Start as Minors option - Discussion

[glider1]

How cool is "start as minors!" This thread is for discussing the option and proposals for possible changes

Gavagai says:
I have an idea for developing Start as minors, and that is to Start as barbarians. It is basically the same, except for until you can establish diplomatic relations you see every other civ as barbarians, i.e. their cities and their units are barbarian graphics and you won't know which civs you have encountered. When you can establish diplomatic relations you will see and encounter every other civ that also can establish relations.

The reasoning behind the idea is that since the AI considers other civs as barbarians when it comes to war planning and defense planning in Start as minors I think the human players get a bit of advantage when it comes to strategic planning. For example, it is quite easy to destroy a neighbour civ early since you are focused and goes for each city of that civ until it's destroyed. The AI have no such focus and attacks the nearest cities and units regardless of civs. Which is the grand idea of Start as minors. And with a cloak of ignorance over the human player we too would fight left and right until we became civilized!

Any thoughts?

 

[glider1]

I'm not sure you are entirely correct when it comes to the war planning behaviour of the AI. I think the AI can differentiate between war planning for barbarians and minors but would have to check the code in more detail.
Cheers

 

[BobTheTerrible]

What I'd like to see is splitting barbarians into (a possible) multiple civs. That way you could see warring barbarians (which is something I really want to see for immersion), and when a civil war/rebellion collapses a nation, it could disintegrate into a multitude of (barbarian) city-states rather than one (barbarian nation), kind of like how in Rhye's and Fall of Civilization, collapsed nations become disunified independent cities.

 

[phungus420]

Personally, I like the idea. Only thing I'd add is that it would make sense to be able to see different civs after you discover writing, not make it a mutual thing.

 

[Afforess]

I really like this idea. Right now, I never touch start as minors, it seems to harm the AI more than the human, because I can focus my wars, and the AI often can not. If everyone was indistinguishable from barbarians, it would make this a LOT more interesting.

 

[gavagai]

@Phungus
Yes, it would make sense to see the other civs when you get writing. But I was thinking in the lines that you perhaps could see the other civs, but would your high and mighty civ care to distinguish between different kinds of lousy barbarians? Until they learned your refined ways and could actually write their own names, that is.

 

[Snofru1]

@Phungus
Yes, it would make sense to see the other civs when you get writing. But I was thinking in the lines that you perhaps could see the other civs, but would your high and mighty civ care to distinguish between different kinds of lousy barbarians? Until they learned your refined ways and could actually write their own names, that is.

That was absolutely true in history!

The celts in in southern Germany and eastern France had a sophisticated culture but didn´t know writing (around 400 BC). The greeks knew about them but they just considered them Barbarians and they were of no real interest for them.

 

[Zeiter]

Hey, this is a good idea, as long as revealing the civs comes about from the human player discovering writing (and not requiring both to mutually to discover it). Just clarifying.

I imagine that you could figure out which cities were allied with which, though, and which civs had creative leaders or started with mysticism, by observing the game. And you would have to make sure that the cities all have barbarian names before the civs emerge into full civs.

Now, I'm also curious: when watching the replay at the end of a game, would one see only barbarian cities until a certain point, or would those civs all be revealed in that medium?

 

[BobTheTerrible]

And you would have to make sure that the cities all have barbarian names before the civs emerge into full civs.

Or all of the cities have no names at all, and once you discover writing you can finally record the city names.

 

[Zeiter]

Or all of the cities have no names at all, and once you discover writing you can finally record the city names.

Oh, haha, that makes even more sense!

 

[phungus420]

More start as Minors discussion:

From here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=347143

The mod looks like a lot of fun. I haven't actually played yet due to a problem with the interface (reported in the bug section), but I have been watching Unclethrill play for awhile.

I really like the "Start as Minor Tribes" option. I have a suggestion to make it better. Currently this option slows the start of the game considerablly, yet the game still starts at 4,000 BC and progresses at the same pace. This causes the entire world to be at war, with civs that cannot enter diplomacy, and few wonders built until 2,000 BC or later. I would recommend that this option either move the start date back to 6,000 BC or slow the pace of the game for the first 1,000 years or so to keep the game play flavor but not mess up the historical timeline so much.

My Reply:

I like that idea, and will forward it to the RevolutionDCM project forum for discussion there. There are quite a few interrelated XML files that would need to be involved in that sort of a change, so it would take some moderately involved SDK coding (at least to do it right, one may be able to hack it with python, but that would cause more issues in the long run for mod modders and such). It seems like something that would be a moderate challenge to code, I could probably tackle it, it would just take some time.