Sullla's Ideas for a New Civ

[Zyxpsilon]

Sliders would become essential specifically because the focus has shifted to production (instead of Global Happiness monitoring & Empire driven research) in such a concept.
To me, the 25% Production to Gold or Research "projects" always felt like indirect mini sliders at city level. In a perfect situation, i'd wish for a full set of complex other similar stuff;
-- Gold-to-Science(Progress),
-- Gold-to-Culture(Influence),
-- Production-to-Food(Growth),
-- ETC.

... but also, with a tier system (probably gained through techs) that allows continuous choices from 25%, 50%, 75% and so on.

Now you may claim - that *IS* a slider system. Yep, it is - indirectly. Except you'd control "specialized" cities rather than globally impact everything around.
By the time you reach the end of the Modern Era (in the current lack of activities other than nearing a victory condition or having to stage final wars) what else is there to do?
To me, the very beginning of Renaissance if a HUGE hurdle that could use a new *Terraforming* concept for workers that could justify such supplemental city projects if only because the Yields ratio must go somewhere.
In a waste bucket of click_next_turn_hell_loops or an actual gameplay factor that begins to influence Industrial as soon as you hit Gunpowder instead of waiting for any other opportunities to make decisions. Besides, the UN-Wonder is already soooooo near to the Future Era edge, right?

 

[rezaf]

I really hope that a potential Civ6 makes a leap of faith away from Civ4, even though Civ5's leap didn't end up all that well.

Civ6 could be a pausable real-time game, with maps made of a thousand time more tiles, but each arranged into "regions" which would be the smallest area that could be affected. Armies could always be entities made from different types of "units", and those armies could clash and fight for what would feel like an epic amount of time, because you'd be slowing down game speed to 1day/tick during a war, even in ancient times.

The concept of settlers could be thrown overboard, and growth of empires could be organic, with cities and regions popping up with very limited player control.

The concept of a civ's culture could be much more refined, into actual RPG like "skill trees", where you'd always be forced to make compromises. Do I want to make a powerful Monarchy set to dominate the Medieval world? Making the choices neccessary for that could be very harmful later on, when Republics become the norm...

Large empires could be more powerful, but always run the risk of falling apart - though there should be game options disabling this for everyone or only the human player(s). There could be scoring/victory types based on the scores of every civ that descended from you to encourage players letting that happen.

These are only a few ideas, none of which I consider essential for a new civ game, but I definately hope for some more ambitious stuff than Sulla's refined Civ4. Somebody ambitious enough could probably realize most of his ideas using the DLL sources.
_____
rezaf

 

[miwi]

I would like to play "Sullas civ".

Sadly, I finally got bored with Civ5 (I´m a builder).
Civ4 (and maybe some Civ5, I really dont want to give up) will do until Civ6.

 

[MkLh]

Civ6 could be a pausable real-time game

It wouldn't be Civ anymore.

 

[rezaf]

It wouldn't be Civ anymore.

Yeah, you're right. It's as if you'd ditch stackable units or make the map a hex-grid, right?
_____
rezaf

 

[moscaverde]

Take out the tbs part of the game and you lose a huge part of the Civ players (including me).
Government based on a skill tree is also a bad idea, as they changed many times in most civilizations history.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

It wouldn't be Civ anymore.

Agreed, next thing you know someone's gonna wish for a pure FPS (ala-Crysis, etc) or a weird RTS (sic-StarCraft) or a massive MMORPG (duh-WoW) -- oh, wait... hope isn't lost; there's Civ_World on Facebook comin' up.
IMO, it is & always has been a pure, solid, immersive TBS title with very specific context & superbly balanced gameplay features. Add a slight touch of tactical assets for Combat (somehow) and it would even become *MUCH MORE* different (gee, Sulla's theory is no small wreck'of'a'ride either!) than what it already had to go through in CiV.

 

[mitsho]

It´s a very interesting read, though I think it goes into a direction I wouldn´t like, the power gamer. But hey, that´s game design.

I would look for the following goals in my perfect civ game:

1. Balance over all the ages, meaning

a. you can "climb up" the ladder again after a bad middle ages. It might be interesting as well to be able to win in the ancient age. The focus for me is not so much winning than enjoying a good "quasi-simulation". Thus, the AI doesn´t need to go for the win.

b. that the modern age is still playable. The key question is how do you keep the modern age from overloading tasks (espionage, nuclear, United Nations, Corporations, Air Units/Rules, ...). If I look back at my civ (2-5) playing experience I have played many more games in the ancient era and have then started to start in the industrial or even modern era just to see them... (There can also be "negative" game play features as stability...)

2. Strategic Focus: I personally like it more if there´s less MM. Don´t have civ2 caravans which you have to move on the map, don´t assemble the spaceship by transporting it to the capital, as theres no sense, public works is better than workers, or at least merge fishing boats and workers with the embarkment... But I guess that´s just flavour. (I also would prefer a army&autoresolve over tactical combat system)

3. AI: Roleplay. (nuff said).


The point for me would be that the game should be even and snowballing is bad when it ends the game. But that doesn´t mean that you have to even the playing field Mario Kart Style.

The game needs to be interesting in all situations and there need to be around the same amount of options in all ages. How to do that, I don´t know.

 

[masonryan]

sounds like sulla has better ideas for civ than the guys that striped down civ 5 to the state it is in.

 

[megabearsfan]

I glanced at Sulla's article (haven't actually read it yet), but one thing that stood out to me is that he says he'd like Mines to upgrade over time like Cottages did in Civ IV. I don't really like this idea. From a realism standpoint, if anything, I would think that mines and Quaries should DECREASE in value over time, since you are actually EXTRACTING the valuable ore as you mine. The longer you mine, the more ore is extracted, the harder and more inefficient it becomes to extract more ore out of the same mine, hence: abandoned mines. The same could be said for lumber mills. And maybe even for farms. Maybe your farms should decrease in food output until "Crop Rotation" is researched.

This is kind of a radical suggestion, but maybe all non-cottage improvements should have a "time until exhausted" counter where their yield will actually decrease in value over time as they are worked. Once they reach zero, the tile will never be productive again. However, if you stop working the tile for a period of time, the resources in that tile will replenish, allowing you to work them again. Advanced Renaissance and Modern techs - such as the aforementioned "Crop Rotation" tech for farms and plantations, "Biology" for animal-based improvements like Pastures and Fishing Boats, "Geology" for ore-based improvements like Mines and Quarries, "Forest Reseeding" for lumber mills, "Ethanol" for Oil Wells, etc - could eliminate that penalty once researched. This would extend the "Strategic Resource" limitations from Civ V (which I think is a good idea) to ALL resources, in that if you use too much of them too fast, you'll exhaust the supply. Much like American colonists nearly wiped out the Buffalo and Beaver populations from overhunting. You'll still have access to resources for the purposes of happiness/trade even if you stop working the tile, unless the resource becomes "exhausted", in which case, it is removed from the game entirely.

I'll actually read through the rest of his article though and come back with more detailed thoughts/suggestions/criticisms later today.

 

[lschnarch]

b. that the modern age is still playable. The key question is how do you keep the modern age from overloading tasks (espionage, nuclear, United Nations, Corporations, Air Units/Rules, ...). If I look back at my civ (2-5) playing experience I have played many more games in the ancient era and have then started to start in the industrial or even modern era just to see them... (There can also be "negative" game play features as stability...)

I think, most players like to play in the early ages and this has a very simple reason:
Exploration is fun.

But even with making maps bigger and nerfing down explorers, at a certain point in the game the map *will* have been fully explored.
At that point of time you just have to switch to different things, as managing your empire.

Now, this should be made interesting, and here all Civ games up to now have had quite some flaws and weaknesses. Most probably the most important weakness was that the economic system always has been so childish that nobody really could believe in it.

2. Strategic Focus: I personally like it more if there´s less MM. Don´t have civ2 caravans which you have to move on the map, don´t assemble the spaceship by transporting it to the capital, as theres no sense, public works is better than workers, or at least merge fishing boats and workers with the embarkment... But I guess that´s just flavour. (I also would prefer a army&autoresolve over tactical combat system)

I agree that transporting spaceship components to the capital isn't a really bright idea...
And I agree upon the public works (just another thing which CtP2 did better).

3. AI: Roleplay. (nuff said).

Once again, I just have to agree.
"The AI is playing to win" is one of the most aweful concepts in the whole game. And that tells you quite something...

 

[Brian Shanahan]

I glanced at Sulla's article (haven't actually read it yet), but one thing that stood out to me is that he says he'd like Mines to upgrade over time like Cottages did in Civ IV. I don't really like this idea. From a realism standpoint, if anything, I would think that mines and Quaries should DECREASE in value over time, since you are actually EXTRACTING the valuable ore as you mine. The longer you mine, the more ore is extracted, the harder and more inefficient it becomes to extract more ore out of the same mine, hence: abandoned mines. The same could be said for lumber mills. And maybe even for farms. Maybe your farms should decrease in food output until "Crop Rotation" is researched.

Actually mining in general massively increases over time, mostly due to technology. We now have deep casting, machinery, safety equiment and explosives, which all come together to allow us to access resources unavailable to, e.g., the Romans, and the areas where the resources were mined in Roman times are quite often the areas where we mine today.

 

[Xenobenignitas]

I'd remove units completely, or at the least make them automated with player interaction working on a larger, strategic scale. Make the game shift focus back to the other issues that affect civilization. I'm sure they promised something like that when they were designing CiV, or did I imagine that?

 

[Howard Mahler]

I like another of Sulla's ideas.
Domination victory should be made "Easier".

On a huge map, where I play, I think 1/3 of land area and 1/3 of population, together with at least twice your closest competitor in each of land area and population, should be enough for a domination victory. This is plenty hard to achieve, but does not take forever.

Once you reach this stage, it is almost always boring to play anymore.
(So I just start a new game.)

 

[megabearsfan]

Actually mining in general massively increases over time, mostly due to technology. We now have deep casting, machinery, safety equiment and explosives, which all come together to allow us to access resources unavailable to, e.g., the Romans, and the areas where the resources were mined in Roman times are quite often the areas where we mine today.

Hrm, good point.

In that case, I'd like to revise my original idea so that various techs along the tech tree will increase the output of improvements, but the overall decline will still happen until a late-game tech is researched that removes the decline completely.

So for example, if you mine the hell out of one source of Iron in the Classical era, you will see a depletion in production from that mine, and could possibly completely deplete the mine (resulting in the loss of the Iron resource and 0 hammers from that mine). But researching "Machinery", "Dynamite", "Steam Power", "Industrialism", "Robotics" would increase mine output on all mines (including any that had been previously depleted. "Geology" would have the further benefit of removing the depletion penalty altogether. And then other resources/improvements would operate similarly, but with benefits coming from different techs.

Maybe its not a very good idea, but I thought I'd just throw it out there as a thought. Maybe someone else can further develop the idea if they think its worthwhile...

 

[Brian Shanahan]

@megabearsfan, now that is an idea that could work, and also reflects the changing nature of mining. Though I wouldn't have it as seperate techs though, but as an area unlocked by a tech.

And you could have variable depletion rates, and depletion based on usage, e.g. if you make 20 swordsman groups it would go away quicker than if you made only 5.

 

[duckstab]

Take out the tbs part of the game and you lose a huge part of the Civ players (including me).

Add me to that list. Having to make decisions under time pressure simply isn't any fun at all for me. You could make a real-time Civ, but I'd have absolutely zero interest in playing it.

 

[mitsho]

I'd remove units completely, or at the least make them automated with player interaction working on a larger, strategic scale. Make the game shift focus back to the other issues that affect civilization. I'm sure they promised something like that when they were designing CiV, or did I imagine that?

I wanna quote this again for thinking outside the box. That sounds really promising way to go further. Kinda generate a "settler"-feel that you can watch your empire develop.

Taking the units system away kinda also removes the need for tiles and thus the tile-dependent economic system, something else that doesn't really feel natural.

Of course there'd need to be a replacement for the unit system...

I think, most players like to play in the early ages and this has a very simple reason:
Exploration is fun.

But even with making maps bigger and nerfing down explorers, at a certain point in the game the map *will* have been fully explored.
At that point of time you just have to switch to different things, as managing your empire.

Now, this should be made interesting, and here all Civ games up to now have had quite some flaws and weaknesses. Most probably the most important weakness was that the economic system always has been so childish that nobody really could believe in it.
Quote:

Thank you for formulating it better than I did. This is in my opinion the central problem of the Civilization games, but that is of course from my "casual-gamer" perspective.

@the mining-depletion subject. I am opposed to it. This is a good example of the realism-gameplay dilemma. Of course simulating depletion would be historical and realistic, but it certainly will not be fun and it either increases micromanagment (you have to calculate the best way of using them in a incredible complex calculation as there are so many factors) or luck (which makes people angry). With these kind of negative attributes, there must be a clear balancing profit for it to be included. Example: Dark Ages would just bring civilizations down and probably just hammer the bottom civs even more, if it would punish the successful ones, it'd just mean that the optimum play would be just below the "dark age"-threshhold. Stability on the other hand (or "global happines as it was intended") hampers the growth of the top dogs and - if implented cleverly - also provides new challenges for them to battle (gunning for a new social policy combatting their stability or fighting a rebelling city?). What would depletion bring in terms of strategy? It would lower production of high production cities or negate their ability to use them (so that they get the most hammers when they will be producing that special wonder 30 turns from now - how do you teach that to a AI?). It can in critical points in time lower their amounts of swordmen and so on and so on.

I think you could condensate my points into:

1. Similar amount of options in all phases of the game as well as equal importance of those.

2. Roleplay > Winning the Game; for the AI as well as for the player

3. Realism, when Gameplay allows it.

 

[Xenobenignitas]

I wanna quote this again for thinking outside the box. That sounds really promising way to go further. Kinda generate a "settler"-feel that you can watch your empire develop.

Taking the units system away kinda also removes the need for tiles and thus the tile-dependent economic system, something else that doesn't really feel natural.

Of course there'd need to be a replacement for the unit system...

I think tiles can work, but not in such simplified states we have now. Land coverage shouldn't be a determining factor in an economy. The efficiency and variabilty of work done each tile should matter more, so should cities themselves, making small nations and island nations reflect the real world. More importantly than that though, hammers, food and gold should be tradable, not just resources, which would emulate the interaction between developed nations and emergent ones.

I was thinking something more abstract for the military. Something vaguely like the espionage system of BTS, a slider system giving a percentage bonus to military strength and effect. I have no concrete ideas for it though, but I like the idea of shifting away from a war game

 

[boredatwork]

While I applaud Sulla for the time and effort he spent creating an outline for his "new civ", I think the primary conclusion one could draw from the discussion it sparked is the idea of an "ideal Civ" is very much a concept in the eye of the beholder.

His ideas (or any of the other suggestions put forward) are entirely valid for a game he would enjoy playing, but not necessarily everyone would like playing. Nor would a game that others enjoy playing necessarily appeal to him.

Having said that I think the real lesson learnt from Civ5 is not so much features that work or don't for Civilization, but rather that much more important than concept is the detailed development and testing to actually turn ANY concept into a playable game. 1UPT is no more good or bad than tactical maps or Stacks in a Civ game. But successfully implementing any solution requires more effort than Firaxis' copy/pasting or the result will be another Civ5.