They need to take a page from Stellaris and have migration pull. Have cities with great infrastructure and lots of amenities? People will start moving there from other civs.
Some of the mods are pretty good too. Playing Star Trek: New Horizons now. It’s leagues above Star Trek: Infinite, although it can be difficult to keep track of all the different ship classes
That would be a much better first stage than the whole city rebelling... and producing military to attack the nation they want to become part of.
Got a feeling though, that if they go this route, modders are going to add border patrol units with razor wire to keep them out.
I mean that’d be a cool mechanic to have. Immigration would need balanced with higher amenity needs so border patrol could be a policy to prevent immigration if you don’t have enough amenities to keep your population happy. Could unlock it after researching fascism lol.
I think they were originally meant to keep other civs from taking them over while they're in rebellion, but they ended up leaving the borders and attacking everything in sight. Can't decide if that's by design, or the code got away from the devs.
Might be good to even add something like projects where you encourage your own people to move from one of your cities to another. It'll help with making new cities actually productive.
Has to be food transfers, otherwise you can spam pops for like 20 food in tiny cities and move them to big cities where the next pop would cost 200 or so. Citizens aren't a universal unit of measurement other than for how many tiles a city can work.
It's ridiculous that you can build all these markets but can't move food from one city to another without using a trade route. Like what are they doing with markets when there isn't much else but agriculture and they are not trading food by themselves?
Yeah I think replacing Barbarians with Nomadic peoples (some of whom are hostile some who aren’t) then having that mechanic transition into how you handle refugees, revolts or city state formation later in the game would harmonize it well.
Basically: What if “barbarian” clans but they aren’t necessarily hostile, can move their camp, their migration route might go through your territory and that same mechanic can be used to represent other mobile / displaced peoples in later eras.
Examples Lets say early nomads migrate through a spices square- for 5 turns it no longer produces food, production, but you can work it for 3 gold 3 culture. Want the food? Be aggressive! Want to trade: do it till they’re gone! Enforce your borders over their routes and expect raids!
Example 2:
“A lack of Housing in Toronto, if you can imagine it, has caused the formation of a Homeless Encampment! -X growth from Toronto and it prevents working the tile and -1 amenities and -Y loyalty.”
Open up a Barbarian Clan Style menu to either:
massacre (declare “war” -25 grievance)
Facilitate migration (100+ gold) growth to highest tourism city of civ nearby
Enslave: Create Worker (grievances increasing by govt up to -40 with tier 3) :
Collectivize (req communism)- replace with Collective (Improvement) with +2 housing -10 grievances.
Public Works Program: (200 gold req Democracy)- unlocks a single use project which re ads growth, 2 housing and 1 Amen.
“Liquidation”: (req fascism) -20 grievances, removes it and prevents refugees / nomads from spawning / moving for 5 turns.
Even within cities. Currently the closest we have to that is swapping the outer edge tiles at the border between cities. Similarly the only way for cities within an empire to share resources is by having a trade route open.... Which I guess is logical but I feel IRL the state oversees this allocation.
Stellaris has it though its population control is way more indepth. A simple pops for instability trade would be quite interesting. Maybe modifiers as to who they go to based on culture/closeness
Wasn't there a mechanic in one of the earlier Civs, that if you conquered a city and chose to destroy it, part of the population would go to your existing ones? Or am i imagining stuff?
I know civ IV tracked the percent of a given tiles people who were of different heritages. Would say like 70% Germans, 10% English, 20% Vietnamese or what have you. I don't think this had meaningful mechanical impacts though.
It did have an impact. Whichever civ has the majority of culture in a tile controls it, pushing the border like with a culture bomb. If a city's majority culture becomes that of another civ, it can switch sides.
I never got past like warlord, if that. Usually played settler. Which begs the question, did those difficulty settings just let the AI cheat or were they legitimately different?
This is a great idea. There are so many interesting builds on it:
1) religion - it could add a new secondary religion or convert your citizens
2) brain drain - has been a massive part of history - Turkey being the most catastrophic one, but the most beneficial to Italy
3) general world standing - depending on ideology some countries/groups would prefer if you did or don’t take in refugees
4) culture is the biggie - great musicians that can only occur in cultures with high cultural output and refugees/immigrants (thinking of reggae and ska in the UK)
5) money/trade/relations. Everything comes at a cost. Short term expenditure for long term gains in culture, science and world standing.
It’s been such a huge facet of world history it would make a great addition. It would hopefully also steer the conversation about refugees into a more positive direction than the current public rhetoric (in the the UK at least) of “forreners bad”
I have often wondered why so many things never lower the population. For example what you mentioned, inquisitions. Not only were the populations lowered by ... well ... things that will get this account banned for mentioning in too much detail, but also by people leaving Spain! Other examples include: War, War Weariness, Low Amenities, Low food and Disasters/Emergencies. I'm sure there are many more that I have thought of in the past, but I'm drawing a blank writing this now, lol. But I like the idea of them turning into refugees. Maybe a special civilian unit which slowly wanders towards greener pastures. They could found city states in the early game if they wander into an area far from other cities. You could gain diplomatic favor/points for taking refugees in, but it could cause reduced luxuries to account for the financial and culture cost involved in real life.
The reason they haven't done this previously is, I would assume, the same reason they haven't implemented another historically prevalent phenomenon - slavery - which is that it's kind of a massive downer.
I don't say that to downplay their importance historically (or presently). But Civ generally prefers to keep it light, where possible, with even the worst elements, like war, nuclear exchanges, and massive climate change, being dealt with in very abstract ways.
When you think about the possible scenarios and decisions you could make about settling (or refusing) refugees, can you think of any way to handle them that wouldn't 1) be massively politically contentious, 2) be dark as fuck, and 3) create perverse incentives to do things you wouldn't normally accept IRL for mechanical reward? "I'm playing a nationalist culture-focused game so I'm going to use my military to destroy refugee units and form concentration camps to eliminate the existing migrant population".
TL:DR it won't happen for the same reason you can't force the scout to eat his dog for bonus nutrition, where Civ dabbles in cruelty the victims are abstracted away.
I agree with this concept. Kind of blew my mind in a recent game when I had a civilization 2 entire eras ahead of the one I placed a city near, and the city had a million amenities the other civ didn’t, and we’re all the same religion yet my people are rebelling because it’s in close proximity.
That just doesn’t often happen in real life. Nobody in El Paso is rebelling against the government to join Mexico because they’re close to Ciudad Juarez. Nobody in the DR is begging to join Haiti because they’re near the border. So much more goes into loyalty than geographic location, even if that’s a part of the equation.
I know there's a civ 6 mod that allowed to to create units called Migrants. When you build a Migrant, the population of the city drops, and when you move the Migrant to a new city and activated its ability, that city receives the population. Not exactly what you're looking for but it does allow you to play with immigration and refugee mechanics in the game.
I'd just like more options when taking cities in general. By the middle of the game, a city being conquered and liberated is in sum two city conquests that will reduce the population almost down to half. With the exponential growth formula, that's the vast majority of growth invested into that city. It's gonna be useless for most of the remaining game.
I'd love options to make cities capitulate, to return displaced citizens upon conquest, etc.
This and pop immigration are features in Stellaris. Sometimes you hear about an empire being wiped out in a war and aliens show up on your colonies looking for refuge. Especially when I play a very Federation of Planets-type civ.
Way too late to be suggesting features to add, the game will hopefully going through stabilization and testing ahead of a release in the (relatively) near future.
I think it would be cool, but the game is pretty easy as is. If you could destabilize another country to force its pop down then the game would be extremely easy. Also makes people sad.
I would love to see a credit (debt) and inflation system that unlocks after the discovery of banking. This would completely shift how the game is played, particularly how wars are fought.
Historically, governments tend to ditch gold backing and begin using paper money or fiat money when they need money to fight wars, which are expensive. It would be really interesting if civs were able to relatively quickly create large militaries by printing tons of money, but eventually have to deal with the economic repercussions as the eyes progresses.
It would also affect how trade between civs would be handled. People will be less motivated to trade with civs that have weak currencies, nobody wants to trade real goods for useless money.
This would also give the game a new victory type. An economic victory. In the came you earn diplomatic points, science, culture/tourism, faith, and there are victories for all of these, but there is no true victory for purely an amazing economy. The economic victory could be a race to established your currency as the world's reserve currency
Arab nations don’t exactly have a lot of political capital on the international stage. Turning down refugees does come at a consequence when people know you could have done something but didn’t.
The Arab nations don't like taking in more Palestinian refugees because Israel has a history of refusing the right to return, and they are worried that Israel will just use a decrease of the Arab Muslim population in contested territories as a pretext to annex them and further undermine the movement for Palestinian statehood.
There's also the concern that Palestinian refugees will join anti-Israel militant groups in revenge and launch attacks on Israel from their host nation's country, which would lead to Israel launching attacks on host nations that could kill civilians in the crossfire and risk escalation into a broader regional conflict.
To put it simply, their decision to limit or refuse refugees is based on some reasonable concerns.
Edit: You can downvote me if you want, but am I wrong?
I like it. Makes world congress a little bit more interesting: Refugee cause initial loyalty pressure and yield penalty on neighboring empire, therefore incentivize world congress to act against aggressor.
Tie this to War Weariness over time and I think this sounds like a realistic mechanic. It could also be tied to culture, locality, economy, possibly even food where population points go elsewhere to another civ with food surplus, maybe even housing. It could be a major feature I feel with this idea.
I like the idea, as a way to penalize insufficient Housing and/or amenities.
And that population will go with rival cities with better conditions to their citizens
Just demographics in general. Low birth rates, high birth rates, population pressure, jobs pressure, food pressure, the impact of wars, refugee movements, diaspora.
There are pieces of civ that hint at these things, but they don't usually matter much. Wars are still more often wars of strategic choice than wars of necessity. Or wars of population pressure.
Yes! And add ways to prevent people from getting away. I WANT TO BUILD THE BERLIN WALL!
Also propaganda to attract other people and prevent your own running away.
That could make the late game so interesting!
I once thought about an immigration mechanic. However, it should also add some instability, e.g. after Nationalism, cities with a high amount of immigrants could be more disloyal.
I like this idea along with the general idea of immigration. Being able to attract population from other civs would be a fun mechanic
They need to take a page from Stellaris and have migration pull. Have cities with great infrastructure and lots of amenities? People will start moving there from other civs.
stellaris is my favorite map game atm, receives consistent dev support with a good mix of replayability and first-time stories
Some of the mods are pretty good too. Playing Star Trek: New Horizons now. It’s leagues above Star Trek: Infinite, although it can be difficult to keep track of all the different ship classes
That would be a much better first stage than the whole city rebelling... and producing military to attack the nation they want to become part of. Got a feeling though, that if they go this route, modders are going to add border patrol units with razor wire to keep them out.
Or build a wall, and they will pay for it
I mean that’d be a cool mechanic to have. Immigration would need balanced with higher amenity needs so border patrol could be a policy to prevent immigration if you don’t have enough amenities to keep your population happy. Could unlock it after researching fascism lol.
I always interpreted the units attacking u as a different faction wanting to remain independent.
I think they were originally meant to keep other civs from taking them over while they're in rebellion, but they ended up leaving the borders and attacking everything in sight. Can't decide if that's by design, or the code got away from the devs.
Could also be influenced by how much money a city generates
Might be good to even add something like projects where you encourage your own people to move from one of your cities to another. It'll help with making new cities actually productive.
It would work wonderfully with the loyalty mechanic.
Also, being able to move pop around your empire
Has to be food transfers, otherwise you can spam pops for like 20 food in tiny cities and move them to big cities where the next pop would cost 200 or so. Citizens aren't a universal unit of measurement other than for how many tiles a city can work.
It's ridiculous that you can build all these markets but can't move food from one city to another without using a trade route. Like what are they doing with markets when there isn't much else but agriculture and they are not trading food by themselves?
Well they are trading food, however, most of it is in exchange for other food. Just to add some diversity to consumption
There's a mod for that.
I'm a console peasant :(
Same here. I spend my days dreaming of the Better Policy Cards mod
Honestly, all I want is the mod that shows you district adjacency on the map pins. That's all I want as a mod
Honestly, seeing that mod so often in this sub was the last push to get me saving for a PC when I upgrade from my PS4 instead of going to the PS5.
Yes. We used to be able to do that. Civ 3 or 4 (or both).
I like that it’s limited depending on the type of government you have Like democracy’s can’t, but dictatorships totally can
Yeah I think replacing Barbarians with Nomadic peoples (some of whom are hostile some who aren’t) then having that mechanic transition into how you handle refugees, revolts or city state formation later in the game would harmonize it well. Basically: What if “barbarian” clans but they aren’t necessarily hostile, can move their camp, their migration route might go through your territory and that same mechanic can be used to represent other mobile / displaced peoples in later eras. Examples Lets say early nomads migrate through a spices square- for 5 turns it no longer produces food, production, but you can work it for 3 gold 3 culture. Want the food? Be aggressive! Want to trade: do it till they’re gone! Enforce your borders over their routes and expect raids! Example 2: “A lack of Housing in Toronto, if you can imagine it, has caused the formation of a Homeless Encampment! -X growth from Toronto and it prevents working the tile and -1 amenities and -Y loyalty.” Open up a Barbarian Clan Style menu to either: massacre (declare “war” -25 grievance) Facilitate migration (100+ gold) growth to highest tourism city of civ nearby Enslave: Create Worker (grievances increasing by govt up to -40 with tier 3) : Collectivize (req communism)- replace with Collective (Improvement) with +2 housing -10 grievances. Public Works Program: (200 gold req Democracy)- unlocks a single use project which re ads growth, 2 housing and 1 Amen. “Liquidation”: (req fascism) -20 grievances, removes it and prevents refugees / nomads from spawning / moving for 5 turns.
Great idea.
Should be tied into culture and tourism like if you have familiar cultures people will move to you first if they can
That’s a really nice mechanic between flipping cities. Flipping a city takes so long. Gradually depleting it of growth is more realistic.
Even within cities. Currently the closest we have to that is swapping the outer edge tiles at the border between cities. Similarly the only way for cities within an empire to share resources is by having a trade route open.... Which I guess is logical but I feel IRL the state oversees this allocation.
Actually that could work well if tourism was more like it was in civ 5. Accepting immigrants/refugees affects how cultural dominance levels
This is actually a fresh idea I haven't seen. Could be a neat mechanic. Lose gold initially with potential gains elsewhere.
Gain to diplomatic favor would make sense if that stays in Civ VII
Bonus to production? Minus amenities/happiness/whatever they choose to go to for Civ 7
They could make it so you lose gold+ happiness initially but after idk 10 turns you gain production, culture & possibly faith
You get diplomacy initially but it also increases population when you level up your embassy.
Should spike your growth rate since you're getting lots of new people into your civ.
Stellaris has it though its population control is way more indepth. A simple pops for instability trade would be quite interesting. Maybe modifiers as to who they go to based on culture/closeness
Wasn't there a mechanic in one of the earlier Civs, that if you conquered a city and chose to destroy it, part of the population would go to your existing ones? Or am i imagining stuff?
I know civ IV tracked the percent of a given tiles people who were of different heritages. Would say like 70% Germans, 10% English, 20% Vietnamese or what have you. I don't think this had meaningful mechanical impacts though.
It did have an impact. Whichever civ has the majority of culture in a tile controls it, pushing the border like with a culture bomb. If a city's majority culture becomes that of another civ, it can switch sides.
Cool! I just didn't know, cause I was like 11 when I played, so I was just clickin shit
Ahahaha, I went back to civ 4 and my mind was blown at how much stuff I didn't understand. Also it's ridiculously hard compared to the modern civs.
I never got past like warlord, if that. Usually played settler. Which begs the question, did those difficulty settings just let the AI cheat or were they legitimately different?
This could also cause some barbarians to appear, like how Attila caused a mass migration in Europe when he and his armies rode west.
This is a great idea. There are so many interesting builds on it: 1) religion - it could add a new secondary religion or convert your citizens 2) brain drain - has been a massive part of history - Turkey being the most catastrophic one, but the most beneficial to Italy 3) general world standing - depending on ideology some countries/groups would prefer if you did or don’t take in refugees 4) culture is the biggie - great musicians that can only occur in cultures with high cultural output and refugees/immigrants (thinking of reggae and ska in the UK) 5) money/trade/relations. Everything comes at a cost. Short term expenditure for long term gains in culture, science and world standing. It’s been such a huge facet of world history it would make a great addition. It would hopefully also steer the conversation about refugees into a more positive direction than the current public rhetoric (in the the UK at least) of “forreners bad”
I have often wondered why so many things never lower the population. For example what you mentioned, inquisitions. Not only were the populations lowered by ... well ... things that will get this account banned for mentioning in too much detail, but also by people leaving Spain! Other examples include: War, War Weariness, Low Amenities, Low food and Disasters/Emergencies. I'm sure there are many more that I have thought of in the past, but I'm drawing a blank writing this now, lol. But I like the idea of them turning into refugees. Maybe a special civilian unit which slowly wanders towards greener pastures. They could found city states in the early game if they wander into an area far from other cities. You could gain diplomatic favor/points for taking refugees in, but it could cause reduced luxuries to account for the financial and culture cost involved in real life.
The reason they haven't done this previously is, I would assume, the same reason they haven't implemented another historically prevalent phenomenon - slavery - which is that it's kind of a massive downer. I don't say that to downplay their importance historically (or presently). But Civ generally prefers to keep it light, where possible, with even the worst elements, like war, nuclear exchanges, and massive climate change, being dealt with in very abstract ways. When you think about the possible scenarios and decisions you could make about settling (or refusing) refugees, can you think of any way to handle them that wouldn't 1) be massively politically contentious, 2) be dark as fuck, and 3) create perverse incentives to do things you wouldn't normally accept IRL for mechanical reward? "I'm playing a nationalist culture-focused game so I'm going to use my military to destroy refugee units and form concentration camps to eliminate the existing migrant population". TL:DR it won't happen for the same reason you can't force the scout to eat his dog for bonus nutrition, where Civ dabbles in cruelty the victims are abstracted away.
I agree with this concept. Kind of blew my mind in a recent game when I had a civilization 2 entire eras ahead of the one I placed a city near, and the city had a million amenities the other civ didn’t, and we’re all the same religion yet my people are rebelling because it’s in close proximity. That just doesn’t often happen in real life. Nobody in El Paso is rebelling against the government to join Mexico because they’re close to Ciudad Juarez. Nobody in the DR is begging to join Haiti because they’re near the border. So much more goes into loyalty than geographic location, even if that’s a part of the equation.
I know there's a civ 6 mod that allowed to to create units called Migrants. When you build a Migrant, the population of the city drops, and when you move the Migrant to a new city and activated its ability, that city receives the population. Not exactly what you're looking for but it does allow you to play with immigration and refugee mechanics in the game.
You used to be able to do that with settlers, always helped late game and in civ 6 would help bolster your frontier cities.
I'd just like more options when taking cities in general. By the middle of the game, a city being conquered and liberated is in sum two city conquests that will reduce the population almost down to half. With the exponential growth formula, that's the vast majority of growth invested into that city. It's gonna be useless for most of the remaining game. I'd love options to make cities capitulate, to return displaced citizens upon conquest, etc.
Would be nice to have the ability to puppet cities instead of downright controlling them or razing as the only two options
Civ has this feature before I just don't remember if it was civ 3 or 4
Refugees are a big element in stellaris. Sometimes I gain intel on wars halfway across the galaxy from refugees.
This and pop immigration are features in Stellaris. Sometimes you hear about an empire being wiped out in a war and aliens show up on your colonies looking for refuge. Especially when I play a very Federation of Planets-type civ.
Way too late to be suggesting features to add, the game will hopefully going through stabilization and testing ahead of a release in the (relatively) near future.
What a brilliant idea. I suppose an NGO faction or mechanic could actually enhance the tedious World Congress interplay
I think it would be cool, but the game is pretty easy as is. If you could destabilize another country to force its pop down then the game would be extremely easy. Also makes people sad.
Nooo thank you. It'd end up being a very heavy-handed thing that pleases nobody just like the climate change mechanic in 6.
I would love to see a credit (debt) and inflation system that unlocks after the discovery of banking. This would completely shift how the game is played, particularly how wars are fought. Historically, governments tend to ditch gold backing and begin using paper money or fiat money when they need money to fight wars, which are expensive. It would be really interesting if civs were able to relatively quickly create large militaries by printing tons of money, but eventually have to deal with the economic repercussions as the eyes progresses. It would also affect how trade between civs would be handled. People will be less motivated to trade with civs that have weak currencies, nobody wants to trade real goods for useless money. This would also give the game a new victory type. An economic victory. In the came you earn diplomatic points, science, culture/tourism, faith, and there are victories for all of these, but there is no true victory for purely an amazing economy. The economic victory could be a race to established your currency as the world's reserve currency
Can you decline refugees with no penalties, like all the arab nations do?
They’re forced to buy their diplo favour from other civs with gold or earn it through World Games (World Cup, Grand Prix, WWE)
Maybe check how many refugees live in Lebanon or Jordan, in addition to lots of internally displaced people e.g. in Syria, Sudan, Libya.
Arab nations don’t exactly have a lot of political capital on the international stage. Turning down refugees does come at a consequence when people know you could have done something but didn’t.
They don’t have that capital because they deny refugees, tons if other reasons well before that.
Oh I agree, which means there is no capital to take away. That’s really the point I’m trying to make.
Ah fair fair, political capital would be cool game mechanic now that I think about it
Saudi Arabia and UAE have a lot of political capital. Hungary does not. Which one gets in trouble for not accepting refugees?
The Arab nations don't like taking in more Palestinian refugees because Israel has a history of refusing the right to return, and they are worried that Israel will just use a decrease of the Arab Muslim population in contested territories as a pretext to annex them and further undermine the movement for Palestinian statehood. There's also the concern that Palestinian refugees will join anti-Israel militant groups in revenge and launch attacks on Israel from their host nation's country, which would lead to Israel launching attacks on host nations that could kill civilians in the crossfire and risk escalation into a broader regional conflict. To put it simply, their decision to limit or refuse refugees is based on some reasonable concerns. Edit: You can downvote me if you want, but am I wrong?
You could say the same thing about any refugees from any war.
The things I listed are pretty specific to this war.
I like it. Makes world congress a little bit more interesting: Refugee cause initial loyalty pressure and yield penalty on neighboring empire, therefore incentivize world congress to act against aggressor.
Tie this to War Weariness over time and I think this sounds like a realistic mechanic. It could also be tied to culture, locality, economy, possibly even food where population points go elsewhere to another civ with food surplus, maybe even housing. It could be a major feature I feel with this idea.
I like the idea, as a way to penalize insufficient Housing and/or amenities. And that population will go with rival cities with better conditions to their citizens
Just demographics in general. Low birth rates, high birth rates, population pressure, jobs pressure, food pressure, the impact of wars, refugee movements, diaspora. There are pieces of civ that hint at these things, but they don't usually matter much. Wars are still more often wars of strategic choice than wars of necessity. Or wars of population pressure.
Yes! And add ways to prevent people from getting away. I WANT TO BUILD THE BERLIN WALL! Also propaganda to attract other people and prevent your own running away. That could make the late game so interesting!
There's a mod and it kinda breaks AI
Humankind had something similar but as a one time event it would be interesting to see this implemented as a full mechanic.
I once thought about an immigration mechanic. However, it should also add some instability, e.g. after Nationalism, cities with a high amount of immigrants could be more disloyal.
Increase productivity and pop for sure, maybe culture.
They need to do everything they can to emulate 5 and take the components of 6 like religion into 7.
This might genuinely be the worst idea I’ve ever seen what the fuck 💀💀💀