what if settlers had tech prerequisite?

[fittstim]

Much like what hr_oskar suggested, I've been playing with several variations on settlers for months. My problem was that the civs expanded like crazy during the early BC era and pretty much did nothing but build up their military afterwards.

Settlers cost 4 pop. and can not be added to an existing city.

Refugees cost 3 pop. and have wheeled movement (no mountains or swamps).

This has certainly slowed the insane expansion during the early parts of the game. Now civs are still expanding around 1000 AD and beyond.

I would recommend playing with the # of pop required for a settler (or some other attribute which might effect the settler expansion craze) before initiating something as drastic as a tech requirement for settlers.

[XarXo]

I always believed that the very first knowledge that each civ should have was FIRE, also, another thing, when we start we can build roads and irrigation, but in the tech tree they don't appear inside a known knowledge.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
I would like to see a game where the population existed in the world as it did in reality. Neutral nomads and some early villages in sensible places, i.e. where food was available.

Jimmytrick, I remember same old great hopes in Civ3 suggestions forum. A main steering from usual early "settler way", indeed one I too would hope some innovative developer will try.

Of course in late stage of exploration you should be able to build colonies where you want one, more like a "seed" that attract people from surrounding and from others part of the world (think about America colonization from Spain, Portugal, England...)

There should be multi-levels of association between these peoples and your civ such as treaties and alliances with assimilation happening in stages (except by military conquest).

As far as the model can be simple enough for human learning limits and current (game level) AI ...

The free standing population on the board should have individual ethicity and religion. As pop is integrated into your civ this would change slowly over time but never to 100% unless you actively engaged in policies to force that. Which of course would have both advantages and disadvantages.

Well, not sure about the change limit. I mean, give me time and I'll change culture a lot, but I'm more for mutual "blend" effect.

Of course it means we should split Civ Culture into many aspect, as Social Engineer element in SMAC, but not as a matrix you can simply chose, more as a original mix of traits that you can influence and try to direct by general orders and fact: build many temple and cathedral and your people will enhance the religious trait; build barracks and fights succesfull battles and you can turn your civ more on militaristic...

You must change all the buildings and Wonders effects, because you should be able to model your Civ more in a "RPG like" way to forge its culture by actions (and politics act) than by a preset "unique trait" you must live with for 6000+ years.

This will be the direction taken in the next great civ game.

It's a good opportunity, but I bet this can't happens from Firaxis: they simply are not ready to take the risk of changing a winning horse, IMO.

It must include random events, random leaders, rebellions and civil wars, and have satisfying victory conditions other than the stupid conquer the world or build a spaceship stuff we have been playing.

Well, I don't think that current winning condition are really wrong, more bad implemented (half finished?), maybe.

[Zachriel]

I would suggest different techs for settling different types of terrain. For instance, grassland would require no tech, bronze working for plains, iron working for hills, engineering for tundra or desert.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Zachriel
I would suggest different techs for settling different types of terrain. For instance, grassland would require no tech, bronze working for plains, iron working for hills, engineering for tundra or desert.

now theres an interesting concept... 4 or 5 settler units.

but theres no way to limit one to a certain terrain, as the "allow cities" variable is terrain based, not unit based.

awesome idea though.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Zachriel
I would suggest different techs for settling different types of terrain. For instance, grassland would require no tech, bronze working for plains, iron working for hills, engineering for tundra or desert.

Zachriel, this is a great idea! It may not be implementable within the current game framework, but it is great! I would love to see it implemented in some way...

[Inverse Icarus]

i'm a pessimist, so it comes in handy sometimes.

what if you started in a huge jungle / tundra?

recall HVC (how very cold). that would suck

[vondrack]

Originally posted by UberKruX
i'm a pessimist, so it comes in handy sometimes.

what if you started in a huge jungle / tundra?

recall HVC (how very cold). that would suck

Well, that's a good point. The terrain generator or the starting location placement routine might need a tweak or two to prevent such things... or, it could be left to the player to restart. Even now, I restart many games, if I do not like the geography for one reason or another... (dammit, everybody knows now I suck... but I guess most people restart at least sometimes, so if certain starting locations were REALLY screwed and unplayable, it would probably not be a big deal even if not specifically treated by the programmers...).