Civ3 Game Design Discussion Thread

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by Willem
Alright guys, Vel kindly asked that this not turn into a flame thread, and I agree heartily. This constant bickering that's been happening lately isn't going to do one bit of good. If anyone hopes to get the ear of Firaxis, and end up with a better game, then they'll have to learn how to discuss their views like the civilized adults I'm presuming we all are. If I'm getting sick of reading it all the time, I can just imagine how they feel about it.

I agree, I was just merely stating that to come up with all these excellent ideas is one thing, but for them to be of any use that's a whole other thing. I know Dan reads through the threads, and I admire him for doing so, but he doesn't have enough "pull" or "authority" to make our ideas become reality, perhaps Dan would make a good voice for the community - if he would agree to carry our suggestions back to the key members of the Civ3 development team. Otherwise it's back to the drawing board.

Charles.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by star mouse


* In addition to polluting a tile, a polluted square should have a chance of destroying irrigation and other tile improvements.

* Make pollution affect the output of a city in general. Each pollution icon in the city window could reduce the production and commerce of a city by 1.

* Have one or two more buildings that reduce pollution created by improvements. These would cost 5-10 gold a turn to maintain, thus you would be spending gold each turn to clean up pollution.

Excellent idea! I agree. Pollution should be controlled in a more administrative fasion - like inside the city window, I think you have a great idea Star Mouse - a "fee" would not only cut down on MM but it would be much much more simple. Anyone else agree that we should use this concept "pollution clean-up 5-10 gold/turn" ?

Charles.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by OneInTen
For all the features and faults of the civ 3 design, at least it's proven to work as a game, be playable, and at least to some enjoyable. What I think would be really interesting is if some of the suggestions made by fans were expanded to really explain in detail how it would work within the game, what difference it would make to other features, and so on.

For example, it's all very well to say, for example, we need stacked movement. OK, I accept, the people want stacked movement. But what should the interfece be? How should units be added and removed from stacks? What sort of units can go in stacks? What actions can a stack take? What if units in the stack have different movement speeds? And so on - often the feature opens more problems than it solves in it's raw state.

That I think is what game design is really about - not just putting together a whole host of features, but describing in detail how they work as individual features and most importantly how they go together.

I agree OiT, but this is the discussion phase of things. I'm sure that if and when Firaxis decides to take our suggestions seriously we will be more than prepared to give them a complete detail on how our feature(s) will interface and react to other areas of the game. Until then, it's just a drawing board concept we have here. But I openly agree, some of the ideas might be too far fetched to impliment at this point in time, seeming as some of this material would involve uprooting code, and I don't think we want to take that route. However, we need to know what is possible and what isn't - and only a developer of Firaxis can tell us such things. Sadly.

Charles.

[CharlesUFarley]

New Army Building Concept

Originally posted by Willem
But there already is stack movement, it's called an Army unit. But so many restrictions have been placed on their use that it's become pointless to use them. 400 shields so I can move 3 units around, big deal! Not worth it! Make them available right from the first of the game, let them hold more units as time goes by. I've done it with my game, I've converted my Palace to a small wonder that can build them, and there's no problem with it. As I mentioned before, in my least game the French had an Army of 10 Swordsman poised to strike the Indians. If the AI knows how to use them, why so many restrictions?

In this thread I mentioned a concept regarding stacked movement and army building what do you think? IMO I think my idea would work and become a more valuble asset in war. The only problem is my army concept might involve some uprooting of code, and therefor the chances of it actually happening would be null.

Charles.

[Willem]

Re: New Army Building Concept

Originally posted by CharlesUFarley


In this thread I mentioned a concept regarding stacked movement and army building what do you think? IMO I think my idea would work and become a more valuble asset in war. The only problem is my army concept might involve some uprooting of code, and therefor the chances of it actually happening would be null.

Charles.

Well yes, you made the point yourself. Most of those ideas would require more coding, and therefore it will be longer before we ever get a new patch. I think it would be more productive to point out areas that already exist in the game, which only require some minor changes to make them usable. In the things I mentioned about the Army, this is already do-able, in fact I've implemented it into my own game. And it's working out just fine. So I see no reason why some minor changes can't be made to what already exists.

Besides, you're just adding more work to building an Army, and I can assure you that trying to fill up an Army of 10 Riflemen is already enough work. It takes awhile before it's ready to go out onto the field, full strength.

[CharlesUFarley]

Re: Re: New Army Building Concept

Originally posted by Willem


Well yes, you made the point yourself. Most of those ideas would require more coding, and therefore it will be longer before we ever get a new patch. I think it would be more productive to point out areas that already exist in the game, which only require some minor changes to make them usable. In the things I mentioned about the Army, this is already do-able, in fact I've implemented it into my own game. And it's working out just fine. So I see no reason why some minor changes can't be made to what already exists.

Besides, you're just adding more work to building an Army, and I can assure you that trying to fill up an Army of 10 Riflemen is already enough work. It takes awhile before it's ready to go out onto the field, full strength.

I see you're point. My idea supports a wider scope of things to do as some people have made a point of the game not being much fun anymore, and lack of things to do in late game. So that was my suggestion in response to 'lack of features'. But you're point is valid perhaps it will make things more complicated and make the late game even longer. I guess it all depends on how it's coded too. However, you're idea is good.

Charles.

[Willem]

Re: Re: Re: New Army Building Concept

Originally posted by CharlesUFarley
I guess it all depends on how it's coded too. However, you're idea is good.

Charles.

Well that's the thing. My approach is do-able now, I've proven that in my own mod. And there's a French army of 10 Swordsman running around that shows me the AI knows how to use them as well. It's just a question of making some minor changes to the existing code, everything is already in place. By the looks of it, there's no limit as to how many units I can fit into an Army, I've had up to 12 units so far. Now wouldn't some small changes of that sort go a long way to solving the stack movement problem? Wouldn't you rather move around 1 Army as opposed to 10 Riflemen?

[OneInTen]

On thought on corruption - if the distance factor were relative rather than absolute, then it would make more sense (in fact I'm not totally convinced it's not relative, more on this later).

What I mean by this is that it should be distance from the capital, but distance relative to other cities. Not number of tiles away from the capital, but number of cities that are closest (with ties split at random perhaps, I don't know).

If it were a relative distance thing, then it wouldn't matter if you got a costal start - because your 8th furthest away would be as corrupt if it was on your second layer inland as the 8th city which was on the first layer for a player with an inland start.

Now, I say I'm not entirely sure it doesn't already work like this (at least partially) because I recall reading in a thread on civfanatics that one way to get better corruption levels was to ensure that you build each ring of cities an equal distance from the capital. Now that suggests to me that it's evaluating each city in the first ring to be "closest" to the capital and therefore getting minimal corruption. Perhaps they didn't implement a tie splitting mechanism.

Anyway, it's something I should test when I get home to get a handle on it - it seems pointless to discuss a design decision which at the moment it seems nobody fully understands the exact mechanics of.

[Willem]

One idea I've had bouncing around is tying the corruption to the Governor. More specifically making the Gov an anti-corruption device, sort of. Here's how it goes:

When I capture an enemy city, I usually get a message asking me if I want to install a new governor, or raze it. Now what if this idea of installing a governor were extended so that at any time, I can go to a city and "fire" someone who's incompetent/corrupt, and replace him with someone I hope will do a better job of running the city. He may be to a better job, he may be even worse than the one I'm firing. The exception to this would be if I had a Democracy, in which case the people of the city elect their own Governor from time to time.

At least this way there's a chance for some outlying cities to produce more than 1 shield at a time. If I assign a gov that's competent/honest, then the city will produce fairly well. If not we get the 1 shield production we currently have. This appproach could be overlayed on to the current model so that the Governor becomes something like an anti-corruption improvement. At least there'd be some variation, and there'd be a mechanism that gives the player some sort of control.

[CharlesUFarley]

Re: New Army Building Concept

Originally posted by Willem
Well that's the thing. My approach is do-able now, I've proven that in my own mod. And there's a French army of 10 Swordsman running around that shows me the AI knows how to use them as well. It's just a question of making some minor changes to the existing code, everything is already in place. By the looks of it, there's no limit as to how many units I can fit into an Army, I've had up to 12 units so far. Now wouldn't some small changes of that sort go a long way to solving the stack movement problem? Wouldn't you rather move around 1 Army as opposed to 10 Riflemen?

Well I would think so, but instead of having unit tedium, you'll have army tedium, unless you're idea includes making armies more costly but also more effective.

Charles.

[Willem]

Re: Re: New Army Building Concept

Originally posted by CharlesUFarley


Well I would think so, but instead of having unit tedium, you'll have army tedium, unless you're idea includes making armies more costly but also more effective.

Charles.

Well no, Armies should be much, much cheaper than they are. Otherwise, why not just use a bunch of individual units? They're not really any more powerful than the sum of the units inside, so what's the point of making their cost so exorbitant? And yes, it might end up being Army tedium instead, but at least it would be some improvement. And it's something that can easily be patched using the existing code, so we wouldn't have to wait for a major rewrite. It's to late now to expect any big changes, the best we can hope for is for what currently exists to be utilized a bit better. Anything more will have to wait for Civ 4 I think.

[CharlesUFarley]

Re: New Army Building Concept

Originally posted by Willem


Well no, Armies should be much, much cheaper than they are. Otherwise, why not just use a bunch of individual units? They're not really any more powerful than the sum of the units inside, so what's the point of making their cost so exorbitant? And yes, it might end up being Army tedium instead, but at least it would be some improvement. And it's something that can easily be patched using the existing code, so we wouldn't have to wait for a major rewrite. It's to late now to expect any big changes, the best we can hope for is for what currently exists to be utilized a bit better. Anything more will have to wait for Civ 4 I think.

I think you misunderstood my meaning, there were some people complaining about 'not much to do' in the late game. As the game progresses the player runs out of 'fun things to do' - now I don't know about you, but my interpitation of 'more fun things to do' would be to add features to the already existing game. More windows, more 'build' options etc. However some of you just want simplicity - I don't think we'll see my version of fun as it would involve 'more code'. We're more likely to have small suttle changes rather than larger ones. But keep in mind Willem, if you increase the cost of an army, you can also increase it's strength and perpose as well. In theory.

Charles.

[Willem]

Re: Re: New Army Building Concept

Originally posted by CharlesUFarley


I think you misunderstood my meaning, there were some people complaining about 'not much to do' in the late game. As the game progresses the player runs out of 'fun things to do' - now I don't know about you, but my interpitation of 'more fun things to do' would be to add features to the already existing game. More windows, more 'build' options etc. However some of you just want simplicity - I don't think we'll see my version of fun as it would involve 'more code'. We're more likely to have small suttle changes rather than larger ones. But keep in mind Willem, if you increase the cost of an army, you can also increase it's strength and perpose as well. In theory.

Charles.

OK, so we're talking about 2 different things here. And yes, we need more fun things to do, but in other areas, like group movement, we currently have to much to do.

But it needs to be more than just tinkering with an Army, like naming it, though I can see it would add a personal touch. It has to inlvolve some decision making process as well, a choice to be made. That's one of the problems now, there aren't enough areas where you really have to make one.

As for your training idea, who knows. Personally I can't quite visualize what you have in mind, so I can't comment either way.

[CharlesUFarley]

Re: New Army Building Concept

Originally posted by Willem
OK, so we're talking about 2 different things here. And yes, we need more fun things to do, but in other areas, like group movement, we currently have to much to do.

But it needs to be more than just tinkering with an Army, like naming it, though I can see it would add a personal touch. It has to inlvolve some decision making process as well, a choice to be made. That's one of the problems now, there aren't enough areas where you really have to make one.

As for your training idea, who knows. Personally I can't quite visualize what you have in mind, so I can't comment either way.

Exactly, more 'options' involving a greater arena of decision making would certainly make things alot more appealing. And as far as my training idea goes, it stems from the current method of unit development but more in depth, rather than a simple "shields/turn=unit produced" we could go a little more in depth, perhaps a new window with 'training' options, rather than a city only being able to train one unit why not allow it to train a variety.

Stockpile wood (50 wood = 1 archer unit)
Stockpile iron (100 iron = 1 swordsmen unit)

In essence being able to build as many units as you like, depending on the amount of "stockpiled resources" in that city.

And so forth, and maybe make it a little more realistic and difficult to handle and maintain resources. This would throw a radical new spin to the whole unit develpoment system. But again, it's a matter of preference - some people want things simple, some of us want it more detailed - which would provide "more things to do". I personally would rather have more detail than a faster late game. But thats just me.

Charles.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by OneInTen
What I mean by this is that it should be distance from the capital, but distance relative to other cities. Not number of tiles away from the capital, but number of cities that are closest (with ties split at random perhaps, I don't know).

I think the distance from the capital, used to calculate corruption, should be not a "square count" over the map, but be calculated by movepoints needed to reach your capital. That would give the opportunity to fight the corruption by building roads and developing your empire. After building a RR, the distance based corruption could disappear and only the #-of-city based remain.