c178# A SPLITTING HEADACHE?

[Mech Assassin]

I don't really think, most ideas are bad. One just has to find a good balance between realism and gameplay on some of those...

[Grumbold]

Way back in my ZX Spectrum days I played a rise and fall of Rome game (not sure of the precise title, that might have been it.) It was a fascinating game and while very simple it did show how appallingly difficult it was to even achieve what the Romans did, let alone exceed their performance. I would love to play that kind of game again but I do not believe it would fit well with the Civ approach which is designed to get you through 6000 years of historical development with a minimum of fuss.

EU has far more emphasis on internal politics and religion because it introduces the concept of stability. A nation at +3 stability is tranquil, wealthy and content with itself, an ideal place to want to live and trade (for those wealthy enough to have a choice). Their troops have high morale. A nation at -3 stability is stricken with revolt, religious discontent and impoverished. Their troops are ready to run at the first sign of defeat. The whole game is about careful diplomatic management to ensure that you only fight when you are ready, get some quick victories and declare peace with some territory or money gained. Prolonged fighting will see the chance of a rebellion at home grow yearly as the greedy rich and oppressed poor alike sieze the opportunity to conspire against an absent monarch. It is also likely to ruin the treasury since troops are quick to train or hire and quick to die, just ruinously expensive.

EU is not perfect, and it would be hated by the Civvers that feel all it takes to conquer the world is a large enough army, but it does show the way. Their next project is likely to be an attempt to cover the 1000 years surrounding the rise and fall of Rome. If they manage to make that playable and enjoyable then it will be a major achievement and an indication that another step up to take it from 2000 BC to 1850 AD is a real possibility. However I do not think it will ever successfully master the dramatic transformations of the twentieth century. For that matter, its probably the part that Civ does worst at too.

Civ 3 is introducing culture as a concept. If that is a success then no doubt more can be built into it in the future. Civ 4 might even be daring enough to accept religion as a separate important factor. However I do not believe we can expect that to come from the people presently at Firaxis. Their stated aim is to not lose the Civ magic and see additional complexities as not something that the larger gaming audience find desirable. For the same reason random catastrophic disasters or unpreventable internal rebellions are unlikely to become a central part of the Civ game. We have to leave such things to the Alternate Civ community.

[TechWins]

this could be main reason US has never wanted overseas colonies

I'm sorry if somebody has already commented on this statement.

The US does have oversea colonies. Puerto Rico, Guam, etc... They are actually called territories but that is irrelevant. Puerto Rico has a good chance of being sanctioned into the US to become the 51st state. Hawaii isn't a colony, it is a state. I thought that need to be cleared up.

I could care less about discussing civil war/fall of civilizations in Civ3 after having so many long discusstions about it here in several seperate threads, so I won't be posting anything important to this thread.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Rasputin
the stongest and longest lasting empires were those all connected via roads not sea

Any rules should be based around communication times rather than physical barriers. Since you can't build roads or railways to speed up sea travel this would tend to favour land over sea once the infrastructure had been developed. I don't want to see it become impossible to hold an archipelago civ together. If the random map starts you on a small island you need to be able to move forward. After all, Indonesia contains about 1,300 islands!

[Mark_Lipovrovskiy]

I'm afraid that this will prob. not get into Civ3 - but if they include enough customisation tools for the smart guys to make this possible I'll be a happy citizen...

[Ribannah]

Rome - Arguably one of the Greatest Empires to ever rule the Earth.
No army (Greeks, Gauls, Egyptians) that existed could stand in its
way ...

The Romans could never really beat the Celts and the Teutons in the north, while continuing problems with the Persians kept them from expanding farther to the east. Remnants of Roman armies fled as far as China, where their offspring can still be found today .

[November Adam]

A few people are mentioning that they are concerned about adding realism, as it concerns to fun. I agree with you, but with regard to Civ 3, many of these ideas or others should be implemented just to make the game different. If creating it so it would more be more realistic, makes is different (of course fun as well), then go full bore. Cause Civ 2 was fun, but I don't want more of the same.

With regards to culture, natiionalities, etc. Will there be immigration, and emmigration? Seems like good incentive to keep your citizens content. If people are ticked long enough, they would just get up and leave.

Maybe you good add a diplomacy feature alongside this, telling other nations, you will be extremely ticked if they keep taking your citizens.

[Grumbold]

I believe Civ 3 is sticking firmly to the food surplus = growth and bigger pop = slower growth model.

[November Adam]

Seems a shame to me, they are waisting a good opportunity for something different.

[Mark_Lipovrovskiy]

By the way, Starlite, what exactly did you mean by

(consider the Jewish example, which is better known, though it's also more about finances than freedom)

?

[fittstim]

Let's keep on track!!!

Please let's not get into a discussion about religion...

Realistically, when a colony rebels against the motherland, it usually has something to do with trade/tax. For example, the British and Spanish empires were very efficient in exploiting the colonies wealth and returning pretty much nothing. Hawaii never "revolted" from US protectorship (it was made a state only in 1950) because is wasn't being looted. This can be also said about Puerto Rico - although there is a 50/50 split over independence or statehood.

I think it's a great idea to incorporate some sort of independence movement into outlying and conquered cities (these already have a mark about previous ownership - that's why they are cheaper to bribe back).

It seems a simple model could be based on trade routes. If a outlying city reaches a certain population (8 or 12 sounds reasonable), it had better get some trade routes from the mainland/cities-near-capital otherwise there is a chance for a split (this could be similar to the chance for a nuclear meltdown and be affected by happiness and/or the ASTC).

[Provost Harrison]

I get bored of all this stuff about that your civilisation should fall.

You have to analyse this from a gameplay perspective, even if it is not 'historically' accurate. If you were to spend painstaking work building up your empire only to have it fall due to some computer generated 'randomness', you would be amazed how quickly people would get frustrated by this, take the CD ROM out of their computer and frisbee it out of the window.

The catchphrase of Civilization is Build An Empire To Stand The Test Of Time and that is one core of the game that should not be changed. Even if it is unrealistic for your civilisation to be around for 6000 years, so what? The game plays damn well. I damn well want to take my nomadic people, guide them through the Bronze and Iron Ages, take them through the Enlightenment and Renaissance, see the advent of steam power, industrialisation and onto nuclear power and the space and genetic age. It is the whole beauty of the game, you see your little people through the lot, directing and guiding, and is what the game is about.

Sometimes you people let precise 'historical detail' get in the way of producing a good game. Accuracy in this respect is totally unnecessary and would be just frustrating to the point of disbelief. The only feasible option is for your enemies to put up a better fight.

[Grumbold]

Colonial management is only an additional challenge along the lines of happiness management. If collapse was random then I could understand a lot of people getting frustrated, but if it becomes a delicate balancing act between tax levels, city buildings, capital distance and city size then it is no more difficult but the result of failure is different.

[Mech Assassin]

Uh, would that be random, if the city would declare independence only if certain conditions are met? That's not random, it's completely logical.

Also, there are rules options and if you don't like that, just turn it off. Simple as that. Also, that wouldn't really damage gameplay, but add to it, as you have to be even more careful about the happiness.

[RGE]

I don't have a problem with guiding a civilization through 6000 years, to "Build An Empire To Stand The Test Of Time". What I do have a problem with is that whoever is in the lead in 1 AD is also the one most likely to be in the lead in 2000 AD. That spells stagnation, or world conquest, which no civilization has managed to do in our world. And a lot of them have tried their damndest to get away with it.

I just had an idea though, about using corruption to determine when a city should rebel? Assume that every turn all the city's corruption is accumulated in the form of gold, and when the city's council have enough money to bribe the city, they do so, and becomes a free city state. Possibly a barbarian city which concentrates on building the best defensive units they (used to) have the tech for. Or maybe the city could join the weakest/closest (or a mix between those two) of the other civilizations?

With this method, cities with huge trade and little control are very likely to want some independence, while small colonies with little trade will remain faithful for a long time. And to me this is what corruption in Civ II is really about; local authorities stealing control from their rulers. Because corruption on this scale isn't just mere theft and embezzlement. If it was, there would still be some corruption in a democracy, and in Civ II there isn't.