Radical way to add more strategy to civ

[The diplomat]

I have brought this up a few times but only very briefly so I thought that perhaps I should open a thread to discuss my specific idea in more depth.

I believe that strategy comes from decision-making and compromise. In other words, the more decisions a player needs to make, the more strategy the game has. Furthermore, good strategy comes from situations where the player has to make a HARD decision where they need to compromise in some way.

For example, chess is probably one of the greatest strategy games ever. Chess has one particular rule that, IMO, makes the strategy so good. In chess, you can only make 1 move per turn. The player has hundreds of possibilities but has to choose just 1 move. This creates the spectacular strategy because it forces the player to make a very difficult decision. They can only make 1 move so they have to carefully pick the one that they believe is the best. If the chess player were allowed to make several moves, there would still be strategy (do I attack on the right or the left, with the queen or the knights) but there would be much less of it because the player could simply make all the moves that they want. There would not be as much decision-making because there would be less compromise.

In civ, the player has to make choices but they can do everything. I think we could dramatically increase strategy if we put a limit on what the player could do each turn. The player would still have all the options but would have to choose what to do each turn.

MOO3 has a concept call IFP which is similar to what I am talking about and I like it.

How to implement it?

1) Absolute Authority Points

The idea would be to simply give the player a certain number of Authority Points according to the type fo government. AP's would represent the government's political authority over the population. Every action that a player can take in a civ game, from moving units to changing a city's build queue to changing research etc would ALWAYS require 1 AP. So, the number of AP's would directly represent the number of actions a player could take that turn.
-AP's could be increased artificially by a player at a cost. This would represent the government increasing its own power. (In an emergency like a sudden war, the player could use this temporarily so as to be able to do more things)
-certain Wonders would increase AP's. (I think the Great Pyramids should do this instead of adding granaries)
-Very high happiness (like SMAC's Golden Age) would add AP's.
-City riots would decrease the number of AP's!

2) Relative Authority Points

Same as above except that each action would not cost any AP at all. Instead, the player could put as many AP's as they wished for each action. The more AP, the faster the action would be implemented. So the player could decide to do several things at the same but each action might take 1 or 2 turns to implement or the payer could put all their AP in a single action and complete it immediately!
-the bigger the empire the more AP's an action would require to complete it in 1 turn. This would completely replace civ's corruption model. Far away cities could once again have normal production. However they would make empire decisions take longer to implement. For instance, a large empire might require 2 turns to increase the tax rate a certain amount whereas a small empire could do it instantly!

I think the main difference between 1 and 2 is that idea 1 allows the player to do several things per turn and each action would always be done immediately. Idea 2 would force the player to choose how much priority to put into an action.

I look forward to a meaningful discussion.

Vel: I especially hope that you would be able to examine which idea you think would offer the best strategy. if you have an alternative idea please give it. If you remember I mentionned this idea briefly in one of your threads and you said you liked it. I am hoping that this thread will be a place for a more in depth philosophical look at my idea.

[LDiCesare]

I like your idea of delaying orders far from one's capital. I think it would work only for low technologies, however, but is a good simulation. It would restrict the size of empires at old ages: Your borders being unresponsive, you can't defend them properly, but as tech advances (messenger pigeons, radio, satellites), the distance delay would decrease and so give better ability to fight far from the capital.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
I like your idea of delaying orders far from one's capital. I think it would work only for low technologies, however, but is a good simulation. It would restrict the size of empires at old ages: Your borders being unresponsive, you can't defend them properly, but as tech advances (messenger pigeons, radio, satellites), the distance delay would decrease and so give better ability to fight far from the capital.

I am not talking really about communication problems in a far flung empire. That would probably be a little too much for a civ game.

What I am really trying to do is look at POLITICAL AUTHORITY. A leader is able to tell people to obey him/her because they have authority either from the army (despotism) or from religion (theocracy) or from the will of the people (democracy). For example, how was the Egyptian Pharaoh able to make millions of workers construct the Great Pyramids in excruciating labor conditions? How come the workers did not simply refuse to work? I believe the answer is political authority. The Pharaoh had authority as the Leader of the Egyptian Empire to tell workers to do something. When the Pharaoh lost authority then, the population was much less willing to comply.

The idea is not just to represent political authority but to implement a mechanism that limits the number of things a player can. How to do this is really what I would like this thread to be about. Right now, the player can do everything. They can move all the units they want, change taxes, change gvt, change build orders to as many cities as desired etc all in the same turn. I want a mechanism where the player might want to do all those things but will have to choose only 3 or 4 that they can actually be allowed to do that turn. This will force the player to make additional strategic decisions: "I should have Memphis start building the Great Pyramids, I'd like to push science to 40%, I'd like to found a new city to the south near the new source of Iron, I also need to build some more cavalry, and I want to move my stack of riflemen to attack Berlin. But, I can only do 3 actions so which one of the above do I do this turn and which will have to wait for next turn." That is the kind of strategic thinking that I am aiming for. That I believe trully captures the essence of what it means to be a political leader and what empire-building is really about.

[LDiCesare]

I understand what you say, and this is the idea behinf IFPs in MOO3. We will see how it works. I believe it is a good idea.
I also like your proposal of points which allow orders to have better or full effects.
I said that delaying orders makes for another dimension of strategic playing: planning, which is also lacking now. In civ, you can counterattack or react very fast to border attacks, which is way inaccurate for all time warfare.

[Willem]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
I like your idea of delaying orders far from one's capital. I think it would work only for low technologies, however, but is a good simulation. It would restrict the size of empires at old ages: Your borders being unresponsive, you can't defend them properly, but as tech advances (messenger pigeons, radio, satellites), the distance delay would decrease and so give better ability to fight far from the capital.

But this would also work in larger, more modern empires as well. It would represent the amount of bureaucracy that an action has to go through before it gets implemented. Decisions made from the top always take time to work itself down to the ordinary people they affect. Frankly I think it's a great idea.

[steelehc]

I think this is a great idea. I don't think there is any way of adding into the game, at least with our current arsenal. I am all up for having it put into the game somehow.

Steele

[Salvor]

You could actually play a game like this under the current system. Option 1 anyway. Just keep track of the orders you've given and end your turn after a certain number.

There's no way to enforce it, but what does that matter with no MP version? You could certainly do some play-testing to see how it goes.

The questions that remain are to what degree you can customize your governors or utilize auto-commands for workers, etc. Also if your "command bandwidth" would grow as you advance through the ages.

Maybe some specific city improvements or advances that would extend your command ability would be in order (this, of course, is not possible in the current game without some modding and meticulous record-keeping).

It's an interesting idea, and I encourage any who like it to try it. There's no need to wait for a patch or enhancement, though. Just play it that way and see what happens!

[Grumbold]

I like the idea of tradeoffs but not on the number of decisions you can take in a turn of years. You are playing all the political party in power, all the generals and all the scientists.

Instead I would like to see tradeoffs in city development. So for instance a cathedral would create five happiness but reduce science output by 1 and wealth by 1 because strong religious doctine limits free thinking and capitalism slightly. Maybe this is Alpha Centauri Social Engineering in another disguise but we need an alternative to 'build everything'.

[The diplomat]

I am starting to get some replies, COOL! Thanks everybody! All your replies are really really apreciated.

Originally posted by Salvor
Maybe some specific city improvements or advances that would extend your command ability would be in order

Interesting idea! Perhaps there could be a city improvement called the "Town Hall" that would increae AP's.

Furthermore, I think there are several other ways to extend the player's AP.

-Technologies could increase AP.
-The Palace that the player builds could also increae AP. This would make the Palace more than just eye-candy and give it a real gameplay effect. We could justify this by saying that a large impressive palace exerts awe on the population.
-Like I explained in my opening thread, I think the player should also be able to artificially increase the number of AP's but at a high cost.
-The WLTKD should also increase AP! Since the population loves their ruler, they will obey him/her more readily!


Another cool idea that I had is this:
The number of AP's would not be fixed for each government type.
Instead it would work this way:

These are just examples,

DESPOTISM (authority comes from military)
1 AP for every X number of military units.

THEOCRACY (authority comes from religion)
1 AP for every X number of temples ( and other religious city improvement)

DEMOCRACY (authority comes from will of the people)
1 AP for every X number of happy head
-1 AP for every Y number of angry head

the actual numbers for X and Y are not important, it is just to give an idea.

What this does is trully differentiate between the various governments. Your source of authority would trully be different depending on what government you are in. The despot would have to maintain a sizeable army to maintain politial power whereas the democracy would have to worry about the population happiness. This would trully change the way the player acts as well as making each government type unique!

Furthermore, it would allow really cool hypothetical new governments. All the modder would have to do is make the number of AP come from something different. A technocracy (rule by the intellectuals and scientists) could have number of AP depend on scientific city improvements, etc...

[Willem]

Well I hate to burst your bubble, but it's highly unlikely that your ideas will ever see themselves worked into the next Civ III patch. What you're talking about, although I like the ideas, would mean a whole new game concept and a drastic recoding in the programming. Which I doubt very much is going to happen. At the moment, they probably have their hands full trying to fix Civ III, so they're not going to have very much energy left over to be thinking of Civ IV quite yet.

[GePap]

On Governments

the diplomat:
While I agree that some sort of system that prioritizes actionss certainly would help make the game more strategically deep, I am unsure about basing this on governments and not on technology. A modern state, whether democratic, despotic, or somewhere in the murky middle, can do far more than any of their counterparts back in history, simply because of the notion of nationalism (a 'tech' in civ terms) and bureacracy, one which gives the government authority that it lacked before, and becuase orders made are more likely to be carried out with a bureacracy dependent on the power of a state. As for how to handle corruption, our previous discussion on economies seemed more the answer than this system, which really should be seen as only one part. I expect MOO3 to have a better econ system than either MOO2 or Civ3.
Then there is the complementary part of this notion, governors. The point in MOO3 is that the central goverment has to delegate, and any system like yours would also need governor A.I.s, to insure that some areas don't stagnate due to the fact that the player is busy fighting a war. So for any such system to come about, the Governor A.I. would have to be improved, and some sort of military governor introduced.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Willem
Well I hate to burst your bubble, but it's highly unlikely that your ideas will ever see themselves worked into the next Civ III patch. What you're talking about, although I like the ideas, would mean a whole new game concept and a drastic recoding in the programming. Which I doubt very much is going to happen. At the moment, they probably have their hands full trying to fix Civ III, so they're not going to have very much energy left over to be thinking of Civ IV quite yet.

Don't worry: I have no illusions that this idea would ever become reality in civ3 or even civ4. I am talking purely hypothetically!

[The diplomat]

Re: On Governments

Originally posted by GePap
the diplomat:
While I agree that some sort of system that prioritizes actionss certainly would help make the game more strategically deep, I am unsure about basing this on governments and not on technology. A modern state, whether democratic, despotic, or somewhere in the murky middle, can do far more than any of their counterparts back in history, simply because of the notion of nationalism (a 'tech' in civ terms) and bureacracy, one which gives the government authority that it lacked before, and becuase orders made are more likely to be carried out with a bureacracy dependent on the power of a state. As for how to handle corruption, our previous discussion on economies seemed more the answer than this system, which really should be seen as only one part. I expect MOO3 to have a better econ system than either MOO2 or Civ3.
Then there is the complementary part of this notion, governors. The point in MOO3 is that the central goverment has to delegate, and any system like yours would also need governor A.I.s, to insure that some areas don't stagnate due to the fact that the player is busy fighting a war. So for any such system to come about, the Governor A.I. would have to be improved, and some sort of military governor introduced.

I know. And I totally agree with you that modern governments would have more AP's than Ancient ones. There should be techs that increase AP. But I do think that government types should play some role in the number of AP's. After all, there is a big difference between a democracy where the leader needs approval from a senate or from elections before taking action and a dictatorship where the leader can do anything they want with total impunity!

Yes, there should also be decent AI governors for each city. However I believe that if the city model were simplified just a little bit, it would greatly improve the AI's ability to manage the city. SMAC already had a system that allowed the player to custom design what the governor could or could not do. It was far from perfect but it was a good start.