Natural Disasters and Epidemics

[nationalist]

Originally posted by Venger


Far be it from me to speak for another, but since I think culture flipping is such crap, allow me to take a shot...

1) It has no historical basis

2) It seems to happen during the strangest times - i.e. when I am kicking AI butt and have a large standing army in the city...

3) It doesn't make the game more fun, or harder, just more tedious, and random.

Alas - if they let us turn it OFF - everyone's happy.

Venger

I like culture flipping. I think that it makes the game more fun. It gives incentive for builders to build culture producing buildings, rewards people for building wonders that become obsolete, and adds more strategy to the game. For instance, you can expand all you want, but you have to make sure that your nation is cultured enough so that your people don't flee to a rival civ. You can't ignore building libraries and universities, because you can start losing people to a more enlightened culture. I think that it forces people to play using a more balanced strategy.

1. I think that it has some historical basis. For the peaceful flip of a city on your border, look at the example of Texas. I think that it resembles the culture flip in Civ 3. It was part of Mexico, but slowly became more and more influenced by the U.S., settlers came in, Texas declared itself free from Mexico and shortly thereafter joined the U.S. ( I know that this is a VERY brief summary of the history, but if anyone wants to know more they can study it themselves.) As for the war time flip back that you are refering to, I think that it was implemented to prevent a favored stratgy of mine from Civ 2, which was to build a horde of Howitzers, run over an enemy, and garrison a size 24 city that has 4 wonders in it with one Howitzer while I was fighting a war. In Civ 3, that city would flip in an instant. I think that is much more realistic and historicall acurate than having a city of 5 million people subdued and help by a battery of artillery.

2. It is very predictable to me. If you are attacking a civilization that outclass you in culture, still has a capital nearby, and has a large population,you need a very large garrison to hold it and quell the resistors. Otherwise, the people will overthrow you. Try to starve off as many people as possible while rush building culture buildings to avoid the flip.

3. I think that the game makes more fun for stated reasons, and I don't think that it is random.

I like Cultureflip, and I think that it helps to make Civ 3 distinctive.

[GeneralTacticus]

Originally posted by Venger
1) It has no historical basis

Well, the actual concept does, but the way it works is often totally unrealistic. Firaxis does need to work on it a bit, or just give the option to turn it off.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Mike B has said that he wants to add the powers of scripting, without the script. What do you think of that?

I say good luck to him, he'll have a hell of a time trying. The power of scripting is immense, and I too doubt that its possible without the script itself.

At a bare minimum, I'd settle for a trigger system as in Age of Kings, better would be a semi-scripting language such as StarCraft's StarEdit system, but yes, ideally a language like SLIC is the way to go.

The real power lies in its form as a script, it means that you can define self-contained functions, stringent conditions too complex for a trigger system like AoK's to handle, have code for localised or global events, or both, trigger on the UI, etc.
Did I mention if, elseif, else, for and while loops? Do I need to?
And most importantly, hold variables and arrays as variables, rather than named numbers, if that makes sense.

In StarEdit (as in Java I think), variables have to be defined as numbers beforehand, and cannot be altered during the code. This is very annoying, and severely limits what can be done.

The way SLIC is so deeply ingrained into CtP2 means that it's half-way to being ingame code itself. If Firaxis have a way of exposing enough ingame code to make it powerful (like in SLIC, we've done eg. Militia units, wonder units, natural disasters, a unit updater script, AI fixes, small wonders, expanding cities, rewritten diplomacy (twice), not to mention scenario code - New game concepts, not just cheats and rule alterations), and yet keep us sufficiently out of the game files so that we can't (in the words of a certain Firaxian) "create [only] bugs".

If the balance is struck correctly (from their PoV), then all praise to them, but chances are for modders, what we will be able to do with the maximum we will be given will still be frustratingly small, whereas in CtP2, we're still discovering ways to do new things, not just workaround old problems.

If the balance is struck correctly (from our PoV), I will a) buy Civ3 immediately, b) as promised in the Civ3 Creation forum, eat my hat, and c) probably die from a mix of a heart attack (shock) and the effects of hat poisoning.
But seriously, I doubt it will. In the words of Mike B: "I don't believe in giving scripting languages because the only additional power they give users is the power to create bugs."
Well frankly Mike, that's distilled bullcrap in a bottle.
1. Who cares how many bugs we create? We won't bother you with them, its our problem.
2. Besides the bugs, it gives us power to create diamonds. SLIC has oh-so-wonderfully improved CtP2, and the number of players reporting bugs (In SP at least, and MP is hardly a Civ3 concern yet) is vanishingly small, given a few prerequisites (patch, settings etc, all detailed in readmes).

So adding scripting to the power of SLIC, without the language? I don't think so. To the power of AoK, probably quite easy, to a happy medium, most likely, but whether or not it deserves my £30 will remain to be seen.

PS: AI. It is theoretically possible to rewrite the CtP AI, using SLIC to call all the strategic states etc, but this would take thousands of hours, and it is generally accepted to be slightly faster using the existing code as a basis for it.
Assuming the Civ3 AI does not need any rewriting, then Civ3 scripting would not need to cover it. To be truly powerful it would, or to be a truly complete scenario editor it would. How would the AI cope with an all water map? It couldn't. Bye bye naval war scenarios...
This isn't a major priority I woulnd't have thought, but its another point, and the language has the edge there, fuzzy logic and whatnot.

Firaxis, hear the call! Scripting language, scripting language! May the demons haunt your sleep til you heed their call! Scripting language, scripting language!
Give us the power, let us prove that we can create not just bugs, but butterflies, and er... bluebirds. Better scenarios than the world has ever seen, more new concepts than you can shake a leemur poo at, and all available for gamers to pick and choose the ones they want.
Let me mod, Mike; won't you let me mod.

Give us the power,
You know it makes sense.

[Pius Popprasch]

On Deity disease comes more often. I had dying cities in flood plains and jungle, in the Ancient Era! A.I. players seem to have an anti-serum, though.
I'd like to switch it off, actually. There is no strategy involved.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Pius Popprasch
On Deity disease comes more often. I had dying cities in flood plains and jungle, in the Ancient Era! A.I. players seem to have an anti-serum, though. ...

If disease is affected by difficulty level, remember that the AI is playing at Regent level (Editor default).

[Locutus]

Damn, I had wrote a long post last night but the forums ate it. Anyway, it boils down to the same thing as what IW posted: I have experience with both and my conclusion is that scripting language 'without scripting' means that your power to create is limited to what the programmer (Mike, in this case) allows you to create. Scripting ala CtP2's SLIC, allows you to do things that the programmer (in this case Joe Rumsey of Activision) never even dreamt of being possible (in case of my Flatmap mod for CtP1 Joe even flat-out admitted this on the forums).

[Thrawn05]

I would like to see earthquakes in the game. It could destroy improvments (not wonders). On Emperor level and up it won't effect the AI.

That way, I could rename one of my cities Cheesequake, New Jersey!

[Ethelred]

The catch with that is that earthquakes DID destroy wonders. The Colossus and the Light House come to mind at the moment.

The Pyramids are pretty much earthquake proof due their low angle of repose style of construction. Unless they get a lot of water in the ground anyway. Then they could be destroyed by liquifaction. Not too likely unless there is a major climate change.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Ethelred
The catch with that is that earthquakes DID destroy wonders. The Colossus and the Light House come to mind at the moment.

The Pyramids are pretty much earthquake proof due their low angle of repose style of construction. Unless they get a lot of water in the ground anyway. Then they could be destroyed by liquifaction. Not too likely unless there is a major climate change.

I thought the great Light House shared the same fait as the great library?

Oh well. What I was thinking is that if a wonder could be destroy in an earthquake, there is no real sense in me spending all those turns building it (with my luck, it might get destroyed as soon as I finish it).

[Ethelred]

I thought the great Light House shared the same fait as the great library?

Well my memory and the Civalopedia both say earthquakes. The Great Library was subjected to several fires. The last such fire is supposed to have been deliberatly set by early christians that wanted to destroy vile pagan scrolls. They seem to have been particularly rabid in Alexandria. They murdered the last High Priestess of Isis as well. However Julius Ceasar also may have set fire to the Great Library when he conquered Egypt as a diversion at one point.

Link for Light House

And here is link on the Great Library that makes a good case against Ceasar.

Put the blame on Ceasar

Its hard to know the real truth about the Libarary as that area of ancient Alexandria is now underwater. Not so for the Lighthouse. Parts of it can be seen in the Arab Fortress that was built on the site of the Lighthouse. There is a nice documentary on the Wonders that is constantly repeated on the various history and discovery channels.

Earthquakes are not at all unusual in that part of the world. Africa is still moving North as is Turkey. Its kind of amazing the Parthanon wasn't destroyed by one long before the Turks used it for gunpoder storage.

It is a bit scary when the ground starts to dance. I have been though a number of them but they were all far enough away there was never any damage in my area. My Grand Aunts house was wrecked by one though. Took two quakes twenty years appart to do it.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Ethelred
Its hard to know the real truth about the Libarary as that area of ancient Alexandria is now underwater. Not so for the Lighthouse. Parts of it can be seen in the Arab Fortress that was built on the site of the Lighthouse. There is a nice documentary on the Wonders that is constantly repeated on the various history and discovery channels.

I've read some documents that said the Romans destroyed the library (they set it on fire), or the early christians (also set it on fire).