{The List} Borders

[marcthornton]

Originally posted by Tiberius
I like the fort city idea.

Forts would be created by army engineers (a special worker, that would cost 1 or 2 pop points, would be much more expensive than a regular worker and would be able to build only roads, fortifications, barricades, fort cities, radar towers, and other military related improvements) and would have a fixed, one tile wide cultural radius. Army engineers should be able to build forts on mountains, too.

A fort city would have zone of control, would offer a defence bonus similar to a barricade and would act as a radar tower.

... the fort would never culture-flip.

I like this a lot, the availability of the Army engineer should be tied to a technology researched, and future technoogies should add to the abilities of the army engineer. The engineer should only be able to build forts and fortification improvements, and cannot be assimilated back into a city without a cost of doing so. (Maybe he is angry for being discharged, etc.)

The zone of control should not be an area around the fort, but more like a wall or line of defence. You should be able to pick the 2 linear directions (At time of creation in which the control grows, and based on the number of units, and or improvements, the length of the defence grows. This defence line should also have a movement penalty for all units to cross, and a higher penalty if you are crossing it in the defended direction. You could then create artifical choke points for armies, etc. You should also be able to bombard these defences to blow a hole in the wall.

I may wish to put up 4 forts around a key area to blockade it in a square format. These barriered squares should provide an increased defencive bonus for your tropps only. (This defensive bonus works much better with Octagons instead of our current on point squares)

You could in fact create the Great Wall of China!

marc.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
Yes, but you were basing it on cultural borders moving faster across deserts, which is exactly the opposite of how I see it. Culture should travel faster towards more "useful" tiles.

That results in the problem we're trying to solve - you often end up with the large empty spots.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by skywalker
That results in the problem we're trying to solve - you often end up with the large empty spots.

But the opposite is nonsensical. Why would my culture expand into the desert faster than into some beautiful, bountiful grasslands?

The heart of Uber's idea that I like is that it causes cultural borders to advance along logical geological lines. My tweak of that idea preserves that while making the choice of which geological lines to follow a little more logical.

Now granted, the empty spots is a problem, but I don't think a non-sensical solution is a good solution.

A better solution would be to allow something other than culture to also effect borders. If you do nothing, they advance into useful tiles automatically, but if you want them to colonize the desert you need to do something about it yourself. Maybe make a colony radiate culture... or how about fortresses radiate culture but only backwards towards your existing cities (so they can't be used to make a huge land grab, just to fill in the empties).

There are tons of other ways to fix that problem other than instituting a nonsensical game mechanism...

[GodKing]

Remove culture from the calculations on determining national borders. Instead, have it based on another property of the tile - rivers and mountains have high values, making them hard to cross with your boundaries, and deserts and jungles low, making them easy to control. Once you establish control, it will not flip to another civ on its own. Most discussion has been along the lines that this is something that happens in the background done by the computer, but there is no reason it cannot be done manually except to probably reduce the workload of the player.

Some natural movement of boundaries towards more resourceful tiles, such as horses or iron should and could be implemented once those resources are known and discovered.

A fort or other system of creating an artificial boundary should be implemented, possibly by using a special worker unit.

Cities should not have to be restricted on what tiles they work. All land in your empire should be productive, the closer to larger urban areas the more productive. This would change how corruption effects / works in civ dramatically. It might also eliminate the workforce allocation system that civ has had from the beginning. However, the extremely flexible nature of the workforce system and the ability to micromanage or not would be lost, and another method would have to be implemented to replace these aspects of the game.

Some diplomatic method needs to be made whereby civs will, under certain financial and corruption situations, be willing to trade territory. Examples in history include the Louisiana Purchase, Gadsden, and the Polish Corridor.

Well, sounds like a game plan anyways. Lots of good ideas.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
But the opposite is nonsensical. Why would my culture expand into the desert faster than into some beautiful, bountiful grasslands?

Because more people would live on the grasslands, so it would take a stronger culture to take them over.

The spread of culture over grasslands is already simulated by the fact that you're going to build your cities there!. You won't do so on deserts, but we don't want them to be empty and unclaimed.

The heart of Uber's idea that I like is that it causes cultural borders to advance along logical geological lines. My tweak of that idea preserves that while making the choice of which geological lines to follow a little more logical.

This does!

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by skywalker

Originally posted by wrylachlan
But the opposite is nonsensical. Why would my culture expand into the desert faster than into some beautiful, bountiful grasslands?

Because more people would live on the grasslands, so it would take a stronger culture to take them over.

So let me get this straight... people in the desert, who are not going to get any of my cities, whose land I'm not going to improve, who in fact stand nothing to gain from being part of my culture, are going to take up my culture faster than those on grasslands, where I am going to plant cities, whose land I am going to upgrade, who stand to benefit a ton from being part of my culture??? I'm sorry but that just doesn't make any kind of sense to me.

The spread of culture over grasslands is already simulated by the fact that you're going to build your cities there!.

If my cities are on grassland, why would my culture transmit to desert people(a totally different lifestyle) faster than to people who live on grasslands (who live a life much more like my people)?

The heart of Uber's idea that I like is that it causes cultural borders to advance along logical geological lines. My tweak of that idea preserves that while making the choice of which geological lines to follow a little more logical.

This does!

Yes it absolutely does follow your logic, which unfortunately I do not.

The problem with the empty spaces, IMHO, is caused by the borders expanding too slowly. Currently borders expand in a negative exponential way. That is to say it takes exponentially more time for each successive border expansion. If borders expanded in a more linear way, you'd never have holes, because the borders would expand to fill those holes.

[Kuciwalker]

So let me get this straight... people in the desert, who are not going to get any of my cities, whose land I'm not going to improve, who in fact stand nothing to gain from being part of my culture, are going to take up my culture faster than those on grasslands, where I am going to plant cities, whose land I am going to upgrade, who stand to benefit a ton from being part of my culture??? I'm sorry but that just doesn't make any kind of sense to me.

Let's assume that each person takes up culture at the same rate. When there are fewer people in an area, it takes less time to "assimilate" that area.

Think of it this way - a center of culture in the middle of a wasteland will stand out more than a center of culture packed in between lots of other centers of culture. Fertile areas will be quite populated (with cities even), so it's harder to dominate them.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by skywalker
Let's assume that each person takes up culture at the same rate. When there are fewer people in an area, it takes less time to "assimilate" that area.

That's an assumtion that there is no reason to make. Why would a person who will get no benefit from a culture take it up at the same rate as someone who stands to gain a lot from taking it up?

Think of it this way - a center of culture in the middle of a wasteland will stand out more than a center of culture packed in between lots of other centers of culture. Fertile areas will be quite populated (with cities even), so it's harder to dominate them.

A center of culture in the middle of a wasteland? How did it get there?Are you're assuming that cultural expansion happens through the effect of missionaries??? Which would beg the question why am I sending missionaries into the desert for a bunch of land that I don't want instead of focusing my effort on those nice grasslands which I do want?

[Trifna]

It seems that I didn't ever got a comment... so here's what I wrote, which denies that direct link between borders and culture to replace by occupation:

Hey, is border really depending on culture to start with?...



Cultural influence is linked to culture, but the boarder is determined by ECONOMICAL and POLITICAL aspects! A city/civ may be very advanced, great and so on, if it has less population and is not using some territory, others will be able to take the territory anytime.

Borders are dependant on the territory you USE and are able to keep, perhaps less/differently when the nation-state comes in modern times. Like Canada: if it is not able to keep its presence in North Pole, USA may just take the territory (even with nation-states) without asking permission!

This is how territory is internationally determined right now, and this is how it always have been in the past. Territorial possession is done by using this territory, OCCUPYING it (economical use, demographic presence, military presence of an empty space (like northern Canada), etc.). Cultural expansion is not directly the same thing as physical border. To resume my point: Territory must be own de facto.

I believe it is really crucial since the cultural border concept is the base of all the border discussion up to now.

[Flinx]

Flinx's Border Proposal

In my opinion (and various people have expressed each of these) there are 3 types of borders.

1) City Borders - this is the land a city can/is using for productive purposes.

2) National Borders - these are ultimately politically determined.

3) Cultural Influence - A measure of ability to control a certain area.

Let me try to explain how I would implement these ideas:

Cultural Influence map toggle on/off solid shading in your colour (stripe in overlaping zones?)
This can be exactly as in Civ3, but several good improvements have been suggested in this and the culture thread. Some ideas I like are:
- increasing influence due to fortified military units -- Options for additional influence increase per additional fortified units; a cap on the number of additional units; the cap varying with government etc.
- creating an area of influence separate from a city when a unit is fortified in a colony or fort.
- increasing influence along roads and railways.
- modifying influence across/along geographic features. (without getting into the debate above)
- limiting/modifying influence based on government type.
- limiting/modifying influence based on era/date.
(I am also open to the idea of using a completely different basis than Civ 3 Culture Points as the starting point to calculate a zone of influence.)

City Borders can be shown on map with a thin white line
In Civ3 this is the 21 tile fat-X and the 3x3 tile square. In my idea city borders would expand at certain population levels (e.g. 8 tiles for pop 1-6, 20 tiles for pop 7-18, 36 tiles for 19-34 etc.), be limited by zone of influence and national borders (i.e. a city border cannot extend beyond a national border and cannot extend beyond the influence of the city core) and there would be no maximum number of tiles to a city and no fixed shape.

National Borders - Claimed can be shown on map with a dashed line in your colour
Initially as you settle your first city at 4000BC you claim all land on your continent/island. With each additional settler you make the same claim (I claim this new found land in the name of the glorious and immortal god emperor Flinx the magnificent ). As you meet other civs on the same land-mass(es) you will have to negotiate your overlapping national claims.

National Borders - Fixed can be shown on map with a solid line in your colour
All borders established by negotiation/treaty. This obviously requires a lot of new diplomatic options!!!

[Flinx]

Originally posted by Fosse in {The List} - Diplomacy

I would like to create a new state of land owndership, occupation.

If France and England go to war, and England captures Leeds, then Leeds and all territory that the capture turns over to France, is considered English territory, occupied by France. France exploits all resources, but it is still recognized by the world as English.

If France has an MPP with the Celts, and England takes back Leeds, then the MPP isn't activated because the French are the clear aggresors. If England pushes on and attaks the English on some land that was French at the war's opening, the MPP is activated.

At the end of the war occupied territory can be put on the bargaining table. Whoever keeps it at the peace treaty official gains control. So if England is willing to give up Leeds to sign peace, it becomes a real French city.


This will make MPPs stronger and less unpredictable... so you can sign one and not worry about your pact mate waging a purely aggresive war that activates thier "protection." Perhaps England would be able to offer the occupied land to another country, on the condition that the other country can take it from France. So at the end of the war, the Romans might get Leeds if they enter an alliance with England.

[Kuciwalker]

A center of culture in the middle of a wasteland? How did it get there?

I build a settler, told it to goto a tile in the middle of the desert, and when it got there I hit 'b' and told it to start working on a Temple

[Skanky Burns]

Colonies should have their own physical border. Plonking a city down next to a colony shouldn't just force your colony to pack up and leave.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by skywalker

A center of culture in the middle of a wasteland? How did it get there?

I build a settler, told it to goto a tile in the middle of the desert, and when it got there I hit 'b' and told it to start working on a Temple

OK, maybe we're not understanding each other. My point was that if I create a city on grassland, even if it borders a desert, the culture from that city should tend to expand along the grasslands more than on the desert.

If you go to the trouble of planting a settler in the desert, then sure, the culture should expand through the desert. But how is that different than the way it is now. I thought you were advocating culture travelling faster across desert in order to "fill in the holes". If you're gonna plant a city in the desert anyways what's the point?

[Kuciwalker]

Ok, so I put it at the edge of the desert. So what? Look at Europe - it has good terrain and a lot more cultural diversity than, say, the Sahara. Expansion over good terrain is easily represented by people actually settling there. Over bad terrain, where there are virtually no "natives" one city will exert more influence, farther.