FiretopMountain wrote:
Pfft. Here's my two cents on predetermined civ advantages:
The civilizational flavour should come from the tech, not the other way round.
Otherwise, you have this backwards-ass intelligent design nonsense. The Egyptians weren't good at building because of some inherent racial advantage, it was because they developed the Mathematics and Slavery techs to overcome their geographical circumstances. The English didn't have a great navy because they had some kind of proto-understanding of shipcraft, it was because they were based on an island and had to develop technologies to support that lifestyle.
After the first couple of rounds, look at your tech tree, and declare yourself to be a certain civilization that matches that configuration.
The civilizational flavour should come from the tech, not the other way round.
Otherwise, you have this backwards-ass intelligent design nonsense. The Egyptians weren't good at building because of some inherent racial advantage, it was because they developed the Mathematics and Slavery techs to overcome their geographical circumstances. The English didn't have a great navy because they had some kind of proto-understanding of shipcraft, it was because they were based on an island and had to develop technologies to support that lifestyle.
After the first couple of rounds, look at your tech tree, and declare yourself to be a certain civilization that matches that configuration.
That's a good point. I agree that if you were to create a variant to add a historical element, then it would seem more aligned to the flavour of the base game that any historical touchstones were added IF you developed your society in a parallel manner to a real nation rather than specifically starting out with a certain identity and with certain predisposed traits.
It would be nice if you could even do this in a way which added thematic flavour without affecting the overall game play much. For instance adding historical references to the existing Objective cards or creating some different open objective cards which give real historically linked rewards or identity for attaining certain development criteria (that are obviously aligned with the nations that they historically corresponded).
Now I am sure this will be a fantastic game which I look forward to playing without any adulterations. Although I also can't help but think a few historical references would add a bit more thematic texture - the art of course is to do this without changing the base game much or making it appear too forced.