Minicivs!

[Not a Spartan]

Okay, I'm sure this has been thought of before (everyone loves more content!), and it's probably buried somewhere in the 'nice to have' list, but in any case it'll be pretty neat: mini and micro civs!

Minicivs would be useful if there're any large scale campaigns planned. A big 'Rise of XX Empire' campaign could have them at the initial stages, e.g. a Rise of the Persians campaign would have them battling the Babylonians and Egyptians at the start. They wouldn't be ordinarily playable except through cheat codes and the Map Editor, but would have a decent range of buildings and units.

For instance, an Egyptian miniciv profile (I won't profess to know a lot about history so this is just a quick example!) might look a bit like this:

BUILDINGS:

(village)

• Egyptian palace (civ centre)

- trains cannon fodder archers (either unupgradable, or with just 2 levels) and cannon fodder spearmen (likewise, with either none or just one level up) and normal citizens

• Egyptian house

• Egyptian Field

(+10% productivity when near rivers)

• Egyptian mud-brick wall (slightly stronger than a palisade)

(town)

• Egyptian 'barracks'

- same units as civ center, but has 'refined composite bow' upgrade (100 wood) that adds +1 pierce damage to arrows, or trains them at level 2- (though they're still cannon fodder overall )

• Egyptian frontier fort

- not quite a fortress, but not quite a defence tower either

- trains Nubian (?) chariot archers

• Egyptian guard camp

- trains Medjay champion units with sickle swords (weaker than 'normal civ' champion units)

(city- upgrading to city stage costs less than it would a 'normal civ')

• Palace

- acts as dropsite

- trains hero Ramnses the Great (monuments build faster), Scorpion (can build civ centers), Cleopatra (can take over Roman/Ptolemaic buildings), and <generic other pharaoh/warrior etc.>

• Sphinx

(increases productivity of fields near rivers a further 10%)

• Egyptian dock

- builds Reed Galley (a multifunction fishing-merchant ship. garrisoned units fire arrows)

• Assorted other easy to model but characteristically Egyptian New Kingdom buildings

- eye candy

Microcivs are totally not playable and can appears as Easter eggs on the map- they only consist of one building and a few units- you could have an Axumite trade dock (home to Axum warriors- may also build Axum Trade Galleys, and regular Axumites) or an Armenian Noble House (home to Uratuan warriors and horsemen and regular citizens). They have a population cap of 20, and are generally peaceful and can be traded with. The population may auto gather, and both their units and buildings ignore zones of control.

[MishFTW]

Sounds to me like assets packaged with the game, specifically for atlas.

[Not a Spartan]

Saw the cheats topic and the talk about the superheroes and flying saucers and thought I might expand on the 'microcivs' a bit.

I was thinking that they'd appear mostly to act as trading posts/eye candy in the 'Unknown' random maps. But maybe they could ally with the player once the player had traded a reasonable amount of goods with them.

Obviously, 20 mixed units wouldn't make a very strong ally. But every once in a while (maybe 1 in 20 maps), there'd be a fun anachronistic/offbeat microciv; for instance a Time-Travelling British Fort housing powerful Redcoats, Native Cavalry and Mortars, or a Secret Laser Pepperpot Drawer hosting laser-shooting pepperpots screaming 'exterminate!'.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Saw the cheats topic and the talk about the superheroes and flying saucers and thought I might expand on the 'microcivs' a bit.

I was thinking that they'd appear mostly to act as trading posts/eye candy in the 'Unknown' random maps. But maybe they could ally with the player once the player had traded a reasonable amount of goods with them.

Obviously, 20 mixed units wouldn't make a very strong ally. But every once in a while (maybe 1 in 20 maps), there'd be a fun anachronistic/offbeat microciv; for instance a Time-Travelling British Fort housing powerful Redcoats, Native Cavalry and Mortars, or a Secret Laser Pepperpot Drawer hosting laser-shooting pepperpots screaming 'exterminate!'.

yeah you are my hero, im the one that want Trading post. and never find support with these idea.

[Not a Spartan]

yeah you are my hero, im the one that want Trading post. and never find support with these idea.

Thanks! I'm afraid I'm not a perfect hero though. The main purpose of microcivs is really to spice up the randomised 'Unknown' maps a bit, with the trading post thing just a fun extra. I could imagine them being actually useful in the 'Unknown Nomad' or low-resource maps, but there's usually plenty of resources to go around.

[Lion.Kanzen]

i know, you enable to train native warriors.