Civ should be about nations, not collections of cities

[Trifna]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
So... where is the [City Production in column]?

It'll end up just, or more as complicated as before.

Since buildings and wonders won't be included in this model... you'll need to micromanage the number of shields assigned to each project AND THEN the assigned shields have to come from the cities. How will the remainder be calculated? Evenly? This will get VERY messy.

As I've said before... it also ignores enemy activity. Are you going to answer the criticism... or does your silence infer consent?

There is already an easier to manage build system, in a game interface; the Nation Manager in CtP2. Its not ideal: From a perspective of data interface programmer, its missing filtering and some additional control functionality. However, its already versatile, flexible AND functional.

Note the sortable columns.

I guess beeing silent doesnAll shields left after structures production goes to units with the system I proposed. What is so bothering with this? You get an eye on your global unnit production instead of local. For infrastructures, the best I see would be to put a list of cities and to see the possible choice for each one. Now this is not what I was talking about wiuth my iudea at all.

[The diplomat]

First, I totally agree with the original premise that UR laid out: civ should feel like an empire not simply a collection of cities.

The question becomes how to do it. Here is my 2 cents.

1) Increase the number of empire wide decisions.
One of the reasons why civ feels like just a collection of cities is because 95% of the game is city management. The player has the tax/science/luxuries sliders and diplomacy which are empire wide but everything else is city management. The game needs to have more empire wide options.

I propose for example:
-social engineering where the player sets labor, econ, military policies.
-budget, where the player can take tax revenu and allocate it to improving military, improving industry, improving econ etc...

2) Allow city to city trading and sharing of ressources.
Another reason why civ feels like just a collection of cities, is because each city is completely self-contained. In an empire, there is going to be intercity trading and sharing of ressources. If a city is starving, a neighboring city will probably share or trade their surplus food to them.

-cities should be able to trade and share surplus food and other ressources.

3)Macromanagement tools.
The player should have tools to alleviate micromanagement. For example, there should be ways to give build queues and orders to several cities at once like in CTP2.

Let's remember that micromanagement is not necessarily bad. It only becomes bad when it becomes repetitive. For example, city build queues are not inherently bad themselves. What's bad is when the player is forced to repeat the same build queue operation for every city because that would be tedious.

Let's be careful not to automate things too much. With too much automation, you do risk creating a game that is just "pushing kindgom sliders around" as one poster mentionned. In fact, MOO3 sometimes feels that way to me. There is so much automation, that you can play the entire game by just tweaking sliders once in a while with the AI doing everything else for you. That is not fun.

The player should be able to manage cities directly. But I think that with adequate macromanagement tools like the ability to issue build orders to multiple cities at once, intercity resource trading and sharing, and empire wide decision making like budgeting and social policies, your empire will much more of a nation rather than a collection of cities.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by The diplomat
The question becomes how to do it.

No, the question so far seems to be: why do it? You say you agree with UR that civ needs to be focused on nations... now tell us why. The "how" can wait until you inform us why it is necessary or desirable.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by cyclotron7

No, the question so far seems to be: why do it? You say you agree with UR that civ needs to be focused on nations... now tell us why. The "how" can wait until you inform us why it is necessary or desirable.

Why, you ask? Because I think the game is falling short of its true potential.

Look at how the gameplay in civ is structured. The player builds and then micromanages lots of self-contained cities. That's not a "empire building game" but a "multiple city building game"! It may be fun to a certain degree. But it often becomes repetitive. Every game is basically the same: crank out lots of cities and micromanage each one until you crush all the other civs.

I realize that for some people that is fine. But, I think that the game could be so much better and more interesting if it were trully an "empire building game" like it claims to be.

Such a game would be more interesting because it would be more than just micromanaging lots of independant cities. It would be more about your empire, its interactions with other civs, its evolution, its rise and fall. I think that would make the game so much more interesting.

Does that answer your question? If not, I would be happy to clarify.

[srholmes]

i think the border and strategic resource concepts added in civ 3 also add to the empire feel, as they are important for an empire, not for a particular city.

if only they were in civ 2!

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by The diplomat
Why, you ask? Because I think the game is falling short of its true potential.

Alright, but you'll have to illustrate that further.

Look at how the gameplay in civ is structured. The player builds and then micromanages lots of self-contained cities. That's not a "empire building game" but a "multiple city building game"! It may be fun to a certain degree. But it often becomes repetitive. Every game is basically the same: crank out lots of cities and micromanage each one until you crush all the other civs.

If micromanagement is your problem, there are easier and less intrusive ways of fixing it than completely restructuring the basis of the game, such as a better interface or a screen at which you can see and change all city projects and queues at once.

Even if you made civ a nation based game, you would still be, as you say, cranking out cities (or population, or units) and crushing the other civs. The only difference is micromanagement, but as I said you don't need a new model to do that.

I realize that for some people that is fine. But, I think that the game could be so much better and more interesting if it were trully an "empire building game" like it claims to be.

That's a really nebulous statement. Please describe specifically what could be benefitted by your system, and why simple changes to the existent system are insufficient to deal with the problems.

Such a game would be more interesting because it would be more than just micromanaging lots of independant cities. It would be more about your empire, its interactions with other civs, its evolution, its rise and fall. I think that would make the game so much more interesting.

My civ games already emphasize the cooperation of cities. I am worried about connecting them into a cohesive and defensible whole, and about my overall cultural borders as opposed to simple city radii. Interactions with other civs are already handled nationally, not on a city basis.

Does that answer your question? If not, I would be happy to clarify.

Thank you for answering, and it's a good start, but I feel I need further convincing on the matter and I am not yet aware of the specific problems that a "national" system, and only such a system, could fix.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by srholmes
i think the border and strategic resource concepts added in civ 3 also add to the empire feel, as they are important for an empire, not for a particular city.

That's a good point. It's important to note that steps have already been made in this direction in recent civ games. The question is, do we need more, and if so why specifically?

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by cyclotron7

If micromanagement is your problem, there are easier and less intrusive ways of fixing it than completely restructuring the basis of the game, such as a better interface or a screen at which you can see and change all city projects and queues at once.

Even if you made civ a nation based game, you would still be, as you say, cranking out cities (or population, or units) and crushing the other civs. The only difference is micromanagement, but as I said you don't need a new model to do that.

When I said that I think civ falls short of its true potential, I meant that the game has the potential to trully engross the player in their empire and the "historical what if" aspect of the game. For example, if a future civ game dealt more with culture and the rise and fall of empires, then I think such a game could provide a player with an even richer gameplay experience beyond just building a collection of cities and crushing opponents.

Regarding micromanagement, I have already expressed my complete support for tools such as a screen, like CTP2 has, where the player can issue the same build queue to multiple cities.

Regarding making civ a "nation based" game, there seems to be a slight misunderstanding. I am not necessarily advocating radically changing the civ game where there would be just empires and no cities. I don't think that my suggestions, like a macromanagement screen, Social Engineering, intercity trading, would require any radical overthrow of the game's mechanics.
I think it is possible to move the game incrementally away from a "collection of cities" to a more "empire based" game. As you or someone else pointed out, there have already been good improvements in this area, such as national borders. Civ3 feels more like an empire based game than civ2 did. When I speak of a "nation based" game, I am simply referring to a game where the player has a better sense of how the cities together form an empire.

Of course, if we are talking about creating an empire-building game completely from scratch, then I personally would probably do things very differently than civ2/3 did. I have concrete ideas that I could share about how I would create a true "nation based" game, as you understand it, where the focus is entirely on empires and there are no cities. But I am not sure that this thread is about radically remaking the civ game to that extent. Urban Ranger can correctly if I am wrong.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by The diplomat
When I said that I think civ falls short of its true potential, I meant that the game has the potential to trully engross the player in their empire and the "historical what if" aspect of the game. For example, if a future civ game dealt more with culture and the rise and fall of empires, then I think such a game could provide a player with an even richer gameplay experience beyond just building a collection of cities and crushing opponents.

I can appreciate that; I feel I understand what you mean and I would like it to. I am unconvinced, however, that the "fixes" proposed by people thus far would do anything about this.

Regarding micromanagement, I have already expressed my complete support for tools such as a screen, like CTP2 has, where the player can issue the same build queue to multiple cities.

I view a better UI as the best way to combat micromanagement. Personally, I would like to try solving micro with a better UI before trying to solve it with whole new game concepts.

Regarding making civ a "nation based" game, there seems to be a slight misunderstanding. I am not necessarily advocating radically changing the civ game where there would be just empires and no cities. I don't think that my suggestions, like a macromanagement screen, Social Engineering, intercity trading, would require any radical overthrow of the game's mechanics.
I think it is possible to move the game incrementally away from a "collection of cities" to a more "empire based" game. As you or someone else pointed out, there have been already been good improvements in this area, such as national borders. Civ3 feels more like an empire based game than civ2 did. When I speak of a "nation based" game, I am simply referring to a game where cities don't function as independently, but where the player has a better sense of how the cities together form an empire.

Your views on this are less extreme than those of others I have been debating here; that's probably the source of any misunderstanding. If, by making the game more "nation based," you mean things like Social Engineering and better trading options, I agree entirely. What I am against is taking control away from players by restricting what we can build or do at local levels in order to either decrease micro or just to give civ a more "unified" feel.

I'm all for cities fitting together better. What I am wary of is the removal of city functions and turning them into abstractions or AI controlled functions just for the sake of less micro or more centralization.

I think our views are not far apart on this issue. What, more specifically, would you like to see in this regard in the next iteration of Civ game?

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
I'm all for cities fitting together better. What I am wary of is the removal of city functions and turning them into abstractions or AI controlled functions just for the sake of less micro or more centralization.

Believe me, I completely agree with you here. MOO3 implemented "the removal of city functions and turning them into abstractions or AI controlled functions" and proved conclusively IMO that it is a horribly bad idea.

Originally posted by cyclotron7
I think our views are not far apart on this issue. What, more specifically, would you like to see in this regard in the next iteration of Civ game?

This may surprise you, but I think that if a civ game had proper micromanagment aids, that it probably would not even need city governors. I think the AI governors were an attempt to solve the problems of micromanagement by simply delegating decisions out of the hands of the player rather than providing the player with the necessary micromanagement tools.

In terms of specific suggestions, they probably fall into 2 categories, micromanagement and gameplay features.

1) micromanagement.
-a screen where the player can manage multiple cities at once. Two crucial features here would be the ability to set build queues for several cities at once, and the ability to disband/upgrade units by city or unit type.

-intuitive symbols on the main map to warn of problems. After all, the easier it is for the player to know what is happening in their empire, the easier they can deal with problems. And I believe that being able to quickly identify problems will alleviate some micromanagement problems.
Specifically, under the city name, there should of course be turns to pop growth, current build and turns to completion (like civ3 already has).
I also think there should be small symbols next to the city to indicate famine, unrest, no defending units, shield shortage, WLTKD etc. Last, each city would have a small symbol next to it indicating which of the three ressources (food, shields, gold) the city produces above a player defined quantity. For example, if a player is looking at the main map and sees a city with the shield icon next to it, the player would automatically know that that city produces more than X shields (where player has preset what X is). I think this last feature would really help players quickly identify good cities like good production cities or good science cities. The player would no longer have to surf through a domestic screen just to find the best production city or the best science city.

2) gameplay features.

-minor tribes that the player could bribe or conquer into their empire in the early game.

-intercity trading. The player could spend gold to create a trade route between any two cities and then indicate the specific transaction. First the player would right click on a city and select "begin trade route", then right click on second city and select "end trade route". The player would then get a pop-up showing the food/shield/gold of both cities, and the player would set how much of each ressource each city would import or export. The pop-up would show the cost in gold for creating trade route, and player would confirm or cancel. There would be a trade route animation between the two cities to show the trade route is active. The player could also create trade routes with a foreign city if there is a trade pact between the two empires.

-authority points. the player would get authority points by building certain improvements and/or units (different depending on gov type. ie: theocracy would accumulate authority points from temples, cathedrals, despotism from military units, democracy with happiness improvements etc.) Severe unrest would cause the player to lose some authority points. Founding new cities would cost authority points based on distance from capital. The further the city is from capital, the more authority points it would cost. If the player losts all its authority points, the gov would collapse into anarchy for certain number of turns at which point the player could switch to a new gov that gave the player enough authority points.

-empire-wide policies ( like simple SE) where the player could impose things like "slavery", "capitalism", "nationalism" etc...

- expanded budget screen. The tax revenu could be allocated to either military (military units get combat bonus), science, luxuries, public works (workers improve terrain faster), intelligence (spies get increase chance of success), diplomacy (improves diplomatic relations slightly with all treatied empires), economy (speed up production).

Those a few ideas that have been buzzing in my head. I hope you find them interesting.

[Straybow]

Sounds like some of the suggestions raised in the old Civ3 List. Your registration says Sep 99—were you in on any of those discussions?

[Trifna]

Straybow: Your registration says 1970. Since Apolyton wasn't online in 1970, what is that??

[Cyclotron]

Straybow, so many different ideas were floated in that list that I would be surprised if somebody managed to come up with a page of suggestions that were not mentioned there.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Straybow
Sounds like some of the suggestions raised in the old Civ3 List. Your registration says Sep 99—were you in on any of those discussions?

Yes I did participate in the civ3 List ideas.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
I didn't say that anything different was not civ. I said that Civ was based on a city model, so anything not city-modelesque is not Civ. The city model is the basic, underlying framework of the game.

Not necessarily. The idea of Civ is not micromanaging cities, but to build a civilisation that can stand the test of time. However the game implements this underlying theme is not important. Cities was used initially because complicated models would bring an IBM PC clone to its knees in 1989. More than a decade later, such models can be easily licked by an average Wintel box. I cannot why the old crude model of cities cannot give way to a more modern apporach.

Originally posted by cyclotron7
PW and stacked combat are not. It's like saying "let's improve Starcraft by making it turn-based, and adding diplomatic functions." That may be good, but what you get is no longer Starcraft.

This is a bad comparison because Starcraft has RTS as part of the definiting characteristics. However, you can replace Zergs with Orks and still get Starcraft.