An interesting late-night musing on how to make a better civ game

[Jaguar]

I cant really explain this idea, you'll just have to see for yourself. This idea could be worked into every single game concept.

Example:
Terrain. Instead of having just a few different types of terrain, have a few variables for every square, like maybe

• temperature
• elevation
• slope (ie a foothill would slope upwards towards the mountain range)
• resources (instead of either having an iron resource or not, you could have varying amounts of iron in all hill/mountain squares. All should have a tiny bit, but some should have a lot)
• fertility (ie barren or nutrient rich)
• % forested

Every variable is somewhere from .00 to 1.00. It isn't too hard to do. Though it will be hard to show terrain-wise. But other things could be implemented without even worrying about graphics.
another example coming...

[Jaguar]

Civ traits: instead of the "each civ automatically gets two" idea, those could be percentages too.

Americans: .31 expansionist, .21 Industrious, .26 commercial, .13 scientific, .07 militaristic, and .02 religious

or something like that. But it goes even further. Say, Miami for example is .47 cuban and .51 american and .02 other. Say that the cubans are much more miliaristic. The city of Miami becomes more militaristic. The Miamian people will be slightly better in battle, or something. The units wont have arbitrary values. Instead, they will be valued on what weapons they have, what quality, experience, number of troops, and how militaristic the people are.

[Jaguar]

The city view, for example. Instead of having people working on squares, you'd have an overall idea of what amount of people are working where. The single population head idea would be of course, banished, and instead, you'd have your 353,000 city with 35,000 brits, 240,000 americans, blah blah, whatever, and your people would conform to what jobs their ethnicity tends to like. Zulus would join the army more frequently than, say, french. You would have commerce coming in, but it wouldn't be so exact, like 7 commerce, which gives you 3 gold and 4 science. You would have a general trade figure, which goes up during boom times, and down during recessions. You wouldn't have just single improvements. ie spend 32.5 production on a better school system, which instead of randomly multiplying science by 1.5, instead would benifit research, possibly make the city more scientific, and slightly benefit happiness and commerce.

I'm sure you see what my general idea is now. comments?

[Ethelred]

I thought people allready had a problem with Civ III being slow. Adding what amounts to fuzzy logic with partial properties and so many terrain types would slow the game down. That many more decisions to make for each and every move.

The single population head idea would be of course, banished, and instead, you'd have your 353,000 city with 35,000 brits, 240,000 americans, blah blah, whatever, and your people would conform to what jobs their ethnicity tends to like. Zulus would join the army more frequently than, say, french.

This is actually in the game allready to some extent. Look at the build priorities for each civ. Zulus attack a lot because they build a lot units to attack with. Forceing such behavior on the player would not be well recieved by many. Giving people advantages or disadavantages allows people to choose what to do within their talents rather than just forcing them to behave a certain way.

The idea in good game design is to allow complexity of action without complexity of rules. Hard to achieve but essential for an abstract strategy game to have longevity. The terrain stuff is good for a combat sim but the fact is games for grognards sell poorly.

[Jaguar]

Well obviously the zulu citizens aren't going to force you to make an army. They'll just be more likely to join if you have one. Also, it should depend on your government how much you control the workers. In despotism, you can choose exactly how much you want where. Same with commie and mostly the same for monarchy. In the democratic forms of government, you can only subsidize various industries.

[steelehc]

That would be a very interesting element to add to the game. However, not only would it be very difficult to add, having no relation to any engine already present, but it would also bog down the game even more then it is already. Good idea, though.

Steele

[Thrawn05]

Excellent points. I like Jaguar Warrior's idea of percentage of traits. That would help with civs that in real life are noted for more then two (You say france is also expansionist during Nepoleon).

[ahenobarb]

I like the first three ideas about the terrain!

[Jaguar]

I think the way to keep the terrain manageable is you have maybe 5 different tree graphics. Each for a different temperature. Then you have maybe 5 different densities of each type of tree. Then you'd also have, for flat terrain, desert, plains, grassland, tundra, and glacier. The game would stick the appropriate tree graphic on top. Assuming that we have 5 different temperature terrains for flat ground and hilly ground, and 2 for mountains, we might only have maybe 30 graphics total. The graphics would give you a ballpark idea of what the terrain is like, and then you can further see the stats by hovering the mouse over the square and getting exact numbers.

Keep in mind, this is for civ 4, (assuming there is one,) which will be on maybe 6 ghz machines. Think about it, Civ II was released with 200 mhz machines being the good computers of the time. III was released with 1000 mhz being pretty common. It makes sense that IV will be released at a time where 5+ ghz will be the norm. Also, if you wan to see how much a computer of today can do, play Black and White. That game has entire 3-D worlds, with people who actually walk around and stuff. It takes my 1 ghz PIII only about a minute to load a game . I think the terrain being complex is fine, because I don't really care how long it takes to load at the beginning. I hink the rest are mostly formulas, and those don't take computers too long. Especially because the computers could be 5 times as fast. Thats easily enough for some more graphics and a lot of formulas.



I think the civs in most desperate need of percentage traits are China (Needs small amounts of everything) and Rome (Militaristic, Commercial, and Industrious, which wasn't given to Rome)

[Tarquelne]

I'd like it, but I think it would alienate too much of Firaxis's target market. The game's supposed to be simple. Part of that simplicity is the ease at which someone can look at the terrain (for example) and quickly know/guess how much it's worth.

It might be fun, though, to have a utility that'd make some random changes to various values in the .bic. Start up a new game and maybe, for example, find that the deserts are blooming.... or that, hey, tanks are 1/2 price. Woo hoo!, wish I'd got to them first.....

On citizens having preferences: I think it'd be nifty if citizens of various civs _demanded_ things. You might want to rush a Spearman to defend the city, but the Babylonian citizens want a Library....

Of course, Civ players also seem to be control freaks.... at least when it comes to the game. I think most would HATE my idea.

[Jaguar]

Well what we don't want is to watch a story that unfolds on a generated map.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Jaguar Warrior
Well what we don't want is to watch a story that unfolds on a generated map.

That reminds me of the opening to Civ on the SNES, where Gaia gives you the gift of "becoming" the world's greatest leader.

[Inverse Icarus]

jaggie, how about this?

[Jaguar]

Thanks.

[Inverse Icarus]

and your little musing seems like a good idea, though i dont know how well it could be implimented, and to what extent.

sure, if the germans rule a city with a large indian population, the indians might be more inclined to peace / commerce than the german people. perhaps that city would get cheaper commerce buildings?

that way the best cities would have a bunch of different popultations.

yay diversity!