Suggestion: Great Migration Antiquity Crisis

[Adam N.]

Had an idea for another antiquity crisis: Great Migration

There have been great migrations in history due to population pressure and war, among other causes.

In Civ 7, the Great Migration crisis kicks off with whispers of a distant threat and the approach of vast hordes of migrants. The player takes a malus policy reflecting anxiety and discontent among the populace.

Migrants slowly begin appearing on the map, all moving in one direction. They take up one hex and have an icon. Some are builders (production), some are scientists (science), some are traders (gold) ... etc.

Players can send units to grab these migrants and lead them back to their settlements. Doing so provides a boost to the yield associated with the type of migrant, as indicated by their icon.

However, most of these migrants are accompanied by one or more mobs, who must be settled on a city tile. Doing so prevents the tile from providing its yields to the city, and the mobs must be fed, leading to a local food penalty.

As the crisis worsens, more and more migrants appear, but the mobs attached to them also increase. Powerful specialists with unique bonuses may appear, causing players to fight over possessing them. Crisis policies reflect the struggle of trying to integrate these new people into the empire.

Toward the end of the crisis, the military power these migrants are fleeing shows up. They pursue and harass the specialists, causing the player to decide whether to save them or avoid conflict. These forces otherwise avoid attacking the players.

The crisis resolves as the last migrants flee off the map, with their tormentors in hot pursuit. The players have likely settled as many migrants as they can support, squeezing their resources as a result. When the new age begins, these camps disperse, either integrating into the city proper or leaving, perhaps to found a new city state somewhere on the map.

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What do you think?

 

[Zaarin]

Welcome! I'm pretty certain that the Migration Period is what the Barbarian Incursion crisis we've seen glimpses of is meant to represent; I do like your more peaceful take on it, though, as many of those "barbarians" settled within the Roman Empire and contributed to it positively as well as negatively.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

In fact, current academic consensus is that the "Barbarian Invasions" of Rome were far more like the posted Migrations than a military-style invasion. For one thing, many of them started over a century and a half before western Rome 'fell', and were basically people moving into parts of the Roman Empire that had been largely depopulated by the Antonine and Cyprian Plagues of the late 2nd and 3rd centuries.

Unfortunately, having Plague remove up to a third of your population just to make accommodating migrants easier is going to be a real hard sell to most gamers, and without the sudden availability of farmland to support them, migrants' reception is likely to be bloody.

 

[GeneralZIft]

Unfortunately, having Plague remove up to a third of your population just to make accommodating migrants easier is going to be a real hard sell to most gamers, and without the sudden availability of farmland to support them, migrants' reception is likely to be bloody.

Haha the crisis system is already a hard sell

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

no, i don't think civ should try to simulate history from the top down, but rather, the bottom up.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Haha the crisis system is already a hard sell

Exactly. So far, frankly, the crisis events we've seen look relatively mild, yet people (at least on these Threads) are already agitated about a 'forced' crisis system.

BUT, going by previous Civ games, if the crisis were optional gamers would find ways to simply avoid the whole mechanic or ameliorate the results to the point of banality: witness the Dark/Golden Age system in Civ VI, which is so easily manipulated that I've never gone into a Dark Age unless I was actively trying to- which, to me, makes the whole system rather pointless.

I suspect two things will happen with the Crisis system inCiv VII:

1. The crisis events will be modified in DLCs to get a wider range of results: both more devastating if you are not prepared for them, and less avoidable as gamers find 'holes' in the system to avoid crisis completely.

2. Alternatives to the straight Old Civ - Crisis - New Civ progression the game now mandates. I firmly believe that within a year or two there will be a modification of the mandate to include alternatives. Possibly a Retain Old Civ, Take A Hit on Civ Bonuses the longer you play a Civ 'Out of its Age', or a much wider range of potential progressions in Civs, probably right up to Pick Any Civ with certain prerequisites.

Even if it is devilishly hard to get the prerequisites, the idea of having the option will appeal much more than being seemingly straightjacketed into a few Civs throughout the game based on the choice you made on Turn One without knowing what (all of) your opponents are and what might happen vis-a-vis resources, terrain, and other in-game events.

 

[GeneralZIft]

Maybe dodging the crisis could let you ascend your current Civ choice. Somehow I doubt it though, doesn't seem like they ever designed for stuff like that

Exactly. So far, frankly, the crisis events we've seen look relatively mild, yet people (at least on these Threads) are already agitated about a 'forced' crisis system.

BUT, going by previous Civ games, if the crisis were optional gamers would find ways to simply avoid the whole mechanic or ameliorate the results to the point of banality: witness the Dark/Golden Age system in Civ VI, which is so easily manipulated that I've never gone into a Dark Age unless I was actively trying to- which, to me, makes the whole system rather pointless.

I suspect two things will happen with the Crisis system inCiv VII:

1. The crisis events will be modified in DLCs to get a wider range of results: both more devastating if you are not prepared for them, and less avoidable as gamers find 'holes' in the system to avoid crisis completely.

2. Alternatives to the straight Old Civ - Crisis - New Civ progression the game now mandates. I firmly believe that within a year or two there will be a modification of the mandate to include alternatives. Possibly a Retain Old Civ, Take A Hit on Civ Bonuses the longer you play a Civ 'Out of its Age', or a much wider range of potential progressions in Civs, probably right up to Pick Any Civ with certain prerequisites.

Even if it is devilishly hard to get the prerequisites, the idea of having the option will appeal much more than being seemingly straightjacketed into a few Civs throughout the game based on the choice you made on Turn One without knowing what (all of) your opponents are and what might happen vis-a-vis resources, terrain, and other in-game events.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Maybe dodging the crisis could let you ascend your current Civ choice. Somehow I doubt it though, doesn't seem like they ever designed for stuff like that

Yes, I strongly suspect that the Crisis system is so built into Civ VII that they are not going to deviate from it or abandon it no matter how many DLCs they produce after launch.

On the other hand, I would be very, very surprised if elements of the crisis system are not modified in various forms after launch. For one thing, Mandatory Negative Events are always a problem in commercial games because so many gamers dislike them so much. For another, this is the first time Civ has tried to build a game system around such a set of events, and such First Attempts almost always come with unforeseen problems that have to be 'tweaked' to get it to work optimally.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

IF there's such crisis in gameplay for Antiquity Era.
there should be TWO Big crises. if Antiquity means 4000 BC (or older, SHOULD be 6000 BC even!) - 400 AD. it means 7th November 2024 'Exploration Age demonstrations' only shows the first Barbarian Migration Crisis--Bronze Age Collapse (Game ends at 900 BC! That's 15 Centuries APART! No playable area during this timeframe!), and not the Second 'Fall of Rome' Crisis.