Mod idea: People's Mod

[Superstring]

This is not a mod ready to play, it’s a mod idea I will beginn to realize in the near future. Its scope is too wide and deep, however, to come up with it in a short time or even to cover all of the possibilities coming from it. I’ll only try to explain the basic idea and sketch it out a bit. I hope it is considered fascinating enough by the community to motivate other civers to join the project or make up their own way of implementing the basic idea.

Civ is overall my favorite game and a great series but I always missed the influence of the people, the civ itself, in the game. You can have unhappiness in your cities which you get rid of by building certain improvements. And you can transform some laborers into specialists if you’ve discovered certain advances. That’s pretty much all what makes up the POP (=Population points ) influence in civ games. To put it short and precise: To date this game has no society concept. In the end I try to achieve no less than introducing the feature of society to the Civ series.

Practically speaking my idea is to integrate a new button into the civ manager that gives access to a window where every POP of the city is given an interest, which you are requested to chose from those available by your discovered advances so far. This event takes place whenever a city population increases by one POP. Then the window pops up (no pun intended!) automatically and you are required to choose an available type of POP. Otherwise you can’t close the window to proceed play. From play, however, you can always access the POP manager from the city screen by pressing the appropriate button in the city manager. So much concerning the mechanical implementation hook. But what about the content of the concept?

NOTE: The following text has been edited as the original concept has been changed after thinking about the final goal I want to achieve with the MOD. It varies a lot from the original text written as the date displays.

Every POP chosen is ranked every turn concerning its importance for the present society by computing a total value from several factors unique to every POP type. A hunter for example might receive points for every forest tile within the city radius and for every huntable ressource there (=needing a camp). If Archery is dicovered it scores higher because now there are bows to hunt with more effectively and so on. As the city grows POP of other types may be chosen and compete with the POP already there via comparison of their importance total. As turns pass by some POP types prosper, reach their climax and decline. If there is an upgrade (hunter to forrester to ranger e.g.) available they might survive longer transformed into the more modern version.

The most important theoretical aspect of this concept is the idea that the POP “signature” (=display of appointed POP by type) exposes the society structure of that city, as opposed to the physical tile working of laborers. The POP signature reveals the typical wayl of living in that city, the soiety structure of its citizens as a snapshot at that point of time. So all tiles will still be worked if you choose a POP that doesn't normally work tiles as e.g. a scientist.

Thus, although the POP can be thought of as specialists (as Impaler stated in the following post) the original specialist appointment system would remain unchanged. A scientist specialist chosen in the city screen gives beakers and Great Person points, but then one laborer doesn't work his tile. This drawback doesn't exist with a POP scientist chosen in the POP manager screen.

The meaning of the POP signature as a present state of the society in the city obviously leads to the possibility of introducing some more devious aspects of society into the game. For example POP that is not able to collect enough points to cope with the demandment of its time could transform to representatives of unfavorable society signature tokens like Gangster bosses of organized crime in a city low on public order, or prostitutes or drug addicts or simply unemployed or homeless persons relying on costly public welfare to remain sufficiently satisfied. On the other hand exceptionally successful POP can advance to Elite status, well known people in prominent positions but not yet Great Persons.

In the first installment I plan to do it as a "goldfish addition" to the game. You can see the development of society in the POP Manager Screen and you can choose new POP when the city grows but it'll have absolutely no game effect in the first version. Its more a n experiment in Social Darwinism, the Survival of the Fittest among the citizens. It's just to ensure the frame and mechanism is working correctly before bothering the players with it. In later versions, however, unsuccessful POP would become unhappy (+1 unhappy face in the city per unhappy POP or even could transform into a social problem with drawbacks to the city stats ( means waste of hammers, money, heallth and so on). At that stage you'll really start to feel the welldoing of your people as a considerable constraint to your actions (as it should be for a leader game). This is my fundamental motivation for the mod and the reason why I'd like to call it The People's Mod.

So much for now. Still pages of possible suggestions remain, but it would be too cumbersome to write (and read!) them all at once. There should still be lot of room for your thoughts. Suffice it to say that this is a great way to increase the depth of the game instead of increasing the width with completely new game mechanics. And it provides the proper challenge in the end game as many players complain about having nothing reasonable to do then when all the AI civs are already kept at bay and victory is for sure. Some of them even start wars just for the fun of it. With the POP society concept you have a complex modern society with a widespread variety of different POP types at that time, every single one to be kept satisfied, up and running in a different specific way. Including the social problems concept there might even be some POP that can't be satisfied, only get rid of by approppriate measures. Enough work I think to repel boredom while you’re juggling your pluralistic, picky and selfconcerned late game society to prevent its implosion which may well deny you the craved victory in the very last moment. All in all a builder’s dream – or nightmare.

So what do you think?

NOTE: The following post of Impaler refers to the original post's suggestions, so its a bit out of place now.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Very interesting idea, I see lots of potential here. The per unit of population aspect feels kind of like an extention of specialists, in essence everyone is a specialist now. As for hunters, miners, farmers I think it would make more sense for these types of specialists to give you the ability to work a plot of the particular terrain rather then create improvments on their own. If you build mines you need to have miners to work in them ect ect. Elite/Noble man types could be assigned once the city reaches a certain size/power. Traditional specialists realy just become a class of specialists which have Buildings as their dependencies and dont work terrain.

[Superstring]

Your suggestions, Impaler, are much more down to earth than mine and thus better practicable.

But for my motivation of the mod its really important to disconnect the significance of the POP appointments and the laborers assigned to the tiles. So there is not necessarily a one to one connection. Especially you do not have to give up working a tile to assign a researcher POP for example. But this researcher has much less impact on the game than a specialist researcher, doesn't create Great People points but demands an extra condition for staying happy above the usual ones from the ordinary game.

[Superstring]

Well, one argument for not having to give up working a tile for a non laborer specialist is that in modern times big cities import their food. So a modern metropolis might not have a single farmer in his POP signature, cause living in New York nowadays has not the least bit of a farming atmosphere (as long as you aren't a cynic, of course). Instead there would be bankers, policemen, shopkeepers, accountants, bureaucrats, entertainers, doctors, service personnel, you name it.
All of them not working a tile for output of food.
So how could that city exist under ordinary game conditions.
Even the most modern city in the unmodded civ game would have the need for lots of farmers and workers if they'd have to represent tile working citizens, which in turn does not represent the professional structure of a modern industrialized society let alone a service oriented post industrial society of nowadays.
The structure of the game can't reflect this now, so laborers working tiles must be disconnected from the POP assignment to get my idea to function for modern cities.

[Superstring]

Wasn't allowed to delete this post (haven't got the appropriate authorization I guess), so I deleted its content only, as it 's now completely obsoleted by the final concept.

[Unimatrix11]

Superstring, I like your ideas in general, but I think they are too much for Civ... maybe it would need a whole new game to get all your ideas done. Have You ever tried "Victoria - An Empire under the sun" by paradox entertainment ? I guess you'd love that one... But i'd really like to see a turn based civ-like game with a descent social model, too.

[Superstring]

Thanks for the advice Unimatrix11.
I already own EU2, but haven't tried it yet. I just ordered Crusader Kings, which I'll try first. Heard a lot of cheers about "Victoria" now, probably I'm buying it if Crusader Kings proves to be my kind of game.

As to your objection of me demanding too much of the game's moddability I hoped my rather extensive first post would have made clear that for good reasons I'm quite positive that it ain't so. But now I'll try to give a much more concise explication why it should be possible and is not floating on air.

1. As the POP concept is encapsulated within the human player's civ and not seen by the AI from outside there is no need the AI understands it, cause it won't have it in its civs. It only applies to the human player to make the game more complex and fun for him/her. It will be balanced because in the full implementation it will give advantages and drawbacks to the player in an equal amount if implemented right.

----- I feel this is a STRONG advantage of my concept for it avoids the problem many ambitious mods have, that the AI doesn't understand the rules changes but the player does and exploits them properly. So the AI falls to the human intelligence even more. As AI isn't involved in my Mod there's also a very good chance it can be done with Python and XML alone, and no promised SDK has to be awaited and used. ----

2. All interaction with the current program and gameplay is well defined and could be implemented as a dummy structure even without anygame influence at that moment. Also every element of the POP structure is well defined, as there is type (=name) of POP, prerequisite for its availability, and requirements it has to increase its importance total. That's definitely all for the moment. No voodoo or dreamCIV involved.



NOTE: I edited the precedenting posts to introduce the final streamlined concept. I hope I presented it clear enough for the community to see its potential for adding a totally new perspective to the game by introducing society and its interactions. Interested people that already read the former concept might want to check it out again.