by Glostakarov
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</font>Customizability. Is that a word? In essence, as much of the game as possible should be able to be toggled on or off, irrespective of difficulty level. This should apply both to normal games and the scenerio editor.
For example, suppose I don't feel like playing with regional politics, or trade, or whatever, I can just switch it off when I create the game. For scenerios, the toggle would be stored with the map as either on, off, or user selectable. An example I saw in another thread was a scenerio where the Earth was being invaded; because the people of Earth would band together they wouldn't want internal politics for that game. In such a case the person building the scenerio could simply switch off that option, so that it isn't used in the game.
Another part of being able to heavily customize/mod a game is the introduction of new units and modify the tech tree. Snazzy, high-res graphics and animated units are very nice, but they make it harder for fans to create their own units. You could include a lot of units in the editor that are not actually used for anything in the game, so we could pick them out and assign them whatever stats we see fit for use in our scenerios. However, a better idea would probably be to create the unit animations in a format that is relatively easy for end users to reproduce. It's still going to take a pretty knowledgeable person to go out and do it, but if the software is easy to plug such animations into, it will happen.
To answer the question in advance, the more that we can do to modify/enhance/enjoy the game, the more replayability it will have. Having more customization options keeps each game from being fundamentally the same as the last.
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