CIVilians: The next best thing Civ never had

[raingoon]

Awhile back I posted what I thought was the best thing Civ never had -- Energy Barrels. Now here's my vote for the next great concept that should be fundamental to Civ 3 -- CIVilians.

Just as Energy Barrels will address a multitude of issues (from Infinite City Sleaze to all manner of commonly wished-for enhancements in trade, diplomacy and production) so too will CIVilians facilitate many ideas.

CIVilians replace what have always been called population units. For the sake of this brief discussion, think of them as icons in your population window, albeit much more descriptive icons.

And what does each CIVilian represent? Two things. First, a population number. Second, fundamental population needs, of which there are three:

Ahem...

The 3 Needs of Every CIVilian

1. Food
2. Happiness
3. Culture

Not exactly original, but let's just be clear. After poring over every wish list from here and SidGames, it really boils down to most fans believing that CIVilians require Food, Happiness and Culture, in that order. Exactly how each of these 3 needs are being met, and how effectively, is shown graphically in your population window.

Food is outside of this discussion. Happiness is a function of your global policies vs. each CIVilian's culture needs. Here is where I will eat half my words about being anti-SE and say SE can be helpful in setting global policy -- obviously. But adding to that your CIVilians having their own cultural needs makes SE work for me.

The Religion Model (see the religion 3.0 thread) summarizes many Civ fans' ideas about individual population units having their own beliefs. That this idea truly makes it into the game is very important to those of us who hope for a Civ 3 and not a Civ 2.5, and to that end I submit this proposal in the interest of simplicity and fun.

Anyway, back on point: all CIVilians need culture. For game purposes, religion is culture, and there can be several "brands" of religion and other beliefs to which CIVilians subscribe. I suggest the game offer many various brand of beliefs and lumping them all under the one word, simply culture. And CIVilians in their natural state are forever trying to convert others to their own culture -- this happens in various ways; for an excellent discussion of how, see the religion thread. The thrust is, every CIVilian has one -- and only one -- cultural identity, but any number of variables can change that identity in the course of the game.

Your policies (i.e., SE choices) will either clash with or compliment your Civ's cultural makeup. If you tolerate diversity, a diverse population may get along, but become much less able to convert (each other as well as) CIVilians in foreign Civs to their way of thinking. That might make them happier at home, but if you are playing for a "cultural victory" whereby most of the world is converted to your way of thinking, you will need a change in policy. "Tolerance" necessarily decreases your CIVilians' ability to convert. Also, a cultural victory would first have to overcome the lack of any unifying belief amongst your own CIVilians.

Thus, you may choose to change your SE policy so that you are "intolerant" of all but one belief, and declare X your "State Religion." Those whose cultural identity is X (again, X is a specific brand belief, perhaps ancient Paganism or even modern Consumerism) will be happier AND emboldened in their abilities to convert others. Unfortunately, those whose culture is not X will be disappointed to say the least. If there are enough of them geographically grouped together, you may soon have a problem that requires a military solution.

To sum up -- CIVilians need Food and, more interestingly, Culture. How the player responds to the latter demand, using an updated SE model, will help to determine that other need, Happiness.

To paraphrase the religion model, culture is to population what trade is to resources. Both represent a quantifiable exchange while neither would dominate the game. I highly recommend the Religion 3.0 thread for how a belief system can be modeled very simply in the game, and the SE thread for various ways the player can effect those beliefs.


[This message has been edited by raingoon (edited February 09, 2000).]

[Adm.Naismith]

Raingoon, I liked your "enrgy barrels" and I think also the CIVilian concept is interesting.
I like when a model is clean and coherent with others part of game. I only have some dubt about your idea of a tolerant culture less able to attract people than some kind of fundamentalism.

I think it will have more effect on diplomacy with your neighboor (if you have intolerant culture none will love you - until has exactly same culture as you). Not very new (in SMAC a faction look better at you if it share same SE), but can be better developed with the help of your "culture" concept.

If Firaxis will implement some kind of "village to city" growth model with immigration (as already suggested into The List) your culture should influence how many people will join your civilization.

Anyway, good matter of discussion, Raingoon!

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Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant

[The Joker]

You just keep on pouring out great ideas, raingoon!!

I really like this culture idea (I have advocated for it myself). But I don't think each pop unit would need it's own culture. It would be annoying. Just having each city have it's own is fine for me.

I also think a part of this culture should be the level from 0 to 100 in various categories. These should be Individualism (would have directly effect your SE effects, like a democracy with low individualism would get a lot of corruption), Conservatism (how fast are the pop willing to accept new SE settings), Tolerance (would effect the unhappyness caused by living in a multinational city), Militarism (how willing are they to go to war and to loose troops in battle) and Secularism (how much does their religion matter to them).

Combined will these make SE changes much more difficult, and the game more fun.

BTW I really like the cultural victory. It would be optainable through conquest and diplomacy plus propaganda of some sort. I guess that's what the US is trying at this very moment.

[raingoon]

Quite right, Joker. The US is going for a cultural victory to be sure -- largely driven by US exports from software and entertainment corporations. Which makes me think the discovery of corporations would add a BIG boost to the culture variables.

Btw, I like your 1-100 system. Also, the culture could be tracked at the city level, just as you say. But, per the religion model which thought this out pretty well, each civilian would still have its own culture, its just that the player doesn't begin dealing with it until the city level, where the culture with the simple majority representation sets the culture for that city -- meaning if you have a city containing 50% X, %40 Y, and 10% Z culture in civilians, that city shows up on the map as an X city. See what I mean?

[The Joker]

I completely agree on the religion thing. Nationalism should also be dealt with citizen per citizen, meaning that each citizen is one nationality. I personally think cities should be made out of people in stead of heads. This would allow for units costing population etc, and would be fun. It does, however, have some problems needed to be solved.

Well, that's all I have for now. I'm going skiing in the Alps next week (yippie!!), and so I won't come back untill monday 21st. Hope to see some great ideas then.

CIAO!

[VetLegion]

Great thread burried deep

Raingoon, The Joker, please continue disussion. Begin by answering me these questions

Which characteristics should be given to the "head" more precisly?
Which SE elements would then be attended to on micro level (building temples...etc) and which ones should be kept macro?

City in Civ1/2 has population abstractly shown as "heads". The problem I see is that this works fine in Civ1/2 because only characteristic of a "head" is wheather it is happy or not.
If a more abbilities are given to the "head" then a new way of representing is needed since things like "militaristic babylonians worshipping Jehova and having skill in trade" happen in real life.

I am eager to see a working pop/SE model. Please elaborate your thoughts further.

[NQUOTES]

I think CIV3 should factor in world terrorism and also implement a national media as a improvement to a civilization. What is a war without CNN. Everyone knows that the threat of terrorism is very prevalent in a modern society.

[korn469]

well i'm not sure how you could replace heads and have the game remain civ...however i think i know of a way that you could detail information about the heads without having information overload

taking a suggestion from the EC3 list and expanding upon it...the suggestion is New modes of victory

ok the basic idea is to have three maps...a political map, a religious map, and a economic map

well you could take that idea and with a tweak or two get this

• a political map that shows each's head's nationality
• a religious map that shows each head's religion
• an economic map that shows each heads culture

using that idea we now have three distinct representations of the heads...nationality, religion, and culture...because of this we could now have four paths to victory...changing all of the heads to your nationality, changing all of the heads to your religion, or changing all of the heads to your culture, and building the space ship

opiate of the people

to convert heads to your nationality here is what we would use...

the base amount of time to convert people to your nationality would be 50 years with about 20% of the heads converting to your nationality every ten years...however there would be two factors that effect this rate...the first factor would be your reputation, people would be more likely to join a civ that respected them and treated them like citizens than a genocidal civ bent on destroying them...the second factor would be government type represented by the Politics SE choice in SMAC...people would be more likely to join a government like theirs rather than one opposed to them

here are the SMAC reputation levels:

Noble
Faithful
Scrupulous
Dependable
Ruthless
Treacherous
Wicked
Infamous

in SMAC you start at Noble, i would change it to this and have the player start at honorable and have the ability to increase reputation slowly over time if certain criteria is met...in SMAC you can't increase your reputation

• Noble: -10 turns to assimilate, +2 commerce, no citizens are killed, no refugees, -2 Partisans
• Honorable: 50 turns to assimilate, +/- 0 commerce, 1 citizen killed when you capture a city, no refugees, 3 Partisans
• Faithful: +5 turns to assimilate
• Scrupulous: +10 turns to assimilate, -1 commerce, causes 1 refugee
• Dependable: +15 turns to assimilate, -1 commerce, causes 1 refugee, +1 Partisans
• Ruthless: +20 turns to assimilate, -2 commerce, causes 2 refugees, +1 Partisans
• Treacherous: +25 turns to assimilate, -2 commerce, causes 2 refugee, +2 Partisans
• Wicked: +30 turns to assimilate, -3 commerce, causes 2 refugees, +2 partizen
• Infamous: cities never assimilate, -4 commerce, causes 3 refugees, +3 Partisans

*note: refugees would work like when the Aliens capture a base in SMACX

also SE choices would effect how quickly heads can change to your nationality...if you have the same SE Politics choice then a city would assimilate 10 years quicker to your nationality, if you had different choices then unless they were simple Politics (the default choice) it would add 10 years on to how long it would take to assimilate a city to your nationality...if they were simple then it would be the normal time to assimilate them

religion and culture could work in a similar method but each one could be totally unique...any ideas would be appreciated

and here are some ideas for wonders and special occurances...

the Statue of liberty: halves the time it takes to assimilate the people to your nationality
the Ka'abah: with this wonders once a head gets converted to the religion that controls this it can never be converted to another religion
The Holy Mosque in Makkah is the most revered place of worship for Muslims around the world. At the center of the Mosque is the Ka'abah, which literally means 'cube' in Arabic. All Muslims are required to face in the direction of the Ka'abah five times every day when offering their prayers. Muslims believe that the Ka'abah, constructed of stone blocks, was originally built by Prophet Abraham and his son Ismail. Many believe it was erected on the original site of a sanctuary established by the first Prophet, Adam. Embedded in the corner of the structure is the Black Stone, a meteorite used by Abraham as a foundation stone. This stone, although respected as the only surviving object from the original building, has never been worshipped and has no special sanctity or power.
the Internet+(insert wonder here): the internet should be a wonder, basically i think the internet should be a scientific wonder that is beneficial to all civs but if a civ has the internet and another cultural wonder represented by (insert wonder here) then it would have a devious side effect...each turn it would randomly convert one head from any civ to the culture of the civ that has those wonders...so if given enough time it would convert all of the heads to its culture


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The OpenCiv3 website
korn469
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited March 14, 2000).]

[VetLegion]

Korn469

Increasing reputation? Its a must!

As for the three (or more) maps, I fully understand the point, and I like it. But something bugs me when you mention maps...do they extend out of cities? How is village population represented in my civ? Civ has the rather unrealistic (but working great) system in which a city abstracts all the pop around it, including village pop and all. Good for gameplay, but for me it requires a little "mental strech" to abstract the whole village pop (till 20th century, even in industrial world more that half) under a city object.

And for the main topic, heads...

You mainy discused the asimilation/conversion of heads. Now how about other head characteristics?

[korn469]

Vetlegion

quote: religion and culture could work in a similar method but each one could be totally unique...any ideas would be appreciated

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The OpenCiv3 website
korn469

[The Joker]

korn:

I like your ideas. I think that gov types should have some resemblance level to other gov types. The people in a representative democracy would be willing to adabt to a direct democracy faster than to a dictatorship (see the SE models in The List).

But other factors should be included when finding out the adaption time. Your former actions towards the coutry which you conquored the city from (like if you have killed settlers or committed other, smaller or larger atrocities).

Having a city with a population different from your own should give problems, also in the long run. A city in riot should have a certain chance of breaking apart each turn, which would depend on the amount of unhappy people in the city and it should increase exponentially for each turn it had riots. Some times the riots should be so huge they could not be stopped (if the city lost population due to food shortage the propability of revolt should be even larger). If the city broke apart it would get the units with that city as home city. But these units would have to fight the other units in the city, and if they couldn't win this battle the revolt would be stopped. This would make it possible to supress a large number of cities, but they would not be much good to you, and they would need a large number of units garrisoned there. (NOTE: I am opposed to the idea of having each unit supported from just one city. Units should be supported globally. But a unit should still have a home city which it was loyal to.) This would also mean that if a city which had many units outside it revolted, those units would have a change (50% or so) of joining this city in it's revolt.

Cultural and religious victory should be optainable without conquest of any kind.


Now to the CIVilians:

I would like to use the x10 system for pop, as this would make it possible for units to take population out of the city when built.

Each city would have some characteristics, in which it had a value from 0% to 100% (propably in 10% intervals). These would be:

- Individualism. This is the one I can see most applications for. It would partly determine some of the effects of your SE settings. Examble: A Capitalistic economy would give +3 eco (economy). But if the individualism level in a city was higher than 70% it should give +4 eco, and if it was 100% it should give +5 eco. The same way if the Individualism level was very low: If it was less than 50% Capitalism would give onle +2 eco. If it was less than 30% it would give +1 eco, less than 20% - 0 eco, 10% - -1 eco, 0% - -2 eco.

In a democracy the default would be +2 eff (efficiency). But if the Individualism level was 50% it would give only +1 eff, 40% - 0 eff, 30% - -1 eff, 20% - -2 eff, 10% - -3 eff, 0% - -4 eff. This would portray the situation in Russia at the moment - the nondemocratic gov type there had decreased the individualism rating of the people giving lots of corruptin when changing to democracy.

Communism (true communism, not socialism) would by default give +4 hap (happyness), but as with the 2 previous exambles the higher the Individualism level was in a city the less happyness and the less efficiency (the more corruption) would the city have, up to a point when Communism actually gave unhappyness.

A dictatorship would give unhappyness as default, but if the Individualism rating was lower than 30% it would not do so. However, if your Individualism rating was very high it would give much more unhappyness than usual.


- Militarism: Would determine how unhappy your people would be with war. It would also determine how unhappy they would become by losing units in a war. If your Militarism rating was high enough there would be no unhappyness caused by units away from the city, nor from units lost in battle. On the other hand, if the Militarism rating was below 20% you would have to make peace (if your Legislature SE rating was low enough - meaning that the people had a lot of power) if the enemy proposed it. It could even be made so that with a low legislature rating and a high militarism rating you could be forced NOT to make peace!!


- Conservatism: This would determine how long your people stayed unhappy when you made SE changes. If this was very high they could stay unhappy for up to 20-30 turns, but if it was very low they would become happy again after just 1 or 2 turns.


- Tolerance: This would determine how much unhappyness was caused by having a multinational city. If a city was home to a lot of different nationalities in stead of just 1 the tolerance level would determine how much unhappyness was caused by this.


These would not just be static. They could be changed by things like:

- SE changes. A change to democracy would increase the Individualism over time, with perhabs rising it 10% every 10 turns (maybe this should be decided by your Conservatism rating) up to 7 or so. Having a capitalistic or a Laizzes Faire economy could raise this even further.

- A very wealthy civ would give a bit higher Individualism rating.

- A destructive war would decrease your Militarism rating while a small, succesful one could increase it.

- If you stayed with the same SE rating for a long time your Conservatism rating would rise, but if you made SE changes (even smaller ones like changing from a small to a large public sector in a capitalist economy) often it would drop.


I think improvements in the city would be added/substracted to the SE effects. A temple could increase the happyness by 3, a bank could increase the economy by 2 or 3. This would make it much easier to calculate the effects of both SE changes and the construction of improvements.

I don't think each head should have it's own rating, as it would be too complicated. Each city having it's own would be fine. Each head should, however, have it's own nationality (like Americans, Germans etc - a far away colony with little interaction with the mainland should create it's own nationality within some time. This would make it want independance), it's own religion (propably made up in stead of real religions) and it's own culture (like consumerism, fundamentalism, ecologism etc). I think the 2 latter would effect the output of that head.

I think the people of your civ should have much more power, and they would follow their own interests. This could give massive problems, if you eg had a civ with a lot of different nationalities. This would make the use of protectorates (giving an area semi-independance) very likely, as you would now mostly expand this way in stead of conquoring others.


Well, these are my thoughts. Hope someone will actually read this long post and comment it...

[raingoon]

I agree with both The Joker and Korn here in the micro, with a couple of comments.

First, the three maps, with slight adjustments to what Korn469 is saying:

1. Political (shows nationality, a military victory -- to change someone's nationality they must be subsumed by your nation)
2. Religious (shows religious affiliation, a religious victory)
3. Economic (shows trade deficit/dependencies, a victory by becoming the unrivaled world leader in Trade, with monopolies on several resources)

As in the real world, culture would be a combination of all three, tho I'm not sure what this would mean to the player.

Counting Heads

Population units need not be changed graphically. Opening a city would still give you (what we are calling) the CIVilians which would mainly represent numerical abstractions (based on the x10 system).

Also within the city window religion would be abstracted in either a bargraph or a pie chart. Each city would be represented on the world map according to its majority religion, and the AI would track religion at that level -- calculating the majorities, cutting down on AI workload.

[korn469]

The Joker

i liked your ideas except for 10x to pop system...i think that it inadequately addresses the population and units problem

i'm not sure what you exactly think the problem is that units and population have any effect on each other...

with a 10xpop system population growth has to be 10 times as fast...so cities that grow in twenty turns normally will now grow in 2 turns...so most cities would get 1 population in 1 or 2 turns with the slowest grow cities getting 1 pop in 3 turns

units would still build at the same rate and most units would take longer than two turns to build so unit production would not limit population growth and nor would lack of population limit unit production

so the 10x pop system doesn't effect unit growth or population in an effective mannor...but it does cause other problems

1. population either grows at 10 times the speed or it is too slow
2. more than one pop has to work a square or city radius has to be ten times as large
3. with 10 times the population then micromanagement becomes a major problem, you would spend ten times as much time in the city management screen with no added benefit

those are the problems i can foresee and there might be even more problems that i cannot see, and there might be benefits but without completely changing civ it would not work in my opinion...

as for your other ides i think they are good

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The OpenCiv3 website
korn469

[korn469]

The Joker

the problem you are trying to fix is that a certain population can only support so many soldiers in the field before it has dire consequences on productivity...you cannot send your entire population off to war and still have healthy economic growth

is that a correct statement of the problem?

to that end there are four solution that i can think of but all of them have problems, and are by no means perfect solutions

1. Each military unit takes one population to build...when disbanded in a city a military unit would then add a point of population to the city in addition to the minerals

pros: it fixes the problem of having the military take away from your civ's productivity
cons: a large military becomes too expensive and hard to get...slows down the game

2. Each military unit consumes one food every turn.

pros: a large military will slow your population growth, an excessive military will stop your population growth
cons: could slow population growth too much...also it doesn't decrease the productivity of your cities, it just slows their growth

3. A certain number of military units creates a soldier specialist. This specialist provides support points but eats food, and could have other benefits and penalties.

pros: a large army will create many soldier specialist, which will give you fewer worker and decrease productivity
cons: would be hard too balance, if the soldier specialists are too few it has no effect, if they are too many then it could destroy game balance...would also hinder a small empire from beating a large one

4. Each worker or specialist (or drone) has a marker that identifies them as a civilian (normal background) or a soldier (green back ground) when soldiers make up a majority of the citizens in your city then productivity goes down by a certain percentage. For example if soldiers make up half of your pop then productivity goes down by 10% if they make up 75% of pop then productivity goes down by 25%

pros: solves the problem of population and soldiers
cons: like other solutions this solution might not go too far...or it could make having an army too expensive

joker

even though these solutions are not perfect i would rank them above a 10x to pop system because the increase in population upsets the balance of the game...even a 4x to pop upsets the balance too an unacceptable degree...those are just my preliminary ideas and if we work together i think we could find an agreeable solution without upsetting the game balance

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The OpenCiv3 website
korn469

[The Joker]

Korn:

I can see your criticism. But how else would you portray the way units should take population out of the city in which they were built? This has shown to be a major factor in history. Often most of the adult male population was soldiers in wartime, which cause food shortages and lack of production at home. A country could be cribble by having too many troops around. This should by all means be portrayed in (Open)Civ3. If you have a better idea I would really like to hear it.