What do you think of an underlying regional ability for civs?

[TahamiTsunami]

Civs currently already have an ability tied to themselves and another one to their leaders but, since I've been looking at some discussions about how nomadic tribes could be done, I've been thinking about how some civs could share a regional ability.

For example, there could be a Eurasian Steppe Nomads ability that the Mongolians and Scythians could share (any Great Plains natives civs could have a similar ability) that would could highlight relatively mobile cities, more cavalry units, etc.

Some of the other regions that I can somewhat easily think of abilities for if there can multiple civs from those regions are Saharan bonuses to getting food and faith from desert tiles, Polynesian bonuses to early naval abilities, Andean bonuses from mountains, PNW bonuses to camps and fishing, and Mesopotamian bonuses to building near rivers. I'm having a harder time thinking of what a shared regional ability would be for say a Western Europe or East Asian regions and would like to hear other suggestions or if you even think this would be a good idea in general.

 

[The googles do nothing]

Pantheons are like this in the sense that many of them relate to terrain. There was a thread a while back where Boris suggested that Pantheons should based on your actions - If your the first to build a Holy Site on a river you get the river goddess pantheon.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

It is annoying that I don't get a really good pantheon just because an AI took it before me. I'm just not sure how to address this. Unless pantheons are involuntary, like you say. That way, for example, two civilizations side by side but who have the same geographic features can both benefit from the same religion because they share a pantheon. One would then have to allow themselves to be converted to the other's religion.

 

[The googles do nothing]

For example, there could be a Eurasian Steppe Nomads ability that the Mongolians and Scythians could share (any Great Plains natives civs could have a similar ability) that would could highlight relatively mobile cities, more cavalry units, etc.

Alternatively the regional abilities could be based on the region the city is in rather then associated with the civ. Make it harder to build cavalry in a jungle bound city but your plantations may be more fertile.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Alternatively the regional abilities could be based on the region the city is in rather then associated with the civ. Make it harder to build cavalry in a jungle bound city but your plantations may be more fertile.

I still think it makes no sense to have a bonus for terrain your Civ has no in-game contact with, and the more your in-game actions influence your results in everything: tech, civic, religion, Promotions, etc - the better, IMHO

But, rather than relate 'geographical' bonuses to Region (a concept which Civ doesn't really have), I'd relate them to tiles actually in the city radius: got coastal waters in the city radius of your first cities, start getting increasing bonuses towards any Tech or Civic related to sea travel or trade, have over half the tiles around your first city = Tundra, Dance of the Aurora should be pretty cheap for you - almost, but not quite, automatic.

In my Ideal 4X Historical Game the terrain/climate/Tile type would also have a lot more negative consequences than has been normal in Civ. Mounted units, for instance, would be severely restricted in 'rain forest' or jungle terrain: horses cannot even move as fast as a man on foot through dense undergrowth and swamp, and they die like - well, like horses in a swamp: quickly. Trying to take a bunch of infantry units through a set of desert tiles would inflict casualties on them - look up Alexander the Great's march through the Gedrosian Desert for a really bad example of what could happen historically.
Want to explore a bunch of snow/tundra tiles? Try it with anything other than Scouts, and kiss those units goodbye before the Industrial/Modern Era - unless you invest in some serious Fur Resources or hire Barbarians that already live there.
Just examples, but your start position and the terrain/climate your Civ is "familiar with" should have a major effect on where your Civ can 'project power and influence' until technology takes off in the Early Modern/Industrial Eras. Both China and Rome, two of the largest land empires of the Classical World, tried projecting power into the central European or Middle Eastern dry-land desert/steppe from their own familiar forest/Mediterranean/riverine areas, and failed repeatedly. That should set the pattern for the game as well.v

The 'nomad start' or nomad/pastoral civilizations is another problem, one that is looming larger in Civ's future, I think, since the up-coming new 4x historical game Humankind apparently uses a 'nomadic start' of some kind for All the Factions/Civs. I'm waiting to see how they handle it, and especially how they handle the transition from pastoral/wandering to settled/city, and whether they have any Later pastoral Factions, like Civ's Scythians or the Civ-Staple Mongols

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

It's a very interesting idea.
How would it work if both Egypt and Nubia were in would they get Saharan bonuses or could they instead get their own Nile river bonuses, or both?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

It's a very interesting idea.
How would it work if both Egypt and Nubia were in would they get Saharan bonuses or could they instead get their own Nile river bonuses, or both?

IRL, both share the same river/terrain combination: large, long river with extensive marshes surrounded by rocky desert. So both have access to ready food/water source from the river, and rock for building material (rock-cut tombs and churches are IN, Stave Churches are OUT!). Consequently, IRL they influenced each other constantly (see Nubian Dynasty of Egypt and extensive trade between the two since Pre-History).
In Game they could, therefore, as in History, share two ends of the same long river or be on completely different rivers in different parts of the world. The surrounding terrain doesn't have to be desert, but should be dry and rocky - a marshy river valley between mountains would also work for the type of starting position that would 'lead' to their (semi-) historical development.

Using the framework of
Food Source = grain, other plants, herd animals, fish
Fresh Water Source = river, marsh, lake
Building Materials = stone, wood, reeds (marsh), clay (brick/mud brick)
Special Resource = Obsidian, Copper, Whale, Fur (this last not necessarily present at all, but represents the early resources back to Neolithic that were exploited for Special Features or as Trade Goods)

That gives a matrix of 'differences' of 4 x 3 x 4 x 5 (including No Special Resource) = 240 combinations.
Some of those might be pretty close to one another, but that should cover any reasonably-sized game's Civlizations and City States.

In our case above, the two could be:

Egypt: Grain, River, Stone, None
Nubia: Animals, River, Stone, None

So, Close, but not smoking the same cigar.
Obviously, a Civ could also start with multiples of the Framework: both Nubia and Egypt had pottery (clay) and mud-brick construction in addition to building in stone very early, and both were still hunting animals and keeping domesticated Cattle after they settled down to agriculture, and both (especially the Egyptians) fished the river.
By adding such possible multiples the combination totals climb into the thousands but the programming and CPU necessary to keep all of them in mind and generate a map for the resulting combinations and Civs/Cty States could be daunting.