Apolyton CS: Civilization III: The List v1: Radical Ideas

RADICAL IDEAS
-Summarized by korn469-
korn469@mindless.com

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Representing comments from over 70 fans, this RADICAL IDEAS thread was one of the most popular and most inspiring in our project. Although a number of people hope that Civilization III is just a step forward, many more gamers hope to see something revolutionary, something radical. The reason, I think, is simple: We've played the Civilization series for so long that the thought of our same old pet strategies working in Civilization III makes us wary of what is to come. If it is more of the same and that's all, a significant number of people will be less than enthused. This summary is dedicated to them.

PLEASE NOTE: The very nature of this thread resulted in people offering entirely new systems. I ask you to read the teasers below and consult the Apolyton threads for more details if you are interested in the specifics. The threads can be found at:

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000030.html
http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000061.html
http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000153.html
http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000155.html

And since there is a chance those threads might be archived soon, you might find it helpful to look at the RADICAL IDEAS file I have sent-it is basically an "uncut" version of the outline below: Please read that file since what comes below barely scratches the surface. [Yin]

1. AI ENTITIES IN THE GAME    TOP

1.1) Instead of Civilization III having everything owned by the state, AI controlled companies could build city improvements.

1.2) These companies will grow independently of your civilization, and could build for and trade with other civilizations.

1.3) There could be an economic scale that determines how much involvement your civilization has in the economy.

1.4) Laise-faire economies might have AI companies build everything, with things like factories being handled at the company's discretion, and certain areas vital to the states interest could be directed by hiring the companies to build and maintain those things. This could include roads and schools.

1.5) Communist economies might not have AI companies at all, and the player would have to build and plan everything.

1.6) Regulated free markets/socialism could allow AI companies and could give the player varying degrees of interaction in the economy.

1.7) Civilization III should have a real stock market, representing each one of the AI companies. You could invest money in this stock market and it would fluctuate over time. Wars, economic booms, and recessions could influence it. There could even be a stock market crash.

1.8) Have the AI control special interest groups in your civilization. They could be the senate in a democracy, or they could be a group of nobles under a monarchy. You would have to deal with them and keep them happy or they might revolt, or attempt to assassinate you. There could be more than one special interest group competing for your favor.

1.9) These AI controlled special interest groups would have different agendas depending upon your social engineering. Priest in a fundamentalist state might scorn secular education and grow restive if you built too many schools, and would lobby for more temples and other religious structures. The senate would overturn large military budgets and would lobby for improvements in their districts.

1.10) If you appease the special interest groups then they will approve of your actions (if all the senators are happy they will vote for declaring war) and you need their approval under certain forms of government to do certain actions. However, under the forms of government that you didn't need their approval they would be more likely to revolt if they didn't like your policies.

2. COLONIES    TOP

2.1) In Civilization III colonies would be cities that you found that don't connect to your borders. They wouldn't count against bureaucracy but would have a greater chance of revolt.

2.2) Have an explorer unit claim land for you civilization. This is how your civilization gets new territory. Your civilizations can buy and sell this land, and other civilizations can build on it but risk making your civilization angry.

2.3) When the conditions are right settler units spontaneously appear. The condition could be economic or happiness. If it were economic reasons then when the settler founds a new city, it would most likely be a colony. If the settler appears because of happiness reasons there is a good probability that when the settler founds a new city it will be independent.

2.4) Upon building the UN, colonies of your civilization have a good chance of becoming independent, and if your civilization maintains colonies, it might take a hit in reputation. Larger powers would have to use treaties and trade instead of colonies. Smaller powers could catch up during this time.

3. DYNASTIES    TOP

3.1) Instead of the player being an immortal leader of a civilization, the player is one of a long line of emperors/kings/presidents.

3.2) Each ruler would have strengths in certain areas and weaknesses in others. These strengths and weaknesses will effect your civilization's social engineering.

3.3) After a while, the leader will die or another leader will replace him.

3.4) At the start of the game, there would be an option either to have random attributes or to have the player set their leaders attributes.

3.5) If the player does something great then the leader could improve. If the player really fouls up then the leader could become worse in an area.

3.6) Having too many unhappy people in your civilization could cause the people to revolt and put a new ruler in power.

3.7) Players could appoint an heir and improve the heir's abilities. If a revolution toppled the leader, the player would get a randomly created successor instead of the heir.

3.8) Each leader could have a list of accomplishments and failures recorded in the monument screen.

3.9) Besides the main leader of your civilization, there would be governors, generals, and administrators. These leaders could add small modifiers to the area they handle. It would be possible to recruit or assassinate leaders of other civilizations. You could conduct purges among leaders in your own civilization under certain forms of governments. Also strong leaders (especially generals) would be more ambitious and ambitious leaders would have a greater chance of revolting against your civilization.

3.10) Even if a dynasty falls, it could set up a government in exile and resurrect that civilization later in the game.

4. ESPIONAGE    TOP

4.1) Spies should be invisible. However, other spies with equal or higher morale could spot them.

4.2) If a spy accomplishes a task, the civilization it spied on should not know.

4.3) Infiltrating datalinks shouldn't be permanent.

4.4) Civilization III should have special research facilities that conduct secret national research. For each one of these facilities you could do a specific kind of research, and you cannot do that research until you build one of these facilities. Spies could have orders to find and infiltrate these facilities. If a spy infiltrates one of these facilities, he could have a few options. Either the spy could steal the technology they have developed there, or could sabotage the research there, or could go into deep cover and provide a small research bonus for being in one of those facilities.

4.5) If your spy takes more than one turn to steal a technology (the spy disappears during that time) then the spy would have a better chance of success.

4.6) Abandon spy units and have a national espionage budget. The more you spend the more espionage points you would have available. You could use those points to run spy missions, spending more points would give a better chance for success. You could also spend points on counterespionage.

5. ETHNICITY    TOP

5.1) Each unit of population has an ethnicity.

5.2) Ethnicity can effect diplomacy.

5.3) Civilizations can be composed of different ethnicities.

5.4) Each ethnicity is native to a certain area of the map. As you begin your civilization has one race but as it grows it absorbs other races.

5.5) There would be some problems with mixing ethnicities. Certain governments would have would have less ethnic tensions than others. For example, a democracy would have less ethnic tension than a fascist government.

5.6) You can ethnically cleanse an area and it would result in increased loyalty from your people but would be a major atrocity with huge diplomatic repercussions.

5.7) Base ethnicity on a civilization's color instead of real ethnicity.

5.8) You work to assimilate people into your empire. As time goes by if you can either suppress the conquered ethnicity or try to get them to become part of your empire. If you suppress a conquered ethnicity, they will not assimilate into your civilization.

5.9) There should be immigration in Civilization III. People will move from poor, unhappy civilizations to wealthy happy civilizations. How close the two civilizations are will be a factor in immigration. Immigrants will take a certain amount of time to assimilate into your civilization, and during that time, they can cause ethnic strife. You can close off your borders but this causes unhappiness under certain governments. Certain facilities could encourage immigration.

5.10) Make we love days cause immigration to your civilization, instead of populations booms. Then if you switched governments before assimilating the immigrants into your culture you could suffer consequences.

5.11) Certain ethnicities would have certain advantages, like purple might be natural horsemen while blue was natural sailors.

6. GAME PLAY SUGGESTIONS    TOP

6.1) Have multiple tech trees. When the game begins the computer chooses at random which tech tree the current game is going to use. The tech trees would each have their own individual strengths and weaknesses.

6.2) Civilizations do not start with any inherent bonuses.

6.3) Social Engineering choices and the actions your civilization takes would determine what bonuses develop.

6.4) Changing the way you lead your civilization could cause new bonuses to replace the old ones.

6.5) Units have a supply bar in addition to a health bar. If you don't have enough supplies or if you can't trace a supply line to your civilization then the supply bars, start to go down. When a unit runs out of supplies then it starts losing health until it dies.

6.6) The addition of leader units. These units act as command and control units and improve the statistics of surrounding units however the units themselves are very weak. The player can attach them to a particular unit or they can move independent of others units.

6.7) Buildings should have a certain population requirement before they will function.

6.8) Units (except for warriors and settlers) have a prerequisite building before a city can build those units.

6.9) Base total number of units a civilization can have on population.

6.10) Instead of random combat, have a more chess like combat system. Where the outcome of a battle is always the same.

6.11) Civilization III scoring should be a turn by turn basis. You would get points every turn. Therefore, even if a civilization is completely destroyed they can still have a decent score.

6.12) Have a list of all the possible things that you can research. The technologies that you have had the longest ability to research are at the top of the list, the newest technologies that you can research are at the bottom of the list. A random amount of research is assigned to the first item on the list, and then a random amount is assigned to the next item on the list and so on until there isn't any more research points to assign. The total maximum amount of research assigned to each technology is determined by the most advanced research facility built in your civilization. If you want to direct your civilization's research you can move an item up on the list but every time you do this research points are lost.

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