Eternal China Syndrome

[Fosse]

Every previous Civ game (and the offshoots and imitators) has suffered from the Eternal China Syndrom. Meaning that civilizations that appear in 4000 BC are the only ones to ever be found and, barring military obliteration, will all last until the launch to Alpha Centauri.

Many people have asked that steps be taken to address ECS in future Civs, on the grounds that it is historically inaccurate and presumably less exciting than playing in a world where empires can truly rise and fall.

So, should the Civs that begin the game be able (or likely) to last until the final turn? Should new nations be able to rise from the old, break off from the established, or appear in the hinterlands?

If ECS is something that you feel should be excised from Civ 4, then how should the new dynamism be handled, and how would players react to it?

[General Ludd]

Yes.


The game desperately needs to be more dynamic in this regard.

[Vince278]

The focus and goal of the game is to "Build a civilization to stand the Test of Time" as I once heard said. Thus your goal is to be the Eternal China and to trample everyone else underfoot. I tend to be a conquerer so if someone else survives up to the Alpha Centauri launch then its nobody's fault but my own ( ). I'd like to see civil wars implemented in a game but I'd hate to have the nation I worked hard on to be taken away from me for the sake of historical accuracy (which is something Civ is intentionally light on anyway).

[clarkcd]

I enjoyed the Civ II (I think) concept of having an empire split into two separate countries when you captured the capital. Sure the trigger event was kind of odd but the feature was nice.

Then again I also liked having barbarians be able to capture cities.

[Robert Plomp]

Pherhaps there could be a feature that rioting / unhappy citizen will turn into a new group of nations on the long term.

So if you don't keep your people happy in one part of your empire, they might overtrow a few cities at one point in the game.

[Wernazuma III]

I think a good idea would be to have cities which are seperated from the capital by ocean or which are isolated from other cities of the same civ by more than, say, 10 tiles are likely to split apart´after some time, forming a new civ.

[Drachasor]

Hmm, perhaps make it so that there are two or more levels of assimilation of foreigners. The first level just makes it so that they'll have standard levels of happiness and productivity, like normal citizens in your civilization. However, they will maintain their ethnic distinction, and if enough of them become unhappy, then most of them in all cities will revolt, potentially bringing back their civilization.

As for other sorts of revolutions, that could be handled via happiness too. If you have enough cities clustered together (perhaps at least 10% of your empire), and they are very unhappy for a long time, then they might revolt (e.g. American Civil War and Revolutionary War).

Naturally, if something like this might happen, you should get warned when the chance first appears, and later as well (with increasingly urgent warnings).

This would work best if revolts were quite toned down and didn't happen when they currently do. If you could have up to 100% of your citizens unhappy in a city and have no revolt, then the above system could work fairly well. For example, if you have a cluster of cities and all of them are 75% or more unhappy, then perhaps each turn after the first 5 or so there will be a 5% cumulative chance of a revolt (so after 10 more turns after the initial 5 there is a 50% they will leave your empire).

The key to any such system is to make it so that it won't happen often, and it would never happen if you took steps to avoid it. My suggestion might not be perfect, but I was trying to go for something that the player can work to control.

-Drachasor

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Wernazuma III
I think a good idea would be to have cities which are seperated from the capital by ocean or which are isolated from other cities of the same civ by more than, say, 10 tiles are likely to split apart´after some time, forming a new civ.

Sounds good except that it this could make victory by conquest nearly impossible.

[Sandman]

I suggest a long time ago that standard government changing revolutions should be bloodier. Much bloodier. Partisans would swarm about, counter-revolutionaries would sieze control of cities, units would join the other side, and your civ would be very, very vulnerable to invasion.

If you got lucky, you'd only be in chaos for a few turns, as rebellions are put down and foreigners driven back. If you were unlucky, your empire would spend hundreds of years trying to rebuild itself; like China.

Smaller civs could have revolutions more safely, whereas larger civs would suffer more badly. Players with large civs would need to be more 'conservative' in their view, keeping a monarchy long after it's passed its sell-by date, for example, since a revolution would be so destructive.

[Lambiorix_be]

Originally posted by Sandman
I suggest a long time ago that standard government changing revolutions should be bloodier. Much bloodier. Partisans would swarm about, counter-revolutionaries would sieze control of cities, units would join the other side, and your civ would be very, very vulnerable to invasion.

I am not convinced that every change of government style should be bloody and/or disruptive. Why would going from republic to democracy have to be disruptive? Only if the change goes from one 'extreme' to another should it be disruptive Ex. from democracy to communism.

On the other hand if your government is totalitarian (monarchy, despotism...) you should be vulnerable to attacks on your 'throne', to be translated by city uprisings, army units becoming 'barbarian' etc... (Why not an uprising of the workers trying to become communist )

[Odin]

Originally posted by Sandman
I suggest a long time ago that standard government changing revolutions should be bloodier. Much bloodier. Partisans would swarm about, counter-revolutionaries would sieze control of cities, units would join the other side, and your civ would be very, very vulnerable to invasion.

If you got lucky, you'd only be in chaos for a few turns, as rebellions are put down and foreigners driven back. If you were unlucky, your empire would spend hundreds of years trying to rebuild itself; like China.

Smaller civs could have revolutions more safely, whereas larger civs would suffer more badly. Players with large civs would need to be more 'conservative' in their view, keeping a monarchy long after it's passed its sell-by date, for example, since a revolution would be so destructive.

I like this. It would hurt ICS big time.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by Vince278
Sounds good except that it this could make victory by conquest nearly impossible.

Personally, I wouldn't mind so much. But anyway, there'd be some centuries of course, until such "colonies" would revolt, so if one is quick enough...
Another idea would be to make colonies be likely to revolt after certain advances, like Age of Reason, Democracy, Nationalism or such.

[Fosse]

Victory by conquest should be pretty hard. Perhaps not impossible, but certainly not the snowball effect it is today.

The more countries you conquer, the harder it should be to keep your empire under your control. That way the game gets more challenging as you approach the end, not less. The modern age would sure be a lot more fun if it wasn't just waiting to pick off the last one or two nations you haven't subdued yet, don't you think?

[Fosse]

I don't know yet if I'm a fan of bloody and protracted revolutions. It seems counter-intuitive to declare a revolution (as the player) and then fight off revolutionaries (as the ruler).

That being said, the current method of imposing anarchy for a random number of turns is awful and tedious; the ideas offered so far are better than the nothing I have thought of. Something new should be devised, and the topic should probably have a thread level discussion.

[Fosse]

Victory by conquest should be pretty hard. Perhaps not impossible, but certainly not the snowball effect it is today.

The more countries you conquer, the harder it should be to keep your empire under your control. That way the game gets more challenging as you approach the end, not less. The modern age would sure be a lot more fun if it wasn't just waiting to pick off the last one or two nations you haven't subdued yet, don't you think?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Sandman
I suggest a long time ago that standard government changing revolutions should be bloodier. Much bloodier. Partisans would swarm about, counter-revolutionaries would sieze control of cities, units would join the other side, and your civ would be very, very vulnerable to invasion.

If you got lucky, you'd only be in chaos for a few turns, as rebellions are put down and foreigners driven back. If you were unlucky, your empire would spend hundreds of years trying to rebuild itself; like China.

Smaller civs could have revolutions more safely, whereas larger civs would suffer more badly. Players with large civs would need to be more 'conservative' in their view, keeping a monarchy long after it's passed its sell-by date, for example, since a revolution would be so destructive.

I agree, the solution needs to be based on a change to the political system. Meaning that chaos should not be hardcoded in, but that each civ has the potential for internal collapse, alla EU. Now, this is not likely to be done given the current system, and if they are moving in civ to remove the "unfun elements", what is more unfun that facing internal collapse? (as playing China in EU2 proves).

[dannubis]

perhaps once a certain position in the tech tree has been reached, the people could also become wary of the 'ancient' governement systems. i mean, in the western world, how much absolute monarchies are still left... and this would push people towards change of governement.

[Lambiorix_be]

Originally posted by dannubis
perhaps once a certain position in the tech tree has been reached, the people could also become wary of the 'ancient' governement systems. i mean, in the western world, how much absolute monarchies are still left... and this would push people towards change of governement.

That is a good idea. ex.. once democracy has been invented, it should be harder and harder to maintain a monarchy. Civil unrest should arise easier. (maybe only in the big cities since small (rural) cities mostly are the most conservative) until you change to democracy and everybody is happy again.

off course what with 'Communism', 'fascism'?

[GePap]

Ending ECS would take an immesely radical change to the Civ4 system- I doubt it will happen.

[Urban Ranger]

As somebody pointed out, the entire idea of Civilization is to build one that stands the test of time.

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by Vince278


Sounds good except that it this could make victory by conquest nearly impossible.

has it ever been possible in real history?

[Urban Ranger]

The Mongols came real close.

[Drachasor]

Well, my idea would make it fairly difficult to simply conquer the world. It could even be used to bring back the Civ2 system of having a Civ split when you take its capital (in this case, you'd have it split into the former empires that existed and/or return to old empires). If you had to take more care to keep foreign groups happy for longer, then conquering the world would take longer and be more challenging the more foreign cities you had. (This might require some tweaking of the happiness system).

Anyhow, while the idea of Civilization is to have your Civ stand the test of time, that doesn't mean that every civilization should stand this test, nor does it mean that new civs couldn't pop up.

-Drachasor

[Fosse]

Well put Drachasor. I like the idea of taking the capital causing all foreign cities to become independant. That's a nice touch, and could even be incorporated if Firaxis won't go down the road of completely ending ECS.

[Max Sinister]

I had never any problem in conquering the world back in Civ2. OK, if they'd combine it with the higher corruption from Civ3 (or whatever they plan corruption the replace with) and other things, it might work...

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Max Sinister
I had never any problem in conquering the world back in Civ2. OK, if they'd combine it with the higher corruption from Civ3 (or whatever they plan corruption the replace with) and other things, it might work...

High corruption you can't do anything about isn't fun, so they are changing the model (or maybe getting rid of corruption, but I hope not).

As such they need to make it so that a world conquerer needs to work on appeasing the people that he conquers. It can't just be wham-bam, and a few turns later they are all happy citizens. Instead there needs to be a longer struggle to make them content/happy citizens of your Empire.

-Drachasor

[dannubis]

in newly conquered territories active resistance should take place
going from tile improvements being destroyed, production being sabotaged to poisonning of water supplies...
even perhaps regular spawning of an enemy partisan unit (with guerrilera camps much like barbarian camps).
and while i think of it, perhaps terrorist attacks in your home country could take place commited by foreign agents of the occupied nation

at least this should tie up a substantial part of your military...

[CarnalCanaan]

I should read before I post...

Most talk has been around the idea of internal demographic forces causing the fall/rise of a Civ (i.e. revolutions). I admit, that's been my best idea.

Maybe this could work better: [URL=http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=118736]

[OliverFA]

This sounds really nice. The idea of having new civilizations appear in the game as time progresses sounds cool. However, I am only in favour of it if the designers can find a proper way of implementing it. Otherwise the new "feature" would make the game less enjoyable.

[OliverFA]

Originally posted by GePap
I agree, the solution needs to be based on a change to the political system. Meaning that chaos should not be hardcoded in, but that each civ has the potential for internal collapse, alla EU. Now, this is not likely to be done given the current system, and if they are moving in civ to remove the "unfun elements", what is more unfun that facing internal collapse? (as playing China in EU2 proves).

I completely agree with GePap. One of the points of making a new versions of a game is to improve it with new features that improve the enjoyment and make it better. But designers must be very careful not to spoil the game when making the changes. Better to keep it simple and, if it works, improve it in civ5 than to just make an enormous change that would spoil everything. Culture and resources are a good sample. They are killer features, and almost everyone has an idea about how they can be improved (and some ideas are very good!) but if the designers have tried to implement those extended versions of the culture and resources concept most probably they would have failed.

If they start adding too much thing like partisans, internal dissidents, terrorism, etc, etc, the game will move from the Eternal China Sindrome to the Five Minutes China Sindrome. The key is to find something in the middle.

In my opinion the best thing they can do is to introduce one or two features that ease a bit the ECS, but that´s all. Better two fully playtested features that a bunch of untested ones. After all playing ECS is fun, and fun is what I want to get when playing civ! For example, they could bring back the idea of civil war if the capital is conquered or if the government collapses. And they could introduce the idea of cities very far from the empire having the chance to revolt and declare indepence (the definition of far would change with the age of course).