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How to portray the rise and fall of great powers in Civ3
I think one of the major flaws of Civ2 is that bigger is always better. This, along with making the game an annoying mass of micromanagement, is not at all realistic. If that was the case China would be the most powerfull civ in the world today. But the US is far more powerful. Hey, the UK is more powerful than China.
I think there should be penalties of having a large civ. This would also make it possible to have a smaller civ beat a large one in a war. This way the strongest civ at one point in the game wouldn't be that forever. History has shown numerous great powers emerge and collabs, although Civ2 has almost nothing of this.
One of the most recognized theories revolving international policy today is the Hegenomytheory (described in the book "The Rise and Fall of Great Powers" by Paul Kennedy, London 1988) which describes how the international power balance is never static. This is caused by uneven growth rate in different societies, especcially technological advances. A large growth rate causes for one civ to become more powerful than the others. It then uses a lot of it's production on the military to preserve that position and to become even stronger (by conquoring other civs), but this will with time cause less growth in that civ, which causes it to be surpassed by other, less militaristic ones. This theory can be used to describe a lot of diferrent civs, like the USSR and, to some extend, the US, as the growth in the US has been far lower than that in Europe and Japan the last 50 years. I think it would be GREAT if Civ3 could have the dynamic powerbalance to be based on this theory.
I have collected these ideas for making the rise and fall of great powers possible in Civ3 from varios threads, and would like to hear new suggestions and what you think of these (I am aware that I have included far too many ideas to be included in the game. This list is only meant to show as many theories as posible, and then Firaxis (if they read this) can decide which to include):
- I would like a pretty radical new way of expansion. I think settlers shouldn't be able to be built untill the discovery of colonization (discovered by the Greeks around 500BC). Untill then expansion should work something like this: You should have just your one city for some time, untill you would get the message that 10,000 people had left it to settle another city. You would see that city on your map, and be able to see the information for it. But other than that it would be more or less independant. You would be a bit like allied, but closer linked together. After some time with trade etc. between the two you could ask it to join your civ (this could only happend after some ancient advance). It could accept or refuse. If it refused you could go into war to conquor it. This would cost some money though, but if it was conquored it wouldn't create very much unhappyness in it (unlike normal conquored cities). Mostly, however, it would be willing to join you. Most expansion should be done this way. It would also make it possible to have city state civilizations, like the greek. It couldn't be united, as the individual city states didn't want this. If the city states were attacked they would almost always stand together against the enemy. Smaller wars between them could come. The city states would have the advantage of no corruption or waste in them (pretty important with the ancient high inefficiency SE settings). They would combine their research. The thing being researched would be settled by a vote between the city leaders. Foreign affairs would be decided the same way. The city states could have individual SE settings. As time passed they would, however, show less efficient than the united civs. Therefor they would often unite, most often with one city state conquoring the others, or at least break up into two or more united civs. In such a war a foreign power could support one part with units, money etc. in exchange for the entire city state civ becoming a protectorate of that civ.
-Huge corruption and waste for cities far away from the capital (I think SMAC did ok here).
-Less control over cities far away (would work a bit like the city states, but just with one city being more or less independant from the civ).
-I like the concept of some sort of bureaucracy points. These would be an expence on your national budget. The more bureaucracy points you have the lower the chance is for revolt, and the more control you can have over cities far away. But the more cities you have the more of these points would be required. So a large empire wouldn't just mean that the periphery cities were more or less useless. It would be a very large expence on your national budget, forcing you to raise taxes, which could create even more unhappyness plus it could reduce your research rate. This concept is far from perfect, but an advanced version of it could be implemented in Civ3, making the game more exciting. This could also help setting back very large civs in research, which could help smaller powers to take over.
-The chance of civil wars raised if you were a large civ. The chance would be even higher if you had a very polarised civ (like great difference between the individual cities in wealth etc), which would also be more likely in a large civ. Check the Civil wars in CivIII Thread for more info.
-Being a large civ would require more units around the world. If the cost of units would be both raw materials, food, credits and perhabs labour a large army could be really expensive, also in your national budget. This could cause unhappyness and less research due to raised taxes.
-CTP's State of Alert could be implemented (this is among the things I like about CTP), but better. There should be 3 or more levels of alert - low, medium and high. If set on low your units would get their attack/defence rates halfed. This would make them pretty useless. If set on medium their rates would be 3/4 of usual, and on high they would be normal. However, on high an average amount of units could cost perhabs 40-50% of your country's labour and gross income plus loads of raw materials! This would make that REALLY expensive, and therefor only workable in a serious war. The major downside for large civs should be, that these would be significantly slower at moving between these states of alert. If you have 150 cities the time to go from low to high could be 20-30 turns! For a small civ with 10 cities this could be reduced to 1-2 turns. This way large civs could be not only unstabile, but unflexible, and would make it possible for a small civ to win a war against a large one before the large can set it's SoA to the high level.
-Better AI. Small civs should make alliances with each other if they were attacked by a large one.
-Cities should grow faster in modern times. This way cities made in 1800 wouldn't be useless.
-Every civilization should spend part of its research points on education, just to preserve the knowledge it has: a larger civ should always spend/pay more on education just to ensure that no knowledge disappears; if it spends too little, doesn't have enough libraries, advances/knowledge will disappear (like a substantial part of the knowledge of the Romans after the Great Migration); as it has more people in it, it needs more administrators, more priests, more lawyers, more scientists just to run the empire!
-When building units conscription of the troops and manufacturing of the weapons should be divided (units would require real people from the cities, so cities should consist of people, not heads). but would it be wise policy for the Mongols in China to arm the subjected native population? Of course not! So you would have to conscript people that were loyal to you. This would make it hard to build a large army in a civ based on conquest, as you could only build loyal units in assimilated cities. Assimilation should take a lot of time, determined by the happyness of the city and how you treat it.
-When researching advances should spread slowly across your empire (with a speed of maybe 3). Cities who didn't have an advance couldn't produce things requiring this, and it couldn't help researching an advance which required one they didn't have. This would mean that a large part of your civ could end up not helping you with research. With the discovery of advanced flight this would no longer be, as all cities would get an advance immediately.
-There should be far more advances, so many that one civ could not research them all. This would mean that you would have to have good relations with some civs, and trade advances with these. This would also mean that large isolated civs would stagnate, as they couldn't trade advances with anyone (this would solve the China-stagnation problem).
Well, what do you have to say?
[This message has been edited by The Joker (edited January 18, 2000).]
I think there should be penalties of having a large civ. This would also make it possible to have a smaller civ beat a large one in a war. This way the strongest civ at one point in the game wouldn't be that forever. History has shown numerous great powers emerge and collabs, although Civ2 has almost nothing of this.
One of the most recognized theories revolving international policy today is the Hegenomytheory (described in the book "The Rise and Fall of Great Powers" by Paul Kennedy, London 1988) which describes how the international power balance is never static. This is caused by uneven growth rate in different societies, especcially technological advances. A large growth rate causes for one civ to become more powerful than the others. It then uses a lot of it's production on the military to preserve that position and to become even stronger (by conquoring other civs), but this will with time cause less growth in that civ, which causes it to be surpassed by other, less militaristic ones. This theory can be used to describe a lot of diferrent civs, like the USSR and, to some extend, the US, as the growth in the US has been far lower than that in Europe and Japan the last 50 years. I think it would be GREAT if Civ3 could have the dynamic powerbalance to be based on this theory.
I have collected these ideas for making the rise and fall of great powers possible in Civ3 from varios threads, and would like to hear new suggestions and what you think of these (I am aware that I have included far too many ideas to be included in the game. This list is only meant to show as many theories as posible, and then Firaxis (if they read this) can decide which to include):
- I would like a pretty radical new way of expansion. I think settlers shouldn't be able to be built untill the discovery of colonization (discovered by the Greeks around 500BC). Untill then expansion should work something like this: You should have just your one city for some time, untill you would get the message that 10,000 people had left it to settle another city. You would see that city on your map, and be able to see the information for it. But other than that it would be more or less independant. You would be a bit like allied, but closer linked together. After some time with trade etc. between the two you could ask it to join your civ (this could only happend after some ancient advance). It could accept or refuse. If it refused you could go into war to conquor it. This would cost some money though, but if it was conquored it wouldn't create very much unhappyness in it (unlike normal conquored cities). Mostly, however, it would be willing to join you. Most expansion should be done this way. It would also make it possible to have city state civilizations, like the greek. It couldn't be united, as the individual city states didn't want this. If the city states were attacked they would almost always stand together against the enemy. Smaller wars between them could come. The city states would have the advantage of no corruption or waste in them (pretty important with the ancient high inefficiency SE settings). They would combine their research. The thing being researched would be settled by a vote between the city leaders. Foreign affairs would be decided the same way. The city states could have individual SE settings. As time passed they would, however, show less efficient than the united civs. Therefor they would often unite, most often with one city state conquoring the others, or at least break up into two or more united civs. In such a war a foreign power could support one part with units, money etc. in exchange for the entire city state civ becoming a protectorate of that civ.
-Huge corruption and waste for cities far away from the capital (I think SMAC did ok here).
-Less control over cities far away (would work a bit like the city states, but just with one city being more or less independant from the civ).
-I like the concept of some sort of bureaucracy points. These would be an expence on your national budget. The more bureaucracy points you have the lower the chance is for revolt, and the more control you can have over cities far away. But the more cities you have the more of these points would be required. So a large empire wouldn't just mean that the periphery cities were more or less useless. It would be a very large expence on your national budget, forcing you to raise taxes, which could create even more unhappyness plus it could reduce your research rate. This concept is far from perfect, but an advanced version of it could be implemented in Civ3, making the game more exciting. This could also help setting back very large civs in research, which could help smaller powers to take over.
-The chance of civil wars raised if you were a large civ. The chance would be even higher if you had a very polarised civ (like great difference between the individual cities in wealth etc), which would also be more likely in a large civ. Check the Civil wars in CivIII Thread for more info.
-Being a large civ would require more units around the world. If the cost of units would be both raw materials, food, credits and perhabs labour a large army could be really expensive, also in your national budget. This could cause unhappyness and less research due to raised taxes.
-CTP's State of Alert could be implemented (this is among the things I like about CTP), but better. There should be 3 or more levels of alert - low, medium and high. If set on low your units would get their attack/defence rates halfed. This would make them pretty useless. If set on medium their rates would be 3/4 of usual, and on high they would be normal. However, on high an average amount of units could cost perhabs 40-50% of your country's labour and gross income plus loads of raw materials! This would make that REALLY expensive, and therefor only workable in a serious war. The major downside for large civs should be, that these would be significantly slower at moving between these states of alert. If you have 150 cities the time to go from low to high could be 20-30 turns! For a small civ with 10 cities this could be reduced to 1-2 turns. This way large civs could be not only unstabile, but unflexible, and would make it possible for a small civ to win a war against a large one before the large can set it's SoA to the high level.
-Better AI. Small civs should make alliances with each other if they were attacked by a large one.
-Cities should grow faster in modern times. This way cities made in 1800 wouldn't be useless.
-Every civilization should spend part of its research points on education, just to preserve the knowledge it has: a larger civ should always spend/pay more on education just to ensure that no knowledge disappears; if it spends too little, doesn't have enough libraries, advances/knowledge will disappear (like a substantial part of the knowledge of the Romans after the Great Migration); as it has more people in it, it needs more administrators, more priests, more lawyers, more scientists just to run the empire!
-When building units conscription of the troops and manufacturing of the weapons should be divided (units would require real people from the cities, so cities should consist of people, not heads). but would it be wise policy for the Mongols in China to arm the subjected native population? Of course not! So you would have to conscript people that were loyal to you. This would make it hard to build a large army in a civ based on conquest, as you could only build loyal units in assimilated cities. Assimilation should take a lot of time, determined by the happyness of the city and how you treat it.
-When researching advances should spread slowly across your empire (with a speed of maybe 3). Cities who didn't have an advance couldn't produce things requiring this, and it couldn't help researching an advance which required one they didn't have. This would mean that a large part of your civ could end up not helping you with research. With the discovery of advanced flight this would no longer be, as all cities would get an advance immediately.
-There should be far more advances, so many that one civ could not research them all. This would mean that you would have to have good relations with some civs, and trade advances with these. This would also mean that large isolated civs would stagnate, as they couldn't trade advances with anyone (this would solve the China-stagnation problem).
Well, what do you have to say?
[This message has been edited by The Joker (edited January 18, 2000).]
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