Tribes, city-states, kingdoms, empires and more...

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So I have been thinking of a way to represent the different types of empires in history and make managing your empire more interesting.

There would be no barbarian camps or city states. Instead, everyone would start as a "tribe", 1 settler ready to found your first city. So the game would have more AI "tribes". Each tribe would have a unique bonus that would stay for the whole game and apply to individual cities you settle. If you conquered another tribe or convinced them through diplomacy to join you, those cities would keep their unique tribe bonus. So through conquest, you could have cities with different unique "tribe" bonuses that would apply to the individual cities.

When your capital grows to X pop and if you have not settled another city yet, you would become a city-state. You would pick a city-state unique bonus that emphasizes tall play. When you settle your second city, you would get to choose whether to make that second city part of a kingdom or to let it be a city-state allied to you. If you choose to be a kingdom, you would get direct control over the second city just like a normal game of civ and you would replace your city-state bonus with a kingdom unique bonus that emphasizes wide play but getting too big would give you a small chance of the cities rebelling against you. If you choose to let the second city be an allied city state, you would not directly control the city's production but would get to trade with it, controls its military units in times of war and it would automatically declare war against your enemies. You would become a League and get a unique league bonus. You could settle other cities and make them allied city states as well and grow a league of several allied city states this way. At any point when you settle another city, you could declare yourself a kingdom. Your capital and that city would become your kingdom and any other allied city states would become independent city states no longer allied with you but friendly. The League would be dissolved. You could conquer these city stated to forcefully integrate them into your kingdom or through diplomacy pay them to join your kingdom. When you conquer a city that you did not settle, like a city from another civ or a foreign city state, you could declare yourself an Empire. You would replace your kingdom bonus with a unique Empire bonus that emphasizes conquest and expansion but there would be a higher chance of rebellion the more different tribes you conquer. You could make other tribes or kingdoms your vassal like in civ4. Later, in the game, if your empire gets too big, you could declare yourself a confederation and replace your empire bonus with a unique confederation bonus that would also reduce rebellion. When you get the "nationalism" civic, you could declare yourself a nation-state if you wanted to. You would automatically lose cities far away from you but your remaining core cities would become more powerful and have a strong loyalty factor. You would also replace your empire or confederation bonus with a unique nation-state bonus that would apply to all your cities. Also, if you are a peaceful player that does not conquer, you could build a big League and then at some point change your League into a Confederation and skip the empire phase.

Thoughts?

I feel like something like this would really make a civ game more interesting. It would give the players interesting choices and interesting bonuses. It would also be really cool to see your civ evolve from a lonely tribe into a small kingdom and maybe into an empire and then eventually become a nation-state or stay an empire if you want. It would be up to the player. But it would make the history of your civ more interesting, I think. Plus, it would make the game a lot more dynamic as different empires around you might become empires or break up into nation-states. Instead of always encountering a neighboring "civ", your neighbors might be an AI league of city states or an AI empire etc... I am hoping that city-states, kingdoms, empires, confederations and nation-states would have different play styles so that the game would feel different based on what you are.

I also envision a civ game having a lot more starting AI "tribes" in a game so that on a large map, over time, you could encounter city-states, kingdoms or other empires.
 
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thats interesting, thanks for sharing
these bonuses could not replace each other but stack, especially if they had different scope
e.g. the tribe bonus is applied to citizens of your ethnicity, city-state bonus is applied to the capital, league bonus to allied city-states, kingdom to own cities, empire to conquered, nation to the whole country
in your empire you could have cities taken from different kingdoms, some of them -- former CSs with their bonuses, in those cities people of different ethnicities with their own bonuses..
 
To SupremacyKing2 : that's the spirit.

Although I would make City-States less mechanical and more organical.

I have once designed some sort of a very simplified and incomplete "policy"/tech tree, here it is :

- Nomadism (Basics for all)

- Civilization (Civility ?) [>City-State]
Unlocks Agriculture / Ability to have cities beyond size 3.
Locks Pastoralism

- Organization [>Empires/Kingdoms]
Unlocks Settlers / Ability to manage directly several cities
Free Settler

- Pastoralism
Unlocks Military Tech Tree 2 (prevalent at about AD 1200)
Unlocks the Horde (1 pop = 1 military unit + support)
Locks Civilization

- Clans
Unlocks Clans (ability to have allied cities)

- Barbarism
Unlocks Military Tech Tree 1 (prevalent at about AD 400)

Note that you can be both Civilized and Organized, to be more like traditionnal Civ, but i forgot what were the cons for taking the two. (like being long to research or something, i can't remember)
 
This seems like more than a little tweak. It's more like the skeleton of a new civ game. And your suggestions would affect the victory conditions of the game. Am I right?

It would give the players interesting choices and interesting bonuses. It would also be really cool to see your civ evolve from a lonely tribe into a small kingdom and maybe into an empire and then eventually become a nation-state or stay an empire if you want.

Isn't this almost the thing in Civ IV? You start as a tribe, found a city then other cities. :)

I seem to remember something like: "your tribe has decided to settle down and has chosen you as their leader."

not all civilizations start with the same techs and the leader abilities vary.
 
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This seems like more than a little tweak. It's more like the skeleton of a new civ game. And your suggestions would affect the victory conditions of the game. Am I right?

It would definitely change the game, yes, but not in a fundamentally radical way. I don't think it would require big changes to the victory conditions, although I would change them anyway but that is a different topic.

Isn't this almost the thing in Civ IV?

Not really. You would still start with one city and found more cities. That's basic to every civ version since civ1. What my idea would do is basically give you bonuses based on how many cities you have and your relationship to them and change the game rules a bit for how you expand. Plus, it would add diplomatic ways of adding new cities to your civ.
 
I think if you connect your ideas with real civilizations - which not necessarily have to have been empires - and give them "real" individual traits, this could be quite exciting and a way to learn history! :goodjob:
 
I think your idea(s) would work and they would be best in a watered down version added to an existing civ-game.

I do think they would be difficult to implement otherwise. (But not impossible!)

A very original idea in my mind!

I am curious about what made you think about city-states, tribes and empires...

Certainly the game is interesting enough as it is!

Another pertinent question is how would different players handle the new options? I think many players main (or sole) ambition is to beat the game. But that's not anything new som it might not matter.

hm... Am I blowing things out of proportion? Is your idea simply an add-on to ties between player and AIs? Expanding the diplomacy and political aspects of the game? :lol:
 
A very original idea in my mind!

I am curious about what made you think about city-states, tribes and empires...

Thank you. I love history and recently read a book about how the Roman republic changed into an empire. It reminded that me that Rome started as a kingdom and then became an empire. And of course, many European kingdoms eventually changed into nation-states. So it got me thinking how it could be represented in a civ game.
 
A simpler way to implement my idea would be to add "political organization" that the player could pick and combine with different governments. It would not replace governments but could be added on top of governments.

Political organizations would be:

City-State
Cannot be used if you have have 2 or more cities
Get bonus to "tall"

Kingdom
Requires at least 3 cities
Get bonus to growth

Empire
Requires at least 1 conquered city
Get bonus to expansion

Confederation
Requirement: ?
Get bonus to ?

Nation-State
Requirement: ?
Get bonus to: ?
 
Perhaps smaller tribes and kingdoms could be inclined to ally against some great menacing empire? Imagine that you are allied with some of your neighbors against for example the great Mongolian Empire!

edit: Also, big empires have a tendency to fall apart.
 
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Perhaps smaller tribes and kingdoms could be inclined to ally against some great menacing empire? Imagine that you are allied with some of your neighbors against for example the great Mongolian Empire!

edit: Also, big empires have a tendency to fall apart.

Yes, I would love that to be better represented in the game.
 
it can be meshed into the governments, so they will be something more than card holders
e.g. classical republic = city state league. tribe republic doesnt make much sense anyways..

Tribe
can't found new cities, but the capital can :c5moves:move (like in CivBE). when you defeat another tribe or a civ, it pays tribute in food
can't found or capture cities (but can sack them repeatedly until they're destroyed from population loss)

Chiefdom
captured tribes and cities become :c5puppet:puppets, pay tribute in food/prod/gold (choose)

Horde
puppets build military units, including their uniques

Oligarchy
settlers found colonies (puppets) which may evolve into new city-states
choose a city-state bonus, provide this bonus to allies and yourself

Republic
like oligarchy but can send envoys to other city-states. captured city-states become allies, found/captured cities become puppets.
choose league bonus

Autocracy (Empire)
can :c5occupied:occupy cities. settlers cost more, culture and growth penalty for conquered cities
choose empire bonus e.g. +2 production per conquered city in the capital, caravans from conquered cities bring food to the capital etc

Kingdom
you can found and conquer without penalties but fall apart easily. So need luxes and policies to keep people happy
choose kingdom bonus to all your cities (growth, culture etc)

Nation
high loyalty but unhappy people may revolt more likely (spawn barbs), and your military units can defect to revolutionaries
choose state-wide national bonus (builders can hurry production in cities, faster healing in home territory etc)

Totalitarianism
maximum loyalty, reduced penalties for unhappiness and insufficient housing. penalty to culture and tourism
 
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In Civ IV there is a religious civic called 'theocracy'. But it is really a form of government. Where some priests or leader rule, but they do God's bidding.

It is a quite rare form of government but I think it is interesting for the strong moral it might foster in its inhabitants.
 
In Civ IV there is a religious civic called 'theocracy'. But it is really a form of government. Where some priests or leader rule, but they do God's bidding.

It is a quite rare form of government but I think it is interesting for the strong moral it might foster in its inhabitants.

Civ6 has a theocracy government.
 
Cool!

I am somewhat of a fan of theocracy. I am glad they didn't remove it altogether. In Civ 2 there was another type of government. I think it was called either fanaticism or fundamentalism. A form or government with a very religious streak. With its very particular benefits and probably disadvantages.

I tend to like a government that encompasses all of reality. Takes all of reality seriously.
 
Mechanically it is very sound, but historically I don't know how well it would fit. Tribalism and sedentary kingship are not necessarily mutually exclusive (see Saudi Arabia for modern reference), for example. Also, nation-state needs a functional population culture mechanic to work. As it is right now, there's no real way to tell if any city is culturally mixed or not, and basing the loyalty/core based on just proximity isn't fair imo.

Pretty interesting ideas nonetheless with quite a bit of EU4 influence permeating, I see.
 
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