I am experiencing a hard time currently, and my go-to escape are video games. And I downloaded Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, and that game was crap. It worked like an ass, and I had few WTF moments. Like cities next to my civilization were willingly joining my empire without me even doing anything to exert influence over them. This was weird, and left me dismayed. I must say my experience with Civilization VII was even worse. (Described here)
For those that don’t know, Civilization is a game, where you run your own state. You establish cities, explore the map, conquer new lands, build wonders to stand the test of time, and try to beat your opponent through either the mastery of science, culture, influence over city states, and other civilizations, or through pure conquest.
City states were a mechanic introduced in Civilization V, or perhaps earlier. I don’t know, I haven’t played much Civilization IV but I think they were toying with the idea already back then. Otherwise, there were barbarian camps that spawned units that raided your territory. Each city state provides things such as military units, culture, faith, or commerce, and resources, if you happen to gain influence over them.
In Civilization VI they did away with the worker unit, and this was one of the WTF moments. I played a lot of Civilization III and V. Currently I am playing the latter. From a strategic point of view, the worker is vulnerable and you need to have some military units present to defend it from depredations of barbarians or other civilization. You can raid other civilizations and take their workers. In Civilization III, the worker could be merged with your city population, this symbolized the fact that you take the workforce to develop your empire instead of letting it work inside the city. This mechanic was done away with in Civilization V but the latter introduced great people, who could build special improvements around your cities. In Civilization VI this was streamlined, which is shame.
Civilization VII introduced movements from one civilization to another at the turn of the periods. This was very poorly done. For some reason they copied a similar game called Humankind. The latter game also kinda sucked. Honestly, why copy shitty projects, and not stick to the formula that works? Honestly, just improve the graphics, the AI, the random generation of maps. I like playing on Terra. A map that creates a random Earth-like map with one large continent that all the civilizations start at and several continents with only city states and barbarians.
I think of some innovations for such games. For instance, instead of starting with a settler, you could start with a settlement or a horde. The game starts 4000 BC, and back then you already had settlements. You could either start with a settlement, and build defense and an army to defend yourself against hordes, or a small army, enough to conquer a settlement and start a civilization. There are ancient ruins that you can explore and give yourself bonuses, maybe they can be replaced by villages that provide you with extra units or other boosts. Some might even invite you to settle. The horde would have a leader that is spent upon foundation of a new civilization to build a palace. The civilization that would start with a city would already have a palace in place.
Periodically hordes of barbarians would spawn in the wilderness and invade settled civilizations to establish a civilization of their own. You can expand your civilization by building settlers just like in the olden games. Workers would be kept. In Civilization III the enslaved workers from other civilizations would wear chains. But in later games this is not present because wokie woke, can’t depict slavery. The game Humankind had roving mammoths and prides of lions in the beginning that you could defeat and gain bonuses, it definitely added to the immersion. In fact such units could spawn periodically in the unclaimed wilderness and provide perishable resources like ivory. You could either choose to hunt the elephants to extinction or manage the wilderness sustainably. Whales in the oceans could function in a similar manner. Elephant hunt or whale hunting could provide for an interesting game mechanic.
Another mechanic concerns crises and transitional periods. You see, global temperature periodically fluctuates. Hot periods are replaced by cold. In cold periods, cities collapse, hunger roams the land. In the game, barbarian horde activity could be heightened during such periods, simulating the barbarians being driven out of the wilderness in search of food. Another mechanic could be pandemics, the lack of sanitation to exacerbate the loss. Also technological disruptions, such as the printing press might challenge the established religion, which could lead to unrest. Same can happen with industrialization. Each such disruption can lead to a different form of dissent and there would be several ways to get out of the crisis. Will you suppress the heretics through inquisition, or will you accept religious tolerance. Will you suppress worker uprising through force or give them social welfare? There could also be a dynamic of upper classes and commoners. You need to balance the satisfaction of both to keep order.
Also, I would totally abolish real world civilizations in the main game. Instead of starting as Egyptians, you will be given a set of starting bonuses. You can also customize, whether you start as a settled or a roaming nation. This way, the design could create a wealth of combinations that can lead to a variety of outcomes.
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