Civl Wars and Breakaway Civilizations in Civ 4.

[bigvic]

civil wars could be a path to the next level of the genre and according to soren's 1/3 rule probably won't be a big part of civ4, but...

i would like to see lots of them. could be a way to introduce new civs and give the game some kind of authenticity. i mean, you start with x number of civs. there are say 4x number of civs that can exist at once, but maybe 20x total civsx that can come into existence during the course of play as a result of civil wars and/or some other mechanism (mixture of culture, granting of independence, etc). what i think would be super cool is if the player then had the opportunity to play out the new civ his civ spawned. like, "oh these english have been fun, but i'm getting bored. oh hey look! i just spawned the americans! oh crap! oh wait, i can choose to play the americans and fight my former self to survive? now that sounds like a challenge."

you know? also the minor civs of galciv are cool. i love fighting, but true conquest of alien cultures, especially in the modern world are almost unheard of. perhaps differing levels of control, client states, etc would be nice, but all of this, i'm afraid is far beyond the scope of the next incarnation of civ1. i just hope they get the freakin artillery right and improve the ai.

[Brent]

I would be in favor of the basic way Civ2 handled them, but I'd like the splitoffs to be (or at least have a decent chance of being) civs that weren't available in setup. Realworld splitoffs if available, if not, realworld subregions, if not, new inventions. But I don't see why the player shouldn't be able to name the splitoff, it doesn't affect gameplay anyway.

Forgive me for getting biblical here, but as an example, I'd like to be able to start the game with a unified human race, the Antediluvians for lack of a better name, and have the object (or a possible goal) be to keep unified for a certain amount of time. Splitoffs could be the Cainites, then Japhethites and Hamites, blablabla, maybe it would be okay for someone to split off as long as the mother civ can hold its unity for a certain amount of time afterward, like maybe in relation to the time it took before you usually lost unity. Or maintaining unity for a certain amount of time could be one possible victory condition along with others like we already have.

Maybe choosing which side of a split to continue as could be a strategic choice, and there would be a way for a smart person to know which half has better chances or is likely to, but it shouldn't be too obvious. Maybe the decision is based on the new Civ Traits of the halves and which the individual player would be better at taking advantage of.

There's always Civ5... or hopefully we'll be able to implement our radical ideas that the Big Guys didn't specifically plan for in modding.

[bigvic]

yeah, i mean i respectwhat the guys have done with these games and in allfairnes some of the things i've suggested (and some i have not) would alter the game significantly. i respect the design and design philosophy but from what i have heard civ 4, though i am sure i will purchase and enjoy it, contains nothing truly revolutionary. 3d graphics and a few bells and whistles will not result in anything truly groundbreaking.

ihate to sound negative since i am sure i will get plenty of enjoyment from the product. i suppose it seems that despite all the awesome coolness of the civilization series there is always something that profoundly irritates me about the game that should have been caught and fixed inthe designstage yet in spite of modifications and patches ad nauseum never gets fixed and detracts enough from the game itself to deny it the descriptionof "almost perfect". inearly civ it was that kill one/kill the whole stack thing. for civ 3 it was the ai inability to use artillery. this last was especially inexcusable in that once i learned (fairly early) that the ai was incapable of using these incredibly power units, i realized that regardless of ai cheating i would almost always triumph, no real challenge. if you design a powerful unit and expect people to have fun playing against the ai, make sure the ai can use the unit at least minimally adequately and properly. otherwise whats the point. and after lord knows how many patches the ai use of these resources was still hideously lacking.

[UnGenius]

The civil wars of Civ2 were one feature that I really missed in Civ3. Toward the end of a Civ3 game, when it's usually just me and another former world power that I'm chipping away at every turn, it starts to get boring. When you know you've cut them off from the resources they need, and they really don't stand a chance at stopping your advance, then what's the point? If it's only a matter of time (on big maps, a long time) until you "officially" win, then at that point it is more fun to just start a new game.

If civil wars were brought back, and done properly, then there would still be something to look forward to at that point. Yes, you've pretty much conquered the world - but what about those regions in the south and the west that are threatening to break off? What if the current war strikes a chord with the nation you conquered thirty turns ago, reminding them of their former glory? There are so many things to consider here that it would undoubtedly make the end-game situations much more challenging and worthwhile.

Also, what if you're the other civ? The one whose resources have been cut off, the one who has been the victim of nuclear attacks, the one who has been losing cities to the enemy every turn? In Civ3, this scenario is usually hopeless. But what if you could invest in propaganda, the same way you invest in technologies? The more money you put into propaganda, the more the enemy's citizens see of your plight, and the more willing they are to support your cause. Stir something within them, whether it's nationalism, a desire for greater freedom, or just general anti-war sentiment. Look to the Cold War and you'll see powerful examples of this from both sides.

I think the entire notion of Civil Wars could add a whole new element of gameplay and make competition between superpowers even more engaging. It's hard to imagine that they could leave it out much longer - if it's not in Civ4, it will most likely be included in expansion packs or in Civ5.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by UnGenius

If civil wars were brought back, and done properly, then there would still be something to look forward to at that point. Yes, you've pretty much conquered the world - but what about those regions in the south and the west that are threatening to break off? What if the current war strikes a chord with the nation you conquered thirty turns ago, reminding them of their former glory? There are so many things to consider here that it would undoubtedly make the end-game situations much more challenging and worthwhile.

That's the stuff that I was trying to incorporate in my first post.

I think the entire notion of Civil Wars could add a whole new element of gameplay and make competition between superpowers even more engaging. It's hard to imagine that they could leave it out much longer - if it's not in Civ4, it will most likely be included in expansion packs or in Civ5.

I think that a modified and update Civil War model could be the next step for this genre, especially if you could choose whether you wanted to stay as the mother nation or chabge to become ruler of the seceeding state.

[korn469]

I think that civil wars should serve the purpose of restraining and controlling expansion. Civil wars should exist to curb sprawl by making it dangerous to have large or far flung civs before you had the necessary technology and infrastructure to support such a civ. I would try to set up some kind of mechanism for triggering civil wars so that the player wouldn't just randomly lose half of their empire.

For example have a communication and bureaucracy score for each civ. Communications determines how far away from your capital you can settle cities without suffering a happiness penalty. Bureaucracy determines how many cities you can settle before you get a happiness penalty. So lets say in the ancient age both numbers start at 10. Any city 10 tiles away or closer wouldn't have a penalty, any cities greater than 10 tiles would have a penalty. The degree of the penalty depends on how far away the city was from your capital. Something like 11-20 tiles away cause one extra unhappy citizen, 21-30 causes 2, etc. Have the exact same mechanism for bureaucracy. You could found up to 10 cities without a happiness penalty, but any cities founded (or captured) over that would have happiness penalties. Mirror it to the communications penalty so that 11-20 would cause one extra unhappy citizen, 21-30 would cause two etc. As you discovered new technologies these limits would increase. Then make it so that every city would have to have at least one worker. This way it would be impossible to simply ignore unhappiness. Only rioting cities would revolt. Normally a rioting city would have a 20% chance per turn of revolting, but cities with communitions or bureaucracy penalties would have a higher chance. Maybe like 10% per each extra unhappy citizen. So if you had 4 penalty citizens, then each turn a rioting city would have a 60% chance of revolt. Every time a rioting city revolts, every city with unhappiness penalties should also check to see if they revolt as well. If they do revolt all troops stationed in those cities should transfer from the mother civ to the breakaway.

Also cities siezed by force should present challenges as well. Unhappiness conquest penalties should apply to occupied cities. I believe that if a civ didn't have troops in a occupied city at the end of a turn then the city would automatically revert to it's former government (and sacrifice a point of population to turn into a defender unless it was size 1 then it would have like a 50% chance of producing a defender but it wouldn't lose population). Also occupied cities should have at least a double chance of revolting if they start to riot. This would also cause other nearby occupied cities to check to see if they revolt. All military units stationed in an occupied city that revolts would disappear, and the city would have a 50% chance per military unit of losing population. However an exception to that rule would be if an occupied city ever had as many troops as population it couldn't riot.

That's how I would do it if I was in charge of civ4, but I'm not.

[Sandman]

Good thread. My view:

First off, I would like to see independent minor civs appearing as cities (with military units, etc), rather than goody huts. You can interact with them in a variety of ways, and, crucially, even when conquered/assimilated, they tend to stick around as a distinct ethnic group. The way city radii are handled should be changed, so they're flexible, and you don't need to worry about overlap or unused squares. This way, independent cities could be incorporated into your empire without resulting in any awkwardness (and city placement would be more historical).

Secondly, cities conquered by barbarians would become independent cities, like in previous civs. Although you could interact with them in more ways than just conflict.

Thirdly, cities which are in revolt would have a chance of breaking away as independent cities.

Fourthly, cultural 'flipping' wouldn't happen. A strongly influenced city would be very rebellious, and would probably revolt unless strongly suppressed.

Fifthly, minor cities could become major civs if they became powerful enough, and they'd start behaving like normal civs.

I'd also like to see a change in the way in which revolts are handled. At the moment, it's binary; a city is either in revolt, or not in revolt. A more gradual system, with production penalties applying to rebellious cities, would be nice. Maybe these production penalties could be 'used' to build rebel military units, which would then spawn near the city. Obviously, seriously rebellious cities would be likely to revolt completely. And there's the possibility of clandestine activity by neighbouring powers (especially communist ones) to further increase the problems.

In addition, it would be nice if the stability rating was borrowed from Europe Universalis. A high stability means that there are relatively few unhappy citizens in your empire. But if your stability plummets, due to excessive warring or revolution, you're in trouble, and if you don't invest in raising your stability, be prepared to see your countryside swarming with rebels and your cities declaring independence. In EU, small nations could cope much better with stability loss than large nations, so this provides a way for small, nimble, nations to leapfrog the competition and get the more advanced governmental models whilst the large nations are just trying to stay together.

Needless to say, starvation and genocide, as well as entertainers, should be curtailed, so you can't just sweep the problem away.

[Shigga]

+1 @Leto

[Nikolai]

Now, wasn't that a great contribution...

[Shigga]

Why say more when he said what I wanted to say already? Doing the repeater is kind of pointless don't you think?

sry for offending.

[annoyed]

civil wars should also be affected by civ advances(nationalism, Comunism, etc) ideas that historically spawned civil unrest historically.