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4X Make Civ(likes) Great Again! Brainstorming design thread

lophiaspis

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I don't think that you can meaningfully compete with Civilization by adding new things and features. To begin with, the problem with the recent Civ games is that they have an excess of fiddly subsystems built on top of the base game, slowing the game down, so developers are tempted to reduce the number of cities you have and the amount of units you have to keep the game flowing properly. With the reduction of scope, the game becomes less dynamic and less deep, while the focus turns instead to tedious micromanagement tasks that do not amount to anything genuinely strategic. Adding automation is no solution - the end result would most likely be something like Master of Orion III, a bland, boring game that plays itself.

A genuine contender to Civilization should do avay with this superfluous junk so it can once more be fun, dynamic and reasonably quick to play, with simple and elegant game mechanics that give rise to interesting emergent situations when the game has enough scope. In the first place, Civilization gained the status it has because the essential core of Civilization is tremendously fun - so fun that the game remains engaging even when you add oodles of superfluous junk on top. A deceptively simple game like the original Master of Orion is much more likely to manage the same. Sophisticated, "realistic" extra features should be a secondary concern.

My dream "Civ-like" game is essentially an empire builder set in the ancient world that deals almost exclusively with building and warfare, in that order. The premise is that you can quite easily conquer cities, but keeping them from rebelling against your rule is only possible with cultural dominance, which requires building palaces and temples to assert your dominance, for which you need hard-to-attain raw materials, luxury goods and specialist craftsmen, so you have to go on military campaigns to gain the resources you need for your building projects. This way, the empire turns quickly into a pyramid scheme on the verge of toppling that you have to struggle to keep running, while rebellions inevitably emerge to check your growth and cause weaknesses for rival empires to take advantage of, resulting in a natural "rise and fall" cycle. You could conceivably add some extra stuff like diplomacy or religion to a game like this, but the way I see it, you probably shouldn't add a lot, since there's a very real risk is losing sight of what would make the game fun in the first place.

This. What nuCiv needs is LESS complexity, not more. Adding more cruft is a common design mistake, also seen outside videogames, that stems from catering to your most jaded hardcore fans at the expense of everybody else. See also: Why nerds ruin everything.

Go back and play Civ 1. Isn't it shocking how quick and fluid it is? You can finish a whole game in a few hours. Civ 1 plays ten times faster than Civ 3-6. Why can't we go back to that?

If Firaxis was smart they would make a Lite version of Civ, with
-complexity level somewhere between Civ 1 and 2.
-F2P, without any P2W elements, funded by ads (which can be removed by paying) and buying customization elements like ability to make your own civ.
-fully cross platform like Fortnite with a focus on PC/Mac and Tablet/Mobile.
-singleplayer, but also exploiting Tablet/Mobile 'simultaneous' multiplayer, which is really just PBEM done right.

This is what they should have done instead of their retarded 'civ for consoles' gambit. They could keep the 'big civ' line for PC going at the same time as the cross platform F2P 'lil civ'. This is the best way to revitalize the brand and reach loads of new players. However it seems like all the smart people left Firaxis a while ago, so I doubt they will ever understand this.
 

Nutria

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Go back and play Civ 1. Isn't it shocking how quick and fluid it is?

Seriously, do this. It's amazing how well they did at getting the right scale for everything. Nothing is too big or small, whether it's the maps, the numbers of units and cities, or the length of the game. And all of the game systems are well integrated with each other. There isn't anything like religion that's just tacked on because it exists in real life. Civ should have started cutting down complexity to get back to this level a long time ago.
 

MilesBeyond

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Why you cut down complexity? What should be cut down is micro, not macro. Less clicking on individual cities to build things, and more strategic decisions. The world is not a simple place.

Complexity for its own sake isn't necessarily a good thing. What complexity can do is take fun, functional mechanics and breathe life and longevity into them. What complexity cannot do is take flawed or unfun mechanics and make them fun. Complexity can make a good game great, but it cannot make a mediocre game good. It can get you excited about future playthroughs and the different ways you can play the game and different choices you can make, but in order to do that, the gameplay itself has to be fun enough that you want to experience those options. And I think what people are saying, and that I might agree with, is that Civ's problem right now is not a lack of complexity, but rather that the basic game mechanics desperately need a rework.

I remember that's what I thought about Beyond Earth. There were a few things (like the tech web and the affinity system) that I thought were actually interesting mechanics that could potentially add some depth to the game. But it was a moot point, because the fundamental gameplay just wasn't fun.
 

Cael

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Why you cut down complexity? What should be cut down is micro, not macro. Less clicking on individual cities to build things, and more strategic decisions. The world is not a simple place.
Compare vanilla Civ4BTS with the Fall from Heaven 2 mod. FFH2 added a lot of complexity and new mechanics, yet it is far more fun than vanilla.

Now, compare Civ4 with Civ5. Lots of added complexity and options in Civ5, but far less fun.

You can even compare SMAC with Civ4 and there is a good chance people will rate SMAC ahead of Civ4.

It is not how much complexity is added, it is what complexity is added.
 

Bad Jim

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Adding automation is no solution - the end result would most likely be something like Master of Orion III, a bland, boring game that plays itself.
I know this isn't really what you were driving at, but automation is key. If I can play ten times faster without skipping anything care about, I'm going to find the game a lot more fun.

MOO 3 didn't suck because it had automation. It sucked because it was released unfinished. With fan patches, it is apparently a decent game. The "plays itself" part was due to broken AI. AI should be at least as strong as the automation and can be given production bonuses, so it shouldn't be possible to win without thinking for yourself if the game is properly made.
 

Nutria

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MOO3 was originally going to be far more ambitious, and automation was going to be central to it. The player was only going to be allowed to make a few moves per turn. Other than that, your empire would run completely on its own. I'm not sure it would have been a good game even if it did live up to that plan. It goes against Sid Meier's axiom that the player should be having the fun, not the computer.

Where I've seen automation work the best is Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The player is one guy in the world and there's a limit to how many units he can control directly, so you have to put governors in charge of your provinces. Each character has their own abilities and personality, so knowing who to trust is crucial. Automation isn't something you do to make the game run faster, it's a fundamental part of the game. Unless you make automation a core part of Civ the way it is in RTK, I don't think it will be a solution. The player will be tempted to micromanage everything if they're allowed to.
 

Bad Jim

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The reason that players are tempted to micromanage is that automation is often badly done. The most common error is trying to make something entirely autonomous when what is really needed is an efficient interface.

For example, some games have AI governers that build all the wrong things. A governer in GalCiv 1 is basically just a build list that you can edit, so you still have full control but you can save a lot of clicking vs manually selecting everything you build.
 

Cael

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The reason that players are tempted to micromanage is that automation is often badly done. The most common error is trying to make something entirely autonomous when what is really needed is an efficient interface.

For example, some games have AI governers that build all the wrong things. A governer in GalCiv 1 is basically just a build list that you can edit, so you still have full control but you can save a lot of clicking vs manually selecting everything you build.
You can do the same thing in MOO2, I believe. Make a build list and have it apply to all new colonies.
 

Bad Jim

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I don't think the Civilization series could reduce city management to a few sliders though. People would call it "dumbed down" not "elegant". MOO1 was okay because it had depth in other areas, like designing your own ships and fighting battles on a tactical grid.
 

MilesBeyond

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I don't think the Civilization series could reduce city management to a few sliders though. People would call it "dumbed down" not "elegant". MOO1 was okay because it had depth in other areas, like designing your own ships and fighting battles on a tactical grid.

Well that's exactly it. Despite being on a broader scale than most other genres, focus is still a very important thing for 4X games. You need to be able to identify what aspect of the gameplay is the core, and have everything else serve that aspect. MoO is a great example of this - the core of the game is the ship design and tactical combat. Everything else in the game exists to serve that purpose. Making money and developing your planets are not ends themselves, but rather are ways to support your fleet. Now, that being said, of course you can play MoO without focusing on combat and still have fun, and even win - especially the second one. But that doesn't change the fact that ship design and combat is the meat of the game, and almost everything else serves it in some way or another. HoMM is another example - again, everything centres around the combat. You build up your towns - so you can get more troops. You level up your heroes - so they can be more effective in combat. You explore the map - to get more bonuses to aid the first two so you can have an easier time crushing the enemy. And again, exploring the map and building up your towns and heroes are all things that are fun and addicting in their own right, but they all exist to serve the combat.

Or take Paradox games. Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria, Hearts of Iron - each one of these has a clear focus that highly differentiates it from other installments in the series, despite often using the same engine and having overlapping mechanics. We've got political intrigue and dynasty management; exploration and expansion (aka map painting); economy and diplomacy, and warfare. And while none of those elements are unique to those games, they're unique in the level of focus that they're given.

And I think part of the issue with Civ is that it has become increasingly unfocused. Like I said above, is it a strategy game or a SimEmpire game? Is the focus on building up your empire, or is it on warfare? And in theory, an unfocused game can sound great, because hey, it does everything! In practice, though, that's not really the way it works ouit, and it ends up kind of not doing anything. Vicky 2 is a game that does everything, and yet it's still very focused. Like I said, the emphasis of the game is very clearly on economy, and to a lesser extent diplomacy. What's Civ's emphasis? And I think answering that question is really the first thing that would need to be done in building a better Civ.
 

flyingjohn

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I don't think the Civilization series could reduce city management to a few sliders though. People would call it "dumbed down" not "elegant". MOO1 was okay because it had depth in other areas, like designing your own ships and fighting battles on a tactical grid.


And I think part of the issue with Civ is that it has become increasingly unfocused. Like I said above, is it a strategy game or a SimEmpire game? Is the focus on building up your empire, or is it on warfare? And in theory, an unfocused game can sound great, because hey, it does everything! In practice, though, that's not really the way it works ouit, and it ends up kind of not doing anything. Vicky 2 is a game that does everything, and yet it's still very focused. Like I said, the emphasis of the game is very clearly on economy, and to a lesser extent diplomacy. What's Civ's emphasis? And I think answering that question is really the first thing that would need to be done in building a better Civ.
The unfocus is mostly due to the civ 6 and 5 main designers being a bad fit for the lead dev/designer positions.There is nobody left at firaxis who can design a game around a clear vision of what it is supposed to be.
Beach is here just tor randomly add features and make sure the game gets released while shafer couldn't handle design in his mods for civ 4 let alone at a standalone game for civ.
Also most of the civ 5/6 expansions are based on newcomers dictating features,and they just use the kitchen sink approach of adding stuff without understanding the original vision or direction.

Unless they hire a codexer or something alike nothing will change for the coming expansion and civ 7.
 
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1. Victoria 2-style pop system. Get rid of abstract pops, use real population with realistic growth rates. Every tile should have population, not just cities (remember that for most of human history up until the industrial revolution cities had slightly negative natural growth rate, they only survived by an influx of outsiders coming in). With every tile being worked we can get rid of nonsensical and micro-intensive pop allocation.

2. Cities have no artificial radius limits to tile exploitation. e.g. capital cities could theoretically take resources and income from most of the country. Infrastructure and distance is what determines how much you get. Cities should end up a lot more spaced out than before rather than the whole map being patterned. Or worse, ICSed.

3. Culture made much more important. I'd get rid of all of these gamey Civ 5+ faction bonuses and attach most bonuses/penalties/pop inclinations to culture. This would also tie into whether you could assimilate a conquered city or it would be a headache for hundreds of years to maintain control over.

4. Less tech overall, and some penalties specifically for trying to slingshot ahead (or maybe a tech-diffusion system so those behind catch up better). However, every tech has multiple tiers. The way to progress up the tiers would be to actually use/implement the tech, which would give bonuses going forward. Civ 6 sort of did the opposite with their "do x to research the tech faster", instead we do "use the tech to get better at it". For example the age-old English Longbow wouldn't be a special unit for the English, it would be a special unit for an archery-focused civilization that produced a lot of archers relative to its size.

5. Get rid of all tactical one unit per tile combat crap, go straight back to Civ 4. Thanks to #2 this should allow plenty enough tactics with maneuver without the dogshit that is managing 30 units, not being able to attack a city with more than a few units, or having units stuck on each other unable to move. Plus its simple enough that braindead Firaxis AI can still manage it decently.
 

Cael

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And I think part of the issue with Civ is that it has become increasingly unfocused. Like I said above, is it a strategy game or a SimEmpire game? Is the focus on building up your empire, or is it on warfare? And in theory, an unfocused game can sound great, because hey, it does everything! In practice, though, that's not really the way it works ouit, and it ends up kind of not doing anything. Vicky 2 is a game that does everything, and yet it's still very focused. Like I said, the emphasis of the game is very clearly on economy, and to a lesser extent diplomacy. What's Civ's emphasis? And I think answering that question is really the first thing that would need to be done in building a better Civ.
If you think Civ is bad, wait til you try Galactic Civ 2. Have fun upgrading individual buildings over an entire empire that could consist of several dozen planets.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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There's lots of great ideas in this thread already, I'm not sure we need to segway into the details of MoO games so much.

My biggest issue with Civ games, and an awful lot of 4x games generally is what someone else mentioned, the disparity of time. Only my issue stems from a different route cause and has a different solution, or, rather, different result that would require some kind of original solution.

Early years go by too quick but with little to do, gradually escalating to modern years going by too slowly but with too much to do with the added burden of a crushing slow-down in the computation of AI moves. Whereas what I'd prefer is a more even layering of years. 1 year per year. With there still being a similar amount of computations being made on year 1 as on year 2020. In Civ games having one turn be 50 years is just silly, you zoom through BC as if BC hardly existed and find yourself learning gunpowder before you've even had a real taste of Egypt or Rome-like empiring. It's as if its less about getting a sense of empire building and more about preparing yourself for industrialisation, if that makes sense.

The absurdities that follow as a result of this concept of gradual speeding is such things as the squares on the board not matching the pace of time. A BC worker takes centuries to build one road in one direction, or thousands of years to build one monument, and that's it for their BC achievements. You can build a load of BC warriors and have them go and conquer a city, but by the time they're built and arrive at their destination, the enemy has already advanced beyond the warrior stage of original strategic war declaration. Sending out a scout or warrior to de-fog the map is also ludicrous, as they will be gone for thousands of years and yet always maintain a perfect line of communication and never decide to defect or settle or just go awol, then 3 thousand years they come home, unchanged and outdated.

Whereas with a more common-sense approach, early game would properly lock you in an unmoveable fog and the fog would only become removable with technological advancement combined with certain builds and units, to which knowledge of your surroundings would expand more in-line with a sense of actual expansion rather than just something you do to while away the early years.

And this is where my idea starts to merge with Delterius 's idea, in that there shouldn't necessarily be just one map screen. Just one city for years and years in BC? What would one do? Well, in the early years the map would be bigger and each square would be divided up into lots of little squares. So year one would be forming the early tribe's dominance of the small area around their first city. Building roads would take a few years, but would cover all these minisquares, sort of like a wonder. Where Civ has changes in 'eras' that do nothing but change the aesthetic, my game would have these changes in era zoom out the map one level, enabling you to start conquering a region, the next era enabling you to conquer a continent, the next era enabling you to conquer Da World!!!! etc. And eras are time coded, not tech coded, so you'd only be able to do so much before the next era change, allowing for all kinds of choice-variety in gameplay styles in preparation for the next era.

Combat could be Total War (no re-enforcements though) style. When you engage in hostilities with an enemy, the computer evaluates your technology, civ-choice, demographics and money & all etc, provides you with an army to suit, to which you face-off with the challenger on a field of battle, again, on ever larger fields of battle as the game expands per era. Thereby keeping the abstract element while also permitting a sense of the more realistic and allowing the AI more of a chance to be effective. Expanding your empire would be organic, like a spreading bacteria, in many layers as described by Delterius . Each turn you'd be allowed to tinker with one layer once each. You could have vast complexity within a routine of fairly easy and quickly cycling turns.

& etc.
 
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cvv

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Props to Slaughter for raising this important topic.

I'd just use this opportunity to once again fanboy my favourite mods that transformed below average 4Xs into fantastic games - the Religion&Revolution mod for CivIV: Civilization, the Codex mod for Beyond Earth and especially the Renaissance mod for Warlock 2. You should play all of those and realize there are modders who already know exactly what makes a great 4X game, unlike the talentless hacks that made the vanilla versions.
 

Nutria

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Scaling up the game as you pass through different eras is an interesting idea. It wouldn't work for multiplayer since your initial city state would be across the world from my initial city state and we wouldn't meet until the endgame, but I don't think most Civ players are interested in multiplayer anyway.
 

Archibald

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For multiplayer could just do era specific matches, so that you start and end game in same era.

Similar potential issue could be with AIs in single player, if they spawn in another side of the map leaving you with not much to do in early ages. At first glance I think that AIs shouldn't be generated for entire world at first. For example if you set in setting that you want 5 AIs around then initial age where you are really zoomed in would still have 5 AI tribes running around and providing challenge/interactions. As you start scaling out then map would be repopulated with new AIs, lets say in initial age 3 AIs died so when you move to new era you'd get 3 new AIs generated that occupy new lands. This could provide some flexibility in a sense that you could generate AI empire based on how player is doing and avoid situations where due to lucky early couple of eras end game becomes trivial and more of a time waster than challenge.

Obviously in such case you'd need to ensure that at least few AIs died on each era or simply always add at least one new AI when going into new era.
 

kris

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The absurdities that follow as a result of this concept of gradual speeding is such things as the squares on the board not matching the pace of time. A BC worker takes centuries to build one road in one direction, or thousands of years to build one monument, and that's it for their BC achievements. You can build a load of BC warriors and have them go and conquer a city, but by the time they're built and arrive at their destination, the enemy has already advanced beyond the warrior stage of original strategic war declaration. Sending out a scout or warrior to de-fog the map is also ludicrous, as they will be gone for thousands of years and yet always maintain a perfect line of communication and never decide to defect or settle or just go awol, then 3 thousand years they come home, unchanged and outdated.

Whereas with a more common-sense approach, early game would properly lock you in an unmoveable fog and the fog would only become removable with technological advancement combined with certain builds and units, to which knowledge of your surroundings would expand more in-line with a sense of actual expansion rather than just something you do to while away the early years.

as exploration is my favourite part of 4X in general I really feel this one. Particularly how there is no exploration to do in late game. Or in some games there is no interesting exploration after the first third of the game. Fantasy 4X might do a little bit better in this aspect.

thats why I proposed explorers to be sent out to explore surrounding plots (not walk them there, select them and choose what plot they should explore.). They should have a max range and you can have a limited number of them (based on tech/economy/tiles)
 

mbv123

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I love when you can genocide unwanted pops in 4x games, like in Endless Space 2.
Just conquered a system with shitton of subhuman aliens that you don't want? Send them all to some prison lava colony where they all work to death and die out because you cut off their food supply. Or just mass conscript them as cannon fodder for land invasions.
 

MilesBeyond

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I love when you can genocide unwanted pops in 4x games, like in Endless Space 2.
Just conquered a system with shitton of subhuman aliens that you don't want? Send them all to some prison lava colony where they all work to death and die out because you cut off their food supply. Or just mass conscript them as cannon fodder for land invasions.

I remember reading a Stellaris player talking about how they turned a planet of conquered aliens into food and then sold that food to the surviving aliens of that race.
 

Lagi

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The absurdities that follow as a result of this concept of gradual speeding is such things as the squares on the board not matching the pace of time. A BC worker takes centuries to build one road in one direction, or thousands of years to build one monument, and that's it for their BC achievements. You can build a load of BC warriors and have them go and conquer a city, but by the time they're built and arrive at their destination, the enemy has already advanced beyond the warrior stage of original strategic war declaration. Sending out a scout or warrior to de-fog the map is also ludicrous, as they will be gone for thousands of years and yet always maintain a perfect line of communication and never decide to defect or settle or just go awol, then 3 thousand years they come home, unchanged and outdated.

Whereas with a more common-sense approach, early game would properly lock you in an unmoveable fog and the fog would only become removable with technological advancement combined with certain builds and units, to which knowledge of your surroundings would expand more in-line with a sense of actual expansion rather than just something you do to while away the early years.

as exploration is my favourite part of 4X in general I really feel this one. Particularly how there is no exploration to do in late game. Or in some games there is no interesting exploration after the first third of the game. Fantasy 4X might do a little bit better in this aspect.

thats why I proposed explorers to be sent out to explore surrounding plots (not walk them there, select them and choose what plot they should explore.). They should have a max range and you can have a limited number of them (based on tech/economy/tiles)

incendiarydevice idea of static see radius is believable, although I like also exploring with single unit the unknown.

exploring unknowns should be dangerous. If you go with unit abroad they should take damage. Some special explorer unit could survive longer, but still they would evaporate. Think about it, you send Karak ships to explore oceans, after many years they return almost destroyed, and you need to prepare them for next journey.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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The absurdities that follow as a result of this concept of gradual speeding is such things as the squares on the board not matching the pace of time. A BC worker takes centuries to build one road in one direction, or thousands of years to build one monument, and that's it for their BC achievements. You can build a load of BC warriors and have them go and conquer a city, but by the time they're built and arrive at their destination, the enemy has already advanced beyond the warrior stage of original strategic war declaration. Sending out a scout or warrior to de-fog the map is also ludicrous, as they will be gone for thousands of years and yet always maintain a perfect line of communication and never decide to defect or settle or just go awol, then 3 thousand years they come home, unchanged and outdated.

Whereas with a more common-sense approach, early game would properly lock you in an unmoveable fog and the fog would only become removable with technological advancement combined with certain builds and units, to which knowledge of your surroundings would expand more in-line with a sense of actual expansion rather than just something you do to while away the early years.

as exploration is my favourite part of 4X in general I really feel this one. Particularly how there is no exploration to do in late game. Or in some games there is no interesting exploration after the first third of the game. Fantasy 4X might do a little bit better in this aspect.

thats why I proposed explorers to be sent out to explore surrounding plots (not walk them there, select them and choose what plot they should explore.). They should have a max range and you can have a limited number of them (based on tech/economy/tiles)

incendiarydevice idea of static see radius is believable, although I like also exploring with single unit the unknown.

exploring unknowns should be dangerous. If you go with unit abroad they should take damage. Some special explorer unit could survive longer, but still they would evaporate. Think about it, you send Karak ships to explore oceans, after many years they return almost destroyed, and you need to prepare them for next journey.

Indeed, I like the exploration as well, however, your line "after many years they return" in a civ game would mean just one turn. The kind of enjoyable exploration you're describing would be an in-game equivalent of centuries, possibly even millennia. The thing I described and Kris expanded on would still involve enjoyable exploration, you'd just be limited to a more realistic zone of travel and discovery, such as building a scout to go and unlock one square or two and perhaps build a different unit to investigate what those squares contained resource-wise, so early exploration would involve more complexity, that of first clearing an area of trouble, followed by surveying the area for use while also providing the joys of exploration. The number of squares you'd be exploring would be similar to the number of squares you'd explore in a currently normal game, you'd just be doing it more immersively, realistically, logically, complexly, easily, rationally. Once the game zooms out to whatever would be the equivalent of the late middle-ages, then you could send out your caravels to provide random global fog-clearing.
 

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