Reworking the CIV "Philosophy"

[Pyrodrew]

Originally posted by BlueO
Hmm, you know what? Civ3 isn't the only game that gets boring by midgame. All other strategy games are the same. From Civ2 to Mom, Moo, Botf, Pax Imperia, and even Imperium Galaticum 2.

I never tried most those games, but Civ2 always had the weaker AIs team up against the strongest player (usually the human) near the mid-end game. This balance of power always kept things more interesting than the mid-end game that Civ3 has. In Civ3, there is no balance of power... simply fear of the strong. And as I said in another thread, in a Regent game the "Furious" Babylonians (Aggressiveness4) was one of the other superpowers & they let me finish my spaceship (which they didn't even start building) for Ivory! For mere Ivory they let me win the game! If I was in Civ2 they would have teamed up with the "Annoyed" Indians (2nd strongest) and/or the "Furious" Aztecs (4th strongest) and attacked me.

Civ3, I don't know what the lategame challenge could be... except I suppose, the game could come up with a number of doomsday scenario

My guess is they thought Corruption would be the late game challenge. But corruption isn't dangerous... it simply slows the player down & severely limits empire size (which some hate). Civ3 Corruption also guarantees that no AI Civ will ever conquer the world since they don't know how to solve corruption.

lategame challenges should be a toggleable option

The 1 thing I did expect in Civ3 was more options. But if you start a game, there are exactly the same world generation options that Civ2 has (only now you cannot walk on glacier, and there are no swamps). I agree it would be great if there were options for random volcanos, wild earthquakes, floods or whatever.

[Marcus Agrippa]

I like your idea of civil wars, degression, etc. The only thing I disagree with was the "ancient units should be able to fight modern units" post. That has never been the case. Modern riflemen would slaughter samuri without any trouble.

However, the few examples of successful "outdated beating modern". For example, Afganistan vs Brits or vs Soviets, or Native Americans vs Europeans/Americans. But all of these defeats have been due to terrain. So, I think that modern units should always be able to overwhelm older units on normal terrain, but could run into trouble in mountains, jungles, etc. Thus, terrain would be the "great equalizer".

[Pius Popprasch]

Yep, a Dark Age would be nice, triggered by a Unique Unit. and Blunders of the World.

[fezick31]

Originally posted by Pius Popprasch
...Blunders of the World

This actually would be a neat concept. It may not be possible with the civ 3 engine, but a blunder could result if you were more than xx% done with a wonder when someone else completes it. For example, you are working on the cure for cancer, get withing 10 shields, and someone else builds it. Rather than build the cure for cancer, you generate some new disease or other disaster that has a negative impact on your civ.

[squeeze truck]

Originally posted by Duddha
awesomedude:

I don't post much on this forum, actually basicly not at all, but after reading your post I felt obligated to correct you.

I don't know what history classes you've taken but your wrong and macaskil is right.

Actually, you're both only partly right. Yes the Catholic church's cosmology was mostly Aristotolean, but the point was moot because during the Middle and Dark ages, questions on the nature of the world and the universe were considered to be answered by the church, and people as a rule did not go around asking them. Early Carolingian (Pre-European) civilization knew *of* Aristotle, but simply didn't care.

Greek and Roman Classical thought was preserved in their entirety by the Arabs and Persians. It was re-introduced to Western Europe when the Franks conquered Toledo (in what was Muslim Spain) and discovered the university library filled with classical texts written in Arabic, the most important of which were the Trivium, the Quadrivium and the Digest.

Without the Trivium, there likely would have been no scientific method, and hence, no Copernicus.

[Furtigan]

Interesting ideas. My (inflated) dos centavos:


--Some elements of technological progress are pretty undeniable: life expectancy, etc. Military units are one of them. Give me a shotgun and I'll wax any Samurai you got. I have achieved some interesting results by making some civs unable to build modern units (and very aggressive) which got me what I wanted: lone rifle units trying to hold out against wave after wave of spearmen (sometimes succeeding, but not always). Unfortunately, you have less control over improvements, etc, though I am creating an "Inquisition" (negative culture) that only theocracies can build.

--I've always loved the idea of regression, although I think the word we're looking for is "decadence." The tendency for populations to become complacent and the resulting decay. The problem comes when you try to make it into a game with any sense of continuity. Of the Civs that existed in 1000 BC, only China still exists in any recognizable form. Did they "win?"

Still. this has to be a part of any game called "Civilization." It is a glaring omission.

One step towards this might be to make happiness much more important, and a "happiness victory" a possibility (quality of culture, rather than number of temples). Another practical problem is that we're starting to move more towards a "Civilization Sim" and away from a "Strategy Game." A great idea in my book, but not everyone's.


--I agree with Ozymandias about the tech tree. If you want to pursue arts and culture to the exclusion of science, for instance, you should be able to try. I'd like to see a real tech "tree" that branches, in dozens of different ways (more than you can build in one game) rather than the tech "path" we have now.

Another game with the same issue is SimCity. After awhile, every city has the same "special" features (theme parks, military bases, etc). I live in a city (Orlando) with a slavish attention to one and only one industry, with the resultingly unique problems and benefits... which can never possibly be anywhere close to created in SimCity.

Similarly, there should be a rainbow of ways for cultures to develop. One of the biggest letdowns in Civ is when you finally cross the ocean and discover a new continent and other civs... and they have the same technologies, etc as you do. I would like some sense of "boy, these people are weird."



My suggestion for CIV4 (God, I hope Firaxis reads this), would be that the shape of your civ be multi-dimensional. Simply having five (or fifty) different government types isn't enough. I think the attributes are a step towards what I'm imagining, but I'd like it to be something you choose rather than something assigned.

To Wit: You pick (with some constraints) your society's religion, economic system, government, social structure, etc.

Modern India, for instance would be a Polytheistic Capitalist Democracy with a modified Caste system. Your relations with other civs would hinge around how similarly configured your societies were. e.g. US and EU share almost all attributes, are allies. US and India share some (democracy, capitalism) but not others, and are quasi-allies. 1970s China and USSR shared one thing (Communism), but could not ally because they shared nothing else.

If you had four axes of culture (say, gov't, religion, economy, and social structure, as above) with five choices each, that would give you twenty different types of civs, all with varying strengths and weaknesses, each with different possible routes around the tech tree. (Communists, no Wall Street... Atheists, no Crusades)


Anyway, that's what I think.



...and I'm right, because I scored in the top 3 percent of the GMAT, so "don't mess."

[squeeze truck]

Originally posted by Furtigan
Interesting ideas. My (inflated) dos centavos:

...and I'm right, because I scored in the top 3 percent of the GMAT, so "don't mess."

I scored in the top 1% in English Usage and Spatial Comprehension Whatever. That and dos centavos will buy you one tamarindo in Tijuana.

Finally someone who thinks as big as I do!!

I love the multi-dimensional culture idea. This may make civ into a game that only I would be interested in playing, but here goes.

"Polytheistic" describes India the same way that "round" describes earth. I would love to se a detailed (and customizable) civilization attributes, all the way down to names of individual Gods, a complete cosmology, detailed social order, and a list of totems and taboos.

To give a real world example, if I play the Aztecs then my major totem would be the sun god. The only way I can keep my empire together is by sacrificing one person to the sun god every day. As soon as I stop doing this, the empire loses its authority and literally falls apart. This means I have to raid neighboring civs or barbarians to capture soldiers and workers constantly so I can sacrifice them.

If I play the Chinese, I maintain my authority by building and maintaining massive public works. As soon as the dikes on the yellow river fall into disrepair and break, the citizens will revolt and the empire will come apart.

The Americans are an extremely legalistic society. If I as leader violate the constitution repeatedly, I lose authority and chaos reigns.

The taboos and totems thing simply means there are certain things that each civ MUST do, and other things that they MUST NOT do.
In game terms this would be similar to the superhero role playing game "Champions". Placing restrictive taboos and totems on your civ gives you "points", you use the points to buy special abilities (like "industrious", "religious", "commercial", etc.)


Also, if a civ develops some advance, let that advance be historically appropriate to the civ that invented it.
If the Babylonians develop a number system, let it be base-60 instead of base-10.
If the Chinese invent map making, make East the top of the map instead of North.
If the Aztecs develop a calendar (astronomy?), let the dates appear in the form of "one reed" instead of using the BC-AD scale.

...and any civ who learns a tech from another civ learns it as that civ developed it. If the French learn writing from the Egyptians, then French from then on is written in heiroglyphics. (Similar techs could bring civs closer together, and different ones could drive them apart.)

[Furtigan]

Unplayable; or at least unmarketable, as you said.


What difference does it make if they use base 60 math? How do you know the Babylonians in Civ3 don't already use it? Unless you're saying that base-60 math would somehow inhibit development, on the macro-level that Civ exists on, details like that and the East vs. North map are irrelevant.

Some things wouldn't be, like the nature of the religion. Again, the Diety's name is not important; but the social effects of the religion are. To use one example, in China, the same religious/governmental system (neo-confucianism) that gave political and social stability also led to eventual stagnation. It giveth and it taketh away. There would be all kinds of situations like that. Freer societies produce more tech. They also don't follow orders. Some of this is there now, of course, but I'd like to see it in much more depth and nuance.


I don't like the idea of tying any attributes, much less rules or taboos to a given civ. A culture's attributes should arise at least in part as a consequence of the game itself. Let's say I decide I want to play a game and be pacifistic, go for a culture win. So I pick India as my civ. Then I find, by 2000 BC, that I am sharing a relatively small island with the Aztecs and Zulu; to win the game, I'm going to do a lot of fighting. I should be able to build a military-oriented culture. I can do this in Civ3, sorta, but I'm running against what the computer "wants" me to play.

It made sense for the game designers to give England a naval unit as their UU; if your goal is to replicate reality. But we've all had the experince of playing a landloked UK or a Germany whose mobile land units are wasted in an achipelago game. I want to recreate history; and if the way the game plays out and my imagination lead me to make a Pacifist, non-expansionist, polytheistic society living in the tropics and centered around the fruit-and-spices trade, I should be able to do so. The fact that my Civ is named "Russia" only makes it more interesting. Otherwise, why bother with randomly generated maps at all?

[Ozymandias]

My thoughts are actually along different lines.

The basic mechanics would be that there would literally be too many techs to research within the course of one game.

Branching tech trees would flow from basic decisions essentially geared towards which type of victory you were going for and/or your play style.

The "essential" techs would remain the same -- you'd still have to discover iron etc. Yet (for example) each specialized military tech (armored cavalry; blitzkrieg) would require research.

At a more fundamental level, large branchings would occur, for instance, to make you decide to pursue one tree towards Democracy OR the tree towards Communism (I would point out that no major state has ever truly gone from one to the other -- China under Chiang Kai Shek was an authoritarian regime a la Franco's Spain, and within the scale of the game I'd discount short-lived communards).

I would also envision religious/ethical pathways: Monotheistic, Polytheistic, Conufician. A Confucian path would lead to the possibility of an early establishment of a state bureacracy (and the improvements that go along with it) but probably not much of a chance to build cathedrals.

The different paths would have variation in improvements, wonders, units, etc.

Of course, trading of techs might become rampant -- but, again, the basic mechanism is to literally have it it be impossible to do everything.

So we would encounter truly different civilizations, with different force structures, etc.

Some historical examples of military units which might NOT co-exist on the same path or might be on a unique path:

Advanced Phalanxes (Hoplites) and Legions.
Armored Cavalry (Knights) and Horse Archers.
Roman triremes armed with the corvus.
Archers armed with recurved composite bows v. Longbowmen
Guerillas (infiltrated insurgents as opposed to partisans).

Military technology obviously converges dramatically as the centuries roll on -- "Military Darwinism" at work. However, independently researched units (representing the units themselves and/or the tactics and training employed) and technologies might include:

Advanced fortresses (Vauban as opposed to the ancient city walls)
Aircraft Carriers.
Blitzkrieg armor.
Cruise missiles.
Submarines.
Tercios.

-- Basically, any historically significant unit or tactic (PARTIALLY represented now by UUs -- I would much rather have a Militaristic civ develop Legions than just hand them to the Romans!) whose deployment is not an "obvious" and ubiquitous extension of the technology at hand.

Best,

Oz

[Mizaq]

you could do something like this now, but you would have make a separate mod for each style. that kinda cramps the whole idea of specialization, but hey don't let that stop you from making a mod of just one of those branches.

[s3d]

Originally posted by Ozymandias
I would much rather have a Militaristic civ develop Legions than just hand them to the Romans!)
Oz

In my mod I have Legioner as UU roman unit and Legion as common early and cheap army (2 units without blitz, available with code of law).

[Furtigan]

Originally posted by Ozymandias
My thoughts are actually along different lines.

No they aren't.

Maybe I wasn't clear, but that is exactly the kind of tech tree I would like. A branching "tree," as opposed to a directed "path" as we have now, which allows real diversity of civs (more than just their team colors and the look of their buildings) and adds replayability to the game.

I don't think trading techs is a problem.
1) You pick up other people's techs from you libraries, etc. Say each library gives you a 1% chance per turn of learning a tech from someone else in the world whom you've met. You would also get them from capturing cities, like civ 2, and just from trading with them.

2) Many Civs wouldn't value techs. You meet a militaristic feudal monarchy, and offer them Epistemology, and they're probably going to say no, or offer very little.

Trading techs would only happen with major, pivotal techs: iron, gunpowder, etc. And in those cases, you really have to ask if anyone would give away a strategic edge easily.


The only idea I would disagree with is the idea of either/or branchings. You could know about both democracy and communism, though you could only implement one. After all, it's not like the NATO countries were democratic because they didn't know how to be communist.

But yes, there should be sub-techs everywhere. For example, you can only learn Crusade/Jihad if you're running a monotheism. You can only have Feminism if you're a democracy or something close to it, and so on.



300 techs...

[squeeze truck]

Originally posted by Ozymandias
My thoughts are actually along different lines.

I would also envision religious/ethical pathways: Monotheistic, Polytheistic, Conufician. A Confucian path would lead to the possibility of an early establishment of a state bureacracy (and the improvements that go along with it) but probably not much of a chance to build cathedrals.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I dig the massive tech tree.

I just don't think a culture or a religion is a form of technology. India didn't "develop" polytheism, they were polytheistic as long as they were India. It's innate to their civilizaion. Ditto for Monotheism and the Jews; they were always that way.

To me at least, what is now the tech tree needs to be broken up into at least 3 different entities.

The massive tech tree idea is perfect for the hard sciences. I like Ozymandus' ideas here. I would even favor some sort of randomization of the tree, and some sort of automatic generation of techs (don't ask me how), so that the end of either branch is impossible to reach.

Culture however should not be in the tree. Some should be dictated by the terrain of the starting location (I have heard it suggested that Mesopotamia and Egypt were theocracies because they were on fertile rivers, and Greece and Rome became republics because they were hilly.), and the rest should be innate.
Neo-Confucianism wasn't so much an invention as it was a codification of existing traditions. It should be "developed", but seperately, I think, from the tech tree.

I think the application of technologies, as in military units and city improvements should be dictated by both culture and science, rather the way it is now. So any civ that has Iron and a strong military tradition should develop a sort of legion unit.

Oh, and whoever said that Feminism was developed by democratic nations needs to brush up on their 20th century history. The first country to have any sort of laws guaranteeing the equality of women was the Soviet Union.

[Andrew Cory]

Hmmm, tec. trees. This is part of how I would like to see UUs handled in the future: instead of each civ. being asigned a UU at the outset, I would like to see unique tecs. If you are the first to hit a certain level, you can decide to research a certain (terminal) tec that comes with a UU, _or_ you can research somthing else. Only the first player there gets to research the tec, though they can sell it to other players. Any given Civ. would only be able to build two or three UUs in an era, so they would not be able to just stay at the head of the tec. curve that way...

One thing someone said struck me as historicaly accurate, but phylisophicaly ignorent. I forget who it was, or the exact quote, but the thrust was the Democracy and Comunism should be on compleatly seperate branches, as no one had ever successfuly gone from one to the other. Technicaly, this is true, only in the sense that what we today call "democracy" is not at all what the word actauly means. Without going into a lengthy digression on the deffinition of Democracy, suffice it to say that Comunism is the logical outgrowth of well thought out Democracy...

[awesomedude]

Originally posted by squeeze truck


Actually, you're both only partly right. Yes the Catholic church's cosmology was mostly Aristotolean, but the point was moot because during the Middle and Dark ages, questions on the nature of the world and the universe were considered to be answered by the church, and people as a rule did not go around asking them. Early Carolingian (Pre-European) civilization knew *of* Aristotle, but simply didn't care.

Greek and Roman Classical thought was preserved in their entirety by the Arabs and Persians. It was re-introduced to Western Europe when the Franks conquered Toledo (in what was Muslim Spain) and discovered the university library filled with classical texts written in Arabic, the most important of which were the Trivium, the Quadrivium and the Digest.

Without the Trivium, there likely would have been no scientific method, and hence, no Copernicus.

Holy... I thought this thread 'died' long ago. I do not really see in what way we are "both only partly right". It might be due to me being tired; I really don't feel like going back and checking out what I actually wrote earlier (it all came off the top of my head, I just enjoy a good discussion as it really enhances your argumentative abilities). As for the events in Toledo, I have no deep knowledge about them I must admit. Would you mind filling me in on what the works you mentioned above contained? I hope you didn't resort to any greater means of research to put me in my place ...