Cultural mod

[Alcatraz]

I'm currently working on a mod to enhance and emphasize culture as the dominant force in the game.

Rationale: As a war game, Civ is pretty awful. If I wanted a war game, I'd play TOAW... Additionaly, it's far too easy to conquer the world in Civ.

My goal is a game in which war is a neccesary element but not the driving purpose. To do that I need to discourage war so that neither players nor the AI will go to war without just cause, nor stay at war beyond the length of time neccesary to acheive limited strategic aims.

Here are some of the things I'm trying or considering:
Making offensive units take a population point to build - This one makes sense from a realism perspective, since units in the field are composed of people removed from the general population. This will make it more difficult for players and the AI to field large standing armies of offensive units. Since one of the factors the AI considers (I think) when deciding to go to war is relative military strength of the opponent, this might tone down AI agression. Likewise it will hamper swarming tactics. As a side benefit, it will slow down civ growth rates thus bringing the tech progression more into line. It may also lead to faster game play since there will be fewer units to move each turn.

Increasing defense strengths across the board - This will make world conquest trickier, but won't do much to tone down AI agression.

Increasing unit build costs - Will have some of the same effects as the first option.

Increasing the number of buildings that can be built - This may cause the AI to build fewer military units, particularly in "dead spans" where all available (desired) buildings have been built and the next tech allowing city imp's is far off.

Adding more culture enhancing buildings or culture points to existing buildings - Warmonger civ's may find themselves rapidly absorbed.

Increasing the build cost/upkeep of barracks - Make it more difficult to build veteran units (probably eliminate/change Sun Tsu at the same time).

Question: Can the victory conditions be changed (the amount of culture needed to win the game)? Does it scale with world size?

[dunk]

I would think that the AI would disintegrate a little more with adding a cost of one pop point for an offensive unit. It uses pop-rushing a lot and this just makes it even more expensive to the AI.

I like the idea though. Although, making culture flips occur more often would take a lot of work. I haven't seen any type of formula for that. I would like to see war toned down some too. I feel like I'm always skating on thin ice in the industrial age if I try to keep the peace and build cool stuff.

The other suggestions you made are good ones. Increasing unit costs would lower the number of units anyone could build... increasing the risk of war. Right now, it's pretty easy to simply overwhealm your enemies with a little patience. With fewer units, warfare would turn out to be more random. I think offensive units should be incresed more than defensive ones.

Increasing defensive values without increasing offense is another good way to reduce the effectiveness of an offensive war. It would take a lot more knights to kill that pikeman if his defense is 5 or 6.

[Willem]

Re: Cultural mod

Originally posted by Alcatraz

Making offensive units take a population point to build - This one makes sense from a realism perspective, since units in the field are composed of people removed from the general population. This will make it more difficult for players and the AI to field large standing armies of offensive units. Since one of the factors the AI considers (I think) when deciding to go to war is relative military strength of the opponent, this might tone down AI agression. Likewise it will hamper swarming tactics. As a side benefit, it will slow down civ growth rates thus bringing the tech progression more into line. It may also lead to faster game play since there will be fewer units to move each turn.

I tried that and discovered that I was being left in the dust in the early part of the game. Apparently, the AI doesn't bother much with offensive units early on, so doing this actually helps them out with their expansion. Plus I think if it sees that a unit will cost population, they will go for a Settler or Worker instead. I haven't bothered to try it yet with later units though.

Another approach you can take is increasing the gold cost of units. I've raised it to 2 gold per unit in both Republic and Democracy, which seems to make a difference.