a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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I reiterate what others have said: there’s little reason to trade when the map is so homogenous, and each town is a self-contained ecosystem. In order to facilitate trade (and culture). Regions of the map need to specialize. And, we need to be able to live with different starting resources. As someone else said, we need desert towns and snow towns and jungle towns. Right now, you NEED grassland/swamp to survive. As such, every town looks and functions so similarly that they’re almost forgettable.
My suggestion is to greatly expand the existing biomes and fill them differently. Biomes need to be larger. And towns should be able to flourish within these biomes without needing too many resources from neighboring biomes for basic-level survival.
Maybe iron and other metals stay in the mountains. But there should be an expansion of wood and stone tools. Maybe they break easier (there’s still a reason to get iron), but it stops being ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.
Clothing and food should differ between biomes. In the snow, you can’t farm, but you hunt seals and fish. You clothes yourself with yak furs and build igloos. In the tropics, you farm yams and bananas and sugarcane. You tame elephants for riding. You build homes with palm fronds and make mosquito nets for protection.
We need replacements for clay and sheep and berries in ALL biomes. Nothing needs to function the same, but we need to be able to live (even if it’s difficult... grassland would probably always be easier than desert for instance) in all biomes. And biomes need to be made bigger (like 2000k tiles).
That way, we have diversity in Eve camps and early camps. Large towns would require resources form more places, but would retain some “uniqueness” based on their starting points.
You could trade bananas for fish and increase everyone’s yum potential. Trade iron for a pack animal. Or better clothing. Make it so trade makes life easier, without making life impossible to begin with.
Specialization would more accurately replicate human history and encourage the development of culture. Truly advanced tech would still need resources from all over the map, which would require multi-village interaction and trading.
It would be a huge overhaul, but I think it would accomplish at least some of what you’re seeking.
Additionally, I want to reiterate what was said above. Making existing items scarcer to try and force conflict and trade sounds like an extremely unpleasant playstyle. Make more luxury goods and isolate them to specific parts of the map. Think spices, dyes, cloth, jewels, wine, etc. People LOVE personalizing their character, and we already have “drug dealers” growing and passing out mushrooms. If you expanded upon that concept and gave people goods that made the game more fun on an individual level, I think trade would evolve organically.
I was Hooper! That was an... interesting life.
I was the last kid of my mom. She didn't like her property, so she married some random single guy so she could pass his property on to me (the property where we lived). As a baby, I was annoyed. I didn't want to deal with the property nonsense and planned on growing up, leaving, and doing normal city stuff.
But I was trapped there and decided to go with it. She had already passed inheritance to me and told me to get a wife. She left me in the berry bushes and came back with you. At that point, I figured, "why not? This could be interesting." From there, we had our life. And I had a lot of fun.
I know Jason has been trying to induce conflict and create stronger family ties. What surprised me most was how... this actually happened. I really felt like husband/dad, and I felt the need to protect the property and protect the family from anyone who wished us harm, above everyone else in the city. Even if it meant war.
But... at every step, I could feel how unsustainable it was. I remember leaving the property to go get a basket of pies and thinking, "this is a dick move." I was feeding off the work of others, while literally spending my whole life repairing the property fence, trying to expand, and guarding. I didn't produce anything. And, as you mentioned, the rest of the town crumbled away while I did that.
But it did create this greater sense of family, at least for me. I really enjoyed that life. But early societies need communal goods to grow. How this game, with such a short playtime, can successfully transition communism to capitalism... I don't know if it's possible. Or desirable. I enjoyed our family, but I don't want to play a game where everyone's just combative the whole time. Real life has enough of that.
I don't know if property fences can be used to break late cities up into a bunch of smaller cities. In theory, that could be interesting, and could foster trade/wars/truces/etc. But idk. The property itself requires maintenance. It saps away time that should be spent creating.
Additionally, I couldn't yum in that life. Not as important because I was a man, but still notable.
I want that feeling of protecting my family. But not if it destroys the town in the process.
It was a really interesting experiment. And definitely a memorable life I will remember for awhile.
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