Can't wait for the expansion pack -- Civ3: Warring Democracies?

[Captain]

Originally posted by GoldenPanda
skywalker -- what you describe is absolutely possible for anyone that has access to the inner workings of the game.

Captain -- I'm still not sure if I understand your whole investment analogy. Are you saying players receive Bananas WHILE improvements are being built, or AFTER? If you're saying AFTER, then calling it "investment" is quite confusing. I see it simply as choosing the most prosperous city to live in, which is just what was described in my design. It would be good if you could take some of my design concepts as a starting point, and talk about what changes/additions you think could benefit the game.

No, I mean it's like investment. (ignore fees and taxes for now).

example:

You have $150 available.
buy Stock A for price $100 one day one.
at end of day one you have net worth $150, only $50 is liquid. the rest ($100) is tied to the city rating.
if you sell now, you have all $150 liquid again.

next day Stock A goes up to $150.
net worth is $200, but only $50 is liquid. the rest ($150) is tied to the city rating.
if you sell now, you have $200 all liquid.

say you wait until the 3rd day where Stock A drops to $120.
net worth is $170, but only $50 is liquid. the rest ($120) is tied to the city rating.
if you sell now, you have all $170 liquid.

(liquid means available)

Stock A's price depends on the City Rating. It can go up or down depending on specifics, but generally city ratings will go up as our empire develops and grows.

I left out more complex ideas and stripped it down to what I thought would make a good start point. Here are the major points.

1) Citizens try to acculumate bananas.
2) They do this by living in cities and holding political office.
3) Holding office gives a salary or bonuses.
4) Living in city A has a one time cost in bananas=present city rating at time of move. As the city A rating improves, so does your potential banana gain. You can at any time, leave city A and move to a different city B. Doing so gives you bananas=present city A rating and costs you bananas=new city B rating.
5) Living in the capital is like the bank. It costs nothing to move there, but you don't get any bananas when you leave either. No gains, no losses. No further accumulation of wealth can be achieved while you live in the capital.
6) Overcrowding penalties as explained in previous posts.

Expected result: Citizens will move to cities they see potential with. Citizens will lobby for improvements that will raise the city ratings because that will benefit them.

[GoldenPanda]

Let me ask you the question this way: who will your "investors" be going up against? who stands in the way of building a cathedral? and why does he want to be in the way?

[punkbass2000]

Originally posted by GoldenPanda
Let me ask you the question this way: who will your "investors" be going up against? who stands in the way of building a cathedral? and why does he want to be in the way?

The Military Department might want to stand in the way of improvements in favour of units.

[GoldenPanda]

you mean the Imperial Government wants to force cities to make military units, while the cities themselves just want to build improvements, and want the other cities to build units? For one thing, not much interesting would be going on WITHIN the cities -- everyone would just want the same maximum rate of return on their investment.

A more elegant system IMHO has the Imperial Government buying units from the cities. Cities are not some infinite-size mutual fund where anyone and everyone could invest their savings -- cities are centers of production. This production is taxed and distributed just like in the real world.

[Captain]

Well, my major thing was keeping it a democracy game as we know it. We already have the framework for that. I don't think the government needs to buy or do anything besides play the game (president) and give advice (ministers).

The thing is that right now, everyone wants the best for the empire. We'll gladly sacrifice two fringe cities if we have to, or make one city churn out veteran units instead of distributing the production - because we have no personal stake in the cities. They're just production centres. Only if we invest in them by artifically introducing the concept of "living" in a city, do we have a stake that will cause us to think twice about letting our home city be abused.

The purpose of having investment is to create an interest group that will lobby for the city's benefit - possibly at the expense of other cities. For example, if a minister constantly rush buys things for one city and not another, the neglected inhabitants will get upset with the minister. Ministers can't rush buy everything for everyone, and sometimes wants to build military units. Not everyone's needs can be met. The ministers have to play to the crowd and try to win favour so they can be re-elected.

The system I propose doesn't change any internal game mechanics, it just adds the the fun of the democracy game in a (fairly) simple manner.

Not that I'm against anything more complex, I just don't think the elected officials want to bother with having to buy things from citizens of cities or get approval for everything.


This adds to the decision making in this way:

1) Do I build the things that would benefit the empire (in-game)?

or

2) Do I build the things that will get me re-elected (demo game)?


Citizens must balance requests by deciding:

1) Do I lobby the ministers to improve my city so I will gain bananas?

or

2) Do I put personal gain behind the good of the empire? Do I lobby for what I think we (as a country) really need to do well in the game, instead of what will benefit me most?

As it is, right now, the only arguments we'll have are about what people think is best for the country. I hope to add just 1 more dimension to it, for now.

Does that make sense? (I dunno, it makes sense in my mind, maybe I just haven't explained it well.)

[Captain]

Originally posted by GoldenPanda
you mean the Imperial Government wants to force cities to make military units, while the cities themselves just want to build improvements, and want the other cities to build units? For one thing, not much interesting would be going on WITHIN the cities -- everyone would just want the same maximum rate of return on their investment.

Of course, but they won't all get the maximum rate of return. And that's precisely where the conflict (and arguments and "buying" of votes) comes in.

In the game itself, no, not really much interesting happens or can happen. You just build stuff by piling up shields (or rush buying), and poof! There it is. Identical to everything else (except for wonders). That's just the way civ 3 is. Cities look all the same and in the end-game, everything is built that's worth building - a real no-brainer. And there's nothing you can do about that without making your own civ 3 game. We added fun by putting in this concept of a democracy game but that doesn't actually change game mechanics.

But when we add in citizen interest in making their cities best, then that's pretty interesting (no pun intended). There'll be times when citizens demand things that aren't prudent - like a library instead of walls or cavalry.

And there are also the risks and benefits of starting wonders. And since only 1 city can build wonder at a time, deciding which city builds it will be a major political event!

(On reflection, wonders are so risky that having a wonder in the city should increase the rating by 100, not just 10. I'll reiterate my formula:

City Rating = (cpt x (#content + 2x#happy) + wonders) x penalty factor.

So citizens will want cities with high happiness, lots of culture, wonders, and few penalties.)

A more elegant system IMHO has the Imperial Government buying units from the cities. Cities are not some infinite-size mutual fund where anyone and everyone could invest their savings -- cities are centers of production. This production is taxed and distributed just like in the real world.

It is more elegant, you are right, but also more difficult to track. What I propose can be done without the software, just a guy and a spreadsheet. The reason I'll stick to this is that I don't think I have what it takes to write the program so I'll try to stay within my own limits.

[GoldenPanda]

Captain -- I see what you're saying now with wanting to keep to the current system as much as possible, with just one legislature for the whole empire. Creating interest groups will benefit the current game, I agree with you. You just have do come up with something better than First Come First Serve with the investment slots -- you don't want First Come to mean the player who wakes up at mdinight to submit his turn.

I was thinking in terms of something that could be done inside of six months, you're thinking for the more immediate. Good luck to us both.

Any comments on my longer term design? I'm hoping to flush out design flaws by discussing it and getting feedback.

[Captain]

Six months! Whoah!
Yeah, if we had that long, I'm sure something way better than what I proposed could be done. But I'm fairly sure I'll be cutting my Apolyton time drastically down once September arrives as I'll be back to full time work.

I'm mostly free this summer (although the next few days are going to be crazy) so I would be more than happy to help out with anything you want to work on.

I don't know of a better solution than first come, first serve - besides paying a premium (which is built-in to the mechanics of the investment with my first model of overcrowding, and is irrelevant in the second model of overcrowding). What are your thoughts?

As for a longer term thing, I think we should flesh out our entire game concept. What I was thinking of was just an add-on to the dmeocracy game. Now I see that you mean we can replace the democracy game with something better - where there's more at stake than just appeasing voters. So that opens up the possibilities more and if we had a program to do tracking of stats so that people paid taxes per turn and earned income per turn, then I'd say we have something.

I just got a gem of an idea! Why don't we speak with Mark Everson who's working on Clash of Civilizations? He's trying to build his own civ game with a team and they've been making some progress. I think they're working on the AI now. But we could see about creating a whole different online civ game in which an ai would be unnecessary because each citizen would be represented in game with a citizen they can control.

Maybe that's too much like Ultima Online though. A blend of RPG and strategy might be cool - the empire controller players must interact with digital citizens controlled by other real live players.

Maybe that's more of a two year commitment - but I imagine setting something like that up would be less difficult than programming an AI. All we'd need after the program was written is the servers to handle all the traffic.

[GoldenPanda]

talking with Mark Everson is a great idea! I've actually tried out his demo. He's written some pretty amazing stuff on designing the game as a true simulation. Do you think you could ask him to look at this thread and give some thoughts? Thanks!

[GoldenPanda]

In terms of the investment slots, if you don't want to have a whole parallel financial system, maybe some type of lottery?

But certain cities will always be more prosperous than others though. I don't know why anybody inside a great city would ever want to leave.

In my system, what would happen with a very rich city is that it will attract people who carry the most prestige, who can afford the highest auction fees. This will entice some of the original inhabitants to leave, as their relative social standing becomes reduced.

[jdd2007]

bump

[Captain]

I'll be away a few days. In the meantime... carry on. I'm interested to see what ideas we'll have here in a few days.

Cheers!