How about if instead of just tribal villages, we have something more like the cottage system. A 'goody hut' starts off as a 'small tribal settlement', but if undisturbed for long enough grows to 'a mature tribal settlement', and so on (not sure how many levels). The earlier ones only have access to the weaker benefits, the later ones progressively more. Furthermore we add a chance to respawn the base goody hut in neutral land (low rate of course).
The net effects are:
- Early game you only get appropriately low value rewards, like those that Blue Genie suggested as new ones
- Leaving a goodie hut and consuming it later (but risking someone else doing so) might be beneficial, which adds an extra gameplay twist
- Even though you start on prehistoric and are likely to explore the world before much later, you can still get huts later on (albiet probably weak)
The quality of the best reward you would be eligible for on each type would move up with lower difficulties, so right down on settler maybe you still get access to everything right away, but on high difficulty levels you can't access the big things like techs unless you leave a hut to mature a long time.
One option would be to merge the goody hut result system into the outcome system and use the spawn system to spawn different types of goody huts in different terrain or different eras.
Goody huts are already improvements and improvements can upgrade (just needs a flag to upgrade without being worked I guess).
Great ideas!!!
Here's my brainstorming regarding reworking the cottage system:
I like the idea to try to protect huts. But protecting it with 8 units to surround it from being walked upon from enemy scout is hard, when you can't pay maintenance or afford to have war with a civ (if you don't play with minor civs on). So I suggest huts are not to be popped by
walking upon them but by
pillaging a goody hut pops instead. In fact, a popped hut would regrow after a certain (long) amount of time so you could never destroy it completely (it could be spawned some tiles away).
If it is 'grown hut' (how to grow a goodie hut see below) it doesn't pop right away: pillaging a "town level" goodie hut, makes it become "village" and then "cottage" level hut again.
Now, you cannot only pillage it (which would be done with tribal villages near enemy territory), but for popping tech you need
town level hut taken with culture,
smaller bonusses
(like +happiness in nearest city or +traderoutes or stuff also available for popping with culture) things for village and cottage [better bonusses then with pillaging it]
To grow it, you can also
support it (by normal/food merchants, for example), which you would do if it was near your own territory.
Once a "mature" tribal village gets assimilated by your culture it would become a normal cottage, village or town and pop.
If a town is popped by your culture the tech could freely be chosen maybe (not so when pillaged, a pillaged town could only give a 33% tech chance), so popping a "town"-sized tribal hut by territory could be an important and timed step, garrisoning it with some units over centuries, a quest.
Thx for the input!
--->reposting it in ideas&discussion
EDIT: Oh and btw I found another unsolved stack bug:
A stack of byzantines with 3 healers and a general (?!) is standing in dutch territory refusing to move, Dutch have 30 units nearby and a well promoted general but ignore the byzantine stack.
Using newest SVN.