Citystates Game

[Aidun]

Citystates Game:

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Characteristics:

1 Several human teams with very small countries: 1 to three cities each country, one or two would be best;

2 Eventually some AI players with large countries;

3 The human teams are not just randomly placed on the map, but they need to be placed together in order to survive against the AI and in order to stay extremely small. This can bedone by some objective person who can create a random map in the editor and put the human and AI civs on it.

4.1 Only through a solid teamwork and cooperation between the citystates the AI players can be defeated. In this option the citystates are free to decide to cooperate or compete with the others. Cooperation with one or more AI players is permitted.

4.2 OR: without AI players the citystates can compete with each other. One has to try to take out all the others. Citystates are free the choose if they cooperate or compete with the others. Vassalizing other citystates is permitted.

4.3 OR: An allied victory: during the game citystates form alliances with other citystates. The amount of alliances is free. Citystates are permitted to switch between alliances, it is up to the others to react on that or not. The strongest alliance wins.

5 Eventually we can play the game for a certain time period.

6 I think we'd better not use any other modes in addition to this mode, this is quite a challenge and not very easy due to the huge amount of cooperation, especially in the 4.1 option.

These are my thoughts please post all your ideas about the Citystates Game here.

[Aro]

4.1 is the most interesting option, IMO. But we should have some space to growth, and I suggest less human countries, each one can be a little bigger than 2~3 cities. Part of the fun is in the development and growth... I mean, we should take in count other aspects like city planning and expansion, not only Citystates diplomacy.
Just my 2 "centavos".

Note: I see the cooperation between humans as the natural state of the game. Civil wars or other strong disagreements could be a suicide in the early game.
A question: How can we win? I'm talking about victory conditions.

[Aidun]

The reason why I have chosen for a citystates game is that in such a game the production capacity is very limited. I agree that it is part of the fun to build up many cities. Cities are the pride of any nation, not only in Civ. The challenge of citystates however is to be able to win with that extremely limited production capacity: that is the difference to the current PTW game.
In the PTW game the countries still have the ability to estabish huge empires, in the citysite game such is nearly impossible.
But guy's why just stick to one vanilla and one other flavour? Why don't we have three? In every game another challenge?

BTW, partly with the idea to play wars like the Pelopponesian war I started this.

(The Pelopponesian war was the war between the greek citystates of Sparta and Athens, Sparta was allied with Thebes and Athens had it's Attic Sea Alliance: the worlds's first naval alliance. Sparta won and Athens became a vassalstate until the Thebans opposed the Spartanian hegemony. Thebes declared war on Sparta and won due to renewed phalanx tactic. Later on Alexander the Great brought them all under Macedonian rule and so the age of the citystates ended.)

Aidun

[Togas]

This is an excellent idea. I think a couple of notes should be made early on so that this game can involve new people:

There should be no private boards. This would encourage cooperation and allow for people to join and observe at their leisure. It would make this a public game, allow for monthly news updates on our progress, and also fullfill the desire of new people to the game to get involved and learn about advanced civ management and tactics.

The map should have future expansion options -- I see our city states being unable to grow into larger units (except for conquest) without technology like electricity (to irrigate) and advances like harbors. Perhaps one state will have an abundance of luxuries while another will have none, but will have extra horses. Maybe a third is a small group of islands that will need mapmaking before it can send it's iron reserves to the other two. There are all sorts of possibilities ... I'd love to make the map, but if I did I couldn't play it. We'd probably see our city states settle in a "borg" fasion and have to cut away a lot of jungle to get room for a few more cities.

No Diplomatic Victory -- would be too easy, you have 2 free votes. Victory should be either conquest/domination or space race, and Space Race would require ONE of the states to pull it off ... since we couldn't combine our Space Ship parts. Conquest/domination would require ONE of the states to rule the world ... and we may just have to call the game when only our 3 city-states are left.

To keep from escaping our "city state" status too early, Our neighbors would be strong ancient age civs. No early America attack or "Case Pink" to get us out of our city state status. We'd have to tangle with Carthage, Greece, or Rome to pull it off.

Our civs should compliment each other -- and each should suit the theme of the team playing them. Perhaps give a Warmongering team the Monguls, and start them on very mountainous terrain. Give the DIA types the Indians and no horses. Give the other team the Ottomans. We'd have all of the traits covered.

--Togas

[Aidun]

I was even thinking of a mod to change the current civs easily to the ancient ones:
Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Argos, Thebes, Cartage, Phoenicians (Tyrus)
Minoans, Troyans, Rhodes, Ephesos, Miletos, Halicarnassos, Tarsus, Byzantium, were all citystates in the time before the Persians became a mighty empire and the first six citystates, the Minoans and Rhodes even until Alexander the Great conquered them one by one. We could play on the mediterainian map. Of course this is just a suggestion.
To keep the citystate status longer settlers could be made more difficult to produce: higher amount of shields needed and pop cost of 4 citizens.When that settler builds the city, only one of the colonists is left. Argumentation, when people colonize there are always colonists who die during the operation: a builiging accident, by disease, by accidents at sea, by accidents with rough animals, etc.

Aidun

[Kloreep]

Since I plan on just watching this one (three DGs is quite enough for me), I'd be happy to make/modify a map for the game. But I have no experiance with map making at all, so you should probably post an ad in the Creation forum for someone actually good at it.

[Aro]

Originally posted by Togas
This is an excellent idea. I think a couple of notes should be made early on so that this game can involve new people:

.........................

The map should have future expansion options -- I see our city states being unable to grow into larger units (except for conquest) without technology like electricity (to irrigate) and advances like harbors. Perhaps one state will have an abundance of luxuries while another will have none, but will have extra horses. Maybe a third is a small group of islands that will need mapmaking before it can send it's iron reserves to the other two. There are all sorts of possibilities ... I'd love to make the map, but if I did I couldn't play it. We'd probably see our city states settle in a "borg" fasion and have to cut away a lot of jungle to get room for a few more cities.

......................

--Togas

Maybe a little continent to be colonized, but to far before navigation, with some resources or something like that. The author of the map certainly will have a lot of options to give us a hard life...

Originally posted by Aidun
I was even thinking of a mod to change the current civs easily to the ancient ones:
Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Argos, Thebes, Cartage, Phoenicians (Tyrus)
Minoans, Troyans, Rhodes, Ephesos, Miletos, Halicarnassos, Tarsus, Byzantium, were all citystates in the time before the Persians became a mighty empire and the first six citystates, the Minoans and Rhodes even until Alexander the Great conquered them one by one. We could play on the mediterainian map. Of course this is just a suggestion.
......................

Aidun

Good suggestion. The Native American Tribes, or the 13 Colonies, the Spanish kingdoms when the Arabs owned the peninsula... The feudal Japanese society... Man, you can't stop to find good themes...

Edited to comment Aidun's idea

[UnOrthOdOx]

Im a bit confused.

What are the different castes? Is it simply Warriors, Traders, and Religion?

Anyway, random thoughts on a religious caste:

should either start on an island or with no borders with AI civs (reasons about to become clear).

Government limited to: Despotism, Monarchy, or Communism.

Only may produce the number of free units allowed by the government +1 unit for each Temple or Cathedral in any of the human controlled cities. (may need balancing on this part, as it could be abused that later in the game, but would be weak early. Basically a self-imposed Fundamentalism Govt (which I sorely miss from Civ II))

Each city this caste builds is either dedicated to one Clan, or the worship of different 'gods' depending on Civ chosen. Each of these clans will run themselves, and each human city that builds a temple will declare it to one of the 'gods' or clans, thus providing more units for that clan/religion. (may limit the number of gods/clans)

Will not initiate battle with AI, but can assist either of the other city/states with a battle. (Or pursuade one of them to start the war on their behalf)

Have ideas for interesting ways for the different clans to do battle as well. (GoW members may recognize a number of these, though we are just now to a point where we can start that in that game...Think $ game on a larger scale, and not just for $)

[Donegeal]

As I have suggested in the Vanilla PTW DG thread, what about a Citystate DyP DG?

[Aidun]

I'm not in favor of the Dyp mode, because it has some errors:

Originally posted by Kal-el
about the 2 DyP "negatives" brought up by Donegal:

The City Screen is messed up, no doubt about it. The City Screen is set up for the first 65 improvements in the editor and we rearranged the buildings in alpha order to make things easier on the player. The only way to fix it would be to figure out what buildings go where, change those, and then you would only get the first 65 of the 175 improvements to show up anyway. We concluded it just wasn't enough bang for your buck.

As for the Civilopedia, well, we are working on it. We were burning through Civilopedia editors at a fairly rapid pace, but recently they have all rejoined the team and we now have five people working together on the civilopedia so we expect to have that situation fixed soon.

As long as it is erroneous I oppose the use of it, but if it works properly, I consider it as a possible addition to Doube our Pleasure.

Keep in mind however that the Citystates game will on itself be very difficut and surely challenging. Playing the Citystates Game will be like playing an Anarchy Game instead of a Democracy game: especially in option 4.1 we are united under the apolytonian flag, but acting as sovereign states. This adds a major part of diplomacy to the game that is even more important than in the PTW game. In the PTW Game nations aren't dependant on each other for enough power to fight big states because they themselves are too small. In the Citystates Game nations are far too small to become powerful and are very much dependent on the otherstates for their policy.
The size of the state has consequences for its poroductioncapacity and so it has consequences for its military power, its ability to build wonders etc. Builing a wonder means that NO other builings can be build an creates a big risk for the state that builds it.

Aidun

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

If we play this we can modify the Palace in the editor to act as a Sewer System so the lead citystate of each human team can grow to large size, perhaps allowing it to provide several happy faces also.

The human citystates all start on one island with space for each to have 2-3 additional cities in addition to the main one.

The rest of the world would be filled with large continents and islands with each of the AI civs starting on a continent. The citystates could start out with mapmaking and thus would be forced to send out and establish colonies to compete with the AI.

[Aidun]

Good plan, Ghengis, but I'd like to lat the citystates have as few cities on the same continent as possible: rather one in addition to the main one than two in addition to the main one. This makes the need to cooperate even more important.

Aidun

[Aidun]

But in such a case the settler should be made more expensive too...

Aidun

[Beta]

Originally posted by Aidun
I was even thinking of a mod to change the current civs easily to the ancient ones:
Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Argos, Thebes, Cartage, Phoenicians (Tyrus)
Minoans, Troyans, Rhodes, Ephesos, Miletos, Halicarnassos, Tarsus, Byzantium, were all citystates in the time before the Persians became a mighty empire and the first six citystates, the Minoans and Rhodes even until Alexander the Great conquered them one by one. We could play on the mediterainian map. Of course this is just a suggestion.
Aidun

Great idea. I love the theme.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Maybe we should just start a thread for the citystates game since there are only aropund 7 of us who want to play it.