National borders - away from cities.

[THE PITTS]

How about the ability to establish (and try to protect) internationally recognized territorial borders. In real history, this came about with the creation of nation-states in the middle ages, and is now the norm worldwide.
One little pet-peeve from CivII: EVERY technology should have some kind of immediate benefit, not just the ability to go on to other ones. example: gaining Physics increases efficiency, so should decrease waste.

[Pythagoras]

I diagree-
Ok the point of doing that would be to gather resources from that area which would imply you either building a city there or sending 'supply crawlers.' Building a city already gies you the area, supply crawlers will take resources from there, which may require military backing.

If you just want a buffer zone between someone else, just build a line of forts or something to establish your frontier, send in the troops, otherwise if your not getting any resources from it, and you dont have any troops there, whats the point?

[Napoleon I]

Pythagoras: Actually, PITTS has a point. You might want to stake out territory that you want to colonize later on, when you have sufficient resources. Think about Spain, England and France in the New World. They fought over something that was mostly empty land.

PITTS: How would you go about making claims to the borders? Would you have to have a unit there? Can you just click on any area on the map and say that that is your territory? If you need a unit and that unit leaves, does your territory belongs to you forever?

The idea itself though is very good, if you can find a good way to implement it.

------------------
Napoleon I

[Dienstag]

I like you ideas, THE PITTS. Territory should be more than just a relatively indisputable city radius. The whole colonization era was based on claims and the attempt to defend those claims.

In Civ II, any given square either belonged to somebody or nobody, and the only way to do anything about it was to build a city or invade someone else's city. There was no way to peacefully dispute or transfer territory, and there should be. I know SMAC allows you to exchange cities, so that's a start.

One thing that would be would be to choose whether or not you recognize another country's territorial claims. You could say, "No, China, I don't think Taiwan is any of your business." A new border might not be fixed, then, until most nations recognize it. This would also keep nations like Kuwait from being eliminated from the game as long as other countries are actively opposing Iraq.

There might also be the ability for nations to declare a certain place (like Antarctica) international property, so no one in particular can own it. I don't know when this would ever happen; it's just a thought.

And in keeping with my idea of lots of techs, I could see having techs like Physics give a incremental bonus of some sort. Of course, I wouldn't mind seeing techs like Optics, Acoustics, Thermal Dynamics, Relativity, Quantum Dynamics, Astrophysics, Geophysics, Kinetics, Electrostatics, Electrodynamics, Solid State Physics, etc..., etc.... (I'm a physics major, can you tell?)

For all I care, there could 314 physics-related techs .

Dienstag

[NoviceCEO]

quote: Originally posted by Napoleon I on 03-02-2000 04:57 PM Think about Spain, England and France in the New World. They fought over something that was mostly empty land.

It impresses me how mucc Apolyton'ers ignore Portugal. The people who actually fought for the New World were Spain and Portugal. They came to an agreement in the Treaty of Tordesilhas. That treaty created a meridian (The Tordesilhas' Meridian) that dividided the America (that received this name later) into 2: the Eastern part for Portugal (where they started colonizating Brazil, who also received that name later) and the Western for Spain.

About the idea of being able to agree in order to create borders, it may be a good feature, even though I think it would be more fun to fight for them.

[Father Beast]

I like the idea of setting borders between civs, and this is one of the things discussed in THE LIST area. But naturally, borders don't mean anything until you actually meet another civ, and then you would have to hammer out the details with your opponent. as more and more civs come in contact with you, this would get more complicated. When you just start out, you think the whole world is there for you to own. Ideally, I imagine civs dividing up land that is actually occupied by another civ they haven't met, like Spain and Portugal, like noviceCEO said, or the infamous papal line of demarcation.
s for techs, I don't know... I would like a benefit, but I think it's pretty balanced as is. I usually find myself trying to decide to go for the short term benefit of an immediate use tech, or one that opens lots of doors for future bennies.

[Youngsun]

Basically I support the idea of having borders. Borders in SMAC were pretty good but I wanna see more advanced features about them.

Ola Novice!

Portugal's impact on other civs were great! Especially ,in Asia(15~17th century)Portugese merchants were active in trade with Japan. They introduced muskets to the Japanese and the Japanese were enthusiastic about this new weapon. The introdcution of the musket to Japan changed whole course of East Asian history.

At that time Japan was divided by many warring lords. Wars were fought endlessly and there was no signs of quick unification. Lord Oda, who was an expansionist, knew the importance of the musket and bought them at large quantity. He introduced new technique of 3 lines of musketeer which reduced the vulnerablity the unit due to reduced firing interval. Eventually lord Oda's musketeers defeated Lord Takeda's mounted force which had been regarded the stongest of all in Japan.

Later unified Japan launched an invasion to Korea and also this time Japanese musketeers came as a terror to the Korean army. Ming China finally intervened and won the siege of Pyongyang. But later also smashed by the Japanese at Byouck-Je. Finally the Japanese lost the war due to severe naval loss done by Korean fleet and persistant local resistance.

The winner of this war was the Manchu!. While Ming china was spending its vigour to fight the Japanese, Manchus' economic and military success were not checked. Finally whole of China came under the rule of the Manchu.

The biggest winner of course was Japan. Japan had its own version of the Crusade. While many warrior lords were absent at home, the merchant class finally got the upper hand and many serfs left their farms to start new life in cities. Returned warlords came with new perspectives of the World and the contact with other civilisations made Japan culturally rich. (The beginnig of Japanese version of renaissance)

China and Korea were clearly the losers. Especially Korea whose lands were devastated by the war never recovered from the wounds. China had to face humiliating consequences by accepting Manchu rule-Manchus were regareded as insolent barbarians to Han Chinese!

If there were no Portugese merchants around Japan at that time What would have happened?
Well I don't know

[NoviceCEO]

Youngsun, I deeply appreciate your comments.

Unfortuantely, due to a failure in the school program of all the countries I've heard, we generally tend to know too little about other countries' history as we should. I didn't know of the Portuguese influence over Asia and I thank you a lot for the history class.

I had heard of Portuguese merchants traveling to Japan (on a Teenage Mutan Ninja Turtles movie!!) and there was, of course Macau, which has recently been returned to China.

Again, thank's for the history class.
novice

[MidKnight Lament]

Anyone read Shogun? It's long, but good. I didn't know they had anything much to do with Japan until I read it.

[Youngsun]

Novice

No need to appreciate I just had to do it.

By the way, Did you know Japanese food "Tenpura" also introduced by Portugese sailors? (In Portugese->Tempora)And I simply love this Japanese food. hmmm yum.

Midknight Lament

Yea! "Shogun" is great to read I strongly recommend to other people to read it.(Really worth to read since it gives lots of detail about feudal Japanese history.)

[Dobermann]

I think, maybe you have heard of this but I´ll say it anyway

I think every, okey maybe not every, unit should be able to claim land. Claimed land becomes apart of your civ.
But to keep the claim you need a constant military precence, this precence doubles/triples or whatever with fortresses.

So a legion moves into an unclaimed square, claims it, it takes maybe 2 turns, and moves on leaving the square without military precence(unfortified), after maybe 5 turns the square the square becomes unclaimed.
Now if the you fortify the legion it will keep the claim on say, the actual square and the surrounding square. A legion fortified in a fortress will keep the claim in double that.

That is the basic idea, now I´m quite sure there where problems with this, but I cant for the life of me remember what. One issue I do remember was the whole idea of expanding by fortresses. Its not a big problem with me since I want fortresses to have a bigger role in the game, but it would ofcourse be nessecary to make them more expansive to build and they should require upkeep.

Anyway this would be one way of expanding and the actual borders would be between the claimed land and unclaimed/enemy land.

[MidKnight Lament]

Youngsun - I was actually studying Japanese at the time (even if I was crap at it), so I was loving the detail. It can be rare to find a book which makes learning history an interesting novel. (Although I'm sure all you historical gurus will swamp me with them now). You could tell the author had done lots of research. Who was the author, btw?

Gotta love that Japanese honour system....

[NoviceCEO]

Youngsun, the word "tempora" sounds familiar to me, but I don't know much of Japanese food. (I prefer something more like bees, rice and beaf!! hummmm )

[Youngsun]

Midknight Lament

Author? I don't remember now who was the author of that book. It's been almost 6 years since I read that book. At that time, I was able to tell most of lords and generals' names but now I can tell only key figures.(some without given names) For example, that defeated Takeda's mounted force was not led by Takeda Shingen.(legendary tactician) It was his son and I am not sure about his name(maybe Takeda Katsuyori?)
But I will ask my Japanese friend about the author and as soon as I get the answer I will post it. OK?

Novice

Actually it was that Japanese friend who recommended the book(Shogun)and I became aware of the significant role of Portugese merchants.

Japanese appreciation to Portugal is well represented even in pc games such as "Uncharted water" series(Koei made) In Uncharted water I, the main character(Leon) was portugese. In Uncharted waterIII, Whole demos(beginning and ending)are written in Portugese!<-I was really surprised "gash! this game is Japanese made and has whole demos written in Portugese!? not even English!?" Nobunaga's AmbitionV(Koei made)'s ending demo also had a picture that shows Portugese merchants interaction with the Japanese!

[MidKnight Lament]

Thanks for that Youngsun. I might have to read it again. Hopefully someone else might take it up too.