Emmigration in Civilization

[munchkinguy]

I have heard that CivIV is in development. I like the idea from CivIII of culture and the ability to acquire cities through cultural domination. There is, however, one thing that should be added: Emmigration.

There have been several cases throughout history where cities have been captured culturally. Something that happens more frequently is that citizens of poorer countries immigrate to better-off countries. This could be easily integrated into Civ IV. In a city that has poor health, low culture, unhappiness, etc. a population head (or two) could ‘disappear’ and form a settler unit that would be ‘donated’ to the player that had culturally dominated the city. Then the player could move this settler unit and use it to add population to existing cities or found new cities. The emigration could be controlled by the overall culture produced by an empire as opposed to an adjacent city. This has happened several times throughout history and has founded many cities and nations, such as the United States and Canada.

This feature, along with the possibility of culturally capturing cities would make Civ IV a more complex and interesting game to play.

[Nikolai]

You think of something along the roads of Paradox's Victoria? It's automated(but influenceable) system is a bit too complex to demand from Firaxis with their design philosophy, but perhaps something simpler, like your settler idea, could be doable.

[Puupertti Ruma]

I think the cultural conversion should happen little like munchkinguy descibed, not flipping a whole city in a flick, but to make the transition more subtle.

I have thought out a system for this and, although it is quite similar to munchkinguys idea, it includes less micromanagering, and I've described it in such a detail, it could be introduced to the game as is. Or to The List *wink wink*. Oh well, one can always hope...
Oh, and it's an idea I originally thought up, just didn't define it until munchkinguy gave me the needed inspiration. For this I thank you man!

Ok, here it is:

For two nations with a difference in cultural ratio, there is a chance that an immigrant unit is created in the culturally inferior nation. The bigger the gap, bigger the chance that this happens.
If you take the health, religion and other new systems introduced with cIV, you could use them all to create some kind of approval rating which would dedict the probability of immigrants.

In this example I use Celts as the cultural underdog, and Rome as the cultural superpower.

The immigrant unit is automatically created from a random Celtic city in a way that [b]doesn't effect the building queue of that city (so your half built Cure for Cancer wont be cancelled from a random event). The immigrant unit doesn't have a shield cost, however it has a population point cost that is proportional to the size of the city and unrest in the city, ie. bigger city and more unrest means bigger immigrant unit (this is to prevent small size cities being crippled by this and to emulate the fact that unhappy citizen are more willing to migrate). The Celtic player is notified that immigrants have left one of his cities. (As a further note, in a oppressive government, the unit could be from the scientific elite, having a negative impact on science.)

This unit then heads out to a randomly chosen city in the more dominant culture, moving with a certain movement speed. This movement is automatic and neither the Celtic, nor the Roman player can control the unit. It is totally in control of AI. (Because of this it is imperative that Celtic player is noticed when a immigrant is created). This is the major way this system differs from munchkinguys and is in my opinion a MAJOR reduce in MM.

If so willing, the Celtic player may attack the immigrants with a military unit. When doing so, the immigrant unit is destroyd, and the probability of new immigrant units being spawned is halved for a fixed number of turns. This is cumulative, so already halved probability is halved again if you destroy a newly spawned immigrants. If the immigrant unit cost more than 1 population point, half (rounded down) of it's worth is returned to the city it originated, as these fools are made to remember why they want to live in your glorius nation .
The price of attacking your own people is massive reputation loss in foreign relations and a great increase in general unrest in the whole nation. This in effect might make the situation even worse, as the new immigrant units would be bigger due to the unrest.

When/if the immigrant unit finally gets to the Roman city it was headed, Roman player is informed that a Celtic immigrants are flocking to his cities. If the Roman player does not want these immigrants for some reason (e.g. overpopulation), he can turn them away. This makes the immigrant unit instantly join the Celtic city it originally left effectively nullifying the situation. This naturally improves relations between Rome and Celts.
If however Roman player accepts the immigrants as new citizens of his city, the immigrant unit joins the city as a worker would, increasing the city's population with as many people, as left from the Celtic city. These new people preserve their original Celtic nationality, and all normal assimilation rules apply.


There. If you got this far I thank you. I used quite a lot of time and effort for this (read: too much), so I'dd like comments, flaming, whatever. Or just notifying you actually read this..... :grin:

[munchkinguy]

Well, there would have to be some city conversions too. I mean, if the culture of your city has completely surrounded an opponent's town... they would convert. The idea (in my mind) was to balance the scales a little bit.

[alms66]

Originally posted by Puupertti Ruma
When/if the immigrant unit finally gets to the Roman city it was headed, Roman player is informed that a Celtic immigrants are flocking to his cities. If the Roman player does not want these immigrants for some reason (e.g. overpopulation), he can turn them away. This makes the immigrant unit instantly join the Celtic city it originally left effectively nullifying the situation. This naturally improves relations between Rome and Celts.

I like it Ruma. But, I'd change it to where if the Romans turn the Celtic Immigrants away, the Celtic immigrants seek another culturally superior civ, if none exists, they go found their own civilization (i.e. new city by new civ) assuming there is a place to put it (if there isn't one, then the immigrants return home). All civs that turn the immigrants away get a bonus to relations with the Celts.