Spirit of the Age: Expansion systems

From the first turn of a Civilization game the humble Settler is available to produce. With the benefits another city provides, what counterbalancing mechanics keeps a player from doing nothing but build city after city? In Civilization 4 the escalating maintenance costs could tank your economy. In Civilization 5 increasing technology and social policy costs could make the city a net negative for your empire. And in Civilization 6 there is no reason to stop expanding!

In Spirit of the Age I have a radical mechanic to discourage infinite city sprawl — what if you couldn’t build Settlers?

Echoes of Earth update: Unit Maintenance

A small update for Echoes of Earth was released last week. In this post I am going to go over what was changed, why it was changed and what it means for the future development of Echoes of Earth and Spirit of the Age.

Announcing “Spirit of the Age” for Civ6

Have you ever wished Civilization felt more like playing a game of Crusader Kings, then Europa Universalis, then Hearts of Iron? Where each age had a distinct style and unique challenges? Spirit of the Age is a total conversion mod for Civilization 6 that aims to capture that feeling. It is centered around a new age mechanic that decouples era progression from the tech tree and creates a natural rise and fall of Civilizations.

Art of War update released!

A small update for the Art of War mod has been released! Cities now start with 2 population, to make it more reasonable to build military units in the early game. Growth bonuses on Military Policies have been slightly reduced. Lastly the Encampment District can no longer be built next to cities.

You can download the new version of the mod on Steam Workshop or CivFanatics.

Art of War mod released!

Art of War is centered around a single radical change. Every military unit requires a population to train. This single change has far reaching consequences on how war is fought, both on the battlefield and domestically.

This mod has a larger scope than my previous Civilization 6 mods and I plan to expand it over time. In this post I am going to go over what the mod changes, why those changes were made and what my future plans are for the mod.

The scale dilemma in 4x games

How do you make managing one city interesting without making managing a dozen cities overwhelming? This dilemma is not unique to Civilization, the entire 4x genre has struggled with it. In a genre about starting small and growing large the quantity of decisions to make naturally grows. This can easily become overwhelming, but there are techniques designers can use to manage this tension. These techniques must be applied carefully because each has its own limitation and pitfalls.

Three design lessons from five years of modding Civilization

Over the years I’ve released and refined mods for Civilization 5 (and its expansions), Beyond Earth, Rising Tide and most recently Civilization 6. Each project has taught me something new and given me a lesson I’ve carried forward and applied to the proceeding projects. These lessons influence the design, scope and schedule of my current and future projects.

Sapping Engineers mod released

I’ve released another Civilization 6 mod. This one focuses on siege warfare! The mod contains two relatively small changes, one for Siege Towers and the other for Military Engineers.

Steam Workshop support hasn’t been incorporated into Civilization 6 yet so you’ll have to download the mod from CivFanatics here.

Settlers Retreat mod released

I’ve just released the “Settlers Retreat” mod for Civilization 6. Steam Workshop isn’t supported yet for Civilization 6 so you’ll have to download it here from CivFanatics. The mod makes it so that when a Settler is attacked by a hostile military unit instead of being captured they teleport back to the city they were built in. This makes the AI more challenging and ensures the early game economy is consistent.

Combined Arms & Timing Attacks

Civilization 6, like many strategy games, has a tactical rock-paper-scissors element. Spears beat horses, horses beat swords and swords beat spears. This leads to the idea that success on the battlefield requires combined arms. Have an army made up of a mix of spears, horses and swords, where your spears are facing off against your foe’s horses, while your swords face off against their spears.

The problem with this view is that it is to small. Units do not simply exist. They have to be built. Those factors can’t be ignored just because they happened before the armies marched onto the field. As Sun Tzu said: “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”.