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This probably belongs under the "General" thread, or the "More emphasis on age" poll, but -- at the risk of invoking the dreaded businesspeak cliche -- I'm interested in people's opinion on Civ4 gameplay undergoing paradigm shifts through the ages.
That is to say, the rules of the game should fundamentally change as new technologies change the very nature of civilization itself. Some of the proposals in various topics touch on this on a more surface level - for example, that luxuries could be era-specific, that cultural points last only for so long, or, as is the case in Civ3, resources may only have limited use (saltpeter is the best example). I'm interested in more fundamental changes.
For example, Civ cities depend on food found within the city's radius. This isn't realistic in the modern era -- how much food is in the "radius" of New York City, London, or Tokyo? Thanks to modern transportation systems, the very rules of how to feed a city have changed, and the rules of the game should reflect that. For example, maybe after a certain set of tech's have been discovered, food is simply pooled across an entire civ, or traded across civ's.
The idea I'm trying to capture here is that over the centuries, civilizations have risen and fallen in part because the rules changed and the civ either failed to keep up or simply lacked the resources necessary to do so. Few of the games I've played have really captured that element of history. (For some reason, the Great Wonders conquest gets some of that flavor for me, because so many game actions depend on tech discoveries, e.g. the very ability to cut down forests, or to mine, etc.)
OTOH, changing the rules of a game is very disconcerting for the player and may be too much of a sacrifice for the sake of realism. After all, Civ is (mostly) a conquest game, not Sim-Civ. Maybe the rule I proposed above for food and cities is too radical and unbalancing -- maybe instead the city radius simply expands, like the cutural border, but maybe due to some technological advance. But I'd like to see history and technology have more effect on the rules themselves. (Besides the Mesopotamia scenario, another example I'd give is the ability to cash-rush rather than pop-rush due to gv't type).
That is to say, the rules of the game should fundamentally change as new technologies change the very nature of civilization itself. Some of the proposals in various topics touch on this on a more surface level - for example, that luxuries could be era-specific, that cultural points last only for so long, or, as is the case in Civ3, resources may only have limited use (saltpeter is the best example). I'm interested in more fundamental changes.
For example, Civ cities depend on food found within the city's radius. This isn't realistic in the modern era -- how much food is in the "radius" of New York City, London, or Tokyo? Thanks to modern transportation systems, the very rules of how to feed a city have changed, and the rules of the game should reflect that. For example, maybe after a certain set of tech's have been discovered, food is simply pooled across an entire civ, or traded across civ's.
The idea I'm trying to capture here is that over the centuries, civilizations have risen and fallen in part because the rules changed and the civ either failed to keep up or simply lacked the resources necessary to do so. Few of the games I've played have really captured that element of history. (For some reason, the Great Wonders conquest gets some of that flavor for me, because so many game actions depend on tech discoveries, e.g. the very ability to cut down forests, or to mine, etc.)
OTOH, changing the rules of a game is very disconcerting for the player and may be too much of a sacrifice for the sake of realism. After all, Civ is (mostly) a conquest game, not Sim-Civ. Maybe the rule I proposed above for food and cities is too radical and unbalancing -- maybe instead the city radius simply expands, like the cutural border, but maybe due to some technological advance. But I'd like to see history and technology have more effect on the rules themselves. (Besides the Mesopotamia scenario, another example I'd give is the ability to cash-rush rather than pop-rush due to gv't type).
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