Don't know if these things have been said before but...

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Adagio
I agree that the units (in ancient times) shouldn't just be able to walk unlimited tiles away from the civilization it comes from and still make it possible to update the map, even though the unit is half-way around the globe and several thousand years has passed by...
The easiest way to fix this is to have a max number of tiles it can be away from the borders, before this unit risks to change into babarians! The more turns it has been outside the borders and the father away, the higher the risk.
Though later in the game, when you get more tech, they can be father away from the borders without any problems, and stay there for a longer time...

(shrug) I've always figured that, in ancient time, the term "civilization" was used very loosly. As in, all the Germanic tribes or all the Greek city states would have been considered one "civilization" in Civ IV terms, even though they weren't under one common government. Your "civilization" spreads with your warriors and settlers, even though strong centralized government only can come later.

[padillah]

What about your second city? Do you have to wait until your cultural borders expand to a reasonable distance before setteling your second city?

That seems too difficult to me. And, what's worse, it's a contrived difficulty. It seems like it would make the begining excrutiatingly difficult and quickly become irrelevant. I usually have expanded as far as I can go by 1500 or even 1000 B.C. After that it becomes a non issue.

Not something I'd like to play.

Tom P.

[TheArsenal]

Probably not something most people would want to play (including me as I said). But because this board is skewed toward the hardcore and advance player (a good thing), most of the ideas I read here strive for added complexity and difficulty which here are synonymous with “fun” - but I imagine in the Civ IV playing population at large is probably synonymous with “burdensome”.

But that’s why there are mods.

[Urban Ranger]

The only way I can see this implemented is you don't create any cities except for the first one. The rest of the map aren't empty but got people. When certain conditions are met a new city is formed. If it is within your cultural influence, it becomes yours. Netural cities can be swayed culturally or militarily. This way you won't worry about other empires founding cities in the middle of your own.

Of course I also envision the map to be divided into regions, and tiles produce stuff even if they appear to be empty as there would be people there.

[allybhoy]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
The only way I can see this implemented is you don't create any cities except for the first one. The rest of the map aren't empty but got people. When certain conditions are met a new city is formed. If it is within your cultural influence, it becomes yours. Netural cities can be swayed culturally or militarily. This way you won't worry about other empires founding cities in the middle of your own.

Of course I also envision the map to be divided into regions, and tiles produce stuff even if they appear to be empty as there would be people there.

Sounds a good idea, you start with one city and the rest of the map is populated by different tribes of barbarians, and then as the game goes on you can take the barbarian cities militarily or culturaly, the barbarian states can fight against each other, or develop tech and culture and absorb their weaker neighbours until after they own, say, three cities they develop into one of the Civ leaders. This could depend on how they got their second and third cities, if war they would assume a military leader like Monte, if culture then they'd grow into a peaceful leader like Ghandi

[Unimatrix11]

HA ! That's an idea that i had long ago (never posted it tho !) - so i do agree...

[Apocalypse]

Wow, this is from 2004? Looks like someone brought up