Foundations of Civilization

[SevenSpirits]

Hey guys, this is a little impromptu preview of a Civ-like game I’ve been working on designing, tentatively titled Foundations of Civilization (FoC), for the sole reason that I can then call the expansion Castles in the Air.

Note: emphasis on “designing.” I want to make it, but I don’t see a good way to do that yet. I’ll explain more at the end. Anyway, my goal with this project is to take Civ IV, a game that’s already quite solid, and put even more emphasis on the tiles. Here’s a quick summary of what’s new about tiles:

Hex Tiles

Civ V’s failure notwithstanding, hex tiles are good, because they remove the need to distinguish between orthogonal and diagonal adjacencies. Two rings of hex tiles around a city is 18, only two less than the 20 tiles of a Civ IV city radius. Most other things can remain as they are.

Resources and Tile Yields

Civ V took the game in the exact wrong direction: less variety in tile yields, poorer resources, and poorer and fewer improvements. In FoC, tiles can yield:
* Food
* Construction (corresponding to Civ IV’s worker turns and production, mostly of buildings and improvements)
* Production (corresponding to Civ IV’s worker turns and production, mostly production of units)
* Gold (corresponding to gold and GPP in Civ IV)
* Science
* Culture

FoC actually has fewer different yields/currencies than Civ IV (no GPP, no espionage) but every single one is important, and every single one can be directly produced by tiles, resources, and improvements. This makes city placement and development more important than ever, and allows great freedom in the specialization of cities.

Culture

Civ V kind of made claiming tiles a pain. In FoC, culture spread is as nuanced as in Civ IV, with the added wrinkle that culture doesn’t just get added at cities. Any improvement (or resource) that produces culture - such as a monument or castle - will add that culture right there on that tile! The way border pops work is now generalized: whenever any tile reaches a new multiple of 8 culture, it also adds 1 culture on each of its 6 neighbor tiles.

Culture is also important as a secondary research currency, complementary to science, that lets you discover cultural advances. Cultural advances exist in a separate mostly-optional tree, though most of them take a technology as an alternate prerequisite. While not as critical as technologies, cultural advances are a significant perk of running some number of cultural improvements, even where border pops are not needed.

Combat

Though Civ IV combat is still the model, FoC shakes things up a bit in an effort to bring the tile-based ideal to warfare. First of all, enemy units can use your roads! So... you’ll want to guard them. How, you ask? Forts, perhaps, or castles. Don’t worry, a stack of doom can’t simply blow through your defenders in a single turn, because of the rest of the rules. Most notably:

You may not attack across the same front (hex border) more than once per turn.

Sure, you can attack the same tile 6 times, if you have it surrounded. And those attacks will be quite effective, because of flanking bonuses. Let me explain.

When two units fight, they will take enough damage between them to kill 1.25 full-health units. That damage is apportioned to them in direct proportion to their relative strengths after taking all bonuses into account, with only a little bit of randomness (all applied within the last 0.25). Percent-based combat bonuses are awarded for defensive terrain (up to 50%, similar to Civ IV), high cultural control (whether you’re the attacker or defender) and 20% to the attacker for each previous attack against the defender’s stack this turn (up to 5, of course). That last one is the flanking bonus, and it makes it extremely valuable to surround or otherwise outmaneuver your opponent.

The units themselves are based on actual warfare dynamics, rather than strange ideas about how spears are good against horses but arrows aren’t. For example, the ancient age units include:
- The Skirmisher, available at the start, with low strength but a free Maneuver promotion (double % combat bonuses).
- The Phalanx, available with Bronze Working, a more expensive unit with high strength and a free Armor III (damage taken is reduced; small amounts are reduced the most).
- The Archer, available with Composite Bow, expensive but puny at 1 strength and with a ranged attack.

The counter system, if you can call it that since it’s fairly soft, is that skirmishers beat phalanxes, by outnumbering and surrounding them and then getting massive (doubled!) flanking bonuses. Archers beat Skirmishers because ranged attacks are just good. And Phalanxes beat archers since Armor III lets them shrug off small pokes quite effectively. Chariots and Horsemen also feature, as more-advanced, 2-move alternatives to the Skirmisher. They are quite effective on open ground but receive large penalties when fighting in forests, hills, and cities.

Powerful promotions are available for specialization quite early. For example, Charge allows an attacking unit to continue fighting defenders in the same stack until it is near death, and only requires the second level of Shock (basic combat bonuses) or Flanking (additional flanking bonuses). Guerrilla I gives bonuses in Forests/Hills, and Guerrilla II also adds bonuses for attacking out of them into the open, and leads to Mobility (+1 movement). Armor promotions are available to block small amounts of damage, countering archers quite effectively. And Formation is a second-level defensive promotion that lowers the attacker’s strength by 25% - it’s twice as effective when fighting Skirmishers or other units with Maneuver.

Building up highly-promoted units isn’t free, because healing isn’t automatic. If you wound an enemy unit, that costs them hammers no matter what! Healing (i.e. replenishing lost troops and equipment) only occurs when you commit a city’s production to it.

Notes

FoC is not fully designed yet. I see no point in working past the medieval era until the basic principles are implemented and tested. Obviously, some stuff will play well, and other stuff wont, and it’s important to figure out what’s in that second category before putting in too much labor. So for now, all I’ve done is write down a ton of game rules and figure out the first part of the tech tree.

My plan for a while has been to wait for Civ V to have decent modding abilities and then get started on implementation. I’ve been a bit less than impressed with the handling of Civ V’s updating, though, and I might have to try something else instead. We’ll see.

Questions and comments are appreciated. I know I won’t agree with some of the opinions I expect to see, and that’s unlikely to change. But even in that case it’s useful for me to hear that opinion, and anyway in most cases I am not set on anything yet.

[fire&ice]

such as a monument or castle - will add that culture right there on that tile!

Does this mean your city improvments will be built on tiles?
How will the player chose which one?
Will cities be able to build improvements multiple times across multiple tiles?

Will improvements cost gold or cities?

[antisocialmunky]

And I thought I was the only one who was tossing around the idea of a design by community Civ clone :D

Edit:
I think your model is a little too complex since it is a flat 6 property mechanism rather than the tiered mechanism from Civ and most other game.
I would say, you have a basic level of tile yields of food, construction, and commerce. Make the basic tile improvements that modify these basic yields time intensive to basic but cheaper. Make a second type of advanced tile improvement that generate % yields of culture from food, production from construction, and science from commerce with a few special buildings that cross generate. That way you only have to balance 3 values for each tile and then 3 derived values from improvements.

The improvements for the basic yields modify the base properties of the tile while the advanced improvements make conversion ratios between basic yields and derived yields more efficient. So you could have a farm that gives you like +2 food on a flat irrigated tile and a granary that gives you 50% of food yield to culture and a library that gives you 25% of food yield as science.

It may sound more complex but having two bins of stats, one derived from the other is pretty common and easier to balance than one big flat bin.

[Mardoc]

Culture

Civ V kind of made claiming tiles a pain. In FoC, culture spread is as nuanced as in Civ IV, with the added wrinkle that culture doesn’t just get added at cities. Any improvement (or resource) that produces culture - such as a monument or castle - will add that culture right there on that tile! The way border pops work is now generalized: whenever any tile reaches a new multiple of 8 culture, it also adds 1 culture on each of its 6 neighbor tiles.

Culture is also important as a secondary research currency, complementary to science, that lets you discover cultural advances. Cultural advances exist in a separate mostly-optional tree, though most of them take a technology as an alternate prerequisite. While not as critical as technologies, cultural advances are a significant perk of running some number of cultural improvements, even where border pops are not needed.

Are you still limited to one improvement per tile? Could I build a farm, then a monument, on the same tile?

I do like the cultural advances idea - in civ4, the first border pop worth of culture is worth a lot, and after that culture's mostly meaningless; this would give an alternate goal for culture. I see the total culture produced is multiplied by 4 by your spreading mechanics, which seems reasonable, just take it into account when you're balancing.

Is it going to be possible to take tiles during war without taking the city itself? I see lots of other Stack of Doom preventing mechanics, but you'll still want to funnel your army toward cities otherwise.

The other main question I have at this time is how do you envision the Archer's ranged attack working? Specifically, if I build an army out of 1 phalanx and a hundred archers on the same tile, what prevents the civ3 artillery strategy, where you kill everyone with ranged no retaliation attacks, then mop up with the phalanx?

[luddite]

It sounds like you want to go in exactly the opposite direction than what I suggested: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=409770 . I wanted to take away tile yields completely, while you want to make them even more important . I think both approaches could work, though.

I'd be a little concerned that in your system, making a balanced map seems very difficult. You'd have to guarantee that each player gets the right kind of terrain that they need for all those 6 different yields, whereas civ only has 3 basic yields that people need (or really just 2, since you can get commerce anywhere with cottages).

I do agree that hexes have a lot of potential advantages. Ironically, I think hexes would have worked better with the civ 4 combat system, and squares would be better for the 1UPT civ 5 system, since they'd give armies a little more room to maneuver. I'd also like to see a combat system that's a little more subtle than just rock-paper-scissors.

[Bruindane]

The Battle of Wesnoth is an excellent hex based 1UPT, that is free and open source.

To highlight the combat differences, every unit has two combat strengths, melee and ranged, with the attacker choosing the method of combat, again melee or ranged. Attacks only go through one combat round, not to the death like civ, and only adjacent units may attack. There is the standard zone of control rules, etc.

Units are built at forts (think city centers), but there are no city improvements. Now take your idea of building "cultural city improvements" on hexes outside and you have an interesting hybrid game.

There is fertile ground for ideas (are other city improvements attached to a city, or perhaps also built in outlying hexes), at the very least I hope to expose you all to a gem of game.

[SevenSpirits]

Does this mean your city improvments will be built on tiles?
How will the player chose which one?
Will cities be able to build improvements multiple times across multiple tiles?

Will improvements cost gold or cities?

Improvements, yes. Buildings/wonders... I'm waffling, but probably not. Edit: oh, to be clear, Monuments and Castles are improvements.

You select the improvement to build, the cursor changes to a location selector, you select the location and then it's added to the construction queue.

Yes, you can build as many of each improvement as you like.

Huh?

[fire&ice]

Huh?

I could phrase that much better. I was trying to ask how would you prevent settler spamming. As the one right starting strategy.

[SevenSpirits]

And I thought I was the only one who was tossing around the idea of a design by community Civ clone :D

Edit:
I think your model is a little too complex since it is a flat 6 property mechanism rather than the tiered mechanism from Civ and most other game.
I would say, you have a basic level of tile yields of food, construction, and commerce. Make the basic tile improvements that modify these basic yields time intensive to basic but cheaper. Make a second type of advanced tile improvement that generate % yields of culture from food, production from construction, and science from commerce with a few special buildings that cross generate. That way you only have to balance 3 values for each tile and then 3 derived values from improvements.

The improvements for the basic yields modify the base properties of the tile while the advanced improvements make conversion ratios between basic yields and derived yields more efficient. So you could have a farm that gives you like +2 food on a flat irrigated tile and a granary that gives you 50% of food yield to culture and a library that gives you 25% of food yield as science.

It may sound more complex but having two bins of stats, one derived from the other is pretty common and easier to balance than one big flat bin.

Actually it's much easier to balance improvements that have more than one yield type. Take Civ V: if your choice is between building a mine and a trading post, you just look at the city and decide which yield type you want more. It's really easy to figure out, and not dependent on the situation. Even more strikingly, in Civ IV early game, watermills/windmills/workshops are often strictly overshadowed by other improvements, and there isn't even a decision there at all.

However, if mines yield 2 production and 1 science, and cottages produce 1 culture and 1+ gold, the tradeoffs are much more dependent on other factors, and choices are left non-obvious even if they were balanced a little bit worse.

About your specific suggestion, I find it too complex. Mostly because you're allowing more than one improvement on every tile... I think that makes the tradeoffs needlessly opaque. By the way, here are the base tile yields I'm using:

Grassland is 2 food
Plains is 1 food 1 construction
Hills give -1 food, +1 production
Forests give +1 construction and must be removed for most improvements.

So, all the extra yields come from resources and improvements anyway. I think it's simpler if that's in the form of additive values rather than % bonuses.

[SevenSpirits]

I could phrase that much better. I was trying to ask how would you prevent settler spamming. As the one right starting strategy.

Gold maintenance based primarily on number of cities. I really think Civ IV got this one right.