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Cultural amalgamation rather than switching

Cultures

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8 months ago
Mar 28, 2024, 2:02:50 PM

Firstly apologies for my shabby formatting and grammar, if you can get past that I really appreciate your reading my idea and would love if you could respond with any criticisms you have and changes you'd make to what I've outlined.


My core ideas for this would require a step away from the games current concept of cultural switching and would have little impact on gameplay it is purely an idea for immersion/connection with your nation. This is all cantered around of my major issue with this game and it's overall feel, that I think is so close to brilliance, which is I do not think you keep anywhere near enough of a connection to your previous culture with the single turn jump from one to the next completely ruining the experience in my view. 


The core of my idea for these changes is removing the harsh edges that currently exist between age ups and cultures this is a game that should be about the blending/merging of cultural groups not jumping between real world cultural groups at random. The first change I would make to address this would be changing the current faction naming system, maintaining the current avatar names for the faction I would love to see the sort-of reintroduction of the created names for the joining of different cultures as a sub-heading/title for the factions. With these titles merging together before phasing out the previous cultures name once again becoming monoculture before merging again on your next age up. To better explain this in the Ancient era you choose x culture, this is your name, you then reach the classical era choose a new culture and become x-y for a set number of turns dependent on game speed, before becoming solely y until you age up and then you are y-z etc.  A system like this would require a lot of thought and care to plan out inventing plausible sensible names for cultural mergers that don't exist in reality but would in my opinion help smooth the transition greatly. Additionally to this the game should allow players to name their own nations if they choose offering the chance to rename with every age up giving them the freedom to invent state names instead of culturally based ones if they wish. This removes the idea from the players head (which I think is one of this games biggest missteps) that we are playing as existing historical cultures because we aren't, we're writing our own history.


Beyond the naming from one culture to another in a single turn jump just doesn't work there's too much whiplash there. In my idea for cultural merging takes place over many turns with districts containing the visuals of both cultures and time periods during in this transitional phase slowly shifting from your last cultures aesthetic to your new one. I would also like to allow the player to continue to build the previous cultures emblematic districts during this transitional time. A change like this would really help show the technological and cultural shifts of your nation occur naturally aiding in the removal of the current disconnect between these to cultures. Currently in my view ageing up feels like a foreign power has invaded your nation and wiped out all elements of their culture apart from their most significant sites (emblematic quarters) instantaneously in my mind It almost reads as a cultural genocide which is not the goal of this game at all.


I would also love to see this merging on units as well blending the visual style of different cultures, slowly phasing out the previous one. Again this is mostly in service of immersion with only the emblematic quarter aspect affecting gameplay but I truly think immersion or a lack there of is hone of the biggest problems facing this game.


If you've read this far thank you very much, I would really appreciate any feedback you have on this. I really love this game and would love to see it regain some of it's initial success and popularity and I think these are some non gameplay related changes that could potentially contribute to that. This is almost entirely a visual Idea attempting to change how ageing up is perceived which is likely not a priority for the devs but I truly believe that little elements of quasi narrative crafting would elevate the experience.

Updated 2 days ago.
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8 months ago
Mar 31, 2024, 9:37:05 PM

For the architectural changes I feel like there still needs to be some signs of where your culture started from. Maybe districts built during one era would maintain that initial culture's influences longer. Like for example even if you've picked exclusively African cultures for the rest of the game that the districts built during your Zhou period would have some of those early east Asian style buildings. You could justify this is universe because it's likely a building or two from that era would remain around as a cultural site. Buildings built after that switch would be entirely in the new style so your city's landscape would look like a gradient in which your building styles blend into one another.


Maybe that transitional phase could be tied to sphere of influence with you having to respread some of that influence to foster that transition which could give more purpose to the aesthete ability. I know you didn't want this to effect gameplay but what if your old sphere of influence lingered around and cultures that are behind could readopt it if they're under that sphere of influence like how countries claim to be the successors to others

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8 months ago
Apr 5, 2024, 11:14:20 PM

Not quite amalgamation, but more fluid transitions. Maybe players should get multiple options how exactly they change to a new culture.


1. They can do an immediate switch, as now. But it would be accompanied with a revolution, similar to how previous Civilization titles changed government. Lowered stability for a few turns, maybe some rebel units spawn. That kind of stuff.

2. An evolutionary transition taking longer but causing less friction.

3. Maybe some external conquest situation where you pretend that your culture was supplanted by a people's migration. You lose legacy traits by gain something powerful in return.


The other element might just be some flavour text around those transitions. For instance,

for 1: "heated cultural clashes have led to internal conflict and rebellion in the Greek empire. Our of that infighting, the Roman faction has emerged victorious and are imposing their culture on the new-forged empire."

for 2: "the Greeks are undergoing a period of intense culture friction and change." to mark the start and "after intense societal debates, the Greek expansionist caste has emerged dominant and are now considering themselves the Roman culture."


Something like that. Give it more context, flavour and couple that with gameplay choices. Almost seems like a wasted opportunity to not use this gameplay inflection point for story telling. Getting slightly inspired by Rhys' and Fall of Cilivizations and Civ Legends of Revolutions mod.

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