DESIGN: End Game Options/General Strategy

[Locutus]

I've been thinking about the general strategies to follow in CtP2 (warmonger vs builder vs scientist vs diplomat, etc), as I feel the current game (referring to the original game, but it applies to the mods as well, in some cases even more so) really only gives 1 option: warmonger is really the only way to play, or rather somewhat of a compromise between builder and warmonger. The science victory is too far off and not much fun to achieve, plus it requires a large empire (i.e. a lot of conquering) to realize. The diplomatic victory is usually either really simple or really frustrating, but always boring. There's no economic victory (unless you consider the Gaia Controller as such, but in that case there's no scientific victory), so the options are really rather limited. In the current game, you basically always end up creating a big empire by military conquest, either until you win or until the Gaia Controller becomes available. After that, you either continue to conquer until you win or build the Gaia Controller and win that way. Whenever in this process you hit a city limit, you switch from conquer mode to city development/research mode and spend the time needed to get to the next government type in that mode.

So I've been thinking about what victory options should be available, what kind of gameplay should be needed to achieve them and what changes would need to be made to the current game to realize them. Note that the religion option is completely new and requires a lot of work (both to work out the details of its design and to actually implement) and could well be made optional or left out altogether.


In table form:

		science	product	growth	gold	happy	end goal

military: 	low	high	low	low	medium	Bloodbath
science:	high	low	medium	low	low	Alpha Centauri
diplomacy:	medium	low	low	high	low	Global Alliance
economy:	medium	medium	high	medium	medium	Gaia Controller
religion:	low	medium	medium	medium	high	Salvation

In text form:


Military:
Focus on pumping out offensive military units to conquer opponents. Happiness is kept under control by martial law and government types tolerant to large empires. Research is focussed on offensive military units, but otherwise economic, scientific and other kinds of development are not very important. Only production is really paramount. Main challenge to overcome for warmongers should be crime and happiness: the bigger the empire gets, less productive it will be and the harder it will be to keep the population from rioting.

Summary: Big empire. Production is of the utmost importance, happiness is also fairly important, other parts of the game are inferior.

Main changes required:
In the current game, the city limit is far too strong, it's sheer impossible to expand (far) beyond the limit, which sometimes makes it impossible to start or continue a war. As empires get bigger, they should mostly have lowered productivity (i.e. high crime rates) rather than outright fall apart from riots and revolts. City limit issues aside, military conquest is far too easy in the current game. Defense should be made easier for non-military civs by making defensive units/buildings/etc far easier/cheaper to research and build. The current combat model should also have a much clearer difference between offensive and defensive units, currently there is hardly a difference since the role of defender and attacker are switched continuously during a battle. Make defense units that are worthless in an offensive role but very powerful defenders and offensive units for which the opposite is true and it becomes easier to really specialize your military to suit your agenda.


Science:
Focus on pumping out advances, really focussed on reasearch. A fairly small empire suffices for this, with only enough cities to generate more science points than anyone else. Virtually all commerce income will go to science, production is only devoted to defensive units and installations and science buildings. Growth is of some importance as more people means more commerce (and thus science), but gold and happiness are fairly unimportant. Once the end of the tech tree is reached, all production would be focussed on the endgame project to achieve victory.

Summary: Small empire. Science is of the utmost importance, growth is also fairly important, other parts of the game are inferior.

Main changes required:
In the current game, bigger empires almost always have more science. There should be a much higher price for building and maintaining city improvements (especially many of the same type -- maybe a RoN-like system of incremental building costs is useful?), and it should be much easier to set the science tax very high (80-90%) for scientific civs. Big empires should have to devote a significant portion of their resources to keeping happiness under control, while smaller scientific empires should have little need for controlling happiness and should be able to invest these resources in research instead. To prevent warmongers from simply rolling over scientific civs, defensive units should be easy to research and cheap to build. The endgame project should not require a huge amount of production or territory to build so that it's still doable for a small empire (but it shouldn't become too easy either, or it would be impossible to stop scientific civs once they get too far ahead).


Diplomatic:
Focused on making friends and trading. Most notably such civs will generate lots gold, so they can buy friendships, treaties, etc, but they will also devote some resources to science to give away in diplomatic deals (either in the form of advances or just science points). Production will focussed on defensive military units and trade routes, growth is fairly irrelevant. Diplomatic success can be achieved by a different means for different types of opponents: for military civs, buy them units and give them advances; for religious civs, buy religious units/buildings and allow conversion; for scientific civs, allow research/trade treaties and exchange advances; for economic civs, give them gold, advances or cities.

Summary: Mostly small empire (but works for big ones as well), focus on gold, and to some extend science. Other parts of the game are inferior.

Main changed required:
To make it easier for diplomatic civs to succeed, research treaties should be equally beneficial to both sides and international trade should bring in commerce rather than gold (which can be converted to science points for scientific civs). Diplomatic civs could well be small. To ensure success with a small empire, it should be easy to defend them well, and offer little added value to invaders. Its assets should mostly be in the form of diplomatic treaties, trade routes, advances -- things that cannot be taken by force. As it stands, diplomatic victories are not much fun to achieve, so a more interesting and reliable diplomatic model is required, with a real bargaining table where custom non-symetric agreements can be reached and deals involving third parties (agreeing (not) to attack, boycotting, giving items to, allowing conversion by) can be struck. The trade model also needs revision (probably even tied into the diplomacy model), so that even civs with little production and few cities can build up a major trade network (regardless of if and how strategic resources will be incorporated).


Economic:
No particular focus on anything, but mostly aimed at expanding the population. Will lead to large empires with many large and well-developed cities. Science is important to be able to build new kinds of buildings and wonders. Production is important to actually build all these things and to maintain a sizeable military to fend off invasions and maybe launch small offensive campaigns (though not enough resources will be available to support huge invasions). Gold is important to finance the maintenance of all buildings, which for a large empire will be expensive. Happiness is difficult to maintain in a large empire, so also an important point of focus. Growth is very important, as that will allow more cities to be built and more resources to be collected.

Summary: Large empire, focus on growth, but everything else is also important.

Main changes required:
In the current game, a bigger empire is always better and the biggest and best developed empires can support the largest armies. That needs to be made less true by making city improvements and military units more expensive. That way, the more resources are invested in city improvements, the smaller the army that can be supported and the less can be invested in military. If maintenance costs are higher for buildings and wonders, that will also make it harder to invest in science, thus hampering scientific advancement. The major challenge for a big empire will be maintaining happiness, a lot of resources will need to be devoted to it. The difference between military, scientific and economic empires is in the current game almost non-existant. This should be different: to be a successful warmonger, you should have fairly Spartan policies on city and terrain improvement and focus everything on military conquest. Scientists should be very focussed in their city/terrain development: they should be mostly build commerce/science improvements and (to a lesser degree) defenses. Since the support cost of buildings is deducted from the amount of commerce available for science, scientists should only want to build city improvements if their cost outweighs their benefit. Peaceful builders will invest in well-developed cities and terrain, and found lots of new cities. However, opting for such a policy should simply make it impossible for builders to maintain a large army or advance very fast scientifically.

The endgame for economic civs should be different than for scientific civs and they should require different paths in the tech tree. Scientific civs should really aim to research *everything* and reach the very end of the tech tree, the most advanced technologies should allow for interstellar travel and the like, leading to an Civ-like Alpha Centauri endgame. Economic civs should focus on certain branches of the tech tree, the ones that lead to the most practical advances for improving cities. The tech tree might have to be expanded with some theoretical branches such as Philosophy and Mathematics, which are expensive but lead to few or no practical buildings/units/advances except for the Alpha Centauri endgame. When a good portion of the tech tree has been researched (but still well before the end), it should become possible to start on a CtP2-like Gaia Controller endgame, which should be very expensive to build and requires the player to own a lot of territory. This would then be unattainable for scientific civs, as they lack the production capacity and territory, forcing them to either reform their economy and start obtaining more territory or to continue researching for the easier-to-obtain Alpha Centauri endgame. So tech-wise, civs could either race for Alpha Centauri or for Gaia Controller, depending on how much economic/military power they wield on the map. Alternatively, they could ignore the tech tree race and wipe out opponents with military force, or beat them by the less convential means of diplomacy or religion.


Religious:
The focus of religious civs would be on achieving happiness and converting the world to their faith. There would be a religion value for every civ that is the sum of all population units of the faith of that civ, where happier units have higher values. Religious building such as temples and cathedrals would also add to this value. Once this total reaches a certain maximum value, Salvation is reached and the game is won (not unlike Civ3's cultural victory). Obviously this makes happiness very important for religious civs, though growth is important as well. Science is less important, it's focussed on researching happiness, growth and religious buildings. Production and gold are somewhat important to build and maintain such buildings, and to support unconvential warfare. Unconventional warfare (as well as trade) could be used to spread a civ's religion to other civs, to convert their population to the 'true faith'. This would not lead to city-flipping a la Civ3, but (part of) the population of the converted cities would count to the religion value of converting civ (and no longer to the value of their owner). Unless the civ being converted is itself also persuing Salvation, this would do no real damage to the victim, so there would not be an immediate need for retaliation. Civs could even deliberately allow themselves to be converted by others (e.g. as part of a diplomatic deal). However, large-scale conversion does of course help the converting civ to win the game, so in the long run it would have to be stopped or at least limited by the other civs. To do so, it should remain possible to Reform cities back to the owner's civ, but this should lead to riots, unhappiness and a portion of the converted citizens being killed.

Summary: Any size empire, and main focus would be on happiness. Other parts of the game would also be important, but less so. Especially for small religious empires, unconventional warfare would be key.

Main changes required:
The religion model as described above would have to be refined and implemented (which is far from trivial would require a good deal of additional design work and a LOT of programming). Unconventional warfare would have to be fairly expensive, so civs will have to choose how they wish to spread their religion: by conquest, economic development or conversion.


For all these roads of victory goes that they're not necessarily mutually exclusive. It's entirely possible to combine a diplomatic path to victory with an economic one, or a military path with a religious one. Especially Salvation is something that lends itself well for combining with other victory routes. The advantage of specializing in a single route to victory is that it would be really hard for others to compete with you in the same area, but the downside would be that if someone manages to counter you (either by achieving a different kind of victory faster or by sabotaging your own attempts), you would not have a back-up plan. Human players will of course find their own favourite goals to achieve and their own strategies to follow. For AI civs, these 5 seperate paths to victory will allow for very different AI personalities to be created, which can add a lot of flavour to the game.

[Pedrunn]

military
Please, make the city limit go away. I hate it. It is naive and stupid. The lowering of productivity is good stuff. But we should also consider increase of Crime, harder newly conquered cities maintace and difficulty in grow small and newly created cities.
Nothing against increase defender use. Indeed will make conquering more difficult. But i have my doubts about the actually advantage of it.

Science
Make small empire have higher science then big ones would be one of the best gamebalances ever. How many here lost interest in the game after becaming the first in science (mostly coming together with stronger end bigger empire). All?
Increase gold cost by maintance of building is a good idea. But we could consider taxation of roads TI also (the bigger than empire the more complex the road network).

Diplomacy
You forgot: Completely redo the AI diplomatic .

economic
Increase unit cost can ruin the game. Dont do that. Will take away the power of the smaller civs to directly interfer in a larger civs. Plus it military is a column of the game.
Others comments will follow.

Religion
How do you few about the Religion mod created by me and mapfi? The Idea is to spread the true faith and get advantages by doing it. I know it is slic but i believe it caould be converted or added to the source code with some changes to make it even better. Still i wanted to know your opnion about it.

[MrBaggins]

Completely agree... with a few caveats...

The city cap; its clumsy, but is there for a reason. ICS is one of the banes of civ games. Having no limit on the number of cities you may build, give a player a massive advantage... since the "more-cities" choice is always the right one.

Civ3 "solved" this by making the AI as rampant a builder as the most enthusiastic human. Good or bad? Well.. good in a way, but bad because its caused "empire size" inflation... which ultimately means more micromanagement.

CtP2 is interesting in that it has a more vertical city form: cities can expand in radius, thus meaning there need be less of them, and so, less micromanagement.

It put a damper on the number of cities in a number of ways, including empire size caps. These are a nuisance to the human, but a human player takes them into account. An AI, however, can get into big trouble if its at its city cap, then it starts conquering a few enemy cities, taking it over its cap, and giving it a plague of happiness/rioting/revolt problems.

The answer isn't to just increase the city cap, since that will just delay the problem for the AI, and give the human, (or whoever is ahead, actually,) a further advantage, essentially.

The answer is to have a limited solution, thats undesirable, if you are paying attention to developing governments in time with your progress, but is able to give you (or more appropriately, the AI,) a quick fix for an empire expanded through conquest;

make a series of city improvements which negate that city upto a certain city size.

The number of these improvements that are effective at any given time should be limited, and they should cost substantial amounts to build AND maintain... and the AI should save for them appropriately during war to rush build them...

I.E. if you had 3 "class 10 empire size" buildings... courthouses, perhaps... then if you had an empire size of 11, 12 or 13, then it would count in happiness terms, as size 10. If you had 17, 18 or 19, however, then you'd have an effective empire size, for happiness terms, of 14, 15 or 16.

These buildings would become obsolete with government advances, perhaps?

[MrBaggins]

The concept of making defence far easier, cheaper and more effective is a win-win-win situation.

I agree it works well for the smaller civs, and discourages war mongering, by making it more difficult, and adds a choice to the game; a defensive stance, rather than the current which is that the best defense is a good offense.

[MrBaggins]

Oh.. and the solution to keeping those interested in science victory, small, is by instituting two different government paths, one which is keyed to science bonuses (200%-300% perhaps? or maybe thats too much,) yet severely limits the empire size cap, and the other which is as currently implemented in CtP2. This would allow for a real and discernable choice, that its almost impossible to abuse, by switch between, without crippling happiness issues, or retarded growth.

I agree, though, in general, happiness needs to be more of an issue for larger empires.

[The Big Mc]

200%-300% perhaps

the best government I moded only had a science of about 120 this allowed the government put more money into science based on what they have in the vault and were collecting

[MrBaggins]

Oh... and you'd prolly want a -40% to -70% on gold income, to encourage a balanced gold/sci slider, and to balance the heavy sci mod. Bear in mind they'll have less cities, so 200-300 for them isn't the same as 120 for a less restricted civ. Should probably let them have good growth, though.

Considering this, a civ that had a government of this form might specifically develop appropriate military units and weapon technologies. Perhaps we could give them a couple of government-specific unit types.

[centrifuge]

Originally posted by Pedrunn


Science
Make small empire have higher science then big ones would be one of the best gamebalances ever. How many here lost interest in the game after becaming the first in science (mostly coming together with stronger end bigger empire). All?

I agree that it may help in game balance, but I disagree that it should be implemented as stated.

If a civ has more citizens at its disposal, it only seems logical that they will have more potential scientists, and therefore a greater technology rate.

So IMO it really doesn't make sense to give smaller civs a boost in science. Perhaps instead, the diplomacy model should be worked on so that the smaller civs can more easilly buy/trade techs from other civs, depending upon their relationships.

Then as the civs grow in size and/or power the other civs are consequentially less likely to trade their technologies. The exception is under certain circumstances such as war time, and if the civs are in the strongest of alliances.

This is one area that I would really like to see improved, as the current model makes tech trading nearly impossible.

[Solver]

In my book, anything that helps the peaceful, building-and-researching approcah, is a good thing. I'll love some better defensive options - as it is, the only way to properly defend is to have a big army, which ain't good.

I sometimes dislike the slowness of how cities get improved...

[MrBaggins]

Well... game balance is the largest concern here... over, even "realism or logic". Though at least a nod or two should be paid to logic and realism, obviously... if possible.

I think solvers point that, where possible, options should be given to a player... not removed... is valid and valuable

For instance...

if you consider the regular governments to be "general purpose" then their society reflects that. They focus on a wide range of developments... social, economic, military, expansion... etc.

Its not inconcievable, however, to have an insular government... and society. They would have different concerns... not having need to deal with spread out settlements and the challenges those bring.

Improving and perfecting their cities, for one, and thats certainly compatible with a "science culture". The society could be based heavily around encouraging learning and fostering young talent, from a young age.

It's utopean, certainly, but not beyond the realms of possibility. Think.. maybe... Japan, perhaps. Forced into this situation, by geography... but that's interesting in and of itself.


Now... both a general and specialized society could attempt the science victory. One might get a bonus, but have less numerous scientists... the other try to win by weight of numbers.

[MrBaggins]

Oh.. and I'd just like to point out that tech trading sucks big hairy ones... *wide grin*

Just look at Civ3. You don't research. You shop.

[centrifuge]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Oh.. and I'd just like to point out that tech trading sucks big hairy ones... *wide grin*

Just look at Civ3. You don't research. You shop.

I wasn't trying tosay that it should be the only strategy as is often the case in Civ3. Rather it could take some of those ideas and hopefully make them work in a less game breaking fashion.

The fact remains that tech trading/stealing has had a major impact on the the history of the world... and I for one will not be happy with a civ-game that doesn't use it as a component of value .

[MrBaggins]

Yeah... I agree with that sentiment.

I think that effectively though, tech trading as in... gold for techs... is probably too broken to fix.

I did come up with an idea... though to simulate the positive effect of trade on science, by suggesting that the income gained from trade with international partners should be treated as income (and so both science/gold) not just gold alone.

Tech stealing... is a different matter.

[Martin Gühmann]

I thik tech trading should be allowed, but it should be very expensive and also good relationship should be requiered.

-Martin

[centrifuge]

Originally posted by MrBaggins

I did come up with an idea... though to simulate the positive effect of trade on science, by suggesting that the income gained from trade with international partners should be treated as income (and so both science/gold) not just gold alone.

I'm not sure if I understood your idea completely,

...but the idea that it made pop into my head is one that I like and does have some "real world" accuracy. For example "partial technologies" are often traded in the real world.

So in civ world, this would mean that if you are researching gunpowder for example, and you ask the Chinese for the secret of gunpowder, they can either opt to give the whole tech, or just an ingredient or two and leave you to figure out the rest. So instead of getting the tech outright, you will be for example one turn closer to developing it.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by centrifuge
So in civ world, this would mean that if you are researching gunpowder for example, and you ask the Chinese for the secret of gunpowder, they can either opt to give the whole tech, or just an ingredient or two and leave you to figure out the rest. So instead of getting the tech outright, you will be for example one turn closer to developing it.

An easy way to simulate this would be to give receiver of this partial tech some science points but only if the sender has the tech and the receiver reaserchs the tech.

-Martin

[MrBaggins]

OK... heres the further explanation to clarify what I meant:

At present there is a fairly lame system of good (resource) trading in CtP2. Essentially, you build a caravan unit, and then can choose to trade a good... like beaver or opium, or whatever, to another city.

That city can be foreign... that is belonging to another civ, or national, that is, within your own civ.

This trade, when complete, garners you some extra gold, which is effectively meaningless at present.

What I am suggesting, is that instead of getting just gold for the INTERNATIONAL trade route, you should gain income for that city... that is gold and/or science, based on your slider settings.

This would encourage peace, and diplomacy, rather than being an unused function as it is now. (in my experience, at least)

[centrifuge]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann


An easy way to simulate this would be to give receiver of this partial tech some science points but only if the sender has the tech and the receiver reaserchs the tech.

-Martin

Yes, that is essentially what I had in mind.

[centrifuge]

Originally posted by MrBaggins

What I am suggesting, is that instead of getting just gold for the INTERNATIONAL trade route, you should gain income for that city... that is gold and/or science, based on your slider settings.

This would encourage peace, and diplomacy, rather than being an unused function as it is now. (in my experience, at least)

This indeed is also a good idea. I think that it is definetely something that warrants strong consideration.

At some point, after the bug fixing process I suppose, a poll should be set up to see what ideas should be implemented. Since, all of the ideas good or not cannot be implemented under the same build, and still give a good playing experience.

[Locutus]

Good to see you're back, Pedrunn and MrBaggins

Originally posted by Pedrunn
But we could consider taxation of roads TI also (the bigger than empire the more complex the road network).

I considered that too, but that could lead to some nasty micromanagement when you want to pillage your tile imps to reduce your spending.

You forgot: Completely redo the AI diplomatic .

Obviously.

How do you few about the Religion mod created by me and mapfi?

Haven't really gottenn around to it yet. I remember reading about it and having some reservations but I'll keep the comments for me until I get a chance to actually see it in action.

Originally posted by MrBaggins
make a series of city improvements which negate that city upto a certain city size.

I think that's a great idea Though you'd probably want to put either a cap on how many of those buildings you can build (or better, by how much the limit can be exceeded), or make them really expensive. Otherwise you could simply put such buildings in all your cities and thus negate the whole city limit principle.

Oh.. and the solution to keeping those interested in science victory, small, is by instituting two different government paths, one which is keyed to science bonuses (200%-300% perhaps? or maybe thats too much,) yet severely limits the empire size cap, and the other which is as currently implemented in CtP2

That's an absolutely brilliant idea

Originally posted by centrifuge
If a civ has more citizens at its disposal, it only seems logical that they will have more potential scientists, and therefore a greater technology rate.

True, more citizens means more potential scientists (keyword: potential), but more potential scientists doesn't mean more science. History shows the opposite is more likely: scientific advancement means change and if you're in a very comfortable position, change is more likely to make your position less comfortable than more so. So large and powerful empires are almost always very conservative and opposed to change (which could after all very well make the empire, or at least the people in charge of it, less powerful), and will therefore not do a lot of scientific research.

Another way to look at it -- a way that's easier to see in the context of CtP -- is that big empires have many different problems and concerns, and can only afford to spend a limited amount of resources on science. Guarding the borders of a large empire requires a huge army and feeding the masses and keeping them happy also requires an enormous amount of resources. Smaller empires have much smaller problems and can therefore afford to spend more on scientific research. You can have a million potential Einsteins living in your borders, but if they're all serving in the military or working on farms, they're not gonna contribute much to your science output...

Historic examples abound: apart from a handful of golden ages, China (which has for most of human history been one of the world's largest empires) is renown for it's extreme conservative and introvert nature. With the exception of a brief period under Alexander the Great's rule, the Greeks OTOH have never controlled an empire larger than Alabama (and the 'empire' that they did control consisted of very divided and independent city states), but are renown for their inventiveness and scientific world view. Another example: the Roman empire grew more conservative as it grew larger. E.g. although Heron invented the steam engine in ~60 AD, the Romans never used it for practical purposes (that would after all have rendered slaves obsolete and could well have seriously destabilized the empire).

[centrifuge]

You make good points Locutus , but I still have to disagree. Just for the sake of debate, why isn't Andorra, for example, a scientific powerhouse?
.
Money drives scientific achievement, my experiences and history show this. True, a large nation will have bigger problems than a smaller nation, however they also tend to have greater resources. So the ratio of problems/resources will, in general, be equal for large nations and small nations.

So as long as they don't become complacent and stagnate, a large or small nation can put more or less of their resources toward science, but since the larger one has more resources available the likelihood of achieving a significant scientific advance is increased.

The more technology that a civilization has, the quicker they can achieve more. Just think about how peoples lives have been freed up by the onset of computers/the internet. Instead of having to spend hours and hours digging through stacks of library books to find solutions to whatever queries we might have, we can now spend a mere 15 to 20 minutes and find the same and usually more information on the internet. The internet is just an example, the same can be said about automobiles, cell phones, almost any tech all the way back to fire and the sharpening of sticks.

Edit: spelling

[Locutus]

Just for the sake of debate, why isn't Andorra, for example, a scientific powerhouse?

In terms of Civ/CtP, Andorra doesn't even exist. It wouldn't even qualify as a single size-1 city, it's too damn small. When I speak of a 'small' empire vs a big one, I'm still talking about 10 or (later in the game) 20 or so cities, something comparable to your average modern European country (like France or Italy, or aforementioned Greece). In cultural terms too, Andorra is just part of Spain in spite of its independence, in the same way that Sparta was part of Greece, Brandenburg of Germany, Tyre of Phoenicia, etc.

But semantics aside, no, just because a civ is small doesn't automatically mean it's also scientifically advanced, obviously that's not the case. To achieve such a status, it requires a nation to actually invest in science, and plenty of nations in history have not done so. But at least it's possible to do so: in modern times, countries like the Netherlands, Singapore and several Scandinavian countries are considering their small size (Singapore wouldn't even exist independently in Civ terms and the Netherlands would be playing an OCC game ) disproportionately important in terms of science. It's possible for a small civ to be scientifically advanced, but it's obviously not necessarily the case. Just as it's entirely possible for a large civ to be scientifically advanced, though obviously any resources such a civ would invest in science would not be available for military power or other purposes.

So the ratio of problems/resources will, in general, be equal for large nations and small nations.

Actually, larger civs do have disproportionately larger problems compared to small civs: for most empires regardless of size, the core always has roughly the same size: for the Roman Empire, Italy was it's core, for the British empire it was England, for the Ottomans Turkey, for China it's the Huang He/Chang Jiang river valley, etc -- all are roughly equally large. For small empires, the core is the entire empire, for large empires it's just that: the core. And any territories outside the core tend to require far more resources to keep under control than the core. People there are often of a different culture and are more likely to revolt or even declare independence. And since most empires aren't perfect circles they require a large and complex road network to be connected to the core. They also tend to have irregular and artificial borders that are expensive to guard (as opposed to cores and small empires, which tend to have fairly natural and easily defendible borders: compare the Great Wall of China or the Roman border network with the (lack of) defenses of Greece or Egypt or Korea) and can include vast stretched of inhospitable terrain that are difficult to keep clean of bandits and rebels. In real history we often see small empires can more or less maintaining the same borders for centuries (think for example of European countries like France, Germany, Britain, Spain, etc -- not including their colonial possessions), whereas large empire (such as China, the Roman Empire, the Ottoman empire, Austria-Hungary, etc) are constantly changing their borders: adding territories by conquest, marriage or buying out neighbours, and loosing territory to conquests, revolts, etc. Such large empires have to invest a major portion of their available resources in keeping their empire together and/or expanding it, while small empires often don't have such worries.

Of course there are exceptions on both sides of the equation: small empires that spend all their resources keeping their empire together, and large nations that are stable for a long time and can invest their efforts in other affairs such as science. This is not something that the proposed changes to the game will rule out, they merely aim to add the (historically accurate) possibility to be successful with a much smaller civ as well, not forcing players down the path of military conquest as the game currently does.

The more technology that a civilization has, the quicker they can achieve more.

To extent that is true, but if you simulate that in Civ too well, that just means the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Though that might be realistic, it is quite the opposite of what makes a fun game.

Just think about how peoples lives have been freed up by the onset of computers/the internet. Instead of having to spend hours and hours digging through stacks of library books to find solutions to whatever queries we might have, we can now spend a mere 15 to 20 minutes and find the same and usually more information on the internet.

Ah, yes, but what do we do with the extra time we safe with that? We waste it on playing games and posting on Apolyton Scientific advances may solve problems and lead to increased efficiency, but they also always create new problems. Our efficiency may be much higher than say 100 years ago, but we also work far less.

[centrifuge]

I guess I should clarify my point, I don't believe that just because a country is larger that it will have a greater science rate, however I also don't believe the same about smaller nations.

Lets Take my statement about technology spawning technology into account for a minute. The more that I think about it, the more I believe that increased ability to learn new advances is directly proportional to increased infrastructure. For example, what good is a telephone if you don't have phone lines? So if a civ has the technology of telecommunication, it really would give them no greater efficiency then they currently have.

So a solution to this, that would give a partial solution to the small vs large debate, would be to link tech rate with for example the road network, so if a civ spawns a ton of cities it really will do "the empire" no good scientifically unless their infrastructure is connected. As for cities that are on islands etc this would require a harbor but would necessarilly give a lesser boost depending upon distance.
This would certainly need to be adjusted with the discovery of techs such as the internet.

[MrBaggins]

Your point is well taken, centrifuge, but the system thats being suggested, still requires that a civ develop scientifically to be a great science power.

E.G. it still needs to grow economically, and to put funding into research, then to build appropriate improvements.

Its not that small empires automatically are better scientifically, its that if we set things up appropriately, then if a civ goes on a particular government path AND develops appropriately, then they could have a substantial alternative to expansionist empires.

It still requires development... just development in a different way.

[MrBaggins]

To further clarify...

There is a style of play in civ which, at the moment is second class... the builder.

The builder chooses to limit the number of cities they have, and put far more focus on their internal development, rather than seek headlong expansion and conquest.

This strategy is usuable, although is always inferior to the alternative, expansionism and conquest.

Hence, players making this "choice" are effectively punished, or perhaps more correctly, less rewarded.

There is no real reason why there should be equal although different reward for this popular strategy.

Having a system of linking tech rate with the road network, still wouldn't reward the builder strategy, since its still easier for a large empire to generate the PW to build a road network, than a smaller one.

The expansionist player would still be rewarded more in this case.

[centrifuge]

Originally posted by MrBaggins

Its not that small empires automatically are better scientifically, its that if we set things up appropriately, then if a civ goes on a particular government path AND develops appropriately, then they could have a substantial alternative to expansionist empires.

Well put, and indeed I do think that a change is in order, its just what methods are used to create that change that cause me concerns. It is certainly a tricky problem, imho.

[Solver]

To further clarify...

There is a style of play in civ which, at the moment is second class... the builder.

The builder chooses to limit the number of cities they have, and put far more focus on their internal development, rather than seek headlong expansion and conquest.

Not neccessarily. You can play the expansionist builder - build as many cities as you can without getting into a war - which usually means massing Settlers and expanding till you bump into other nations' borders, and after that focus entirely on developing those cities.

[centrifuge]

Originally posted by Solver

You can play the expansionist builder - build as many cities as you can without getting into a war - which usually means massing Settlers and expanding till you bump into other nations' borders, and after that focus entirely on developing those cities.

Which is the way I usually try to play when the AI isn't acting up In civ2 that's how I always played, then after I got my empire to the point that it was nicely formed, I'd switch to the offensive,

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Solver

To further clarify...

There is a style of play in civ which, at the moment is second class... the builder.

The builder chooses to limit the number of cities they have, and put far more focus on their internal development, rather than seek headlong expansion and conquest.

Not neccessarily. You can play the expansionist builder - build as many cities as you can without getting into a war - which usually means massing Settlers and expanding till you bump into other nations' borders, and after that focus entirely on developing those cities.

Exactly this is also my playing style and I must admit that I liked it that the CTP2 AI was so passive, that way I could concentrate on building up my empire, building everything available and once everything was built, well what should you build if there are no buildings and wonders available anymore, I built units to extend my empire further, so the end result is the same, but it is more difficuilt to reach if you are a builder. And of course needs more time.

And therefore we have to balance it better so that it is not to easy for warmongers maybe we could use better defence buildings that allows a light and cheap army to defend a city against heavy armies, of course the attackers shouldn't profit from that defense bonus.

-Martin

[Solver]

However, with the stacked combat system, it's hard to strike the balance. Currently, obviously, warmongers use 12-stacks, which will easily overwhelm a city with 3 or 4 defenders. If, however, we give the cities with 4 defenders an ability to defend against 12-stacks, that will put the warmongers at too big of a disadvantage - their sacrifical of infrastructure will hardly be justified.

How about adding some science bonuses based on percentage of cities with science improvements? That is, you not only get your 10% in city for an Academy, but if 75% of your cities have academies, you get a further science bonus. That's one of the things that could help smaller empires.