The game currently has 45 civs and only one random option which is taking one civ out of the entire list. I think more options should be possible if you still want a random choice but with more control, for example if you want civs more thematically focused than randomly having the Mayans and Koreans fight around Constantinople.
Hence my suggestion : random civ pools.
Picking one of these options will pick civs only from a given selection. Here are some examples (not a full list, just showing the concept) :
classic AOK : original 13 civs
classic Conquerors : original 18 civs
Europe random : european civs only
Far East random : Chinese Koreans Japanese Mongols Vietnamese
Muslim random : Saracens Berbers Ethiopians Turks Persians Hindustani Bengali Tatars Malays
Crusades random : civs that took significant part in the Crusades
And so on and so on, each pool being its list of civs (a civ wouldn’t be exclusive to one pool)
As many would suggest their own lists, I’d add another feature to spice it up : an editor to make your own pools. Pretty straightfoward, pick a name, maybe an icon and tick the civs you want in it. A pool could be as little as picking one out of a handful (“Americas random”) or having nearly all (“all I want is not seeing the damned Romans in my singleplayer games again”).
Another feature for custom lists would be weighing civs, to make some more likely to be picked than others. For the Far East random for example, giving the Chinese a weight of 4 while the 4 others have a weight of 1 would make the Chinese picked on average half the time. This would just be a number to enter next to each civ
Since there’s already a similar feature for choosing random map pools, I don’t really understand why something like this doesn’t already exist.
I think it could be integrated into the current civ selection screen quite nicely. Add a new “custom random” option next to the other random options, then have it work like map pool selection – i.e. click on a civ to add it/remove from the current pool – but with save and load options as well.
I came up with a similar idea last year but the civ pools were focused on unit types and stengths instead of world regions. E.g. Random Cavalry civ, Infantry civ, Archer civ, Siege civ, Elephant/Monk civ, Cav Archer civ etc.
Custom pool creation could be good. Like cavalry civs, infantry civs, archer civs, gunpowder civs, elephant civs, hybrid map civs etc.
That’s not a good idea. Whole point of doing this type of pooling is giving any one out of those civs at random. High weightage would just make it almost the same as picking Franks and Britons.
The idea of weighing would be to have civs appear more often than others, if some feel “major” and “minor” for your list (for example i’d expect more Chinese opponents in China). If you don’t want that, just keep the default weight of 1 for all picked civs and it won’t be in your custom lists. It’s merely adding another option for the player.
