A new concept for a new civ: Primitive Tribal Regions

[altF18]

An idea for a future civ game....

Primitive Tribal Regions that may revolt into whole new Civs or countries....

you can have the option of starting out with only certain ancient civs, and the world is filled with invisable 'regions' of primitive tribes that you conquer when you build upon them, but over time these ppls might break away from your empire?
i.e, you as the Romans build up in some distant land, only to find the locals who mingled in your cities decide they want independence, and all the cities in the designated region revolt and call themselves French and their new land France.
You could choose to join the Revolutionaries (i know, the idea has passed around before by others, i claim it not) and become the leader of the new french cities, or stay Roman and either try to crush the rebels or grant independence.
Than your cities on England (or another land mass/area on a random map) declare themselves independent as the English. You could choose again if you stayed Roman. Than say you become English, build up on a foreign continent, and find your cities there revolting and trying to become American.
Since the primitive tribes are region based, no extra string of succesors is needed for each civ. instead, a region would determine what the revolting ppl would call themselves. therefore, even chinese cities in the region of America would become american if China lost its hold on them. Or from Spain could come Canada, a region north of America.
Any cities of any civ in the region of Australia would become united as that one nation. Even if they were all from seperate civs. Thus the globe would change over the course of time and give you the player a more challenging game and a wider scope of covering history.
or, of course, you could turn regions off, and certain region civs into the game from the start. (i.e Americans, Canadians, Australians even)
some regions would only be regional tribes and non-playable.
regions would also be responsible for barbarians. the ethnic barbarian system would be changed so that, on the American region you'd find Native tribes - Sioux, Blackfoot, etc.
And also, city names would be regionalized, cities built on Canadian region would take up a Canadian name - i.e Quebec, Montreal, even if Japan built the city. You could say cities are given names based on the local culture.
Occupied regions still not independent automatically become independent after the United Nations is built.
what do you think?

another idea:
follow CTP2, do away with leaderheads. this will allow a good number of civs and new civs from regions into the game, and the choice of gender!

i feel inclined to have you vote on these ideas... though i also encourage discussion....

[Spiffor]

I'm not sure if this whole "let's make provinces that can become independant" idea is good. Sure, it is more realistic, but will it make the game any better ?

Your idea would mean the only Civs available from the start would be the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and maybe the Chinese if we outstretch their existence a "bit" (1000 years).
In the Civ we know now, all Civs have the "Eternal China Syndrome", meaning they all start at the dawn of time and don't die of old age. This is unrealistic, but it has to do with the very essence of Civ : the player has many choices, and always starts at the same time of the game, i.e 4000 BC, no matter how unrealistic it is.
A possible solution would be to force players to start at the real birthyear of the Civ, with the adequate techs and a cohesive amount of cities. For example a game where the player chooses France would start in 890 AD, while a game where the player goes for the USA would start in 1795 AD... But such a solution might be much less funny that what we have now .

I'm not opposed to having parts of your empire declaring independance, but for this idea to be fun, it needs 2 things :
1. It must be something you can adress and even prevent. Not like the cultural reversion back in the time of unpatched Civ3. Factors for a civil war must be objective and preventable : massive unhappiness, massive corruption, military weakness, cultural weakness, presence of foreign nationals...
2. It must not put any strain in your Civ choice at the beginning of the game. In other words, it must not be realistic. In Civ, it would be only normal that the Chinese begin to exist after an independance war against their Japanese ancestors, or, to revert your example, Rome will only exist after fighting for their independance from France
This lack of realism is the only way for the player not to be strained with little choice at the beginning of the game.

However, I think these independance wars would be better if there are connected with ethnical groups within the rebellious cities. Imagine you have kicked Bismarck out centuries ago, but yet never developed your "German" cities, then it would be only natural for them to revolt and try to restore their Germanity again.

In my view, a civil war would work like this : a concentration of troops occurs somewhere in your territory near the cities that want to become independant. These troops belong to the disappeared/yet inexistant Civ that will claim these cities, and these cities will enter resistance until the rebel troops are killed, or until they have been conquered by the Rebels. The first city these troops capture became their capital, and can open embassies, trade etc. The Rebels have an initial treasury dependant from the commerce in the rebellious cities, and an initial science equal to yours.
You fight them normally. The Rebels offer you a peace treaty once their target cities are theirs, or once all their initial offensive units have been destroyed. Once the Rebels have offered this peace treaty, they behave like a normal AI.
I like the idea of choosing whether you want to be the rebel leader or the loyalist leader.



I am overall opposed to your idea of "regions". I don't have any problem with them dictating the Barbarians' tribe names, but I have a strong problem with them dictating city names, and population groups that live there. It is both unrealistic (settlers brought their own culture on the territories they settled upon with little regard for the people they pushed away) and not fun.

[Spiffor]

Ah yes, I forgot the point of this specific "independance" thread.

It would be indeed cool if former "Barbarian" tribes could become their own nations. I even had my own ideas on the matter . Actually, it would be cool if the Civs that didn't make it in the game (say, the 8 remaining Civs when you only play with 16 simultaneously) had several goody huts and barbarian camps with their names. They could be the ones behind an independance war at some point, which will really give the impression of the natives revolting against the settlers.

However, I am really opposed to Civ getting rid of the leaderheads. I think graphical fluff is a very important part of a Civ-game, because it helps the player getting involved in it. When I'm dealing with Bismarck, I want to believe I'm talking to a person, not to some written characters. The loss of leaderheads would make diplomacy much, much less funny in my book, AND would make the civilizations much less unique. The lack of uniqueness in the Civs was one of my main qualms with the CTP series.

[Sultan Richard]

Yeah, that thread on slaves and minor civs brings up good ideas.

Also, on regions, you could have unhappiness based on tribal areas. Say Barbarian tribe X was subjugated by civilisation Y, and they were'nt the same ethnic group (in CIVEDIT), then you could have unhappiness since 'ethnic group A was taken over by ethnic group B'.

[dexters]

I encourage you guys to read my thread:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84289

If you haven't already done so.

The title is a little misleading. It is really more about provinces than independence.

The main thrust of my suggestion is basically a more efficient way of organizing and managing your empire/republic/domain. Just like there was a whole movement by people to ask Firaxis for the ability to nake units, I think this is a movement to get them to put in a feature for the next Civ game so people can bunch up cities and put them into a unit called a province/state, with its own capital to control corruption. For a more detailed explanation, please give my thread a read.

[Galvatron]

The regional idea sounds nice. The game would become more dynamic and would simulate the creation of new nations. You could recreate the American war of independence,...
I support it perhaps one day we will see it

On a side note:
What happened when you push "altF18"? I don't dare to try it because I'm afraid my PC will explode.

[dexters]

regions/provinces what have you, should be in Civ 4 for one really basic reason. Diplomacy. The intrigue level of civs supporting provinces attempting to gain indepence. Trying to sway neutral provinces, will add something to Civ 4 that will make its diplomacy an order greater than Civ 3s. There is a discussion on-going in the Civ 3 strategy forum about how huge pangea maps with 16 civs (or more) create a very unique experience with its sheer volume of interactions. And a provincial system will certainly go a long way in bringing that aspect of the game to smaller sized maps.

I firmly believe that in order to remain relevant to Civ fans, Sid and his team at Firaxis should take the challenge of creating a game that plays as compelling for the diplomat gamer as it is for the warmonger. Civ 3 tries to achieve some of that, but the UN is very much a skeleton of what it could be.

Imagine a game where the UN could be used to pass laws aimed at your opponents.

[altF18]

Primitive Tribes, Barbaric Civs, and Potential Nations...

on that sidenote: F18 doesn't exist on the keyboard

anyway, dexter, i had not read your thread when i posted this, but i have now. the idea is a great, and im about to go reply there with my suggestions.
for this thread, i'll stay on topic, as the idea is differant.
but i will drift from my original design due to some insight from Spiffor
@ Spiffor,
i agree with everything you said, about the realism and historical stuff. and the leaderhead stuff. and the constraining of civs.
however, i still think, like you said, barbarian tribes should become their own nations. and thats a great idea, you could choose from All the civs, and those who you keep out come in as barbarians. (so yes, you could be American and later colonize the romans)
and so they'll still have a chance of becoming a nation.

my suggestion was barbarians have regions, or zones, and these would create chances of the zone cities revolting to become the designated nation. however, this is rather inappropiate, dont you think?

it is. i read your thread on tribes and i like it.
barbarians building camps, being able to control resouces, and building armies. however i disagree with them building improvements or anything besides units.
i also think a new concept could be added here.
instead of just being barbarian nations, they could be potential nations. that is, camps belong to potential nations, such as Australia, but while they're barbarians, the name of Australia doesn't even exist. instead, camps are nameless, and are indentified as in civ 3. Aborigine Encampment would be for potential Australia, or Sioux Encampment if the potential nation is America. Some nations can have more than one tribal names. For instance, potential Canada could have Haida, Inuit and Cree encampments.
All of these tribes would simply be names for the Barbarian nations, and they would share the same border.
You could conduct primitive diplomacy with the tribes, trade, declare war against enemies and everything else Spiffor said, or you could conquer the natives. Of course they will put up a defense, but you should usually win since their units would never be up-to-date as the real civs.
Now Spiffor suggested you name the cities yourself, but I think perhaps, when you conquer a camp and occupy it (instead of raze) and it becomes a city, a name would already be suggested, based upon the potential civ of the barbarians. The reasoning would be, like I suggested, that the city name was selected based on the local land and people. Now I know the settlers bring their own cultures and stuff, but, this would give colonized lands a distinct feel and also reduce the name reuse and those horrible “City 2’s”
So if you conquer a barbaric French camp, it would suggest a name like Paris.

Besides non-playing civ barbarians, which may be an option, there would also be unique barbarian potential civs. These could be places like Peru, who’s camps would be called Incan, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Pakistan even, just to get it in the game though that would be historically inaccurate, and etc.
Thus a good amount of nations ‘may’ enter later on in the game. These non-civ nations wouldn’t be able to build settlers so not to clutter the world, but everything else would work accordingly. That’s why I suggested the riddance of leaderheads. But I agree with everything you said about involvement and all that – and though I personally think civ 3’s leaders are too cartoonish, I guess they are a necessary part of the game.
(Though, to make them more versatile, they could go be static again – and thus male and female…
Or your own picture…).
For the non-civ nations, perhaps the United Nations symbol would be present.

Now for how tribes, as I will call them, become nations or civilizations, well, like civs, when you take their cities, they will have citizens of their nationality (or the nationality of the potential civ) the concept would be the same, these guys would have the chance to revolt unless you subdue them enough, or keep them happy. If they revolt, the new nation would take on the name of the potential civ of the barbarians.


So if you annoy the people of a city that was once an Ainu encampment, they would revolt and become the Japanese.
What do you think? Once again, I look forward to input and opinions.

[altF18]

to add to above, the UN would also play a role in giving conquered tribes independance as countries.
After it is built, Nationalism will soar among the citizens of potential nations. if you cannot retain this, they will break away and declare themselves whatever their potential nation is. you could grant this independance, or go to war. conquered civilizations would be the same way.
(of course, you could always Ethnic cleanse your cities of the would be usurpers... but this would be an Atrocity, which would bring on International criticism...)

[Sultan Richard]

What about places like Macao and Hong Kong where a large number of people were either indifferent or OPPOSED to handover to China? Would there be an option where Ethnic Group A ruled by Ethnic Group B would actually like their masters?

Other examples:

Gibraltar (but most people there are British anyway)
Guantanamo Bay (though no-one officially lives there)




What I'm saying is that there should be choices to improve your (the master's) standing among your foreign subjects (the subjugated)

[altF18]

well, before a city actaully revolts, there could be indicators suggesting the people are unhappy. it would be up to you to satisfy them however you can. as for loyalists, those would be the minor group of people who are happy, or content. but its not like they'd mobilize to keep control over the city...

[Spiffor]

Now Spiffor suggested you name the cities yourself, but I think perhaps, when you conquer a camp and occupy it (instead of raze) and it becomes a city, a name would already be suggested, based upon the potential civ of the barbarians.

This is an excellent idea

For the non-civ nations, perhaps the United Nations symbol would be present.

Not a bad idea either. But a static leaderhead could do the trick as well, and shouldn't be as demanding to the art team as a "real" leaderhead

(keep in mind, though, the natives aren’t really the ones declaring new government, it’s most likely your bureaucrats and settlers.)

This is a misconception that has to be avoided. There were two kinds of colonial independence :
- America-Australian like independences where the settlers were the ones who wanted to be independent from their land of origin.
- African decolonization where settlers wanted to remain dependent of their origini country, but where natives didn't. In the latter case (which encompasses nearly all independances of the 20est century), native elites were the ones to put up the government.

Now for how tribes, as I will call them, become nations or civilizations, well, like civs, when you take their cities, they will have citizens of their nationality (or the nationality of the potential civ) the concept would be the same, these guys would have the chance to revolt unless you subdue them enough, or keep them happy. If they revolt, the new nation would take on the name of the potential civ of the barbarians.

I think that's the right thing to do "Captured" barbarians should be able to revolt like any province should be able to revolt, and to form its own Civ. I think the mechanics should be the same in both cases.

[altF18]

Spiffor, glad you agree!

on everything else, you're right - perhaps real civs would keep their animated leaderheads while the non-civs be static.
though this might seem an inconsistency...
and you're right about my misconception... i'll take that part out!

[bobbo008]

i just dont agree with the "all areas independant when UN is built thingy". lets not forget that Europe only gave up its colonies when it was too weak to maintain them. Algeria, roughly 20 years ago, was a biggie. and several european countries still have islands, how they justify that i do not know

[pedrojedi]

I lost my connection while saying something, but the important thing about it is that I really miss Civ2's feature that made sometimes a new civ arise in the downfall of another empire's capital. It maybe was not realistic, but was fun.

I'm sad that there's no banana option. altF18, you're mean.