The 3d best thing Civ never had (worked out)

[Maniac]

Since there do seem to be some people that like the x10 idea and the related population idea, I made an effort to write down the improved population & resources idea I had in mind, although I fully realize this can’t get in Civ3, because a) the idea is probably too progressive and b) Civ3 is already too long in production to still add many new ideas. Nevertheless, comments and ideas for improvements are always welcome, just for fun (or we can always knock on the door of the CTP2-team).

Let’s st art with saying that I’ll present my idea in two ways. First way: with real numbers, that is, 10000 citizens ARE 10000 citizens/’population heads’. In an alternative way, you can use the popx10 system where 1 population head will always represent 1000 people. So done with the previous system of 10000 -> 30000 -> 60000...
A benefit of ‘popx10’ system over ‘realpop’ would be that in scenarios, you can define yourself what one population head represents. For I can imagine that you would want it to be different in a scenario playing in the Classical Age than in a sci fi hi tech scenario.

But of course, if you get rid of the old pop system and replace it with the one described above, you’ll also have to come up with a new population growth system and a new resource gathering system. Otherwise, the city radius would be fully worked with only 20000 citizens. Here comes my meagre attempt to do that.

I’ll begin my opus (I’m ‘notorious’ for making EXTREMELY long posts) with Terrain. In my theory, each terrain type would have a certain number of ‘Forage Units’, where the definition of a Forage Unit (in the future I’ll abbreviate it to ‘FU’) would be: “An amount of terrain that, without any Terrain Improvements (=TI’s), SE choices or technological advances and buildings, produces enough Food to feed one/two (why I doubt between these you’ll read later) Population Head(s).

Of course, not every terrain type contains equal amounts of Forage Units. If Firaxis decides to keep the old Civ2 terrain system, I can give a concrete example. Then, a Grassland square would contain 10000 FU’s or 10 FU’s, depending if you use the ‘realpop’ or ‘popx10’ system. Likewise, a Plain square would contain 5(000) FU’s. Keep in mind that every Pop Head needs ONE Food, not two as in Civ1/2/SMAC.
In a SMAC-like Terrain system the # of FU’s would depend on rainfall and temperature. There, it would be possible to have terrain with more random Forage Units. Instead of only 0, 5(000) and 10(000), you could have also eg. 1(000) and 4(000) FU’s.

As you might have guessed, there are ways to improve the Food output of a Terrain square, or more precisely, the # of Food each Forage Unit produces. As you remember, in the beginning a FU produces one or two Food. Ways to improve that I have come up with are:
PS: Remember all the numbers that follow are merely indicative. This is just a theory. Playtesting would be needed to know if it works.

1.IRRIGATION:
Use: If there is Irrigation present, the # of Food a FU produces is doubled, however with the restriction that the total amount of Food the square produces can maximum be increased to 20(000).
I would like to mention that in my TI system (just like this ‘Population system’, I invented it several months ago, but never took the effort to write it down. Perhaps I will do it after this, since I’m busy anyway) there is a difference between Irrigation and Farm (see later). In reality, unlike what you would suspect if you look at Civx, Irrigation isn’t used on every terrain. Irrigation is only used if the ground on itself isn’t wet enough and there needs to be brought on more water. So Irrigation isn’t used on already fertile grounds. To represent that (let’s to prevent confusion , suppose that a FU produces in the beginning two Food) an Irrigation TI can only increase Food production to 20(000). In the old Civx Terrain system, that would mean that Irrigation is useless on Grassland.
Or to give an example in a SMAC-like Terrain system: If a Terrain had 6(000) FU’s, so produced 12(000) Food, there can only be added 8(000) Food, instead of 12(000) what you would normally expect.

2.FARM:
You could compare this TI with the previous Civ2 Irrigation TI. Note that I would eliminate the Farmland TI. The effect is simply a doubling of the Food each Forage Unit produces, without restrictions.

3.TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES:
There would be lots of techs that improve the the # of Food a FU produces, like Crop Rotation, Ox Plow, Horse Plow, Mechanization, Refrigeration,… At the end of the game each FU should produce 30 or 40 (with Genetic Manipulation) Food, which is the # of grains you get these days if you plant one.
When you make the end total a city radius could produce, if all surrounding terrain were eg. Grassland, you’d get 10(000) x 21 x 30 = 6300(000) Food, or otherwise said, a city radius can feed 6300000 people or 6300 Pop Heads in popx10 before food has to be imported, which is a realistic number at the end of the game.

4.BUILDINGS:
Harbor and Fishery City Improvements could both double the # of Food there is produced in Ocean squares. And if you want to keep the Supermarket City Improvement, its use could be that you must have the building in your city before FU’s can produce more than eg. 20 Food.

5.RANDOM EVENTS:
There’s been a lot of talk about Natural Disasters. Some, like Famines and small Ice Ages, could have short but tremendous or long but smaller effects on Food production.

6.SOCIAL ENGINEERING CHOICES:
I don’t even remember anymore what it was called, but I do remember that I had a Factor in my SE model that affected your Food production. Eg., if you had for that SE factor a rating of +1, your Food production would raise with 10%. In other words, a Forage Unit normally producing 30, would now produce 33.

Next item. In Civ1/2/SMAC, pop growth was determined by your surplus food. I see two major, and obvious, problems with that. First, pop growth isn’t determined at all by surplus food, and two, people didn’t grow tons of food more than they actually needed, unless it was used for trade & export. So since surplus food didn’t exist in reality, it’s also impossible that it affects pop growth. In reality, there was/is a certain percentage of the population that is farmer. He produces food, enough for his family, and, as better technologies and equipment came available, also for other people. And for that reason, those other people didn’t need to be a farmer and could perform other jobs. That’s the entire basis of any city, or even a civilization.
Eg.: a city of 10000 people, each Forage Unit produces 4 Food, that would mean that 2500 Forage Units have to be used to produce 10000 Food, means that 2500 people would have to be Farmer, the other 75% can do other jobs.
A more modern example, a city of 6000000 people, each FU produces 30 Food, means 200000 people farmer or 3.3%, rounded down 3%, 97% of the population can perform other jobs. BTW, 3% is in my country indeed the % of the populace having to do with food. This proves to me that my model is of acceptable realism.

But in my model, what do the people do that don’t work in the agricultural sector. What I have come up with til now is the following. You would as player determine yourself how much % of your population works in each category.

1. People with a bureaucracy job, working for the government. The # of people doing that would depend on your SE Efficiency rating. The higher it is, the more people working in Bureaucracy. So for this category, you wouldn’t decide the # of people working in it. Happily, this % should be fairly small.

2. People doing Public Works. Indeed, the CTP system of Terrain Improving. The more people you assign to this job, the more TI’s you can build that turn.

3. People doing Trade & Commerce. Every Population Head you assign to this task, produces one Trade arrow. Trade can be used for Taxes, Science and Luxuries.

4. People doing Labor. Every Population Head you assign to this task, produces one Labor. I won’t begin to explain Labor here. Therefore, I send you to the List v2.0. You’ll find it somewhere between that heap of information.

So as you can see, if many people have a farmer job, thus if you have an agricultural civilization, like eg. In the Dark Middle Ages, you won’t have much Trade, Science, Labor and Industry. The opposite holds also true. This is again, I think, more realistic than Civ2.

Now you can understand why in the beginning I doubted if a Forage Unit should produce one or two Food. If it should only produce one, 100% of the population would have to be farmer, so you wouldn’t have any Public Works, Labor or Trade. Therefore, two Food per FU seems more advisable.

But if food surplus doesn’t determine pop growth anymore, what does? This matter I haven’t worked out yet very precisely. However, what I can already say is that I would want it to depend on 3 things: birth rate, death rate and migration.

Birth rate would depend on:
1) Religion (see religion model): the stronger the populace believes in one religion, the more children, since religions usually support that.
2) Child Labour: In The Joker’s model it was I think, there is a law to choose if you have Child Labour or not. Well, if Child Labour is allowed, there are more children, since that means more workers => more money. So less children if Child Labour doesn’t exist and children have to go to school. They aren’t that useful (I know, I may sound a bit rude now, bit it’s the simple truth.).
3) Women emancipation and contraception: doesn’t need an explanation, I think.

Death rate would depend on:
1) Disease, Hygiene, Medical Care: Translated in Civ-terms, whether or not the city has an Aquaduct, Sewer System, Hospital, etc. I would eliminate the ‘tout court’ effect of eg. Aquaduct in Civ2, where no Aquaduct means zero pop growth above size 8.
2) Food, Famine: If there’s too LITTLE food, people die. That is the only way food has effect on pop growth. However, quite a big one, in previous eras and still now in the Third World.

Migration (if there’s a Migration model): doesn’t need further explanation I think.

These 3 factors should be expressed in promille = # of people per 1000 per year that are born/die/immigrate/emigrate.

An example might make it clearer.
A very large city for that time, somewhere in the Classical Age, 100000 inhabitants. Immigration and emigration are equal, so they don’t have an effect.
The Birth rate is 36 promille, death rate 35. Means a yearly increase of 1 per 1000. Calculated for the entire city that means 100 per year. But since in a Civ-game a turn is 20 years around that time, you’ll have 2000 more citizens that turn. Or in a system where one population head equals 1000 people, you’ll have two more pop heads. An increase from 100 to 102.

Well, that’s about it for my ‘population model’. Now it’s time for you to bless me into heaven or curse me into hell. For those of you who still would be interested, I still have a Terrain Improvement model to tell about.

Most important to note, for this TI model there is need of a SMAC-like Terrain model, with something determining Food output (or better # of Forage Units) and something determining Mineral/Shield/Raw Material output (not the same as Labor).

Food output would be determined by rainfall and temperature. These two are determined by altitude, latitude and sea/wind currents. Each combination of these two factors (arid, moist, rainy with cold, temperate, warm) would give its own type of vegetation with its own number of Forage Units. Eg. Arid+Cold = Arctic. Rainy+Temperate = Deciduous Forest. If chopped it would become something similar to Civ2 Grassland. Others could be Desert, Steppe/Savanne, Jungle, Swamp, Pine Forest, Tundra… A bit like Civ2. Note however that Hills and Mountains aren’t included since they are no vegetation type. Which brings me to the second part: Mineral output.

It is very generalized to say that ALL hills and mountains contain things that are to be mined. Therefore I would again opt for a SMAC-like system, like Flat, Rolling, Rocky. I would change the names though, since a high altitude not-mineral-containing hill called ‘Flat’ seems inappropriate. But since for the moment I don’t have anything better, I’ll use these terms.

Now the model itself.
A terrain tile can maximum have 4 TI’s. These are the categories. Of each category there can only be one on a terrain tile.

1.FARM:
Doubles food output. You can build this Improvement everywhere and always, except on Rocky terrain and terrain that contains zero FU’s (=Arctic, I would give Desert a few FU’s, say 1(000).)

2.OTHER RESOURCE-IMPROVING TI’S:
a) Irrigation: Use known. Same restrictions as Farm.
b) Animal Farm (better name wished): Supposed that the same Shield/Mineral system is kept, it adds 1 Mineral. Unlike SMAC you don’t get a food penalty when you build this. Not in Rocky.
c) Culture Farm (better name wished): Grows uneatable crops for trade, such as cotton, tobacco… Adds a certain amount of Trade. So just as in SMAC, Roads don’t add Trade. Not in Rocky, not in Arid+Cold and Arid+Temperate squares.
d) Mine: Adds a certain (high) amount of Minerals. Can only be built in Rocky squares.

3.TRANSPORT TI’S:
Road: 1/3 normal movement points
Railroad: 1/5 normal MP’s
Highway: 1/10 normal MP’s
(Maglev: no movement points used)

4.MILITARY/OTHER TI’S:
Fortress: +100% Defense
Airbase: Air units can land here.
Outpost: No ‘fog of war’ on the square on which it is built plus all surrounding squares. +25% Defense.
Radar: Modern Outpost. Has a vision range of 2. +25% Defense.
Canal: Can be built on a square if it borders at least to 2 Ocean squares. Both Land and Sea units can enter a square with that TI on it.

M@ni@c

[amjayee]

quote: Originally posted by M@ni@c on 06-03-2000 04:01 PM I made an effort to write down the improved population & resources idea I had in mind, although I fully realize this can’t get in Civ3, because a) the idea is probably too progressive and b) Civ3 is already too long in production to still add many new ideas. Nevertheless, comments and ideas for improvements are always welcome, just for fun (or we can always knock on the door of the CTP2-team).

There's also a possibility to join in designing Openciv3. There, you can be sure your ideas are heard, and also we try to implement all good ideas. I'm afraid I'm too despotic in leading the design discussion, but the truth is, that we don't have a lead designer, and virtually nothing has been completely decided about the gameplay. So if you want to see your ideas in a real game, come join us. Visit our webpage at civ3.sourceforge.net, and join the discussion in the Alternative Civilizations forum. Email me if you have any trouble.

Sorry for that ruthless ad, but you were wishing for a meaning for your idea-making. That is the change for all of you to take part in designing a game that is to be one of the best empire-building games ever, as humble as that sounds.

About your ideas, I liked some of them, and they gave me many ideas. Particularly I admire how complete your system is. It is perfectly workable for this kind of game. However, I still favor using the real number of population, not the heads. But I think most your ideas could work that way, too. Check the population system ideas presented in the alternate civs forum.

You might also like the profession ideas in the basic concepts section.

"People doing Labor" Hasn't doing labor something to do with giving birth?

I can't say much more about your ideas - there's the fundamental difference of using the real pop amount, that makes my system a lot different from yours, but basically I agree most of your ideas should be in the game. Come check what could be done with our current population ideas.

Once again I'm sorry for advertizing, but if you want to design a civ game, you could take part to our project. At least you can make a real difference there. You guys are the most innovative community I have confronted on the net, so come use that innovation.

[The Joker]

I really like it. It is somewhat similar to what I had in mind for OC3, but it's great that you have worked it all out like this. Almost ready to play.

Ideally I would like a gridless map, where there is no city radius. So the further away from the city you harvest your food or gather your energy the more waste is there. A system would be needed to determine an area's overall fertility, and the AI would simply place the farmers where they can gather the most food. One PU (population unit - 1000 people) would work on one area, and inside the city you could order farms/irigation to be built on the soil used to gather food in (payed with your PW account and done automatically), which would raise the food output from the used areas. This would liberate more people to do other things - production, administration (needed in large empires) etc etc. But of cause most of it should be handled automatically.

[Maniac]

amjayee:

quote: However, I still favor using the real number of population, not the heads. But I think most your ideas could work that way, too.

I favour too real numbers. I just included a similar model with 'pop heads' to please the more conservative.

I'll check out OpenCiv asap. But that would be something next weekend.

The Joker:

quote: Ideally I would like a gridless map, where there is no city radius. So the further away from the city you harvest your food or gather your energy the more waste is there.

When do you mean a gridless map, do you mean a map without squares/terrain tiles? If so, I must object. Although the idea on itself is of course good, you never got around to really work it out. To me, for the moment, it sounds more like a vague idea of yours than something that can be implemented in the real game. Therefore, until you work out your idea to something "almost ready to play" as you put it, I'd like to stick to grid maps.

About your waste idea. Great! In the beginning of the game, without any techs or TI's, the 8 surrounding squares and the city square would be the only squares of which the city could profit a 100%. Then it would rapidly decay. The following 16 surrounding squares would only have 50% merit. The next 0. If you would connect that square with the city by a road, those 16 squares would have a bigger merit than 50%. The next 24 would also be a bit more profitable. Say 25%. Than with Railroads, the 'profit radius' would even extent further.

And you just brought me on an idea for 'colonies'. Those would be some kind of (quite expensive) Terrain Improvement (although there only bound with real TI's would be that they need Public Works points to be built) that gives the square a 100% merit. It would automatically transmit the resources on that square to its 'home city'.
And of course, if the colony is far away, your Efficiency or whatever corresponding factor too low, your taxes too high etc.., the colony could revolt and become a distinct minor/major civ. What do you think of it? Am I loosing it?

M@ni@c

[amjayee]

M@ni@c:

Openciv3 will most propably use real numbers, so come there to develop those ideas.

About gridless map, I also think it would be nice, but it is much harder to make than a tiled map. But I have been thinking of a way to combine those two systems... I'll tell if I get some idea how that could work, but until then, at least oc3 will use tiles.

I liked your colony idea. It could be kinda like a city, but not "free" like other cities; it would send part of its production to its home city. But if we implement the region idea, colony would be a region rather than a city. I will refine these ideas soon.

[Frugal_Gourmet]

I hate to play devil's advocate here.. truly, alot of these ideas are great and well thought out...

But don't some of these ideas (including some that were submitted to Firaxis) seem a little too complicated?

I mean, let's face it -- running a real life civilization would be a royal pain in the arse and really not that much "fun" at all. Civilization I and II allow you to do it in an easy, simplified manner that's addictive and never burdened with too much complication. Realism is overrated -- that's why computer games are so great.

Do we really need complex disease, resource, and population models to make this game a more enjoyable experience? Do I have to hold some complicated formula in my head to figure out the effect of something on my civilization?

What was really so bad with the earlier population model? It was simple and fun and simulated in enjoyable (albeit not totally realistic) fashion the issues facing city/empire planner.

I can fully support alot of these great ideas, but if it makes the game burdensome, overcomplicated, or tedious to play it becomes less of a strategy "game" and more of a simulation of real life society management (which I assure you is not the slightest bit fun).

[amjayee]

Frugal_Gourmet:

I agree that the population and disease models are very complicated. But (and now speaking for Openciv3) the player doesn't need to care about them. They work completely autonomously, and the player isn't supposed to remember any kinds of formulas. Some level of simulation "under the covers" creates a living, responsive world, with some level of randomness. The properties of those simulated things are mostly hidden from the player.

The player has possibilites to deal with those things - not only population etc., there are many of them - but that isn't going to be complicated. Just that they are somewhat random and uncontrollable - the real challenge in strategy games is to deal with unexpected situations, trying to find the best solutions in the current circumstances. In earlier civ games, the building of the world was always done in the same way. If you do this, no matter what situation, it is guaranteed to work. That is not strategy.

I agree these things must be made easy to control. That is a matter of interface design. And in some cases, what could be easier than a completely autonomous and uncontrollable feature? Also with ai most of the most tedious tasks can be automated. The goal is, that the player can rely on his "advisors" and "governors" and concentrate on the strategy part. But let's not be afraid of some features just because it might be possible to screw up the system.

[Frugal_Gourmet]

Fair enough... so long as these things happen behind the scenes and it isn't difficult for the human player to take action to deal with them.

[Spekter@Home]

First off, Animal Farm = Ranch where I come from.

Next, triangles seem kind of cool. Plus, they'd allow all us old wargamers to go back to working with hexes again instead of squares.

[Par4]

Animal farm is a great book!! All about these animals that form the perfect commie society but then the pig government turns oppressive. Great book.

Joker another great idea and system, very thorough as always, I want hexes. As for cities expanding I want expansion squares to be suburbs after a while, maybe a city center, then city populations, then suburbs. industry around rivers and stuff. This shouldn't affect the game just make it look realistic(the placement of buildings not the expansion) transportation, roads, jobs should affect how far people travel. I want to see colonies producing mainly raw materials and sending them back to the home land for processing. Same kind of thing for regions in corn areas producing vast amounts of food and shipping it off for processing in cities and to feed the population.

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[The Joker]

Maniac:

I'm not a programmer, and I have no knowledge about fractal planet generation, so I can't really figure out a way to implement a gridless map.

I am aware of it's flaws, and yesterday I started to think about how a more simple system that still offered it’s advantages could be made. And somehow I came up with the idea to use a triangular grid map!

Now, I know you all must be ready to sent me to a mental institution right now, but hear me out first:

The triangular map has the great advantage that it can be wrapped around a sphere map, which is something I would really like (I can't really find any gamewise advantages in it, but I think the feel of it would be fantastic). Now, of cause triangles are almost impossible to move units around on. Therefor these triangles should be really, really small. Small enough so that one PU (population unit - just a shorter term for 1000 people, which should be the smallest population amount in the game) can only work one triangle. As is loads of PUs in all cities, these squares should be really, really small. So small that you would not really notice them. In stead they would provide a "feel" of a gridless map. Now, for different reasons I think that one PU should demand 10 food per turn. The advantage of this is, that you could give them less food without the population will decrease. This would of cause mean that they would become a little or a lot unhappy (depending on how little food you give them). Only when the food per PU decreases to about 5 or 6 the people would starve and population would decrease. Of cause there will be no growth in the city if the food per PU is less than 10. Now, this will also mean that the food each food producing PU makes can be set realistically. In early times one PU can only produce say 10-12 food (a really good terrain can increase this, possibly up to 20 - meaning that civs starting out in a really great terrain has a huge early advantage - look at the Romans and the Greeks compared to us primitive and barbaric Danes). This will mean that most of the population will be making food - like 90% - leaving only very few people to do other things. This is realistic, as this was what it was like in ancient times. Of cause, like in your model, in modern times this amount will increase to 60 or more, meaning that only a small fraction of the people will be needed for food production.

The 21 squares of a city would of cause be removed, and replaced with a system, where the distance from the square being produced to the neares city square (a city would fill several squares and grow physically when growing in population) would determine the amount of waste there is. The distance should not be measured in tiles (figuring out the distance with a triangular grid map is pretty dificult and not at all accurate), but rather a direct line between the two tiles – in other words the distance could be measured in kilometers. Within a certain, pretty small distance there will be no waste. If the distance is a little larger, then there would be a little waste, meaning that with a distance of perhabs 20kms the waste would be 20% - a farmer producing 10 food would only come back with 8. As distance increases so does the waste, up to a point where there is 100% waste. The waste could be decreased by advantages and by certain improvements in the city (like some infrastructure improvements, which should replace having to build roads in all the squares around the city). So later in the game the city could use tiles longer away from it than in early times.

The computer should automatically send the farmers to the squares where they produce the most food, so no micromanagement. I actually think that you should not even be able to see or choose the excact squares that the farmers worked on – this will make sure that people wont try to do it themselves, which happened in earlier civ games – even though there was a way to automize your formers in SMAC nearly noone used it, as they thought they would be able to do it better themselves.

To make it more simple for the computer to calculate how to place all the workers on the tiles it might be an advantage to have a tile make only one thing – it either makes trade, production or food. This will make sure that when the computer places the people it can simply put them where they do most good in the field that they are supposed to work in, without having to take into consideration how much of other ressources each tile produces.

I think that we all agree that most or all production should be made inside the cities. Workers assigned to make production would work in the city and not on tiles. A PU worker should propably make 10 production per turn. Cerain advances should increase this with 10 or 20% at certain times. In modern days a factory could double the amount each worker makes, for the cost of 1/10 energy.

This brings me to a few things I have not figured out yet

- Should science still be linked with trade or should it be on it’s own? If it is to be linked with trade then the economy SE factor needs to be made less powerful. I think that +1 science should give +10% science output – but if +1 economy gives +10% trade output then this will cause +10% science, taxes AND luxuries – it will be much more powerful than all the others. I therefor think that +1 economy should give only +5% trade, so balance them all. I also think that although some science output should come from trade a large part of it should in modern times come from scientists in the cities.

- The idea to have one tile make only one ressource has it’s flaws. Cause what do you get from working on a hill triangle? In reality not much! This makes me wonder if hill tiles should still be as good as they are in Civ2? It is completely unrealistic to get production from them. But what about trade? Or food? The same thing with most other tiles, apart from grassland: What should you get from them? In reality very few of these terrain types has been useful to humans. Forest has usually simply been cut down to give way for grassland. Has hills or mountains ever been of much use? I thought of introducing another ressource like a parallel to energy: minerals. This could be found as soon as you discovered bronze working, and iron working would reveale more mineral containing tiles. It would add to too much complexity to seperate the different mineral types, but having one overall could work out. Minerals has shown to be very important to civilizations, and it has the advantage that it is introduced almost immediately, and not like energy in the industrial age. Minerals should be used for almost all units. But this should also mean that virtually all tiles should contain either energy or minerals. It would be a mess to have all this on the regular map, but couldn’t we have a certain energy and a certain mineral map, where the amount of energy and the amount of minerals you could pull out of the ground per turn was shown by colours?

Well, the point is, that I think that this system is pretty good, as it would offer both the benefits of a gridless and the one of a grid map. And it will remove the question about how many workers could be able to work on a tile.

Oh, this reminds me, I have forgotten to describe how unit movement would be done here:

I think that the units should actually work on a gridless map, in a layer above the grid. This will mean that they have completely free movement, and that their movement radius would be in a circle around the unit. You could order it to move to a point inside this movement circle, and the remaining movement points of the unit would be shown as a new and smaller circle around it.

A unit should have a center point. The terrain of the triangle that this point is in would determine how much movement of the unit would cost. This will mean that if the unit has a movement radius that exceeds into different terrain types then its movement radius would not be a circle, but ann odd figure which’s shape would be determined by the circumstances. The terrain in which the center point is in would now also determine the defence bonuses, if any.

The unit would also have a certain extension in the world, which would be where the unit would actually be shown. This could be a circle or a square. When two enemy units touch battle will begin.

The range of sight for each unit could now also be a circle. Different units could now have different range of sights, and the terrain can also effect this: If you are standing in a huge field you could have a large range of sight, while standing in a jungle would give a pretty limited one. Mountains would propably block everything away from them, while standing on a single mountain tile would give you a huge range of sight over the surrounding terrain.

Now this would all mean, that the units would almost entirely operate independantly of the tile system. This gives the advantages of the tileless unit movement with the convenience of a tilebased city ressource system. Of cause a land unit could not move into ocean tiles and such things, and a settler would now found a city in the triangle in which it’s center point is, but otherwise the unit movement would be almost tileless.

Ok, so am I crazy or does this make sence?


Colonies:

Well, I like the idea a lot, but I dislike calling it colonies. How about trading stations or something?

After all, India was a British colony, but I don't think you could compare India with a small "city outpost". In stead, colonies should be regions in your civ that you have decided to make colonies. This would give it a higher police rate, but more unstability, corruption and unhappyness. You could make a colony if you have conquored a foreign civ, and want to keep it, but doesn't have the support of it's people. A colony should require constant and massive military presence, but would offer you with more power than in the rest of your civ if you had a somewhat democratic gov type (check out my SI model if interested) as the leader of the colony would be directly chosen by you. A colony could be one single city or 20 cities, it would all be up to you.


Amjayee:

What do you think about my grid-and-tileless system? Is it workable for OC3?

PS: I completely agree that the key is to make a complex and realistic system in which the player would mostly just see the results and not the complicated underlying mechanisms.

[amjayee]

There are some problems with having a map without tiles, or with very small tiles. The tile/map info has to be stored somehow, and the computer has to be able to understand it.

The map system Joker proposes would be very difficult to handle - triangle tiles are hard to store logically, and in spherical map the triangles would not be of same size. Also if there is a huge amount of small tiles, the map will be way too big to store in memory - remember it has to be in RAM.

But don't be disappointed - I might have a solution. I have proposed a map system for openciv3, where the tiles are hexagon-shaped. Then, each tile would be divided to smaller ones.

So, this means we could make a "hybrid" between tile map and tile-less map. To reduce the map's size in memeory, the terrain properties are stored for each tile. Then, all objects could be placed inside the tile almost freely. We would store for each tile the coordinates of the objects in it. Also the terrain features - trees, rocks, roads, coastlines - could be placed similarly, allowing more variation to the terrain.

The setback in this system is, that I haven't yet figured out a way to create a spherical map with it. But I know it is possible. MD has spherical map with hexagon tiles.

So, the tiles are essential to the civ-game map. The other possibility would be to give up the terrain properties - the type of the terrain would not affect the game in any way, it would just be used to look good - and I think no one wants this. Tiles are needed to store the terrain information in memory so, that it is easy to handle. But as I have pointed out, it would be possible to have a system that seems to have no tiles. And this is what I'm intending to do in openciv3, eventually.

I will read the other things sent by Joker and comment them later.

[Maniac]

The Joker:

I was wondering also if I should change the needed amount of food for one PU (1000 people) from 1 to 10, and thus also the # of food originally produced in a Forage Unit. But I hesitated because then you would get really huge numbers in the endgame. But if you support me I'll do it.

quote: Of cause, like in your model, in modern times this amount will increase to 60 or more, meaning that only a small fraction of the people will be needed for food production.

60??? While in the beginning of agriculture, you got hardly two grains out of every grain you seeded, you now get around 30. This would mean that, if a Forage Unit produces 10 food instead 1, it could produce 300 at the end of the game. See what I mean with huge numbers?

I must say I have also some objections against your triangular idea. One that connects with my new food system. It's this: how many of your triangulars would fit in the space what used to be a 'terrain tile'. This must be known to calculate how much food is produced in one triangular. If you don't know it, the food system could get really unbalanced.

quote: even though there was a way to automize your formers in SMAC nearly noone used it, as they thought they would be able to do it better themselves.

Wow, wow! Are you implying that everyone (including me) who didn't use automatic terraforming thought wrongly that they could do it better than the computer? In other words, are you saying that everyone who did that is a bad terraformer? Nevertheless I agree with you that the AI should determine itself where he places the farmers, and determine where and when to place farms (and mines). But for the other TI's, I would still like to determine it myself. Cause I want to be the one deciding when to build an intercity railroad, and I want to be the one to decide if I build a Irrigation TI or a Culture Farm on a certain tile. BTW, I agree with you about a City Improvement decreasing waste by say 50%. I suggest we would make it an additional use of the Courthouse City Improvement, besides it's use of giving +2 Efficiency and +2 Happiness to the city. (This brings me to another question. The latest version of your SE model, is that still the one in the Listv2.0? In a few weeks, when it's July, I'd like to try to make a hybrid between our two models, so I need to know your latest.) Other such buildings would be a Railroad Station, a Superhighways CI, Mutationes. 'Mutationes' is Latin. They are places where couriers could change their horses, sleep overnight, etc... They contributed to the fast and efficient road system the Romans had.

I'll continue the rest of my answer some other time in the OC3 forum. BTW, I'll also put a summarized and slightly reversed version of the pop model in that thread.

See ye there!

[The Joker]

Amjayee and Maniac:

My main problem with the regular tiles and our new pop model is, that several PU's would work on the same tile. How many PU's should be the max number working in one tile? This is why I like the very small tiles which otherwise don't really interfere with unit movement etc.

Amjayee:

quote: The map system Joker proposes would be very difficult to handle - triangle tiles are hard to store logically, and in spherical map the triangles would not be of same size. Also if there is a huge amount of small tiles, the map will be way too big to store in memory - remember it has to be in RAM.

Well, I don't know much about such things, but I can imagine having a million tiles or more would be a heavy RAM abuser.

Wouldn't the triangles be the same size in a spherical map? I didn't know that!

quote: But don't be disappointed - I might have a solution. I have proposed a map system for openciv3, where the tiles are hexagon-shaped. Then, each tile would be divided to smaller ones.

Hmm, this might be a workable sollution. I remember talking about this when we first started OC3. I definately don't think that these big hexes should be larger than the squares in earlier civ games. And cities, units and such would only work on the large hexes. I am very opposed to having a city only cover a few subhexes. When that is said I kinda like the system. My favorite thing is, that we could have one PU being able to work on one subhex! Wouldn't that be great! Of cause the size of these would have to be workable with the population size and all, but otherwise i really like it. It would remove the odd thing of having several PU's working on the same tile. Of cause this would mean that we have to do something about the subhexes that are cut in half as they are lying in between two hexes. But maybe these could just work as one subhex, just like the others, and still be workable by one PU? If this could be done then much of our problems could be solved.

quote: The setback in this system is, that I haven't yet figured out a way to create a spherical map with it. But I know it is possible. MD has spherical map with hexagon tiles.

I haven't played MD, but I fear that the spherical map there is not a "real" spherical map, meaning that you wouldn't be able to zoom out on your regular map to a point when you can see the entire one half of the globe. Unfortunately I don't think that a real spherical map can be done with tiles (now that you're saying that triangles wouldn't work).

But how about using that platonic figure with hexes for sides, then divide this into subhexes (as many as we like) and then mold the planet into a real sphere? Would this be workable? And how about Populus 3 - doesn't this use a spherical map with tiles? I have never played it so I am not really sure.


Maniac:

Welcome back, by the way! It seems as if you are finally coming back to Apolyton.

quote: I was wondering also if I should change the needed amount of food for one PU (1000 people) from 1 to 10, and thus also the # of food originally produced in a Forage Unit. But I hesitated because then you would get really huge numbers in the endgame. But if you support me I'll do it.

I definately think you should. It will add much, much more possibilities to the game. I don't care about the large numbers. They are, after all, just numbers, and doesn't need much graphical representation (perhabs a slider bar or something, but not more) so it could easily work.

quote: 60??? While in the beginning of agriculture, you got hardly two grains out of every grain you seeded, you now get around 30. This would mean that, if a Forage Unit produces 10 food instead 1, it could produce 300 at the end of the game. See what I mean with huge numbers?

I think you're right. I never really thought these number through. But again, when you don't have to micromanage every PU it wouldn't matter with the large numbers.

quote: I must say I have also some objections against your triangular idea. One that connects with my new food system. It's this: how many of your triangulars would fit in the space what used to be a 'terrain tile'. This must be known to calculate how much food is produced in one triangular. If you don't know it, the food system could get really unbalanced.

I guess due to the opposition against my idea that I will drop it, and turn back to Amjayee's hex concept. But if it was included, the beauty of the triangular idea would be, that no real connection to the old, unrealistic tiles would be needed. Each trinagle would produce a little over 10 food per turn when worked (of cause depending on terrain), so the big majority of your people would need to be working in food production. With discoveries etc this number would rise towards 300 or such.

quote: Wow, wow! Are you implying that everyone (including me) who didn't use automatic terraforming thought wrongly that they could do it better than the computer? In other words, are you saying that everyone who did that is a bad terraformer?

I think I am the only person in the world who actually used the automated formers. When choosing this I thought, that ok, maybe I will not be as good a player when using this as I could otherwise have been, but I will use less time doing boring micromanagement, and so I will enjoy playing more. And having fun is the most important thing why I am playing. So I used the automated formers.

I didn't mean with my post that all the people not using the auto formers were wrong, just that if people are allowed to do something themselves, down to the smallest detail, most of them will, as they don't trust the computer. Therefor to avoid people using ages micromanaging 1000 PU's around we have to more or less hide all that stuff from the player, let the computer handle it, and only let the player choose the overall strategy (percentage of people working with different things and such).

quote: BTW, I agree with you about a City Improvement decreasing waste by say 50%. I suggest we would make it an additional use of the Courthouse City Improvement, besides it's use of giving +2 Efficiency and +2 Happiness to the city.

Hmm, I don't think so. The courthouse would mean less corruption in the city due to distance from the capital, but the waste due to distance from the city when working tiles should be reduced via an improvement that makes it easier and faster for the workers to get to the city - some infrastructure improvements. Roads as TI's shouldn't do anything for the trade output of a square. This will be a great reduction of micromanagement, as you wouldn't have to place roads in all the city sguares. Roads should be built simply by choosing a road builder and then draggin a line between the two cities you want connected (or to the place you want it to end - the battle field or whatever). The road would then take 2 turns to be built, and possibly when it is more than 2 tiles away from a city a square with roads couldn't be built untill the one behind it had - this would mean that you couldn't just make a road reaching 30 squares into the wilderness and then have it be completed just 2 turns later. A road would, besides from giving 3 times more movement per turn increase commerce between cities connected to the road network.

quote: This brings me to another question. The latest version of your SE model, is that still the one in the Listv2.0? In a few weeks, when it's July, I'd like to try to make a hybrid between our two models, so I need to know your latest.

I began making a new version of my SE model a few weeks ago, where I included things like Individualism of the people and such (high Individualism would give more trade under capitalism and more unhappyness and corruption under communism etc), but I soon realized that the government part would have to be completely reorganized. The result was my SI model, which can be seen at it's appropriate thread. It includes the people's own will, and can easily be linked together with an SE model, that would now not require the government part. I think you should just use my old SE model when making your new one. There are other things I would rather do than changing my model a little on my own. In stead I would like to see your new one, and I promise to be a heavy debater on the SE thread when you post your new model. It is always better to improve things through debate with others than just doing it alone.