Time Passing
I've been playing Civilization IV a lot lately. When I first acquired it I didn't really get into it too much, after all I've played the series from its inception, so you could chalk it up to having been there and done that too much. What led me back, I'm guessing, is that Civilization is a kind of comfort food in a way. It's safe and comforting in many familiar ways, because as much as the game has changed it has stayed the same, and I like that. I've slowly moved up in the difficulty levels, and I can already see that in order to keep progressing I'll have to start paying attention to some of the nuances that you can safely ignore on the easier levels.
I've always loved the early exploration part of the game, sending your units out to uncover the land and push back the big black blanket. You never know what you might find out there, and there's something to that that has always been appealing, even though, to some degree, I now what I'll find. The other aspect I've always enjoyed is crushing other civilizations with my vastly superior technology. The computer AI is always so arrogant, so there's some sort of sadistic pleasure that comes with ruthlessly crushing their long-bowmen with tanks and helicopter gunships. But one downside of increasing the game's difficulties levels is that the AI tends to keep up with you in tech for a lot longer.
I've been thinking it over for awhile now, and I think it would be great if someone were to create a Civ type game that more closely follows human development over the years. You could start of leading a small tribe around, then eventually found small settlements, begin to construct cities and structures, develop technologies, etc. You'd have to fend of other tribes and city-states, but if your society is conquered you can continue to control your culture as a group somehow. Only once you're conquered you can't make government decisions, unless your group manages to achieve some sort of status that allows it to do so. You could really go kind of crazy with the options at that point, so they assimilate, do they form a kind of insurgency, or do they simply go about their business focusing on maintaining a cultural identity.
I guess I'm thinking of a kind of larger model that would allow for nuance in the simulation. Your cultural group could develop a kingdom, empire or realm of influence and then dictate polices on trade, immigration, conquest or exploration. But with a more cause and effect thing going one, for instance, you can send out explorers and dictate to them to explore such and such area, but after you dispatch them you really don't know what will happen. Same with fighting wars, you can build bigger and bigger armies, but along with having to support and supply them you would have to take into consideration the manpower hit. Even during the Civil War men would desert to go home and bring in a crop, if you put all your men in the army, then the populace could starve.
And this is where I trail off...