Major issue: territory = victory

[GePap]

Originally posted by Trifna
Ok, so now we're finished with the definition of "major" I hope. It's an adjective, and thus it is always **** COMPARED to. Go get the numbers on Israel army. It's quite an army. the country is little. It has this. This is something to notice as a good example for what I was talking about.

In 1991 Iraq had the world's 4th largest army. Size of a military is not a particularly good measure os great power status- any small regional country can arm itself to the teeth-the question is the ability to project that power.

And by power one also means economic heft and diplomatic heft. A regional player like Israel has a small economy and little diplomatic power worldwide.

[GePap]

Originally posted by frekk
Better to look a bit further in the past. Japan in WW2 is an incredible example of a tiny country with force projection rivalling that of the biggest nations of the world in its day.

Japan's population was largers than Germany's in 1940. Lets not forget Japan had industrialized rapidly since 1854, in 1895 had beaten China and gained the island of Formosa (taiwan), then in 1904-05 defeated Russia and gained control of Korea soon after and great influence in Manchuria. Japan by 1940 was by all measures a great imperial power.

[frekk]

Well, then we're getting into what we mean when we say a "tiny" or a "large" country.

I was speaking in geographic terms, and this is one factor in Civ which models the real world very poorly - a geographically tiny civ is always always tiny in terms of its population as well. In the real world this isn't the case.

I guess that, more than anything else, goes to the root of the "territory=victory" problem.

There's no way in a civ game, as it currently stands, that a civ centered in Japan could be more powerful than a civ centered in, say, Australia, on any realistically scaled earth map.

[conmcb25]

Originally posted by Vince278
Culture points was a way to measure how well you project in a number of areas. As for challenging large empires I'm still in favor of bringing back civil wars.

I miss this from CIV 2.

I like this idea

[Trifna]

I did not wish to highjack my own thread by saying that Israel was the world leading power; I meant that it is a "power" with lots of "power", while it is small. Let's forget Israel, the example of Japan brought by some is better.


frekk resumes it well:

There's no way in a civ game, as it currently stands, that a civ centered in Japan could be more powerful than a civ centered in, say, Australia, on any realistically scaled earth map.

The future is never drawn all that much from a strict and stable factor such as territory (but it's a very important factor of course). It's alot more fluid and maleable. There are many other strategies, ways to play around that are not tend to be pre-determined from the moment territory is taken.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Vince278
Culture points was a way to measure how well you project in a number of areas. As for challenging large empires I'm still in favor of bringing back civil wars.

YES!

[Jon Shafer]

The power of civs in reality is based upon their resources. Included in those resources are things like food, minerals and people. The more resources you have the stronger you are. In Civ, the "land" resource is one of the most powerful because you can derive all other resources from it.

To bring Civ back towards the way reality works, it would require a model based more upon population than land area. By extension, having more land should not automatically mean more population.

The way to encourage larger cities is to make them more powerful. Give them higher support bonuses (Conquests started this, but it should be taken many steps further), perhaps give a bonus to production and commerce as a city's size increases... and so on. The key is to make building UP more important than building OUT. That's how you make a civ like Germany or Japan stronger than Russia.

[conmcb25]

Good post trip and I agree.

How would you do it? Where would the "breaking points" be?

[frekk]

I tend to agree with all this, and that to some degree in the real world land does determine the success of a culture. The problem with civ is that there are not enough different kinds of terrain, and not enough difference between the kinds of terrain that exist. In the real world, its the quality of land, not the quantity.

The flipside of this is, of course, if terrain values had even greater disparity, then the blind luck of starting position would be even more important than it currently is.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by frekk
4. Do away with corruption, and replace it with a system that models political challenges of large empires - insurgents and uprisings in disaffected regions.

Exactly what needs to be done. Ethnic factions in large civs need to be volitile, there needs to be a real possibility of civil war within your civ.

My idea is that the game have some sort of way to recognize the relative strengths of your cities. Major cities in your empire must be appeased. If they go into revolt, there is a chance that the city will attempt to break off and start its own civilization, taking with it a few smaller neighboring cities that are under its influence. I'm going to start a thread on this for more discussion.

[Whoha]

Having Ethnic factions being a problem is just going to force the player to ethnicly cleanse the region to have it not "culture flip" on him. They should be a problem, but it should be worth more to keep them alive then to kill them all. The Ottoman Turks for instance held control over the Arabs until the British came in and broke up their empire.

Having a large territory should be a problem, perhaps a certain amount of transportation infrastructure and other infrastructure in general should have to be present for you to maintain control over cities further away, and corruption should go up until you get to the point where you have no effective control over a city that is so far away that it is governmentally and culturally not linked to your civilization anymore.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Here are some thoughts:

1) More cities=more demand for resources=more chance of resources disappearing in large empires. This could leave the small nation, with 2-3 sources of a particular resource, in a fantastic position to leverage wealth from larger nations!

2) Make cities and terrain improvements COST. This means that larger empires with lots of connective infrastructure and/or small cities will be less well of than a small, compact nation! (I have actually done some rough calculations which show that, even though large nations still get a net benefit from roads and/or rails, it is often as much as HALF of that of a much smaller nation).

3) Perhaps tie wealth to city size and/or population. Also, the DEMOGRAPHICS of a city should be important too, so a city of merchants and civil servants should be wealthier than one of workers and farmers.

4) Make the benefits of trade networks (road/rail and or harbours etc) more dependant on both the size of the city they connect to AND the population/wealth of the cities it is connected into!

5) Large empires=large military to defend them=less money and shields for science, commerce and industry.

6) Large empires will benefit less from high central culture out towards its periphery. This means that cities close to a border will be subject to inreased 'regionalism', as your culture and foreign cultures mix-increasing the risk of seccession later in the game.

7) Increased size=decreased stability-again especially out towards the periphery. In fact, stability would be a great replacement for the current 'corruption'model (though 'corruption/crime' levels would play a role in stability), as it wouldn't adversely effect shields or wealth, but would simply increase the chance of a city breaking away and/or your government collapsing. Of course, there would be ways to increase both city and national stability levels!

Anyway, just a thought.

EDIT: Having read Trips post, I think he is REALLY onto something. My feeling is that a city might actually COST you money when you first build it, but slowly start to break even, then earn you money, as the population grows and the resources it gathers increases! If this were done, I feel that the current corruption model could be done away with completely, and changed into an abstract idea which, as I mentioned above, effects stability of the city and nation!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Solver]

7) Increased size=decreased stability-again especially out towards the periphery. In fact, stability would be a great replacement for the current 'corruption'model (though 'corruption/crime' levels would play a role in stability), as it wouldn't adversely effect shields or wealth, but would simply increase the chance of a city breaking away and/or your government collapsing. Of course, there would be ways to increase both city and national stability levels!

But, we should remember that the Civ3 way of limiting usefulness of large empires by corruption does not work, as when your remote cities produce 2 shields max, it simply stops being fun.

[Trifna]

I don't believe corruption is necessarily the ONE thing that stops empire from being bigger. The problem with lots of people, and espescially lots of people with different background, is that it brings lots of possibilities for disagreement and conflict of interest.

To bring this in the game would mean to roughly gauge inhabitant groups compared to each other. And of course, having many different groups or a multi-ethnic society (as Russia, China, United States, Romans, etc.) can have many advantages (new blood ) but also potential tentions. How to modelize this easily? I have no complete thing right on my mind, and have to get back to some work

[Solver]

I don't believe corruption is necessarily the ONE thing that stops empire from being bigger. The problem with lots of people, and espescially lots of people with different background, is that it brings lots of possibilities for disagreement and conflict of interest.

In Civ3, it was the only thing that was a disadvantage of a big empire, and it was still greatly outweighed by the advantages.