game ideas - influence & stability overhaul


the game designers of HK clearly wanted to make their game different from the civ series of 4x games and the way they have done this is by the use of influence (culture in civ series) and city stability. unfortunately I think they have gone too far and the game is potentially a tedious chore of continually modifying influence and city stability at the expense of any other strategy. this tedium becomes more pronounced when you crowd the game map with more empires that what they recommend for that map size since this vastly raises the number of empire adjacent territories to the point no AI will settle in some territories if too many other empires are competing to culturally control that territory


influence overhaul. currently the game acts as if some of each empire's buildings are the equivalent of a civ series great artist unit launching a culture (influence) bomb every turn EXCEPT instead of summing of culture (influence) over time the primary thing that counts is CURRENT culture (influence) war in each adjacent territory. I would prefer a game switch that gives the user the option to either use the default culture war system OR the civ series model of culture summing over time


with culture summing over time a culturally invading empire cannot just build a few buildings, claim in all adjacent territories that they instantly culturally own them after a 2 to 3 turn wait period, and then use this unfair culture control territory grab as a grievance/demand v the empire they are trying to steal territory from. with culture summing over time a culturally invading empire would have to wait to overcome the summed culture (influence) that is already on that territory before making just a culture invasion. an empire would still have a motivation to build culture bldgs but with the different expectation that instead of the possibility of instantly becoming culturally overpowered that that the summed up culture over time will provide a deterrent to easy cultural aggression


another influence game switch that is desirable is a slider for the aesthete affinity empire culture bomb to determine how much culture (influence) it cranks out every 5 turns (0 to 200% of default amount). if a new game is created using the proposed (above) culture summing over time game switch aesthete empires need to be able to compensate by modifying the size of their culture bomb so their culture bombs make the right amount of cultural impact