{The List} General Ideas

[DarkCloud]

I have an idea.
You see, in civ, You don't know what game is the sav, until You open it. I think it would be very nice if it was like in Imperialism II,
when if You click on a sav, You get information about it, and a screenshot of the game.

Ah, you mean like in Call to Power

[Nikolai]

Yeah, that was a good solution. Problem is, out of what I've seen from Firaxis before, they don't like to do something any others than them has done...

[Trifna]

Inter/multinational organizations and corporations

A very very important aspect since a long time.


Here's me on the issue:

I wonder if independant societies could be included in the same way... Perhaps these could all be represented under one name such as "International groups" or anything. This can include stuff like Amnesty International, Green Peace, "Research Group for Liberal Capitalism" (Ayn Rand's Libertairian group for example), corporations, etc etc

All have advantages and disadvantages, and they would of course promote their stuff (worldwide if possible).

How merging of ideas sounds like?

And I wrote this answering to Worthingtons' post that follows:

I think a great feature that could be impliment in Civ 4 is the appearance of Multi National Corperations - they are after all the pinnicle of globalisation.

Basically my way of implementing would be allowing an advanced City in the Modern age have a small chance each turn that a MNC will setup HQ in thier city.

The Following things will be eligibility Criteria:
The Presence of a Bank
The Discovery of a certain modern age tech
No resistors
City size at least 7

While the following would significantly give you better chance of attracting an MNC:

The Presence of a Stock Exchange
The Presence of any Economic wonders (Ie Adam Smiths,Internet ect)
A High amount of Trade in the City
A larger population
The presence of capitalist specialists
The peace rating of a Country (ie the less war, or preferably no war the better)
The peace rating of the City (Is it on a warfront? has it been in resistance or disorder?)
A high national GNP
The City having Capital status


Possibly there could be more factors, either way the better the city is geared up trade wise, and the stability overall of the location will give a good chance on any given of getting an MNC. MNC's will provide several trade benefits, at it's simplest they could provide Gold Per Turn benefits, possibly they also could be prerequisites to a Wonder like Wall Street for example. This isnt a gimmick, MNC's are absolutly crucial to the commercial sucess of nations and would compliment a Builder style of play giving players an extra factor to consider.

Cheers
Matt

I put this in the List genertal thread since it doesn't fit very well anywhere, and it forms a very important aspect, perhaps more important in power and influence than the UN nowadays.

[Trifna]

Something I see as very important, mentioned by Andromel (<-- SETTLER ):

Anyone find it annoying that you can't have a small, powerful civilization. As time goes on the Civ. with the most land wins. Management should have a greater impact than geographical size. At least that's how I feel

I think that this can exist in many ways:
- How divided your empire is (the wider...)
- Frictions (intern and extern) because of conflicts with foreign ideologies
- Management (think of the Turcs at the end)
- Cost of newly acquired territory (think of Israel vs Palestine, Soviets in Afghanistan...)
- etc.


But in any kind of way, territory isn't such a big thing on the long term.

[Comrade Raoul]

I wasn't sure where to put this, but it'll nag at me until i put it some where so here goes:

2 things - variable AI and Dark ages.

Now these may have been suggested before (dark ages almost definitley) but just in case they haven't I figured I'd submit them.
Right, firstly I was thinking that all civilizations have their downs as well as ups, so what about a negative version of the golden age?
ie, if you suffer many defeats, get into financial trouble (ie. you have to sell off quite a few buildings) you get put into a dark age, where tech slows, cash flow dries up, production grinds to a halt etc.

Now this could make the game quite punishing, so maybe only include it at higher difficulty levels and maybe make it much less likely after the industrial revolution (or maybe replace it with depression, which only affects finances).

The second suggestion, and this ties in with the first, is variable AI. essentially my thinking for both of these ideas is that civs have never been managed with a consitent skill... sometimes they are managed very well by excellent leaders, other times very poorly.
A good way to simulate this might be to have a variable ai...so at random times for periods of 20-40 turns the ai of a civ will move up a difficulty level, and a t random times for a period of 20-40 turns the ai of a civ would go down a difficulty level. You could maybe tie this in with the first suggestion - during its golden ages the ai goes up one difficulty level and in its dark ages it goes down a difficulty level. All this would occur pretty much in the background and be fairly unnoticeable to the player (although dark/golden age notification for other civs as a popup/newspaper would be cool.)

[Jon Shafer]

Golden Ages were originally implimented in Civ 3 as Dark Ages, but it was discovered that they weren't very fun to play with... so they made the effect opposite and implimented Golden Ages instead.

[self biased]

i'd like to see the city radius not be based on the traditional "two squares away" map. it should grow as the city does. if the map is going to be three dimensional, this shouldn't be a problem.

[kolpo]

In order to solve the territory=victory problem do I suggest the following:

I think that the most easy and simple solution is giving nations like japan traits that reduce there ability to expand but at the same time allow there limit number of cities to become more powerfull.

Examples could be:

micro management trait: Empires with this trait try to manage all details of there empire. As a result does it take them longer to make new cities(settles needs much longer to build) and shall they improve there land at a slower speed. But this micro management improves the efficienty of there cities and terrain improvements allowing them to produce more food/trade.

city state trait: this empire is completely build arround 1 or a few gigantic cities who have a great amount of autonomy. The huge amount of autonomy of the cities makes there population very happy and let your cities develop there own culture and science increasing the effect of both. But people love there own city so much that it is very hard to convince them to move to another city dramatically lowering the cultural assimilation rate of newly coquered cities.

It is simple and it is somewhat realistic so that might be a solution for the territory=victory.

[DarkCloud]

updated- apologies, but the formatting is designed for the word document, so it lost a lot of the bolding...

[Trifna]

Public opinion

I had no idea where to put this so it ends up here... (Diplomacy thread seemed a bit different, up to you)



Public opinion is really quite a factor. You cannot just go entirely bad with a nation that you spinned as an eternal friend, and expect your population to keep its happiness as if nothing happened. People get scared, disapprove... You wanna throw a nuke? You better get show good reasons first of all.

Example: China spinned its population against the US after the Second World War to justify some other moves, its power and so on.


I think that it would bring lots, without being too hard to incorporate. It also brings the possibility to push propaganda and spying all in one thing (and it can include Senate and everything political). You have interior and exterior influences.
Interior factors: spin, technology (TV, Internet...), propaganda...
Exterior factors: Trade, contacts (diplomatical, migrations due to roads/proximity/etc....), conquered territory...

As easy as 1-2-3, and you simplify any inclusion of propaganda/happiness/unrest/politics/intelligence/influence/diplomacy/etc. IN ONE GENERAL THING.

[DarkCloud]

still working on summarizing your threads?