Should every civ have a unique weakness?

[saleembkarim]

I think what all the Civ games are missing is having a unique weakness for each faction. It could be optional. For example, maybe Rome spawns special versions of barbarians near its boarders. Maybe Greek cities other than the capital are city-states that you have a ton of influence over. Maybe after picking an ideology, Germany declares war on civs with different ideologies. Weaknesses would be tricky to balance, but it would create unique and interesting gameplay. Any other ideas for unique weaknesses?

 

[CrazyG]

India can't build missionaries

 

[Recursive]

I think what all the Civ games are missing is having a unique weakness for each faction. It could be optional. For example, maybe Rome spawns special versions of barbarians near its boarders. Maybe Greek cities other than the capital are city-states that you have a ton of influence over. Maybe after picking an ideology, Germany declares war on civs with different ideologies. Weaknesses would be tricky to balance, but it would create unique and interesting gameplay. Any other ideas for unique weaknesses?

In my opinion, there is no need for such a mechanic, and it could result in unfun situations where you lose because of luck rather than skill (there's a reason the Iroquois were low tier in vanilla). It would also make the game much harder to balance, and the space for unique ability descriptions is limited as it is. Also, your suggestion re: Greece makes them much worse than any other civ, and the one re: Germany could be devastating for them.

VP is highly unlikely to add this, you'd need to make a modmod.

Thank you for making suggestions, though.

 

[JamesNinelives]

England's weakness could be Colonial Arrogance: you cannot discover new technologies or gain culture from ancient ruins lol.

America has America First: your influence with city-states decays at twice the normal rate.

France - Liberté - your cities will occasionally go on strike to protest you having been in power since basically for ever XD.

Australia (my country) has Terra Nullius: when you settle a new city, you loose influence with all nearby city-states.

Others could be Russia - Oligarchy, China - One Party System (or One Child Policy), Japan - Isolationism etc.

To be clear each of these is a parody and not meant to represent the actual countries (or their histories), just me cherry-picking things that caught my interest or sense of humour.