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Ok, I've played Civ3 and loved it. I also loved Alpha Centauri, as well. Since those games are sharply different, I was thinking about crossing some of their elements, as well as follow real-world models for population and military support.
Realistic Population Growth/Disease
Canada, like the US, has an obesity problem. We are swimming in food up here, yet our population is only a tenth of the US. And both have flat growth (virtualy). Now look at China. It has a lot of food. It has a lot of people. And it is still growing at an amazing rate. Now look at Ethiopia. They're starving, but they have a strong growth rate as well.
I think this has to do with happiness. Most of the unhappy/less prosperious nations have fast growth rates (most of africa, for example). Another thing that affects growth rates are the life expectancies. Lower they are, quicker the growth.
Obviously more crowded people are less inclined to make more babies. And it's also unreasonable to assume that happy/luxurious cities will grow (or even not decline). Because reality shows otherwise.
If this was integrated into the game, it would give an interesting dimension to citizen welfare vs the growth of your empire. The dichitomy of DEVELOPED VS DEVELOPING nations that shapes our world can also be more expressed if these things were taken into account.
How I thought about doing it: I was thinking about having growth be based on happiness. The % of people who are happy in a city could be the % that is subtracted from the standard growth rate. Obviously they may cause starvation, but that's a little thing called obesity and class differences. (Perhaps the communsim government alleviates obesity problems, being dedicated to equality)
Also, another thing that's common among real populations is disease/famine. Famines can basicaly be -1 food in every square, while diseaseLooking at the world, both are more common in developing nations. Graineries (in addition to +100% growth rate) can also severly reduce the damage of famines, and hospitals can reduce the damage of disease. As for diseases, they can happen because of having no hospitals, having jungles nearby, and they could both reduce the pop and cause unhappines (which would help offset growth penalites in pop 1-12 cities, so they still grow sufficiently). These things, taken together, mean that more developed cities (those with graneries and hospitals and aquaducts, and are usually wealthier) have slower growth, but are much better at retaining the pop they have, being healthier and having more food storage and all.
Overal, I think these changes would make population growth behave in a more realistic manner.
Military Logistics
I said that I played lots of Alpha Centauri, and I like their method of military support. Which is: units are supported from a certain base, which lose shields from their productivity to support them. Civ3 does it drasticaly different. It is about total mil costs in the whole nation, and it costs gold, not shields.
To add more variety, military support could vary with government types. There are 2 ways in which they can be unique. The first way is obviously whether you pay in gold or shields. The second way is whether the nation pays for it, or if the city pays for it.
Feudalism, since its decentralized and uses forced labor (instead of paid), it would use shields, and the costs are limited to the base, exactly like the SMAC model.
Communism, since it is a more centralized and organized, while still restricting economic freedom, could pay with shields, while it costs the nation. If the #of free units is less than the # of your actual units, shields start to be lost in some cities. It works similarly to wastage of shields in Civ3, it just takes more advantage of it. Since all cities share the same limited effects, the production penalties of other governments are alleviated by military support being spread evenly around.
The Republic could use the basic Civ3 support model (Gold, nation pays), since it is liberal, and centralized.
Democracy, in the Athenan model, is more decentralized than the republic, so individual cities must pay the gold to support units they build.
What's good about this variance is that having excessively large armies for free governments lose more of their extra commerce (while not taking the productivity hits they had in SMAC), while war-governments lose shields, therefore the ability to amass their army even larger. They get less commerce as it is, so making it cost shields gives them a breather. Plus, it's more realistic when a sovereign autonomous city-state (Democracy and Feudalism) must foot the bill on its own forces.
Realistic Population Growth/Disease
Canada, like the US, has an obesity problem. We are swimming in food up here, yet our population is only a tenth of the US. And both have flat growth (virtualy). Now look at China. It has a lot of food. It has a lot of people. And it is still growing at an amazing rate. Now look at Ethiopia. They're starving, but they have a strong growth rate as well.
I think this has to do with happiness. Most of the unhappy/less prosperious nations have fast growth rates (most of africa, for example). Another thing that affects growth rates are the life expectancies. Lower they are, quicker the growth.
Obviously more crowded people are less inclined to make more babies. And it's also unreasonable to assume that happy/luxurious cities will grow (or even not decline). Because reality shows otherwise.
If this was integrated into the game, it would give an interesting dimension to citizen welfare vs the growth of your empire. The dichitomy of DEVELOPED VS DEVELOPING nations that shapes our world can also be more expressed if these things were taken into account.
How I thought about doing it: I was thinking about having growth be based on happiness. The % of people who are happy in a city could be the % that is subtracted from the standard growth rate. Obviously they may cause starvation, but that's a little thing called obesity and class differences. (Perhaps the communsim government alleviates obesity problems, being dedicated to equality)
Also, another thing that's common among real populations is disease/famine. Famines can basicaly be -1 food in every square, while diseaseLooking at the world, both are more common in developing nations. Graineries (in addition to +100% growth rate) can also severly reduce the damage of famines, and hospitals can reduce the damage of disease. As for diseases, they can happen because of having no hospitals, having jungles nearby, and they could both reduce the pop and cause unhappines (which would help offset growth penalites in pop 1-12 cities, so they still grow sufficiently). These things, taken together, mean that more developed cities (those with graneries and hospitals and aquaducts, and are usually wealthier) have slower growth, but are much better at retaining the pop they have, being healthier and having more food storage and all.
Overal, I think these changes would make population growth behave in a more realistic manner.
Military Logistics
I said that I played lots of Alpha Centauri, and I like their method of military support. Which is: units are supported from a certain base, which lose shields from their productivity to support them. Civ3 does it drasticaly different. It is about total mil costs in the whole nation, and it costs gold, not shields.
To add more variety, military support could vary with government types. There are 2 ways in which they can be unique. The first way is obviously whether you pay in gold or shields. The second way is whether the nation pays for it, or if the city pays for it.
Feudalism, since its decentralized and uses forced labor (instead of paid), it would use shields, and the costs are limited to the base, exactly like the SMAC model.
Communism, since it is a more centralized and organized, while still restricting economic freedom, could pay with shields, while it costs the nation. If the #of free units is less than the # of your actual units, shields start to be lost in some cities. It works similarly to wastage of shields in Civ3, it just takes more advantage of it. Since all cities share the same limited effects, the production penalties of other governments are alleviated by military support being spread evenly around.
The Republic could use the basic Civ3 support model (Gold, nation pays), since it is liberal, and centralized.
Democracy, in the Athenan model, is more decentralized than the republic, so individual cities must pay the gold to support units they build.
What's good about this variance is that having excessively large armies for free governments lose more of their extra commerce (while not taking the productivity hits they had in SMAC), while war-governments lose shields, therefore the ability to amass their army even larger. They get less commerce as it is, so making it cost shields gives them a breather. Plus, it's more realistic when a sovereign autonomous city-state (Democracy and Feudalism) must foot the bill on its own forces.
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