Simulating influences of cities through territory, and finally domination of a region few by few

[Naokaukodem]

Now, Major civs get the influence on turn 1. Just because they are the "Ones" from a few. (normal size : 6 civs)

The reality is far more complex. First off, land was populated homogeneously on the whole Earth, provided it was land adapted to agriculture (or, herding or even hunting or gathering), it is to say not stuff like deserts.

Then, to the image of mateer attracted by mateer in the original "plane" Universe, pools of attraction born.

In the same way we do not understand how mateer came to form lumps, then bodies, planets, stars and black holes, we do know little about what formed exactly into different pools of power in the human world. That let us with mechanics to invent freely.

First off : the map should be populated since the start entirely. (except zones without resources) Second : the player would not become automatically a pool of attraction. Third : this means that the player could play an entire game without being a "major" civilization. (and yet to invent the new victory conditions that belong to this) Fourth : in order to simulate a seemingly choatic aggregation of all things, we may need a multiplicity of levers. Like multiplicating mechanics for the sake of it and without taking attention to exploits in the first time. Yes, this is exactly where I want to go : recreating Civilization I (not the true and final one, rather its process -creating an unseen, experimental and addictive game- and finality -simulating civilizations throughout history), but in modern times.

This is a choral topic. The good news is that nearly every idea is a good idea, and would rather become a part of this project (virtual project, i'm not a modder). As long as your idea is oriented towards how to determine the major civilizations concept, or its lack of concept, you are good. Of course if you judge that this simple sentence do not encompass the OP, you can give it a try. Everyone is judge.

Let's start with the notion of cities, population, buildings, migration and workers :

1) Buildings are built in a tile, where your 'citizens' are. You can build many buildings in one tile. Fun fact, you can move your citizens up to five of them [Antiquity] in order to build buildings in other tiles, with benefits or loss of benefits. (for example, if you build 'houses' in a tile, they would become useless if you move all your population elsewhere)

2) You can split off any part of your 'citizens' in any kind of number up to five. You can work the land, build buildings/districts/wonders in any tile. You can merge them up on the go as well.

3) Groups of 1 'citizen' are auto-sufficient. (food) But they doesn't grow. In order to grow, you need agriculture and crops. Larger groups need agriculture and crops, otherwise the land starts to deplete around them. Maybe re-introduce (or merely introduce in fact) big prehistorical animals like mammoths. (that may purposely made to be depleted)

4) Food is global. New citizens are born in your more populated pool of 'citizens', unless it has reached its max size. In the same time, it's local. It is to say, crops worked have a range of three tiles in Antiquity. But you just have to hit the button "farm" in a plain or grassland in order to have crops, there is flexibility in that regard.

5) Not sure how to treat production. It would for sure not be global, as only your 'citizens' on a tile can build things. Let's say you have a group of five 'citizens' in a tile to build Stonehenge. Fistable, they need food, eventhough they can't grow. They need 2 food per 'citizen', it is to say a total of 10. But they are free of any hunt/gather/farming, because they must work hard to Stonehenge only. Who will feed them ? 'Citizens' 3 tiles max away working farms, breedings, game or savage plants.
Let's say then that a pool of 'citizens' could send "trade routes" up to three tile distant (Antiquity) in order to simulate other Civs cities. They would stand at the place you want to build a wonder/district/building/unit, and could use resources up to 3 tiles distant. So, let's say your specialists and capital are in a place, and you want to build Stonehenge : the reachable resources would be from the spot you build it, not the city if you have one.

What do you think ?

 

[Zaarin]

I think that would be a good game, but it wouldn't be a Civ game.

 

[Naokaukodem]

but it wouldn't be a Civ game.

Huh, why not ?

 

[Zaarin]

Sid Meier's Civilization is a series of 4X games, a genre (like any genre) with certain conventions and limitations. One of those is founding "cities" (an inaccurate term regardless of setting: Civilization's "cities" are more like provinces, and in a space 4X "cities" will be colonized star systems--but it's a useful blanket term). What you're describing belongs more to the grand strategy genre. Again, I like the ideas and would absolutely play a game like that, but I don't see Civilization going that route unless Paradox buys the franchise (which isn't going to happen any time soon). So yes, empty uninhabited land hasn't been a thing for tens of thousands of years--even the most sparsely inhabited regions, like Siberia or the Sahara, had people living in them--but that's a level of granularity that you're not going to find in a 4X game. (For the record, I think Civilization could and should become more granular than it is now without becoming a grand strategy game, but perhaps not quite that granular.)

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Just to butt in here...
It is possible to Approach the 'terrain full of people' model within the context of a 4X Civ-type game.

I have already posted this elsewhere (The Next Expansion: a Few Suggestions), but to summarize, enlarging and combining the Tribal Village and Barbarian Camp mechanisms so that both become simply Settlements that can be either Hostile (Barbarian Camp), Friendly (Tribal Village) or Neutral (convertible to either of the first two) AND making them 'permanent' additions to the landscape unless specific actions are taken, would 'populate' the map much more than it is now. Making it possible to trade with, build trade routes to, or hire mercenaries from Settlements would also increase the 'Civ' interaction with the populated landscape far more than happens in the game now.
Expanding that to include the possibility of Settlements becoming Cities/Free Cities/City States or City States building new cities and even becoming 'Civilizations' later in the game would increase the dynamism of the game exponentially, but is probably also more 'Upward Mobility' than Civ VI could take - it would require some serious reworking of Victory Conditions and Diplomacy, among many other things.
Still, I think these musings indicate that there is considerable scope for increasing the 'granularity' and modeling the implications of the 'populated landscape' within the context of a Civ-Style 4X game.

 

[Gedemon]

Just to butt in here...
It is possible to Approach the 'terrain full of people' model within the context of a 4X Civ-type game.

I have already posted this elsewhere (The Next Expansion: a Few Suggestions), but to summarize, enlarging and combining the Tribal Village and Barbarian Camp mechanisms so that both become simply Settlements that can be either Hostile (Barbarian Camp), Friendly (Tribal Village) or Neutral (convertible to either of the first two) AND making them 'permanent' additions to the landscape unless specific actions are taken, would 'populate' the map much more than it is now. Making it possible to trade with, build trade routes to, or hire mercenaries from Settlements would also increase the 'Civ' interaction with the populated landscape far more than happens in the game now.
Expanding that to include the possibility of Settlements becoming Cities/Free Cities/City States or City States building new cities and even becoming 'Civilizations' later in the game would increase the dynamism of the game exponentially, but is probably also more 'Upward Mobility' than Civ VI could take - it would require some serious reworking of Victory Conditions and Diplomacy, among many other things.
Still, I think these musings indicate that there is considerable scope for increasing the 'granularity' and modeling the implications of the 'populated landscape' within the context of a Civ-Style 4X game.

Yes, I hope we'll be able to implement something of that kind in my mod.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Sid Meier's Civilization is a series of 4X games, a genre (like any genre) with certain conventions and limitations. One of those is founding "cities" (an inaccurate term regardless of setting: Civilization's "cities" are more like provinces, and in a space 4X "cities" will be colonized star systems--but it's a useful blanket term). What you're describing belongs more to the grand strategy genre. Again, I like the ideas and would absolutely play a game like that, but I don't see Civilization going that route unless Paradox buys the franchise (which isn't going to happen any time soon). So yes, empty uninhabited land hasn't been a thing for tens of thousands of years--even the most sparsely inhabited regions, like Siberia or the Sahara, had people living in them--but that's a level of granularity that you're not going to find in a 4X game. (For the record, I think Civilization could and should become more granular than it is now without becoming a grand strategy game, but perhaps not quite that granular.)

I see two of my suggestions pointed out here :

1) Unconventional cities
2) Land populated from the start

The second point is merely the ideal i wish Civ reaches one day, but I think that the first one can ignore it completely.

Now, on the first point, I can see a 4X using it as still a 4X : Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate. In that regard, what makes a 4X is more the randomly generated map than the form or shape of cities. I've seen plenty ways to manage cities in 4X, and they were still called 4X. More, it's designed within a map composed of tiles, which approaches Civ dramatically. For me, the main characteristics of "grand strategy" games as you call them are the encompassed era ; the unflexibility of the map ; a map composed by regions ; battles that happen with abstracted armies rather than sensible units.

Here, it's just that citizens, settlers, workers, and even, why not, units and armies would have the same core. Of course this is a first throw and there may be issues, among unclarity and zones of shadow.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I see two of my suggestions pointed out here :

1) Unconventional cities
2) Land populated from the start

The second point is merely the ideal i wish Civ reaches one day, but I think that the first one can ignore it completely.

Now, on the first point, I can see a 4X using it as still a 4X : Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate. In that regard, what makes a 4X is more the randomly generated map than the form or shape of cities. I've seen plenty ways to manage cities in 4X, and they were still called 4X. More, it's designed within a map composed of tiles, which approaches Civ dramatically. For me, the main characteristics of "grand strategy" games as you call them are the encompassed era ; the unflexibility of the map ; a map composed by regions ; battles that happen with abstracted armies rather than sensible units.

Here, it's just that citizens, settlers, workers, and even, why not, units and armies would have the same core. Of course this is a first throw and there may be issues, among unclarity and zones of shadow.

I think (and I'm sure I will be quickly corrected if I've missed the point) that you and Zaarin are arguing degrees of 'granularity' and 'city founding/management' here, rather than utterly disagreeing on the basics of either.

A comment or three on Cities. They have been the bedrock of the Civ games ever since Civ I, and virtually all the functions of the game revolve around them: all 4 of the Xs involve finding locations for cities, founding and growing them, using them to exploit resources and build armies to remove opposition. Without cities, there is no Civ Game.
However, the 'traditional' (classical Greek, in fact) definition of Civilization as being dependent on Cities, which is the basis for the Civ franchise, has been seriously eroded in historical and archeological circles in recent decades. We now know, for instance, that there were cities without agriculture, massive ceremonial architecture without cities, groups with a high degree of cultural unity, political, economic, and military power without cities, and even societies with very sophisticated economic systems that had no circulating 'money' or cities - in short, there is an immense variety of human development processes and possibilities that NO 4X game models or acknowledges at all.

So, there is a great deal of room for Improvement within the 4X scheme of game design, and that improvement should include a variety of societal/civilization development instead of or in addition to the simple founding of Cities, working the tiles around the city that we have now. That goes together with the 'populated landscape', because that concept includes naturally all the non-city development - the constructing of Gobekli Tepis and Stonehenges, the dominating of wide swaths of land by pastoral groups, the decentralized 'civilizations' like early medieval Europe, archaic Dark Age Greece, or the native Pacific Northwest of the Americas - all places with highly organized societies, cultures, and even military power, but nothing resembling a city.

Once we abandon the limited and, frankly, obsolete concept of City = Civilization that the game is strangled with now, I think we can begin to approach both a more involved and engrossing granularity of population on the map and a more accurate variety of potential civilization development in the game.

 

[acluewithout]

I think (and I'm sure I will be quickly corrected if I've missed the point) that you and Zaarin are arguing degrees of 'granularity' and 'city founding/management' here, rather than utterly disagreeing on the basics of either.

A comment or three on Cities. They have been the bedrock of the Civ games ever since Civ I, and virtually all the functions of the game revolve around them: all 4 of the Xs involve finding locations for cities, founding and growing them, using them to exploit resources and build armies to remove opposition. Without cities, there is no Civ Game.
However, the 'traditional' (classical Greek, in fact) definition of Civilization as being dependent on Cities, which is the basis for the Civ franchise, has been seriously eroded in historical and archeological circles in recent decades. We now know, for instance, that there were cities without agriculture, massive ceremonial architecture without cities, groups with a high degree of cultural unity, political, economic, and military power without cities, and even societies with very sophisticated economic systems that had no circulating 'money' or cities - in short, there is an immense variety of human development processes and possibilities that NO 4X game models or acknowledges at all.

So, there is a great deal of room for Improvement within the 4X scheme of game design, and that improvement should include a variety of societal/civilization development instead of or in addition to the simple founding of Cities, working the tiles around the city that we have now. That goes together with the 'populated landscape', because that concept includes naturally all the non-city development - the constructing of Gobekli Tepis and Stonehenges, the dominating of wide swaths of land by pastoral groups, the decentralized 'civilizations' like early medieval Europe, archaic Dark Age Greece, or the native Pacific Northwest of the Americas - all places with highly organized societies, cultures, and even military power, but nothing resembling a city.

Once we abandon the limited and, frankly, obsolete concept of City = Civilization that the game is strangled with now, I think we can begin to approach both a more involved and engrossing granularity of population on the map and a more accurate variety of potential civilization development in the game.

Civ VI is constrained by being a 4X game, but also by its "boardgame" design and the franchise 's own history and "cannon". I can't see FXS getting rid of cities within those constraints.

But I could see Cities having a little more nuance.

Regions

I think the game could really use "regions". Indeed, we already have Regions with continents. We could just use those or maybe have each continent divided into 2 or 3 Regions.

Okay, but then what? Well, you could a few things. First, you could have a concept of Regions being "controlled" or "free". This wouldn't need to be any complicated mechanic - maybe just having x cities in that Region, or x cities and you build some government building of some sort, making incentive city a capital for that Region.

Anyway. Free regions would spawn barbs and have other problems , e.g. negative loyalty. Once you control a region, no more barbs, and maybe other benefits. Maybe it lets you creat a Trade Node (or maybe you need to control 2 Regions in the same Continent to do that).

What would be fun about this, is you'd have a reason to keep expanding to lock down each Region - to stop barbs and gain other benefits. It would also make dom more interesting, because if you lost a couple of cities, you don't lose control of that Region.

Later in the game, you could maybe flip to just controlling a Region rather than just individual cities or you just control the capital of each Region. That might reduce the clicks late game.

Sprawl

Not a big point, but it would be nice if you could plant villages etc. in each City, either as an improvement or district. It would help cities feel more like an urban centre within their tile area, rather than the sole habitat space they currently feel like.

Minor Civs

The game needs some minor Civs between full Major Civs and City States. Someone the Major Civs can fight with and compete over.

I like the idea of barbs and tribal villages being reworked, and maybe that would be a way to do it. Or let city states expand beyond one city. Or it could just be a new thing. I don't no mind how they do it.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I think (and I'm sure I will be quickly corrected if I've missed the point) that you and Zaarin are arguing degrees of 'granularity' and 'city founding/management' here, rather than utterly disagreeing on the basics of either.

A comment or three on Cities. They have been the bedrock of the Civ games ever since Civ I, and virtually all the functions of the game revolve around them: all 4 of the Xs involve finding locations for cities, founding and growing them, using them to exploit resources and build armies to remove opposition. Without cities, there is no Civ Game.
However, the 'traditional' (classical Greek, in fact) definition of Civilization as being dependent on Cities, which is the basis for the Civ franchise, has been seriously eroded in historical and archeological circles in recent decades. We now know, for instance, that there were cities without agriculture, massive ceremonial architecture without cities, groups with a high degree of cultural unity, political, economic, and military power without cities, and even societies with very sophisticated economic systems that had no circulating 'money' or cities - in short, there is an immense variety of human development processes and possibilities that NO 4X game models or acknowledges at all.

So, there is a great deal of room for Improvement within the 4X scheme of game design, and that improvement should include a variety of societal/civilization development instead of or in addition to the simple founding of Cities, working the tiles around the city that we have now. That goes together with the 'populated landscape', because that concept includes naturally all the non-city development - the constructing of Gobekli Tepis and Stonehenges, the dominating of wide swaths of land by pastoral groups, the decentralized 'civilizations' like early medieval Europe, archaic Dark Age Greece, or the native Pacific Northwest of the Americas - all places with highly organized societies, cultures, and even military power, but nothing resembling a city.

Once we abandon the limited and, frankly, obsolete concept of City = Civilization that the game is strangled with now, I think we can begin to approach both a more involved and engrossing granularity of population on the map and a more accurate variety of potential civilization development in the game.

Still not sure what you mean by "granularity" though. And i agree we can improve Civ dramatically even if no Civ game did it before, or even no other 4X game. After all, before Civ5 there were no 1UPT, no global happiness, before Civ6 there were no wonder or disctrict occupying a tile, or no 'influence' determining the rebellion of a city. And before Civ1, there were no 4X. If all, those last innovations are a step in the right direction, but we can ask for more for sure, since their impact is still minimal, shy and nearly inconsistent.

 

[Zaarin]

nearly inconsistent.

This, IMO, is Civ6's biggest problem. It has good ideas, but it doesn't really know what it wants to be. It's a little late to make Civ6 coherent, but Civ7 needs clearer direction.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

This, IMO, is Civ6's biggest problem. It has good ideas, but it doesn't really know what it wants to be. It's a little late to make Civ6 coherent, but Civ7 needs clearer direction.

If I didn't know better, I would conclude that Civ VI and Call to Power were designed by the same team: both have numerous really good ideas and design concepts, both have most of the concepts and ideas really wretchedly poorly implemented. So CtP had aircraft that took 5 years to complete a mission and farmers howing a field in orbit, and Civ VI has a Tech Tree that covers only half the game-time and late-game units that no one has time to build. As stated, no coherence that comes from actually testing how the Great Ideas work together in practice.

Still not sure what you mean by "granularity" though. And i agree we can improve Civ dramatically even if no Civ game did it before, or even no other 4X game. After all, before Civ5 there were no 1UPT, no global happiness, before Civ6 there were no wonder or disctrict occupying a tile, or no 'influence' determining the rebellion of a city. And before Civ1, there were no 4X. If all, those last innovations are a step in the right direction, but we can ask for more for sure, since their impact is still minimal, shy and nearly inconsistent.

Civ games have always been 'granular' on the map, in that the map either has Cities or it has Nothing. Except for ephemeral Barbarian Camps and Tribal Villages, there is no indication whatsoever of any human settlement other than cities, both within and without the borders of the 'civilizations'.
The Districts were a step towards greater diversity of human settlement: to me at least, they represent the smaller towns and settlements around the major cities: Cambridge town as a Campus District to the city of Boston, or Potsdam as an Encampment District to the city of Berlin, Southwark as an Entertainment District for London (in Elizabethan times).

BUT that's just a beginning, or should be. As has been stated many times, people are and have been for tens of thousands of years, Everywhere on the territorial landscape, in one form or another. In fact, until very recently (last 300 years or so) the huge majority of human beings never lived in or even saw a 'city' - they lived in villages, towns, or semi-isolated farms or camps or steads. So, the Civ games utterly ignore the majority of humanity for the majority of the game's timespan!

I think that even Civ VI has the 'infrastructure' to change that (although I don't expect any such radical change to happen, unless a Master Modder gets his/her hands on the Game Code and does it). Cities, Districts, City States, Free Cities, lumping Tribal Villages and Barbarian Camps into Settlements with more variety to them, gives us a number of possibilities for increasing the variety of ways to represent Human Settlement on the game map in political, economic, religious, military and sociological terms. No playable game will be entirely accurate at this (my sister got her PhD in geography largely by modeling such settlement patterns with hugely complex computer programs: the reality is much too complicated to 'game' for fun!) but we can do much better, and IMHO get a much more interesting game from the results.

 

[Naokaukodem]

No playable game will be entirely accurate at this (my sister got her PhD in geography largely by modeling such settlement patterns with hugely complex computer programs: the reality is much too complicated to 'game' for fun!) but we can do much better, and IMHO get a much more interesting game from the results.

Yeah that's why i refused to participate in a project with the member 'HorseshoeHermit' who PM'd me, he seemed motivated and all but really, we know so little of reality that we could barely emulate it in a video game ! I pointed out cities influences, migrations and things like city sizes, why and when (without railroads), etc.
But I'm still trying to re-invent the wheel, for my own pleasure and because i have nothing better to do, heh.

 

[Naokaukodem]

And by the way, when I now understand what you mean by "granularity", i still don't understand what you mean by "more" or "less" of it.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

And by the way, when I now understand what you mean by "granularity", i still don't understand what you mean by "more" or "less" of it.

I'm sure it's mostly my fault: not explaining myself adequately.

Put another way, I'm referring to more Variety of human settlement on the game map.

Right now, the map had only two types of human settlement: Camps/Villages, which are strictly one-tile temporary features, and Cities, which can be Free, State, or Civ and have a varying radius of activity/influence around them. That's it. No 'granularity' or 'grit': the map is strictly City or Country, with nothing in between and even in the late-game, lot's of 'empty' space on the map - at least as far as depiction of Human Habitation goes.

What I'd like to see is more variety of Human Activity on the map: permanent one-tile Settlements of various kinds, perhaps with the possibility of them having some ability to work a tile or more around them. Free Cities that actually are that, instead of strictly temporary cities that are Free only in the sense that you can get them through Loyalty instead of having to pay for them with Settlers or War, City States that have the potential to join you 'freely' instead of strictly through Conquest (another Level of Interaction above Suzeignty' if you will). Possibly even Districts that, if not contingent with the city center, take on some of the characteristics of a separate Town - which is really what they are depicting in that case.

For Granularity substitute Variety and I hope my meaning is clear: more variety of settlement-types on the map, and more variety of dipomatic/economic/political interactions between them and the gamer.

 

[Naokaukodem]

So would you you qualify my idea of having merely settlers/workers/citizens/military units as a united concept as more variety or less ? Because that's where it becomes confusing : if we reduce several elements to one only, there's clearly less variety, but those elements can be tweaked infinitly in order to give what we have already and beyond.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

So would you you qualify my idea of having merely settlers/workers/citizens/military units as a united concept as more variety or less ? Because that's where it becomes confusing : if we reduce several elements to one only, there's clearly less variety, but those elements can be tweaked infinitly in order to give what we have already and beyond.

For both game and simulation purposes, more variety and influential decisions by the player, within reason, is always a Good Thing. So if we reduce 4 different units to a single unit, but that single unit can act in all the ways the previous four did, and more, we have actually increased real variety. And if the player has to decide how that unit should be used from among a larger number of potential and important functions, variety and player/gamer interest can be hugely increased.

From a historical perspective, all human societies had to allocate people to various functions. This could be done by Tradition, Class, Family, Economics, or Government Fiat (God-King, Priest, etc). Until recently, there were severe restrictions on those allocations: women were largely left out of the 'formal' worker and military 'people pool', the Slave component (present in almost all Civs prior to the Renaissance/Industrial Eras) had restrictions on use, and the non-productive Military part of the population usually had to be kept small enough so that the Productive component could support them. In modern periods, the population tends to be much more flexible in that women and formerly 'marginal' groups are more included, but specialized skills not found throughout the population may be required. You cannot run an industrial/technical society or economy without schools and universities of some kind, and restrictions in available knowledge may be more important than restrictions in the sheer number of 'workers'.

So I would welcome more flexibility in the way the game population is divided into 'useful' elements: workers, specialists assigned to buildings and districts, settlers or immigrants, military or civilian units. IF the restrictions are reasonably accurately modeled - and the differences among various Civics, Social Policies, and Governments in how you can manipulate the numbers - the gamer could end up with a much richer experience throughout the game...

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

I'm sure it's mostly my fault: not explaining myself adequately.

Put another way, I'm referring to more Variety of human settlement on the game map.

Right now, the map had only two types of human settlement: Camps/Villages, which are strictly one-tile temporary features, and Cities, which can be Free, State, or Civ and have a varying radius of activity/influence around them. That's it. No 'granularity' or 'grit': the map is strictly City or Country, with nothing in between and even in the late-game, lot's of 'empty' space on the map - at least as far as depiction of Human Habitation goes.

Let's look at the reasons for that. It's a turn-based game, which therefore uses tiles to express the map to each player. Turn-by-turn, you want to have things be generated for the player to command and eXploit, and so you need some kind of mathematics that governs this generation. But moreover, you need a vessel in which to receive those things. The game needs the generation to belong somewhere, so that it's yours , because it must also be consumed in feedback cycles.

The city-fixation of Civ games is not a necessary thing, but we can make an intelligent break from it only by keeping the interface of a game in mind.
(Also, FXS has 0 chance of really doing this, because they're committed at a corporate level to past success. I think we all know that.)

I think you also see this condition I've alluded to, based on your later statement on the topic of "the way the game population is divided". Getting the kind of gameplay that the realists have imagined (the realists of various scopes and ambitions) requires getting right, the basic materials or ontology that the game world exposes, to the players. For instance, one sometimes wants to say 'map' to actually mean 'game world', but that one design move actually embeds pages and pages of decisions and assumptions. One can have a game that exposes people as the units of gameplay, but then you get Rimworlds and Dwarf Fortresses and the workload becomes too immense to play. Abstraction has been discarded entirely, for the worse.

So the mission is figuring out , if not cities, then "where" do your mouse clicks influence? What is it people really imagine doing with the gameplay , when playing Alternate History Random Map Settler Test Of Time (ARMSTOT)?

Yeah that's why i refused to participate in a project with the member 'HorseshoeHermit' who PM'd me, he seemed motivated and all but really, we know so little of reality that we could barely emulate it in a video game ! I pointed out cities influences, migrations and things like city sizes, why and when (without railroads), etc.

Aw, that makes me feel sad.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

The sheer number of mouse clicks exercising influence in different areas is a problem with Civ. It starts manageable and reasonable in the early game, but by late game what were impactful individual decisions early become mindless clicks or switching to automation where available (not available in enough areas!).

Deciding the build order of your first two cities has a huge impact on the development of your civ. Deciding the build order of your 14th and 15th city is unlikely to impact the outcome of the game in any measurable way. The direction and extent of early scouting is critical. By mid game, all that matters for scouting is filling in the rest of the map, but which area first is much less important.

I really think a problem with the mid- and late-game malaise for civ starts with the nature of the decisions you're making, which do not change as the game proceeds, and which become less and less important over time (even though there become more and more of them).

I raise this in the context of this discussion, as it goes to the heart of the idea that we must have cities as a nexus for exercising influence. I think this should remain a key feature of the Civilization games. But I'm not sure the nature of the decisions being made at the city level need to stay as they are currently.

I disagree with arguments that the board game origins of Civ are a reason for some of its game design issues. Straying too far from good board game mechanics is a bigger issue, to my mind. One of the features of good board game design is to keep the weight of player decisions (i.e. the amount and impact of those decisions) relatively constant over the course of the full game.

Within the context of Civ, I think the conceptual change should be to think of the player as the governing body of a people. What decisions does that governing body make? how does the nature of those decisions change as their people expand, possibly absorbing nearby settlements either organically(cultural influence), through peaceful negotiations (trade/marriage), or war? how does it change as government and technology become more effective? how does it change as you give the population more or less freedom (and what are the concurrent impact on the productivity of your people)?

In other words, as your civilization evolves, so should the way you govern your empire, and the nature and types of decisions you're making. Your cities remain the hub of your civilization, but the commends you issue into and from them don't remain static.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Aw, that makes me feel sad.

Hey HorseshoeHermit. How do you do ? Is your project advancing ?