Civ5->3.5/P

[Hanuman]

Any good ways to approach this?
A friend who is co-dming wants to use Civ5 to control the macro of the map in dnd.

[toapat]

Civ 5 would never be so lenient with letting you play the game the way you need to, but you could use either Civ 5 or Colonization 4 as a basis for the world, using hex grid to mark out terrain, then overlaying resource locations, and then giving cities aproximate size and nation borders to get a rough feel of who controls what.

Then finally, you stick soldiers, mage units, and laborers where they need to be.

you also cant use Civ logic for war. Realistic motivations for war should be fueled by resources, fantastic racism, Warhawks, territory, and paranoia.

warhawking should never really succeed its wars
paranoia should be short territory wars that resolve with the innitator typically taking a hex or two, leading upto full wars
racism sets the stage for those nice long wars that we get to see play out over years in the campaign
territory wars last for periods based off of what is being fought over
resource wars flare up but shouldnt result in conflict.

Combat would mostly just involve 2 rolls that gain or loose points from modifiers like Can produce Steel without external trade, standard combat training, and ease of logistics, modifiers that would be determined by nation.

Examples:
Native Steel (Elven, magically wroght) +2 modifier
Native Steel (Dwarven) +4
Native Steel (Dwarven worked Damacus) +5 modifier
Exceptional Training (Spartan Phalanx) +3 against Formation combat
Exceptional Training (WhirlingDervish) +3 against Formations, -5 against Cavalry
Mounted (Halfling Clawfoot Riders) +4 general except +2 against Formation

notes: Native Steel means the nation has both interally obtained iron ore and fuel, or that the nation is ruled by a magocracy that is intelligent enough to know how to outfit an army with a few spells.

[Hanuman]

Hm, yeah on second thought all the civ5 nations would need to be player controlled, which isn't viable? I don't recall a setting to do that.

The players can't really change the macro, as in, they can't really force an entire province to their hand, but they can influence the leadership or the attitude, and putting that on an AI would simply not work very well and would railroad the outcome.