I don't know about you guys, but I've played my fair share of Sim City and Civilization. I've often thought about combining the two games. It would result in a long game with a lot of micro-management, but I think it'd be really interesting to have that level of control. You could really fine-tune your civilization to be just the way you want it. When I build a city, it's a reflection of the city in me, and when I crush an irritating Planet-loving faction in Alpha Centauri because they won't leave me alone even though they should because I have +6 Planet in my Social Engineering table, that's a reflection of the dictator in me who is fed up with the countless insufferable demands issued from an inferior world power!

But I digress...
It would certainly be an experiment to try to combine several genres into one game. (I think there's actually a GBA game that combines an RPG with a Shmup. Seemed interesting.) So picture this:


You start a new game and are in Civ Mode, where you are given a standard Settler Unit that will found a new city at the location of your choosing. So you find a river and do so. Now you can go into City Mode and start building this particular city. Your options are limited to the technology that your civilation has discovered at this point in time. For instance, if you start in the bronze age, you'll just have a few huts and certainly no power plant or subway system. When your civilization discovers Nuclear Energy, you'll be able to build a Nuclear Power Plant in your cities.

So you spend some time planning out the city, and then you go back into Civ Mode and let the simulation run. The variety of units that a city can build depends on the facilities in the city, so stables are necessary for horse-drawn units, an airport for aircraft, and that sort of thing.

So you build a few more settlers and repeat the process, and you assemble an army of swordsman or whatever. When you do battle in the field, the game will enter an RTS or Turn-Based Strategy Mode, where you can command your units to attack in such-and-such a way.

And you can build special units like heroes for the RTS battles and spies to conduct espionage, but espionage missions won't be derived from a random probability that is calculated when your spy enters the enemy base. Instead, the game will switch to FPS Mode, where you can guide your spy through the enemy base to get the mission done. The difficulty of the FPS scenario is based on what your objective is. If it's draining the enemy's gold supply, it'll be easy, but if it's sabotaging a Wonder or stealing technology, it'll be much harder.

Now if you're not rolling your eyes already, you will be soon, because now imagine all this stuff, but as an MMORPG. You enter the game as a Sim inside a City inside a Civilization, and everyone gets to vote on who they want to run their city and their nation, and Sims can be appointed as RTS generals or FPS spies to undertake missions. It'll probably be good to have a cabinet of people running the country, since not everyone may be on all the time. :P
So what do you think? VERGE can totally do it, guys! Let's get to work!



Also, I had a dream the other night that I was a totally kick-ass super hero. It was pretty cool.

The first thing I think of is Actraiser... part civilization builder, part action game. ... I miss that game. :(