2 radical ideas for Civ4

[Akka]

Of both of the suggestions of GePap, I largely favor the manpower idea. I feel that the population is underused in Civ3.
A system mixed with MoM could be used : part of your laborers works on the map (just like now), but rather than adding ressources to your city, they just make these ressources AVAILABLE. You would need to dedicace other laborers to the use of these ressources.
So, there would be laborers on the fields, that get food, trade and mine ressouces. Then there would be laborers in the city that uses the ressources. Let's say you would need 1 pop to use 5 ressources, and 1 pop to make some buildings work. A factory would work like the use of ressouces : 1 pop working in it would add 5 another ressources, up to the maximum that the factory can produce (10 if the city has 20 ressources available). It's still not a refined concept, so the balance would vary, but I can imagine that it would really add to the game.
Samely, you would need population to build ANY units. I always wondered how a 5 pop city could chunk out dozens of infantry units. War is a bloody affair, and it should SHOW. Europe spend decades to heal for the losses in WWI, while in all the Civ, I could just throw dozens of units and made them slaughtered without a problem.
And well, it would perhaps give a utility to irrigate grassland then

[The diplomat]

The Manpower idea is very intriguing. I would suggest perhaps the following.

Each pop head would produce a certain number of "hammers". Each "hammer" represents 1 unit of manpower. The number of "hammers" each pop head produces would depend on tech level, and social policies. The type of terrain and the agricultural level, and social policies would determine how many units of food would 1 "hammer" produce. The player would set the amount of food that they want the city to produce (so the player could force the city to starve, just break even or make a surplus). The AI would then automatically deduct the amount of "hammers" required to generate that amount of food. The remaining "hammers" would be used to produce city improvements and/or generate wealth.

Military units could require a certain number of "hammers" as a sort of "maintenace cost" to represent the manpower they are taking up.

[Mark_Everson]

The diplomat:

Your idea seems a pretty good way of enhancing the civ system. I anticipate it might have some trouble because of the Civ philosophy of simple game mechanisms that are easily depicted graphically. Your approach would require a more sophisticated interface, but it doesn't seem so far afield that they couldn't make it work if you convince them. I think the hammer support for military is good, but when enough men have been removed to justify an entire population point, its probably better just to reduce the population IMO. That would also let military units settle down and demobilize in an area that needs protection as practiced by the Romans to good effect.

Originally posted by Libertarian
Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. Are you saying that you are building a TBS game from the ground up using real-time input from players?

[...reserves ecstatic shouts of joy until all becomes clear...]

Yep, that's the ticket... The only fly in the ointment is that the players giving input need to put up with some fairly rough stuff to allow us to get the input early enough to change directions! You will owe me 1.0 ecstatic shouts of joy if and when your expectations are fulfilled.

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
Plug...plug...plug.

But, you've got my interest.

I resemble that remark! Just want to get as many playtesters with as many viewpoints as possible so we don't Blow it Badly... Too many revolutionary ideas, which we've got, can be really dangerous if not executed carfully, and with gamplay in mind. I cite the Turkey game Destiny from about 4 years back that had lots of good ideas, but they were put together in such a misguided way that the game was a complete fiasco. Must avoid "Small Gaming Company Syndrome", which frankly Civ 3 seems to show a lot of...

[Sandman]

Re: Population

Some complicated, probably unworkable ideas of mine.

Real populations, not numbers from 1 to 20. City populations grow or shrink by a percentage depending on what the city contains, where it is located, government etc.

The countryside has a population as well. People migrate to and from the city depending on how great the city is, what sort of employment is on offer, etc. If a city is razed, the population is dispersed though the countryside.

Food should be distributed automatically according to who needs it, and the state of your transport network.

There should be different types of population.For example, peasants live in the countryside and provide food, and can be recruited or conscripted to form your infantry.

Even more complicated; A gender and age structure to your population. Too many wars will leave you with a massive gender imbalance, and loads of children and grandads.

[Akka]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
The diplomat:

Your idea seems a pretty good way of enhancing the civ system. I anticipate it might have some trouble because of the Civ philosophy of simple game mechanisms that are easily depicted graphically. Your approach would require a more sophisticated interface, but it doesn't seem so far afield that they couldn't make it work if you convince them.

In fact, the interface should not be changed. It's just that rather moving population points on differents square of the city radius, you would assign one hammer, which would have exactly the same effect.
The more I hear about this idea, the more I like it

[GePap]

Original manpower idea

I didn't expect this thread to get anywere, but nice it did.

My orirginal idea for manpower (i left it out for sakes of space) was as follows:

You have a set of population points based on the size of population. Importantly, growth of pop. would not be based on the amount of excess food, but whether there is excess food period, so that pop. could get ahead of food supply (much like with horse in Colonization). The actual growth would be governed by modern population formulas biologists use (not important to mention them here).
Every square would have a value which would be how many pop. points (whether they look like hammmers, little faces, etc.) can be placed in it for maximum production. Lets say grassland has value 10, which means up to 10 points can be employed there for maximum returns (if you have only 5 points working there, obviously you draw less from the square). This allows players to try to make large cities in small areas, if the squares are specially productive and have high tolerances. You would also need pop. points to make buildings, again, with a limit on how many can be employed, alimit based on city resources (to clarify using civ terms: lets say a city gets 5 shileds, well, you need 1 point. to use that one shield. Thus, the max number of pop. points you cn assign to make that building is 5, even if the city has surplus pop. This way, huge cities with huge pops. would still have production based on available resources, and it just would not be all about pop.) Every building you have would take pop. points to run, along with money (upkeep and salaries). Every military unit you make uses up pop. points also.
These values would of course be affected by tech and time. Overtime, the tolerance of squares would go up with tech- better fertilizers, so forth. Added to this, less pop. points would be needed to do certain things (automation). Factories are good examples. Before I said, you need one pop. to use one shiled. Well, with a factory, one pop. can use two, so that less people can do more. Factories in real life don't increase the amount of materials available, they improve your efficiency of use. Over time, military units get more expensive in terms of population, but of course, pop. should be bigger period, so you would still be able to have more units.

On a far more complex note, and I am throwing this out to see the reception- there is a way to tie even culture to pop. points. We can say that there are two types of pop., priests/scientists/bureaucrats (educated pop.) and laborers. Certain buildings slowly convert pop. points to these educated folks (libs, temples, ie. cultural buildings). Why would this matter? Well, if you want to make universities, you need profs, no? Well, if you have no educated people in your society, then how could you ever make a university even if you had the notion of what a university was (had the tech)? So, as time went on, new facilities would need not just any p.p. to run, but educated people. To be even more radical, I would say that for your civ to have certain techs, you need a certain % of pop. to be educated. If you went to Borneo and you gave them the formula for gunpowder and blueprints for how to make guns, could they use them? NO, cause they can't understand the concepts anyway. So scientific advancement would be based on cultural levels- a civ can have lots of poeple and be rich and militarily powerful, but if it does not educate its people, it won't be able to use certain concepts, no moatter how much money, period. I would then divorce borders (which are political things) from culture while still keeping culture as vitally important.

I personally have not come up with ideas for immigration flows of people and am not even sure if such a concept would work well.

[The diplomat]

The diplomat:
Your idea seems a pretty good way of enhancing the civ system.

Well, thanks. I apreciate it.

I anticipate it might have some trouble because of the Civ philosophy of simple game mechanisms that are easily depicted graphically. Your approach would require a more sophisticated interface, but it doesn't seem so far afield that they couldn't make it work if you convince them.

I don't think my idea would necessarily require a more complex interface. Civ has easily represented the ressources a city produces graphically with the wheat/shields/coins icons for food/production and gold. Since food has already been deducted, my idea would only require the city screen to show the final number of "hammers" (after food) and gold produced. Some of the "hammers" would be crossed out to represent manpower being used by military units. Then you would see the number of coins to show gold being produced, with coins crossed out for maintenance costs. So, my model would be almost identical to civ in terms of representing things in a simple graphical way, but it only need to show 2 ressources instead of 3.

I think the hammer support for military is good, but when enough men have been removed to justify an entire population point, its probably better just to reduce the population IMO. That would also let military units settle down and demobilize in an area that needs protection as practiced by the Romans to good effect.

One reason why I suggested using "hammers" for military units instead of directly deducting a pop head is to be able to represent fractions. What if the player wanted to raise an army equivalent to 2.5 pop heads? How would a city size 1 raise an army if losing a pop head would make it a size 0?
By using "hammers" the player can be more precise than pop heads when creating an army. The player can create an army of any size they want. The player could essentially custom make an army of any size, from really small to very big or anywhere in between. The player would simply choose the number of "hammers", he/she wants the army to be. This would represent the amount of manpower that the army represents. A size 1 city could still build an army since 1 pop would always produce more than 1 "hammer". It would be a small army of maybe only 1 or 2 "hammers" but the city of pop 1 could still raise an army.

(side note: in my model, the time it takes to build an army would not be based on production. Since the "hammers" are equivalent to a sort of support costs, it would be redundant to require a certain number of "hammers" in order to build the unit in the first place! Instead, units to take a certain number of turns to build based on size, the amount of training you want to give them and the loyalty of your population. The bigger the army, the longer it would take. The more training, the longer it would take. And, the more loyal the population, the FASTER it would take. last, the player would have 2 ways of raising an army. Either the player would choose the number of "hammers". the game would give the player the number of turns to complete army, and the player could confirm or cancel. Or in an emergency, the player could select: "raise the largest army possible in 1 turn." The computer would automatically calculate the largest number of "hammers" the army could hold, given the city size, that would still be complete in just 1 turn.)

Furthermore, since the number of "hammers" already indicates the manpower of the army, the number of "hammers" would directly serve to measure damage.

-The number of "hammers" of the army would serve as the damage bar!

As an army took losses in a battle, it would lose "hammers". When the army loses all its "hammers", it would be destroyed. This would represent the casualties in battle.

When a damaged army was brought back to a city, the player could add more "hammers" to it to bring it backt to full strength. This would perfectly represent the idea of new recruits that reinforce an army.

last, stacked combat could be very easily implemented. All you would need to do is replace the 2 or more units with just a single unit that has the combined "hammers" of all the units. I would furthermore be so bold as to suggest that if two units were in the same square when attacked, that they would automatically combine "hammers" as if stacked. After all, if 2 regiments were attacked, one of them would never just sit on the sidelines and wait there turn as the other regiment engaged in battle. Both regiments would attack as one!

I think this idea works very well, on many levels.
I look forward to your thoughts on it.

[Capt Dizle]

I think you should use 16 penny nails for something then.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gents:

I think both sets of better-elaborated ideas really have their good points. But there are also some issues in terms of model complexity, GUI complexity, and whether the AI could handle it. I might comment more if I thought they'd ever get into a Civ4. There were Lots of ideas of about the level of complexity here posted in the Civ3 Lists way back when, and the Firaxis team wasn't much interested in any of them.

The Diplomat, I think your original, unembellished suggestion Might stand a chance. Beyond that I don't think there's much hope for the Civ series with ideas like both of yours'. The Civ games have at their core Very simple models, and IMO only very simple modifications of those models will Ever be considered by the teams at Firaxis or wherever.

Its not that I think the complexity of your models is too great for a game. Heck, the economics model in Clash is about 5x more complicated than anything here. But in the complexity of the model I think you need to look Really hard at several key issues. I think more complexity can be good provided it:

1. Gives at least as immersive an experience for the player
2. Can be Handled by the AI at Least as well as the simple models
3. Doesn't significantly increase the already-steep learning curves for civ-type games

I could write many paragraphs on each, but I'll stick to the point. GePap, I think item 2 is the largest defect in your approach. IMO the AI would be even worse (if it can be imagined *shudders*) with your system than it is with the standard one. But I might be wrong on that...

The Diplomat, I don't have a pat answer to why the more embellished proposal of yours seems to go too far for Civ. I just think it does. One question I do have is what happens to the hammers of army units when they're wiped out? I percieve this as a big problem in your model. In the real world the population is lost. In the 'hammers' world are the hammers lost for good? Will you not end up with a city that has by the end of the game 60 hammers eaten up by centuries of military losses? Won't the player be ticked off that they are being held accountable in current production for Centuries-gone wars? Or if the hammers of support are no longer held against the city once a unit dies, then there is no model of the population loss of combattants due to warfare, which I thought was one of your major goals.

Good luck with your proposals! I probably won't comment much more for the reason I cited at the top. But I'll check in here to see how your models evolve. An do feel free to return the favor and criticize in any way the Clash econ model if you look it over. I have to admit myself I'm not sure the Clash model fulfills my item 1 above as well as the civ one does. That's what playtesting is for!

-Mark

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
The Diplomat, I don't have a pat answer to why the more embellished proposal of yours seems to go too far for Civ. I just think it does. One question I do have is what happens to the hammers of army units when they're wiped out? I percieve this as a big problem in your model. In the real world the population is lost. In the 'hammers' world are the hammers lost for good? Will you not end up with a city that has by the end of the game 60 hammers eaten up by centuries of military losses? Won't the player be ticked off that they are being held accountable in current production for Centuries-gone wars? Or if the hammers of support are no longer held against the city once a unit dies, then there is no model of the population loss of combattants due to warfare, which I thought was one of your major goals.

-Mark

Thanks for your comments. I do apreciate them.
I think I have an answer for the issue you bring up. Yes, when the number of "hammers" corresponding to 1 pop were lost, the home city would lose 1 pop head.

I don't think that this would result in a city losing huge numbers of "hammers" because of centuries of casuaties. 2 reasons:
1) since 1 pop head is removed, the "hammers" are removed. The city is not keeping a running tally of all the lost "hammers". When a city loses 1 pop, the "hammers" are removed and forgotten.
2) pop growth would continue! The city is continuying to grow despite losing pop to war. So, the city would regain population.
In effect, war casaulties really just slow down pop growth from a gameplay point of view. Say, a city gained 4 pop, but lost 1 in a series of battles. The city would be size 3. If the war had not occured, the city would be size 4. So, the city just grew a bit slower than if the war had not happened. So, I don't think that the model would frustrate the player. At least, I hope not.

I fully realize that my ideas are complex and perhaps they are not even implementable at all in a civ type game! I am fully aware that Firaxis would never even give these ideas the time of day if they were making a civ4 or even a civ5. But I still like them

There are obviously civ players like myself who want more complexity in a civ game. I guess that is what your project is about in a sense.

Civ3 is much better, but I have to admit that civ2 was TOO simple for me. I would be constantly protesting when the game let me do things that I felt were unrealistic. "you can't let me simply change governments on a whim with no penalties!" "You can't let me simply convert a citizen into an entertainer every time there is a revolt!" "You can't let me nuke a city, take it with paratroopers, and repeat with the next city!"

[Fredric Drum]

Better start saving now, when CIV4 is right around the corner!!



Fred

[willpax]

As far as the manpower idea goes, a simpler version was already implemented within a Civ-like graphical interface: Colonization (an older Sid Meier game about the new world). You took your little people and put them in the fields or in buildings making trade goods, etc. You could even shift population from one town to another. And, if you wished to mobilize, you had to take those fisherman and carpenters and out muskets in their hands.

I always liked that game. It also allowed for the population to become skilled at an activity and gain a productivity bonus. . .

[GePap]

Yes!

Willpax
I agree with you that Colonization was a great game, and the only reason I don't play it is that it won't play correctly in my computer. On the other hand, the sacle of populations in Colonization was much smaller than that of civs, and since tech never really changed, wars were always the same intensity- so while the Colonization system was excellent (along with its trade system), it would not work for Civ.
When is Clonization 2 coming out? (sadly, probaly never...)

[Mannamagnus]

Another good idea: get Brian Reynolds back on the team!

[The diplomat]

Re: 2 radical ideas for Civ4

Originally posted by GePap
Private property. In civ, all economic activity is centrally controlled all the time, from the beginning fo history to the end. Even a liberal democracy has a centralized economy with the gamer in control of every dime not lost to horribly overdone corruption. I say that there should be private economy- this would help make a bigger diff between govs. All economic activity begins private but over time the government gains the ability to control a greater and greater proportion of it- a modern government can, if it chooses, bring all economic production under its control- kings in medeival europe could not. The Tax rate would be just that, the amount of the total economy the gov uses for itself- the rest in the hands of private individuals. This would also finally make administrative techs key- since better bureaucracy would allow you to draw more money from the people, thus you can do more. Like manpower, this concept can be further refined, but again, i think it would make for a much deeper gaming experience.

I have an idea for perhaps one way to implement what you are talking about.

ECONOMIC GROWTH
Cities would build new city improvements automatically when they stockpile a certain amount of gold. Say a city is producing +6 gold per turn after taxes and maintenance costs. This means that the city would be stockpiling 6 gold every turn. Each city improvement would have a certain build cost in gold NOT shields and a maintenance cost in gold. When the city stockpiles enough gold to build that city improvement, then the city improvement would automatically be built. This way, cities would actually build new city improvements by themselves over time. Since the more gold a city accumulates each turn, the faster it will build the next city improvement, this would represent economic growth really well, I think.

GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION
At the same time as cities are building new city improvements automatically, the player could build new city improvements in any city as well. The player would simply choose the city and the city improvement and the city would gain that city improvement. The build cost of the city improvement would be deducted from the player's treasury. The player would pay the maintenance costs of those city improvements from the national treasury!

The big differences between city produced and player produced city improvement would be:
-city produced improvements would be considered PRIVATE SECTOR by default.
-player produced improvements would be considered PUBLIC SECTOR by default.
-PRIVATE SECTOR improvements are supported by the city. In other words, the maintenance costs would come from the city's treasury. They would costs less maintenance costs but have a smaller effect.
-PUBLIC SECTOR improvements would be supported by the player. In other words, the city improvement would be payed from the gold that came from taxes into the national treasury. They would have a higher maintenance costs but have a larger effect.


NATIONALIZATION/PRIVATIZATION
At anytime, the player could transfer a city improvement from the PUBLIC SECTOR to the PRIVATE SECTOR and vice versa. PRIVATIZATION would of course mean that the maintenance costs of the improvements passes to the city. NATIONALIZATION would of course mean that the city no longer has to support the improvement but that the player would have to from general taxes. This would represent nationalization or privatization of the economy. The player could privatize/nationalize individual city improvements, a certain group or all of them at once. This would allow the player to have a mixed economy. For example, the player could nationalize just the "marketplace" city improvement in all the cities and leave the other city improvements privatized.

NOTE: there would be an option called "AUTOMATICALLY NATIONALIZE". This would nationalize all new city improvements that a city built automatically. (Remember that a city would always continue to build new city improvements automatically when it stockpiled enough gold.) This would allow a player to have a socialist type economy without necessarily having to build every city improvement manually.

The advantage of this system is that reduces the micromanagement of manually building new city improvements in every city without taking away the player's desire to be able to control what is built. Micromanagement is reduced since cities automatically build new city improvements. At the same time, the player can always build a specific city improvement themselves whenever they want. So, if the player did not like what the city was building, they could still build it themselves.

This idea also implements the ideas of PRIVATE and PUBLIC SECTOR in a relatively simple and straightforward way.