I think this kind of idea works far better for something closer to civ then aoe. It also seems to me that it would be a good place to use reinforcement learning and indirect control to shape a civilization’s growth. Also a city state model would work better then a empire model for an early civilization game.


One thing that would be good is to have local technology levels as opposed to a global one. So different settlements might have different levels of wealth and technology. To this end settlements would have an area of influence, when a settlement lies within another city’s area of influence those cities interact with each other resulting in trade as well as cultural and technological exchange. These areas of influence would not be uniform instead they would be determined by technology, terrain, and a civilizations migration rating.

So for instance you have two settlements delta town and mountain town. Delta town sits at a river delta and in an open plain. While mountain town is nestled deep in a mountain range and separated from delta town by thick jungle. So while delta town’s area of influence extends 50 miles over the open plains to river town belonging to another civilization, the thick jungle and mountains mean that that it has no influence on mountain town even though it is mere 10 miles away. Because of these factors delta town is rich and advanced while mountain town is poor and backwards. There is also no interaction between them since delta town needs nothing from mountain town, and mountain town can’t afford anything from delta town. However when mountain town strikes a valuable and rich vain of iron they now have something delta town wants. The player can then build a caravan to start trade between the town towns. As they start trading a line of influence now connects the two by that trade route. As long as that trade route exists the towns will interact with each other gradually improving both. Over time if there is heavy traffic along the trade route roads would be built to further improve trade; of course the player could always build a road themselves.

Technology would be two fold, there would Technologies and Tech levels. Tech levels range from 0 to 100 and indicate how advanced that settlement is in that Technology. Meaning that for instance, the technology irrigation might produce +100 food per field, the settlements tech level would determine what percentage of the total bonus they receive. So delta town has 80 irrigation so they produce +80 food per field while mountain town has 5 farming and so only produces +5 food per field. As long as these two towns are interacting mountain town’s farming will gradually increase up to delta town’s level.