Some ideas for the expansion

[Enigma_Nova]

On further consideration, I also want a Trebuchet unit (guilds?) for Medieval siege, and a Dock improvement so you can connect resources on a nearby island to your capital.

[Silver14]

What I'd like for the expansion is a method of 'directing' automated workers.

I'd like for there to be an overlay the player can bring up and then drag and drop 'ghost' improvements to where you want them built. Roads here, cottages here, farms here, lumber mills here etc. So you can just spend a few moments laying out what you want. Then you can close the overlay and set workers to automate so they build only the improvements where you have specified.

Even after the latest patch I don't fully automate until the only things left to build are railroads and lumber mills. I like to make sure I can get irrigation spread to where its needed, cottages put in the best spots and so forth. Something like this will allow me (and others) to automate from the start.

[Enigma_Nova]

Originally posted by Silver14
What I'd like for the expansion is a method of 'directing' automated workers.

They already have that. It's called "Don't Automate Workers".

[Generaldoktor]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
On further consideration, I also want a Trebuchet unit (guilds?) for Medieval siege, and a Dock improvement so you can connect resources on a nearby island to your capital.

I always thought you get the resources, if they're in the city radius, whether there's a road/bridge connection or not. Trebuchets, or some similar late-ancient improvement on the catapault, sound like a good idea, though I have to wonder if the reason they pruned so many units from Civ3 (I liked AEGIS cruisers and stealth fighters,) is because they are really determined to keep the combat aspect simple here.

[jmp]

What about adding sports to the mix?

Sports could spread much the way religion does in the current game, with a few limitations. (For example, ice hockey can't spread too far from the poles before the invention of refrigeration.) Small cities could build minor league facilities for professional sports that have spread to them, and larger ones could build major league facilities. Major league cities could send players on tour to spread the sport just like religious missionaries. (After all, it's said that baseball caught on in Japan after Babe Ruth visited the country.) The facilities would add happiness to the cities. Major league facilities would produce income in cities that also have a broadcast tower.

Different things would trigger the creation of different sports. For example, golf could only be created in a city that has a working sheep pasture. Ice hockey can only start in a place with frost.

If you look at the real world, it's very easy to pick a few sports to include. Soccer/football being the obvious dominant world sport, having successfully spread to basically everywhere other than the US. Baseball has strong followings throughout the Americas and parts of the Pacific Rim. Cricket is played in most places that were under British rule in the late 19th Century. Basketball is popular in the US and is growing in Europe and other regions. Tennis has something of a worldwide following, while American football is more of a curiosity outside of the US.

This could possibly be done as a mod, since much of it is based on the same concepts as the game's implementation of religion. I don't have enough time to play around with the mod engine to figure it out...
-JMP

[Common Sensei]

Originally posted by jmp
What about adding sports to the mix?

Sports could spread much the way religion does in the current game, with a few limitations. (For example, ice hockey can't spread too far from the poles before the invention of refrigeration.) Small cities could build minor league facilities for professional sports that have spread to them, and larger ones could build major league facilities. Major league cities could send players on tour to spread the sport just like religious missionaries. (After all, it's said that baseball caught on in Japan after Babe Ruth visited the country.) The facilities would add happiness to the cities. Major league facilities would produce income in cities that also have a broadcast tower.

Different things would trigger the creation of different sports. For example, golf could only be created in a city that has a working sheep pasture. Ice hockey can only start in a place with frost.

If you look at the real world, it's very easy to pick a few sports to include. Soccer/football being the obvious dominant world sport, having successfully spread to basically everywhere other than the US. Baseball has strong followings throughout the Americas and parts of the Pacific Rim. Cricket is played in most places that were under British rule in the late 19th Century. Basketball is popular in the US and is growing in Europe and other regions. Tennis has something of a worldwide following, while American football is more of a curiosity outside of the US.

This could possibly be done as a mod, since much of it is based on the same concepts as the game's implementation of religion. I don't have enough time to play around with the mod engine to figure it out...
-JMP

Simplest way to have any kind of sport-related influence is to have Olympics. Have it function a little like the UN. Every "term" (4 turns) all civs get to vote on which city gets to host the games, nominated from the top 5 or 10 cities as rated in the Top 5 Cities demographic screen. The host city gets a commerce boost during the term. It'd kind of be like a "wandering World Wonder."

[Enigma_Nova]

Sounds like an idea, but if you add in many ways to bump up happiness without bumping up health, then Expansive Civs will (relatively) grow in power.
Not that Bismack is complaining, he seems quite happy with this idea.

[Hauptman]

The AI will never come to the player and offer something for nothing and will always ask or demand the player give something for nothing. All the AI seem arrogant from the start, either demanding something or asking for something and not giving anything in return even if they are able. Sometimes you will get asked to trade tech x for tech y but other times they'll just beg or demand tech x and never cough up tech y - meaning they don't really need it that badly.

I beg to differ, Ive had hatshepsut open dialog with me to offer economics for free! (she was running against me for UN victory, silly girl)

[arcady]

Re: Re: Some ideas for the expansion

Originally posted by Grenouille How about some older, classic religions that get out-of-date, as soon as one of the 7 big religions spread? Greek/Roman mythology or north-european paganism comes to mind. Or would that be too un-P.C.?

Nothing historically says these religions should go out of date.

Shinto and Hindu are both essentially paganism - little different in form if not substance from what the Greeks, Romans, and Inca had (though the Inca resembled more of an organized religion paganism, and the aztec are a great example of theocracy paganism.

The only reason any one religion in history goes out is that another displaces it through conversion.

I'd go in for more religions, but would find the notion of any of them being seen as out of date as somewhat offensive.


I would like to see the ability of old religion to pop back up from time to time, and for some tracking within a city of what percentage belongs to each faith found therein - with that used to give a chance that a city might shift in dominant faith, or might get angry citizens if the majority differs from the 'state religion'.


It might even be neat if some cities took to favoring older civics you had abandoned. So that if you adopted 'free religion' city X might get some anger insisting you go back to organized religion or theocracy - for a time at least, and then get along with the present ways, but perhaps with a chance of swinging back into 'traditionalism'.

[arcady]

I'd like to see more civilizations.

I'd be keen on getting the;

• Iroqoi - a major player in North America until the American Civil War era
• Koreans - the hermit kingdom, land of the morning calm, that has been the battleground between China and Japan for 2000 years.
• Maya - once a great meseoamerican civilization with a greater library than that at Alexandria until the Spanish found it.
• Zulu - the story of South Africa is wrapped in this nation's fall.
• Ethiopians - the only African power to never fall to Europe, and the home of the oldest Christian church's in the world, supposedly founded by Jesus' apostiles
• Celts - the original people of the 'British Isles', whos modern descendants still fill out many of the ethnic groups there
• Tibetans - once a military empire, now a pacifist people conquered by an agressive neighbor
• Aboriginee - the absolute oldest 'people' on Earth.
• Polynesians - founded a sailing legacy across the largest ocean on Earth, with little tech at all
• Lakota (aka Souix) - once the greatest warrior culture in North America, until they were finally defeated in 1890.
• Isrealites - From Abraham to David, most in the Western world know their story.
• Anasazi - the Navaho word for 'ancients' - the long lost civilization that built a network of highways and cities across the southwest until mysteriously disapearing.
• Siam - today Thailand they were once a great power in Southeast Asia and could do well to fill in an 'Asia game'.
• Navaho - by the time of USA getting to the west, the Navaho descendants of the Anasazi were and still are the city builders. The city of Santa Fe, the oldest European city in North America, is in their region.
• Ashanti - one of the great West African empires from 1670 until conquered by Europeans in 1902.
• Kongo - a great African empire into the 1500s.
• Songhai - Mali's great rival, conquered in the 1300s, it rose again in the 1500s until Morocco conquered it a century later.
• Moors - A north African kingdom that once viably threatened to conquer Europe.
• Toltec - the people who used Cortez to finally end the multigenerational war they had been having with the Aztecs, who were actually invaders from the north. Modern natives from the region around Mexico City are usually actually Toltec and not Aztec, and the feathered Serpent is the Toltec 'messiah god'.

And for an -expansion- I would like to see some optional styles of play. I for one would love to see built in fantasy elements as was begun but not well explored in CIV II.

Having the ability to play a game that used magical elements as well would be very entertaining.

[MadDjinn]

I'd also like to see the Celts back...

but then you get into era clashes with CIVs..

the Celts are the foundation of most of the European CIVs since their time, not just the Isles.

[Jabutron]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
Sounds like an idea, but if you add in many ways to bump up happiness without bumping up health, then Expansive Civs will (relatively) grow in power.

They've found that while there is a short-term economic boost to cities that host the Olympics, it soon fades, and I don't think they ever recoup the cost of all the new construction.

Perhaps it adds a happiness modifier, but also corruption from all the mob-owned concrete facilities and trash contractors. Make it so that unless it is built in an economic super-city, it really hurts the local economy (and even puts a dent in the bigger ones).

[Jabutron]

I would like to have the ability to build bridges/tunnels from one land mass to another. I get annoyed by having to ferry workers/troops across a one square ocean gap on transports, especially if I'm waging war. With the introduction of work boats, this presents a great opportunity to create something to cross a one- or two-gap expanse. It can be pillaged just like every other improvement, so it would need to be garrisoned. Additionally, maybe a national wonder could be built, like the Chunnel, to connect two cities within set parameters.

[arcady]

Originally posted by Jabutron
They've found that while there is a short-term economic boost to cities that host the Olympics, it soon fades, and I don't think they ever recoup the cost of all the new construction.

Perhaps what the game needs is a new feature called 'historic events'.

Examples would be:

Olympics
Great Concert (Woodstock)
Cultural Revolution (forced civics adjustment)
Death of great matyr (Socrates / Jesus / Dr. King / Salem Witch trials - this one might be best if it never names the victim)
Exodus
Slave Revolt
Natural disaster

Each of these would have an odd short term effects - which would only be lasting they got 'played out' right/wrong.

The Exodus for example might cause a shift in population between two cities, and be likely to happen during a civics revolution or if a city goes angry for a while

A slave revolt might cause a population drop in a civ with slavery, and possibly founding of a new computer civ if they succeed.

Something like Olympics might have a chance of bringing in wealth (Seoul 88 revolutionized the Korean economy and that country is still affected by it) or causing depression (as has happened so often in poorly managed Olympics).

Woodstock, or other 'great concerts' - would be triggers for short golden ages that come with unpredictable results in religious conversions or even civics changes (and while you can always rechange your civics, if it keeps the usual time delay on that there is your impact right there).

A natural disaster could take on epic proportions like a great flood wiping out several cities or a tornado / hurricane destroying all the improvements in a line (tornado) or along a coastal area (hurricane). Or it could be an earthquake doing damage in a small tight circle (which if it happens to land on a city could be devestating).

The trial of a martyr would have an effect like a one or two turn pause on the generation of any culture - which for a culture machine city could be devestating. Alternatively it cause a random undiscovered religion to spring up afterwards - so it costs you at first but later becomes something your people rally around.

The cultural revolution is a wierd one. We've seen it many times in history but it might not be an event as I've described them but more as aspect of a civics change. The cultural revolution is when a society's leaders force a change in the social, political, and economic values of its people through harsh means. Dissidents are rounded up, intellectuals are pruged, witches and heretics are burned, reeducation camps are formed, and so on.

What game effect that might have? It might be a random shift up or down in the rate of culture, wealth, and research after any civics change that lasts two turns. Think of a two turn 'golden age / dark age' - where each of the three factors might be gold or dark or just normal. If it happens, the benefit to the player becomes the ability during those two turns to reassign up to three population in every city to another city, but no one city able to take in more than 6. If this is done however, you risk losing up to half the reassigned people in 'purges'.



All of these might be interesting, but they might be frustrating on play as well - especially if they end up being negative too often, or too 'boonful'.

These ideas are just 'half off the cuff', and if the idea of events was liked, obviously they would need more thinking through than I've done so far to make sure they normally did not have more than short term effects.

The idea is that if well managed they could be a boon, but if poorly managed they could be a bust, and if ignored you might just be back where you were after a few turns.

The exception would be natural disasters, and those get their boon if they hit a rival, or their bust if you hit you. But perhaps in both cases they could create better international relations or domestic opportunity if well managed (Asian Typhoon and SF 89 Earthquake for ex) or domestic stryfe if poorly managed (Katrina for ex).

[arcady]

Originally posted by MadDjinn
I'd also like to see the Celts back...

but then you get into era clashes with CIVs..

the Celts are the foundation of most of the European CIVs since their time, not just the Isles.

This is true of almost any civilization in the real world in relation to almost any other.

Modern DNA is showing Europeans seem to mostly be descended from what you might call 'proto-Turks', but that any two given Europeans are more likey to have DNA in common with an African or Asian ancestor than each other. That Europeans generally don't share any common ancestors with each other.

And the same pattern generally holds elsewhere in the world as well - you could say any two Africans might have more in common with a European or Indian (as in India) ancestor than with each other.

Alsom roughly one in four to one in two-hundred males alive today suppossedly has DNA from Genghis Kahn in him.

But civilizations are more about culture than genes.

And even there the same issue holds. Europe for example, can be traced to cultural roots in Rome / Greece as much as in the Celts and Scandanavians. There are also strong links to the middle east, to central asia, and so on.

If you say the celts don't belong because today they can be traced out to anyone, the same holds for the Romans, the Mongols, the Mali, the Inca, The Aztec, the Chinese, the Egyptians, The Persians, and others.


Part of CIV seems to be a 'what if' game - and these era clashes are common already and have been since CIV I.

Without them, it should be impossible to play the Americans before 1776.

It's always been more interesting to take all the 'great peoples of history' and churn them around in hat, then pull out a few names and toss them down with the idea of 'what if this particular batch was the batch that started it all?'

If we were worried about era clashes, civs should be disapearing and new ones starting up at almost any point during the game - to reflect not just the rise and fall, but the revival and creation of new ones.

Such a complexity though, might stretch the game into unplayability.