Re-engieering Civ

[Urban Ranger]

Okay, lets forget everything that has been done in the past. How would you do Civ from scratch?

[Az]

-large,very detailed map maps.
-Many ZOC, Auto-bombard rules.
-Begin in 10k BC.
-Start from prehistoric times, begin as a very small tribe, and merge, absorbe, integrate into other tribes, as well as conquer them. Based on a true Ethno-Culturo-Lingual web of the real world.
-Real numbers of people.
-Realistic trade, manufacturing, economics.
-Simultaneous movement.
-A very great flexible system of social engineering.
-Smaller alteration of time scale.
-Use real number of people and equipment in armies, but keep them moving as units, call them divisions, legions, whatever the right name for the warriors/era.
-A very capable AI, no resource cheating of either the player of the AIs during the game. just make the AI stronger/weaker, according to the level of play.
-A unit workshop, where one could use the technology he has to build units, ( rifleman,main battle tank, APC, cataphract. etc. ) and then assemble those units into military units ( An armored division, for example, requires: 300 tanks, 50 APCs, 1360 armored vehicle crew members. 500 Heavy infantry soldiers, 100 Supply trucks, 110 Truck drivers etc. )



I think that's about it, though you can challenge me, remind me of missing aspects of the game.

[LDiCesare]

Clash Of Civilizations.
To echo Azazel's points:
Maps should be possible to have in any size, from small to huge, and most importantly look like Earth more or less (continents, sea, not percolating sea and earth as in civ2).
-Begin in 10k BC. Around there, yes.
-Merging of tribes is interesting, evolving cultures too, but I don't think real cultures would be easy to do because you would have trouble making sure the Spanish are spawned from the Iberians, since that event depends of very specific historical events.
-Real numbers of people. Yes.
-Realistic trade, manufacturing, economics. Yes, but how do you model that.
-Simultaneous movement.
-Don't put too much emphasis on modern times, make various eras more balanced in terms of length: Spend some time in the Middle Ages for instance instead of it being a gap to close from ancient times to gunpowder.
-Make units have number of people so they drain on the demography when raised or killed. Probably no equipment because it is already complicated enough without.
-A very capable AI, no resource cheating of either the player of the AIs during the game. just make the AI stronger/weaker, according to the level of play. YES.
-A unit workshop.

To which I add:
Sensible tech model which allows discoveries of some techs only under some conditions (no wheel if there are no horses around for example), and better neighbour-to-neighbour tech-spread.

[CapTVK]

The regular Civ2 with a few minor tweaks. Never change a winning team.


And it should also be able to make toast!...

[Az]

Yes, but how do you model that

A simplified model of economics. Like simcountry, for example.

[Jac de Molay]

-Large varied maps, with a realistic map generator - no big, globby continents.
-Realistic Climate model.

-Terraforming like SMAC.
-Lots of factions/countries able to play a once.
-Unique factions like SMAC.

-SE settings like SMAC, except with more social choices.
-Diplomacy like Civ 3, with better AI management.
-Graphics can downright suck for all I care, as long as the gameplay and AI are smooth and challenging.

-Large Complex tech tree, perhaps divided into different sectors which can be researched simultaneously.

[Az]

I would like the grafics to be decent. Civ 2 level for all I care. But not less.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by CapTVK
The regular Civ2 with a few minor tweaks. Never change a winning team.


And it should also be able to make toast!...

Agree completely.

Though I prefer muffins.

[Sandman]

I'd include a spherical, three-dimensional map.

No tiles, just a free flowing map. Cities and units have a circular radius, which can change depending on certain other factors.

Hire an ecologist and a geophysicist to help produce a realistic looking map layout, with various types of mountain ranges and obvious climatic belts.

The game is played out at various time speeds, like EU.

Dozens of civs in each game.

Evolving cultural model. As time goes by, your civ can gain unique traits depending on the surroundings and your decisions.

Domestication of plants and animals.

Implementation of disease. I'd suggest that the diseases and their effects should be random, rather than premade.

Religion should act a bit like culture, with each religion having a series of traits. I think that new religions should emerge during the game, rather than everyone 'rushing for protestantism'.

[Trifna]

Some ideas from GalCiv should be looked at...

Just from my memory, this would mean:
- minor civilizations
- some stuff from the spying model
- paying others to make war
- helping some others discretely
- possibility to see revolutions
- some simple interior politics maybe?
.
.
.

We'll get a little better idea after GalCiv comes out.

[Odin]

Analog globe map, no tiles. Each unit has a movement radius per turn. The globe will give terrain near the poles a more realistic look, so Russia wouldn't be so huge on a world map.

The game should start with the invention of agriculture (10,000BCE) and go into the near to mid future (2150CE?) The game should also be a lot longer, say a 1200 turns, and there should be more depth in the ancient age, they go by just too fast.

Special Forces, like in CtP and CtP2, we need terrorism in modern times. You should be able to keep track off terrorist groups in your nation and be able to hinder or help them (like the IRA or Al Qaeda).

Many Civ's, each with unique, AoE-like attributes and a unique unit.

More emphasis on the nation as a whole. you shouldent be able to tell where settlers to go, in real life they went where they wanted to go. you dont see individual cities, the terrain just looks more densely settled and produces more resorces where there are more people.

An SE model, like in SMAC.

A competent AI that doesn't cheat.

excellent multi-player gaming.

Minor Civs instead if barbarians.

New nations forming revolts.

[Straybow]

Odin: Russia is huge. It is almost as big as the whole of N. America. And, yes, we can all dream of a "competent AI."

Clash of Civs has taken an interesting approach. I pitched some ideas when Mark was first starting it up, but he thought they were too nit-picky and too intensive to model. I agree, with the average computer out there being several years old many can't handle a huge agricultural/economic simulation load.

The idea is to model how things build up progressively. For example, everything begins with resource extraction. Civlike games do this but never really progress beyond it. Trades build on resources. Professional type occupations build on trades. Military and management builds on everything (and can eventually overtax everything). The game must have enough content to make each step interesting, and then a way for it to fade into the background when more important concepts come to the fore.

I developed the detailed content that would make steps interesting, and had some half-developed ideas on how to take away the µmgmt as things progressed. I still have tables and so on, but it may yet be long before anything practical could be done with it.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Sandman
Evolving cultural model. As time goes by, your civ can gain unique traits depending on the surroundings and your decisions.

Here is how I think this could be done. If a player gains a certain number of a special ressource, it gets an empire wide bonus related to that ressources. For example, if I get X "wheat" tiles, every food producing tile gets +1 food (farming experience allows better food production). If I get X "iron" tiles, every swordsman unit gets +1 attack (better ironmaking techniques allow better swords). etc...
The player could also get civ traits like commercial, religious or militaristic based on the number of city improvements of each type that the player builds. If I build mostly commercial city improvement at the beginning of the game, I would gain the commercial trait, but if later in the game I build so many religious city improvements that I have more religious city improvements than commercial ones, than my civ would switch from commercial to religious.

[Sandman]

The way I see culture developing is similar to the social engineering in SMAC. The player is presented with a series of slots, into which they can place cultural traits. The slots are not split into categories, like in SMAC, but are free for almost any combination of traits. The number of slots available would be limited by... something, the type of government or the level of technology perhaps.

In order to be added, traits would need certain prerequisites to be fulfilled, for example, a mountain specialist society would need to have cities on or near mountains. Once added they become embedded in the class structure, and can only be removed via revolution.

Some traits would have opposites, for example militarism could be opposed to pacifism.

[GePap]

Choice of blind research
inclusion of a "Social enginneering" screen, ala EU or AC for more varied civs.
Minor civs
Population points: some way to make the actual population matter
Multiple build queues
Public works ala CtP
"Command contruction system": single units would be made as normal, but to use them, they would have to be assigned to commands, which could be given a "general", like a city governor if you did not want to deal with them all. This would make combat at this level more strategic and less about moving endless units around. Like the "taskforce" system in MOO3, commands would be given specific tasks, like "defend area X", take X city, attack X command.
Maintain random events: game difficulty level should not be based on giving AI or player advantages, but should be based on making the game more "realistic", such as trying to plan for and deal with epidemics, droughts, floods, volcanoes and earthquakes, so forth and so on.

More diverse ecosystem types.
Have a resource system based on not only what you have, but how much you have.

Improved diplomatic screen: AC and MOO2 had some very good ideas that were sorely lacking in Civ, such as "ask you to make peace with.. or "lest coordinate attacks". This should certainly be in Civ.