A matter of time

[emeseles]

One thing that interests me in Civ is the choice that, as a player, you look down upon high at all that is going on from the start of the game til the end of the game. I wondered, what would the game be like if you were actually down there - in the palace.

New game mechanic idea: Time. Every square represents an update from a courier about the state of a square, as it is known by visibility of units, roads, cities. The further from a place of authority, the longer it takes to receive an update for a square.

You give your units orders, they walk off to do your bidding. Each turn, information is sent back to you from every square that you can see - but it's done based on the technology and improvements you have available - to begin with, every report is done by foot. When you get horses, couriers are going to be riding - so it's a bit faster.. with roads, a bit faster still, with railroads, rather fast, telegraph, radio.. and finally satellite where you can see the entire world in ~1 turn lag.

Civics would give you the capacity to receive information faster. Monarchy must mean you have a hierarchy - you'll be able to put lords in a couple of your cities. The palace is where you live - moving your palace naturally shifts the flow of information, so if you have a big empire, you'll probably want to move your palace to the middle. The forbidden palace gives you another place to receive updates.

One of the unique implications is.. every player has a different view of the world (fog of war would also be obsolete). One player can see their army attacking your city and you only just found out there was an army at your borders.. naturally, the attacking player has no idea whether his army succeeded or not - but perhaps he included a fast courier in his stack which would reduce the time it takes to get back information of how the war is going.

A barbarian uprising on your borders could be a very bad thing.. you'd better have put enough military in to the nearby city to defend it, because by the time you've heard about the uprising, they're probably already pillaging and attacking your city. A few turns later you may hear the good news.. or the bad news about the fate of your city.

The game would become a great deal more strategical in nature and you would in many respects be limited in growth by your technology. Writing, Alphabet, Mapping are all things that can decrease the time it takes to receive information too, not just communication based techs.

It would force you, as a player, not to over extend yourself.. imagine if you will your only time advantage is roads and horses.. building the roman empire stretched across Europe would be a significant achievement, considering the slowness of news coming your way. You'd be playing very well indeed.

When you enter the age of the ocean, ships arriving on your coast - you'll really want to know about it, so building up your trade networks, having an appropriate civil structure, the right buildings, the right techs, will be really important - otherwise a surprise attack could be very bad indeed.

How about colonization? If you go to another continent and capture some cities or found some cities.. if it takes too many turns to get information back, they might just up and declare independence.. you can either go and fight them at that point or.. accept them as your new friends. There's now a reason why they would become a colony, not just to avoid costs (after all, colonies are usually very profitable).

This would also ease the burden on the AI too, as foreign AIs are much more likely to have room to expand, grow, learn - especially AIs on other continents.. when you meet an AI they're much more likely to be at your level because it would be perilous to expand too fast, or to march an army too far away from your palace to conquer an enemy force - they are so far away that it'd probably be a blind gambit. And even if you succeeded in taking their capital, how long do you think you can keep it if you can't connect a road to it in time?

You'd want the ability to see how old information in a square is - when was the last time you knew about its state in a fresh manner.. it's also interesting to note that sending orders to a unit far away from you means the unit must -receive- the orders before they can act on them. Planning ahead is really really important.

Perhaps this is something that could be done in Civ5. I'm not familiar enough with the modding capabilities as to whether such a system could be implemented in Civ4 - but I'd appreciate hearing if people would be interested in trying such a variant of Civ.

[wodan11]

Very intriguing! Would be a wonderful concept for Civ 5.

[Sarco]

Sounds really great.

You might have the option of building information infrastructure, as improvements or low-maintenance units, with certain techs, in cities and in squares. Perhaps you could build "radar stations" as a tile improvement for example in uninhabited islands without having to colonize them, to keep an eye on enemy fleet activity etc. Destroyed if they get inside another civs cultural borders or if pillaged (diplo hit or declaration of war etc).

You could have the option to focus your intelligence on some areas, meaning slower input from other areas. A bit like espionage points.

I really like this idea

[Lord Avalon]

This would add a reason to build forts. And outposts - a building* that wouldn't provide defense, but could be built quickly and add to your information network - extended range, quicker information flow.

*I don't mean a city building, but something a worker could construct anywhere.

[Theben]

It was mentioned in the CivIII List, so the concept isn't unknown to Firaxis... rather implementation and whether or not the player would really like it are the main concerns, methinks.

[Supr49er]

Very interesting ideas!

Welcome to Apolyton emeseles.

[bobbo008]

Well it's a great idea, just imagine how dependent you'd be on the AI, the same AI you groan at constantly. Can you imagine setting a ship out to explore a la Columbus or Magellan, only to find out that they just uselessly go back and forth to reveal that one black square they passed when ships are set on auto-explore?

[lermfish]

Imagine this scenario:

You send a unit to attack, based on information that was received three turns before.

However, that unit was destroyed three turns earlier, but the information hasn't reached you yet.


What happens?



But if this DOES get implemented, I would like units and buildings that spread misinformation/counter propoganda.

[Unimatrix11]

It SOUNDS intriguing at first, but lermfish already said, why it´s pretty undoable.

What could be done tho, is to generate something like ´order points´ or something, depending on roads and general infrastructure and you could only make so many ´moves´ (=mouse clicks) per turn - including those that dont do anything but only bring info on screen (like opening the city screen, the demographics...). The further away a unit is from your infrastructure/capital, the more points each click dealing with them would cost (and the cost of clicking them would ideally be the only info you have about them before you click them - except their location obviously). The way one could simulate the time/distance/information/organization issue without actually distorting the flow of the game in a way that would practically make it unplayable.

EDIT: Do you guys know ´M.U.L.E.´? It had a real-time part each turn, where you improved your assets, and the amount of time you had for that, depending on how much you had of a certain ressource (food) - kinda like that, only still strictly turn based.

[wodan11]

Why does lermfish's question make it undoable? There's no problem at all. What happens when an order gets to the front and the unit is dead? Nothing at all happens, obviously.

It would be nice to do contingency orders, though. e.g., "If still at full health, if enemy unit at X, attack X, else if enemy unit at Y, attack Y, else move to A, else rest."

Here it is in outline format:
If still at full health
-- if enemy unit at X
----- attack X
-- else
----- if enemy unit at Y
-------- attack Y
----- else
-------- move to A
else
-- fortify in place (rest/heal)

(I'm not a huge fan of the "order points" idea because it's too artificial for me. Unless you tied it to money or something. e.g., you have to pay the couriers 1 gp for each message. One of the reasons I really like this distance from the front idea is that it's more realistic.)

[ColdPhoenix]

The problem is that you have to rely on the AI.

It's trying to mimic real life but in reality the ancient army in a far away land would have been commanded by a real person who could react to what was happening. In the game this would mean you could give general orders to your units (go to that island, clear it of enemies and hold it) but the AI would have to be in control of the details.

It means losing some of the control that the game offers so, while it may be more realistic, I think it removes some of the enjoyment.

[Unimatrix11]

Well, wodan, and you would call such an interface really feasable in a game? I dont think so. Playing such a game would become a RPITA pretty soon.

On the points thing: If it´s money, it´s quite like city maintainance again, isnt it? You pay for growth. If you do it with seperate points, you get another layer. What improves your gold, doesnt need to improve your command points as well. Both could relate to rather unfamiliar tech-paths. If you have a big empire you might be allright with money, but maybe your organization is a bit behind. Thus you cannot afford to micromanage every city in your empire each turn (as you would in RL have to actually travel to each of the places). Unspent command points should be converted into culture in your capital at best, to provide some gain for not using all of them (as to speed up MP a bit).

EDIT: More about why the original suggestion is very hard to play at best:

Not only is it not certain wether the unit you are sending a command to right now still exists, but also, according to the OP, it could take a couple of turns for your command to arrive there. And, logically, for the result of the command (e.g. ´arrived and will be executed´ or ´found noone to pass command on to´) to return to you again. Say you assume your troop is ´3 turns away´ (meaning it takes 3 turns for your command to arrive). So you send your order. The next two turns seem no problem, assuming you havent lost the overview due to other commands pending and remember, that you already sent a command to that unit. Now, on turn 3 the messanger arrives at point X, where the army is supposed to be standing. What happens now? Depending on wether the actually army is there or not, it passes the order on or not, and then, in both cases, returns to your capital. Another 3 turns later, you either get the message that the army is now moving towards its new destination or that it had vanished. In the first case, You´d get an icon for the army on your screen i assume, right? Where? Where you know it was 3 turns ago, marked somehow as being 3-turns-old info, or where you have ordered it to go and marked somehow as ´predated´ (how fitting) info, or where it is supposed to be now? How would you be able to even send the next messanger to that army, if you dont know, where it actually is (will be)? You´d have to at least figure out, where the new messenger would ´intercept´ the army on its course, if you want to give it new orders, while still en route.

In the end, expect people to come down to a ´move one tile at a time, send messanger each turn´ behaviour with this, to avoid confusion. This will make the whole concept boil down to just more micro. At least if not supplemented with a limit of messangers - the command points.

[Blaupanzer]

Delays in messages and lack of information have played huge roles a few times in history. Mostly such realities are a wash, armies lost, armies placed fortuitously or disasterously. Since the minimum length of a turn is one year prior to modern times, there are not very many placements of units relative to cities where a messenger could not reach and return in a year.

However, one interesting point of the message system in terms of combat and forces movement is the "lost messenger." This is when the potential reinforcing commander continues to wander away from the combat because the message is not delivered. In ancient and classical warfare this arises occasionally. In medieval warfare, this sort of dissonance is quite common with messengers delivering to the wrong commanders, getting lost and delivering a day or more late, or getting killed giving the enemy intelligence but not the messenger's side.

[Willem]

How would you be able to even send the next messanger to that army, if you dont know, where it actually is (will be)? You´d have to at least figure out, where the new messenger would ´intercept´ the army on its course, if you want to give it new orders, while still en route.

I don't see that as being a big problem, you'd simply have their pathway marked on the map to show you where they're likely to be. However, I would find this type of system to be rather clumsy very quickly if I were to actually play with it. And it really wouldn't make alot of sense considering the time frames in the games. Someone already pointed out that with 1 year turns at the end, there isn't really too many places a messenger can't reach in a single turn. That becomes even more of an issue with the early game when the turns are 40-50 years apart. Your messengers would have to be pretty incompetant if they can't relay a message within 150 years or more. This type of system might be effective with a real time strategy game, but it wouldn't make any sense with the turn based method that Civ uses. I'd rather see supply lines brought into the game myself, that would be a much better way of dealing with whole distance issue.

[smbakeresq]

This has been done before in MOO2, and worked well

In MOO 2, you could not change orders of ships unless they were within a certain distance of a base of yours. This changed as the technology changed. This would be good for units in this game, once you order then to go some place, they are out of contact unless they are within a certain distance of your cities, modified by things such as roads, bridges, railroads and then radio. Radio could let units outside your cultural borders operate, so it would instantly move up the priority list.

As my idea

As a general rule, each city has a communication radius equal to its cultural radius.

1. units and cities within you capitals communication radius could be ordered about at will.

2. When not within a capitals communication radius and not connected to the capital with a road or railroad, a unit must continue its last orders until it is within 3 turns movement of a capitals communication radius of yours.

3. A city not within the capitals communication radius can change its prduction orders with a turn delay equal to shortest possible movement (assuming movement speed of 1)

4. When connected to the capital with roads or railroads, units within your capitals communication radius can have their orders changed at will.

5. Your Forbidden Palace will also act as a second capital for communication purposes.

6. The communication radius of a fort is equal to a cities with one expanion of its fat cross (i.e. within 3 square)

As far as forts, they should be more important, just like the old wargame Fredirick the Great.

This would also change conquest, as a conquered city would not let you use it as a communication base until the civil unrest went away.

This of course rough parameters, but this should work.

Any ideas?