In 2010 I entered indie gamedev having a dream to make my own Civilization, which will be better than Sid Meyer's. Now I have 25 games released (among them there are 3 turn-based strategies) and I feel ready to fulfil my dream.
Here's how the early gameplay looks like now:
Game features
Focus your attention on really strategic issues. No need to issue orders to every warrior or a worker. Actually, there will be no individual units. Everything: see superiority, recon missions, building, wars are defined by numbers and formulas. They are defined by the primary directions, which are set by you.
Flexible technology tree. Your technological advance will be defined by what your people are doing and its environment Coastal nations will sooner advance in seafaring, while the steppes dwellers will be likely to become a major land conquering power. This will be more interesting than "Let's learn alphabet to open a way to catapults"
Achieve your aim using hard- and soft-power. You can influence your neighbours, get them into your alliance, establish a puppet government or initiate a rebellion in their provinces.
Even if your country is captured, you can stay in the game as a rebellion leader. Gather enough resistance points to revolt and declare independence!
And if you expanded too much, neglecting other development sides, get ready to fight the separatism at your empire's suburbs.
As you progress you'll see the chapters from the future history textbooks telling about your glorious deeds and giving slight hints on your future development.
New civilizations will appear in the unoccupied territories during the game. They will receive a bonus for quicker expansion.
Map generator creates realistically looking planet with continents, archipelagos with climatic zones, rives, highlands.
Unique names for the map objects and countries are generated.
Game will be available both for mobile and desktop
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I think, mobile devices lack these type of games now. My personal best are a series of EasyPlay (but they are more Risk, than Civ) and "Musket Smoke" (this is an ingenious game, but it's a wargame).
So, on the 17th of September I'll share the pre-alpha to play on Android and in Web.
Very nice!
I never really played Civilization before. I picked up Civ V and tried to play it a few months ago when a friend was over, but despite putting in literally 20 minutes, neither of us could figure out the controls. At all.
The interface was one of the most uninituitve I've ever seen.
(Since the Civ series goes back to the beginning of the 90's when game controls were much less refined and standardized, my guess is they probably have stuck with their series' general controls from game to game, becoming a bastion of unrefined controls when the rest of the industry improved. That's just speculation though)
I think one way you might be able to one-up Civilization is to make it more accessible to a wider audience, while also making the game as deep or deeper than Civilization.