Tribes, Villages, Towns and Cities

[Dervish]

Hi! All!
Just as I was thinking how to get better and more perfect and more mind-blowing with this Civilization game, although I know it's not my job, I just wanted to share my opinion on the improving the game the way it suits me. I know I am not very good at computers, software programming, I can't handle these mod.packs or edit.packs (whatever@!!), let alone creating one of my own. I simply one of those creatures who wants to eat the sausage, but, doesn't want to see how it's made. So, I thank you the Civ3 team for supplying me with those edit files, I simply never go into there, not enough time and resources.
But, I would like to see few of new concepts introduced to the game, which will make this game ever unique as possible. First of all, the beginning of the game, we always start with building first city, which is capital city with its name, economics. It should start, may be, with creating villages or settlements in Nomadic style (or Barbarian style, it is wrong to think that we are all products of cities, well, in a way we are, now, but, first we started off in the country side, sorry, for this provincial statement), these settlements would be moving across the face of the map on the back of your people first, then camels, elephants or horses (after discovering Domestication of camels, horses, elephants, dogs, cats and mice, may be!!!) untill you discover the Irrigation or Seed-sowing or Sedentary life, which would enable you to build Towns and then Cities. But, before that, you would be tottaly engaged in this new style Nomadic or Barbarian way of life, hunting, food gathering, pastoralism, herding. Cows.it and bulls.it comes first, then go out masterpieces like London and New York.
These settlements should have a window called, may be, Camp Window, very simple, as simple as bulls.it is. It will have only Build Tab in where you can build few buildings (movable ones, of course, because, you are Nomad!!!) may be prefabbed ATCO trailers or something like that. So these portable buildings would be - Hunters Lodge, Granary-Spoil-Pit and Camp Center, that's it for now, remember, you are Nomad. And tabs or menus showing your food, wood, stone resources collected by your people, knowledge from your sage old ones as well. Of course, I understand that pits can't be moved on the peoples' back, but these Granary-Pit would mean storage places for food, materials and tools. And once you build all of them you accumulate so much resources food and wood, not time for gold yet! With which you can trade, buy knowledge, or do anything else, or it should, certain amount of it, serve as a prerequisite to acquire or reach certain Age, stage in development, whatever. And then when resources and goods around your little Barbaric Camp are depleted, you can pack your camp with all its belongings up on the back of your people, horses, camels and move further ahead looking for more fresh green pastures, unchopped forests, unrecovered stones, ungathered berries and mushrooms, while on the back of your people you discover new advancements, like Seed Sowing, very primitive ones, or Setting and Keeping Fire. You send your quick Scouts out there in advance to detail and guard your way ahead and warn you about arrival of your opponents same Hairy people like you. Hunters and Nomads are good fighters, they can ward off your enemies.

Let me continue tomorrow..... OK?
Or you are welcome to continue on your own.

 

[Chicken_Salad]

AAAAANNH! GAH !!

*thud*

 

[Jimcat]

Sounds like you want to play a game that's not Civilization.

I recommend Age of Empires. It does a nice job of letting you play the pre-agricultural tribes.

 

[Mozenwrath]

Whole-heartedly agree, sounds like you're getting into completely new game territory. Maybe you should design your own game, shame you're not too handy with computers... Anyways, the primary point of civ is not altogether involved in realism. Obviously we don't all live in huge cities with masses of emptiness between them and, nowadays at least, people don't work in the land for food, industry and trade to build libraries and granaries! Despite this, I'm happy with the game and like it just the way it is...
Well they could make a few changes but I won't mention them for fear of marring my Fanboy image

 

[DarkwingGT]

Ummm...I'm not 100% sure on this, but the game Civilization takes place after you've learned the key technologies of Irrigation, Building and what not. So basically that's already occured for your civ when the game starts.

 

[wisefool]

There was an old game, I am thinking around Civ1, Starcon 2, MOO, MOM. Sometime between 1989 and 1992.

In this game you were the leader of a band of settler/nomads. You had an overhead map to move through, and had to worry about things like gathering food, and would run into situations enabling the discovery of hot techs like fire.

I really can't remember the name of it, but I would like to play it again hehe.

 

[Dervish]

To, Wisefool, I was certainly not at all there at that time.

Thing is, gentlemen, that we are treating the whole game as one piece and play it as one piece. We all play it right from the very scratch - building a city and finishing it by building last piece for our space-ship, with so many different Ages and Epochs in between these two. There should be an allowance made to play different Ages separately. You know what I mean? I agree the game would last longer, but, when you play, for example, say, Bronze Age, from its beginning to its end, and that's it with all its achievements, science, religion, military success, you build up some points you end the game. Certain amount of points in your score will or may trigger the transfer to the next Age, and/or upon your wish, whether you want to proceed to the next Age or not, altogether, plus, you can add here, anything you want, like number of Wonders built in your cities, amount of gold etcetera and etcetera, everything of that triggers or allows you to proceed further or stop as you wish!! Those Civs who do not collect same amount of points or score (or whatever) turn back or regress to previous Age (or Nomadic). There should be some kind of competition not based entirely on the military defeat, and not excepting this entirely either.
Actually one more thing that I wanted to highlight is the fact that there would be three different BUILD menu's on your Camp (Village, Town and City) Window compared to just one in all previous Civ games:

Hunters' Lodge - is initial place of training and creating your hunters and herders, pastoralists would then turn into your Military Barracks where you build all your military, including the Navy, Air and Land troops.

Granary-Spoil-Pit - is where you will build all buildings and units for Food Production and Material Production, factories, plants, harbour, and etc, everything that helps you produce Food and Shields.

Camp Center - is where you build all of your cultural, scientific, religious buildings.

That would mean one City can produce 3 items at one time. In whatever combinations imaginable, you can produce 1 unit, at the cost of other two, by unclicking other two menus, thereby, diverting production shields from there to creating one unit really fast, or any combination! Or you can produce three units in one menu, at the same speed as if you producing one unit in each menu.

Everything else stays just or almost same as in current Civ3.

Look, I agree it would become much harder to keep tracks of things in such complicated game. But, look, at where the first Civ game was before, and look where it is now in this regard.

One more thing to mention - I like the way Ocean and Sea terrain is depicted in CTP2 as well as Terraforming. Did you notice how differently the Ocean and Sea terrain is shown with different depths, like if it is shallow water, then it is blue, when it is deeper it goes darker blue compared to Land terrain, where you have mountains, plains, hills (to that I would add depressions as in Dead Sea depression and Navigable rivers, may be)?? That's totally amazing! Perfect! And oil as well as many other resources can be produced from Sea and Ocean cells or tiles! Why is it that Civ3 does not have that???
And Terraforming in Tile Improvement Tab is a big step ahead, if we stopped building Caravans, Spies, Diplomats. Why can't we stop building and eliminate Workers too? The Public Works will work on your roads, mines and etc as in CTP2.

And the game should be devided into 9 Ages or Epochs, which can be played separately, by one Age, by two Ages, by three Ages or by All Ages as one piece, also by any combination, so long as they come in successive order!

1) Prehistory
2) Stone
3) Copper
4) Bronze
5) Dark
6) Medieval
7) Renaissance
8) Industrial
9) Modern

Of course, this is only one of my tiny suggestions, it would be nice to see them incorporated

 

[Dervish]

Moderators,
Could you tell me when you open your new forum on Civ4 Suggestions? I am full of new ideas. And I think I am very good at wrecking computers as well.

 

[Dirk Aurel]

Hmm...

Think we all have loads of ideas,sadly they aren´t always taken into the sale version of the game.Might be better asking that our future Civilization would be democratic.We´d all go to the polls and vote if it should be included or not,thus reating the game most ppl want...

As for your ideas,sounds a lot like Age of Empires to me,I miss the Renaissance too,think that is why the tech tree in mid game is so out of balance,take Man-O-War,the Cannon and Riflemen, they all seem to skip way too much.

Think you missed Iron Age btw.

 

[MetalMorph]

Dervish: Take a look at Empire Earth sometime. What you describe sounds oddly familiar.

 

[Dervish]

What I hate in Empire Earth and other games is their science fiction stuff. I don't understand it.

 

[Willem]

Originally posted by Dirk Aurel

.Might be better asking that our future Civilization would be democratic.We´d all go to the polls and vote if it should be included or not,thus reating the game most ppl want...
[/B]

No thanks, I want to be able to play Civ 4 before I die of old age.

 

[Dervish]

Originally posted by Dirk Aurel
Hmm...

Think we all have loads of ideas,sadly they aren´t always taken into the sale version of the game.Might be better asking that our future Civilization would be democratic.We´d all go to the polls and vote if it should be included or not,thus reating the game most ppl want...

As for your ideas,sounds a lot like Age of Empires to me,I miss the Renaissance too,think that is why the tech tree in mid game is so out of balance,take Man-O-War,the Cannon and Riflemen, they all seem to skip way too much.

Think you missed Iron Age btw.

Sorry, overlooked your remarks. I agree I forgot to include Iron Age. And for every age there should be a unique unit per each civ??

 

[LordAzreal]

Originally posted by Dervish


Sorry, overlooked your remarks. I agree I forgot to include Iron Age. And for every age there should be a unique unit per each civ??

That thought occurred to me as well... However, when you're talking about ancient civilizations that died out (eg. Babylon), or modern civilizations which weren't around from the beginning (eg. America), it is impossible to devise a unique unit that suits them. We don't even know what the Babylonians would've been like if they survived to the present day. Therefore, units past their age (ancient) would be difficult to predict. What would the Americans have in an age when they didn't exist yet?

Though this is just a game, you need to do your research into history if you're devising unique units.

But if it were possible, the Germans could have the Teutonic Knight in middle-ages, English with some sort of ancient-era archer, Japanese could have a Kamikaze bomber in the industrial or modern age, Greeks could have the Cataphract in the middle-ages (I know that the cataphract was a Byzantine thing at that point in history, but half of the Byzantines WERE Greek).

But anyway, there's no point in this idea since there are civs that weren't around in certain ages.

 

[Dervish]

Originally posted by LordAzreal


That thought occurred to me as well... However, when you're talking about ancient civilizations that died out (eg. Babylon), or modern civilizations which weren't around from the beginning (eg. America), it is impossible to devise a unique unit that suits them. We don't even know what the Babylonians would've been like if they survived to the present day. Therefore, units past their age (ancient) would be difficult to predict. What would the Americans have in an age when they didn't exist yet?

Though this is just a game, you need to do your research into history if you're devising unique units.

But if it were possible, the Germans could have the Teutonic Knight in middle-ages, English with some sort of ancient-era archer, Japanese could have a Kamikaze bomber in the industrial or modern age, Greeks could have the Cataphract in the middle-ages (I know that the cataphract was a Byzantine thing at that point in history, but half of the Byzantines WERE Greek).

But anyway, there's no point in this idea since there are civs that weren't around in certain ages.

All of that could be eliminated partly by introducing Ethnic Tree, whereby you avoid the need in showing what nation existed at that time what - not. See, if you can't bring so many pieces together at small scale (which starts as the game shows 4,000 years B.C. up untill now), you would notice that by taking larger scale from 100,000 years ago to now these pieces would fit into each other more perfectly than with previous scale. There were no nations at that time, no need to show special characteristics, or special units, because there were none. Everything like that evolved very later on. On a bigger scale even modern Americans fit perfectly well with Babylonians (if you take in stead of 6,000 years of our history you take 60,000 or 600,000 years). Food for thought???

 

[sealman]

too complex... just give the regular game with a few modifications.