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How about an exploration age?
Ok, here's the problem: all the land is usually settled by ~500ce and this typically includes even the small, worthless islands. Another problem is that around the same time all the land becomes settled, all the land has been discovered. Thus, it leads to a non-existent exploration age. Exploration civs (Spain, Portugal, England) all suffer from this, because their UU is very insignificant by the time it comes around. However, that is beside the point entirely since that problem moreso relates back to the balancing issues of the UU.
The key is that with a Curragh or Galley a Civ can discover the outskirts of almost all the land. In historical terms, it would be as if the Romans would have discovered the entire coastlines of Europe, Africa, and Asia altogether. From what I know there weren't any passage known from Europe to Asia until Gama discovered the route in roughly 1500ce. These explorations are a crucial part of history, hence the Magellan's Voyage wonder. The current Civ3 essentially makes it impossible to allow for such an exploration age, but Civ4 needs to take the step for it be possible to occur.
Not every game should have to have an exploration age based on certain circumstances, but it would be nice if a Civ game finally allowed for it to happen. A possible restriction of how many tiles a curragh or galley can travel away from the nearest harbor might do the trick. Although, if the current tech tree holds up curraghs would be discluded since harbors wouldn't be around yet. If a galley could only travel 5-10 tiles away from the nearest harbor would help out strategically while certainly adding more realism to the game. Ancient galleys can't travel half way across the d*mn world! There needs to be some sort of restriction in Civ4 to actually provided a decent exploration age, whether it be to settle/colonize land or just to discover new areas. The latter alone would be much better than neither of the two.
Ok, here's the problem: all the land is usually settled by ~500ce and this typically includes even the small, worthless islands. Another problem is that around the same time all the land becomes settled, all the land has been discovered. Thus, it leads to a non-existent exploration age. Exploration civs (Spain, Portugal, England) all suffer from this, because their UU is very insignificant by the time it comes around. However, that is beside the point entirely since that problem moreso relates back to the balancing issues of the UU.
The key is that with a Curragh or Galley a Civ can discover the outskirts of almost all the land. In historical terms, it would be as if the Romans would have discovered the entire coastlines of Europe, Africa, and Asia altogether. From what I know there weren't any passage known from Europe to Asia until Gama discovered the route in roughly 1500ce. These explorations are a crucial part of history, hence the Magellan's Voyage wonder. The current Civ3 essentially makes it impossible to allow for such an exploration age, but Civ4 needs to take the step for it be possible to occur.
Not every game should have to have an exploration age based on certain circumstances, but it would be nice if a Civ game finally allowed for it to happen. A possible restriction of how many tiles a curragh or galley can travel away from the nearest harbor might do the trick. Although, if the current tech tree holds up curraghs would be discluded since harbors wouldn't be around yet. If a galley could only travel 5-10 tiles away from the nearest harbor would help out strategically while certainly adding more realism to the game. Ancient galleys can't travel half way across the d*mn world! There needs to be some sort of restriction in Civ4 to actually provided a decent exploration age, whether it be to settle/colonize land or just to discover new areas. The latter alone would be much better than neither of the two.
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