How do you want the "rise and fall of empires" idea implemented in Civ-3?

[Ralf]

I don’t know if my interpretation of the “rise and fall of empires” idea is the only one, or even the correct one. Anyway, I think it would be interesting to read about your ideas, reactions and your own solutions on this potentially great idea.

What is the problem? Why is this idea needed?

Well, here is a common scenario: You send your settlers to found about 20-25 cities early on unnaturally fast (more or less ICS) - then the strategy changes 180 degrees:
Each and every of those cities now gets almost parallel/ simultaneously upgraded to multiple clone mega-cities. The end result is an empire that has 25 London’s, or 25 New York’s within its borders. You become virtually unbeatable – the AI-civs just cannot compete.
This is fun for a while, but it is also a rather unchallenging and non-surprising way to play the game in the long run.

A way to combat this is to make huge, even superior and perfectly managed democratic HP-empires, more and more unstable through time - until they more or less fall apart.
Why? Of which reason? If a player is successful: if all he’s cities are problem free - no unhappiness and far ahead and superior in both in science- and military strength. Why, should such an empire fall apart? Well, there are a number of reasons:

* The rich family Dynasty –syndrome: The first generation builds up the fortune. The second are managing it – and the third (spoiled and irresponsible) generation wastes it all away. Translated to your perfectly managed civ-empire, this means that some counties within your empire wants to spend their wealth on immediate gratifications, like luxuries and pleasures for themselves, instead of continuing follow your lofty foreseeing goals.
“We should use our superior lead over other Civs to allow yourselves a more laidback luxury lifestyle – you don’t accept that? Ok, then we break out”.

* American independence style–declaration: “Why should we continuing sharing our wealth with to you (paying taxes) – we want to keep it within our own part of the empire. From now on we want to follow our OWN agenda, thank you very much”.

* Aggressive nationalistic counties want to break out then there’s no big outer invasion-threat and take a nice slice of your empire with them. They perhaps want to take advantage of the superior lead, by conquering other civs NOW! “Why must we wait? OK, then we rather form our own federation so we better can pursue our OWN goals”.

Above three breakout-reasons (I’m sure there are other reasons) is only possible however if the empire is really big (at least over 20-25 cities) AND mostly superior to anybody else.
The split up should consist of a min 20% - max 40% of your all your cities. A rather shaking experience, in other words.

Also, small empires below 10-12 cities should have much less happiness problems with HUGE 25+ size cities, then their big 20-25 city empire counterparts – even though the circumstances – comparing city with city - otherwise are similar. The latter to encourage small empires as a more interesting alternative – and making it easier for small AI-empires to compete more successfully.

[The diplomat]

Great topic!
I believe that the "rise and fall of empires" idea is a very interesting concept. Historically, great empires have risen and fallen. Furthermore, the end game needs to be as interesting and challenging as the rest of the game. It is a fact that in civ2 or smac, by the middle of the game, you basically know who will win and so the rest of the game is pointless.

However, I do not believe that a huge empire should automatically be broken up like you seem to be suggesting. That would be unfair to the player who put so much effort into making his civ that great in the first place.

Large empires should be harder to manage than smaller ones but large empires should not automatically fall apart.
To do this, I suggest "administration cost" just like maintenance cost of improvement except for cities. The larger the city, the higher the administration cost. Every city would have an "administration cost" which would be a certain amount of gold deducted from the main treasury. Administration cost basically represent the money require to administer a city. What this would do, is have a cost to administer your empire. Larger empires would require more money than smaller ones. So, you would need to get more cash comin' in if you wanted to have a bigger empire.
I would also suggest that conquered cities give the player some serious unhappiness to represent the discontent of the assimilated cultures. An empire built on conquest would have to deal with all those different cultures that are not going to integrate into society very easily.



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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[Ralf]

You come up with two great ideas, Diplomat – the “administration cost” and the “discontent of assimilated cultures” – both very interesting and worthwhile. My only added comment to the former is that this administration cost should not only increase with city-sizes (and, more importantly: with number of city improvements) – it should also increase steadily with each added new city within that empire. The result is, for example, that a 15-sized city within a 24-city empire pays a notably higher administration cost, than an otherwise identical 15-sized city would do in a 12-city empire.
At a certain point it should be (at least economically) directly contra-productive to continue founding cities – and at the same time trying to cram in each and every city-improvement into those cities. Something has to be done about the “25 cloned New York’s syndrome”. It can perhaps be allowed in small (below 10) city empires – but definitely not in larger ones. What do you think?

Perhaps “automatic break out” is a little bit drastic. On the other hand: If there’s only a percentage-risk, most players would simply quit-and-reload earlier saved games, until that percentage outcome is in ones favor. More viewpoints needed!
Anyway, at least the “family dynasty-syndrome” can be added, without necessarily having to split up the empire. Many challenging kinds of “obstructive domestic behavior” are needed then it comes to how to pursue an advanced and superior lead. Your subjects (sorry, fellow citizens) are not always in the mood to simply obey your paternally wise goals, especially not under Democracy – and especially not without any big outer invasion-threats (minor border quarrels not counted).
[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited July 01, 2000).]

[hook]

I think civilizations should get more stable as the game progresses. So falling empires dont occure much in later stages of the game

[Ralf]

Yes, hook - but most of the game is played in medieval to modern time-eras. If we only allow “rise and fall” in ancient times what is then left of the whole idea?
Also, we are talking about measures that can make the Civ-3 more of a challenge – not necessarily how it can be more historically accurate (by the way: our history isn’t over yet).

The problem is that unhappiness-caused instability ONLY is too easily bypass-able. It’s not a threat. Once the player have learned what “makes the game tick” he can easily overcome any such instability simply by executing the correct foreseeing counter-measures.
We must add something that makes the game more of a surprising balancing-act challenge – even if (end then) the player is far SUPERIOR then anybody else - and also in modern eras. Especially then – otherwise late end-games becomes too repetitious and foreseeable for the expansionistic civil perfectionists amongst us.

Perhaps “automatic breakouts” is too extreme – but also remember that it only occurs under certain conditions. The empire has to be HUGE – it has to have BIG lead in both science- and resource-accumulation, and finally the AI-competition has to be relatively weak.
It should however, be perfectly possible to win the game anyway – no matter how many of these problems and backlashes the AI throws at you.

Also, “allow rise and fall of empires” can be a pre-game option that you can choose, or not choose. The individual player decides if he wants this feature or not.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited July 01, 2000).]

[UltraSonix]

quote: The problem is that unhappiness-caused instability ONLY is too easily bypass-able. It’s not a threat. Once the player have learned what “makes the game tick” he can easily overcome any such instability simply by executing the correct foreseeing counter-measures.

If this is the case then how about adding an extra factor into the game. So as well as having the normal stuff affecting happiness (police, improvements, wonders), your dominance also affects happiness. So using the dominance rating system that SMAC had, if you're too far ahead of everyone, perhaps your cities would have increased unhappiness.

And also, I had in another thread an idea about cities ceding from your empire. Under this, outlying cities would declare independence from you, the central government, and you'd get options:

quote: This is a permutation of my colonisation idea - maybe under some forms of government, outlying cities (especially ones on a different island far away) would sometimes declare independence and you have the option of declaring war of them. If you win the war you get back the towns under your control, but if you lose (ie decide to sign a peace treaty), then the cities form a new civ with all your techs, a bit of money, etc. If you decide to let them become independent then they'll still form a new civ but'll then repect your civ a lot in the future, and form a sort of an alliance that's called something like a "Commonwealth". Civs which are in a Commonwealth with you are far more inclined to fight with you, share techs etc. Declaring war on a Commonwealth member would incur a sever reputation hit. (And a commonwealth would be a higher diplomatic state than an alliance.)

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[Ralf]

I think adding “Dominance” as another unhappiness-factor in itself is not enough, or even appropriate. That alone would only require some extra foreseeing counter-measures – the end games would STILL be too unsurprising and foreseeable (at least to the expansionistic civil perfectionist type of players, like my self).
Above won’t achieve that growing internal “balancing-act challenge” that i would like to see in large superior HP-empires, as a gradual replacement then (and if) the external AI-civ challenge eventually becomes to weak. The more the player becomes TOO superior in every field, the more he’s in return has to deal with growing internal domestic instability-issues in order to continue keeping his large empire together – and that regardless of government-type.

Quote from Sikander*:

“Now imagine the limitations forced upon ancient emperors with shaky internal power structures and speed of horse communications. Or even worse, Monarchs in the middle ages, with numerous scheming and often rebellious 'subordinates'. A vast majority of his time would be spent trying to hold on to his Kingdom, with very little left to improve the infrastructure of his people or for wars outside his borders”.*

It says by itself that above internal instability-problems rapidly becomes more severe if the empire is really large. I partly agree with hook that those big independence declarations/ civil war power struggles there you loose control over 20-40% of your empire is less likely i modern times – especially under republic and democracy. But the player should still have a growing challenge in keeping full internal political INFLUENCE – the larger, the more advanced and the more superior his empire gets. Especially under republic and democracy.

So long the player is below, or equal to other AI-civs – so long the game mainly remains a “God level exercise” – but if he becomes TOO superior in every field; the game gradually becomes more of a domestic “balancing act” challenge.

Your other idea (Ultrasonix) about “cities ceding from your empire” is great. It would be really nice to have that idea implemented in Civ-3. If the “max 7 AI-civs” becomes a problem they could live as civilized versions of those early barbaric-controlled cities.

*Sikander sets above in a somewhat different context – why not read about it in my “almost human AI” thread.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited July 02, 2000).]

[S. Kroeze]

This a very IMPORTANT topic. I am glad you introduced it -though this is certainly not the first thread dealing with the subject.

quote: I think civilizations should get more stable as the game progresses. So falling empires dont occure much in later stages of the game

And I will argue that civil wars, revolutions, colonies declaring independence and secessions have always occurred quite regularly, even in the twentieth century. Lets just compare the political map of 1900AD with the present.

-In 1900 the British empire controled about a quarter of the globe. Today the empire has been reduced to Britain itself, though it has still some influence in the colonies through the Commonwealth of Nations.

-The French also had a large colonial empire, comprising at least 10% of all land. As one knows France has lost almost all former colonies.

-Other European powers, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, have all lost their colonies.

-In 1918 the Austrian-Hungarian empire disintegrated, resulting in the creation of Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The Ottoman empire also disintegrated in this same year.

-The Russian empire went through a revolution and a civil war. Many parts of the former empire declared independence: Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Estonia, Transcaucasia, Siberia and Poland. During the next thirty years the Red Army reconquered them all or reduced them to political satellites. But as we probably all know the Soviet Union also disintegrated around 1990. And I predict this is not the end of it: the present Russian Federation will sooner or later break up in even smaller parts. It is after all a colonial empire!

-The Chinese Manchu empire also went through a revolution and disintegrated. Korea and Mongolia became independent. China proper was ruled by local 'warlords', who were de facto autonomous. Only after a civil war was the country reunited, but Taiwan became independent.

-When India, a former British colony, won independence in 1947, it soon split up in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The status of Kashmir is still unclear.

-In present-day Britain its constituent parts, i.e.Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, are gradually winning more local autonomy. Scotland has again its own parliament. Spain is tormented by the Basque separatistic movement; in Italy there exists the Lega Norte striving for a splitting up of Italy. Turkey and Iraq have their Kurdish question.

-Many countries in the world have become divided as a result of foreign intervention. Examples are/were Germany, Korea, Vietnam.

-Only somewhat longer ago the United States went though a civil war, also the result of Secession(1861).

So I think its very naive to think history has ended. We have had a crisis in former Yugoslavia, Indonesia is next. But I don't think only large empires should run the risk of disintegration, though the chance it occurs might be increased. When it could only affect large empires this would result in a policy of not expanding beyond a certain point.
Nor do I think that democracy precludes secessionist movements. It only tends to solve problems in a non-violent way (e.g.Czechoslovakia).

I think disintegration of empire should be connected with other factors like war, revolution, nationalism and religious strife. As a rule large empires will have more problems, because they conquered many other people. Some day their victims will seek revenge!

And the tenacious ICS is part of the essential problem we are trying to solve. It should be wiped out by the roots!

[Adm.Naismith]

I agree with S.Kroeze:

quote: I think disintegration of empire should be connected with other factors like war, revolution, nationalism and religious strife. As a rule large empires will have more problems, because they conquered many other people.

I would add to that economical problems (wealth distribution, tax level, burocracy inefficience), that usually are greater in greater countries.

Some good concept already posted here at the forum, as "CIVilians", resources zone (with trade and economics effects), religions and so on, should be the necessary background for "rise and fall of empires" concept.

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[Ralf]

To summarize it so far:

Real hardcore problems like empire disintegration (20-40% of all your cities declare independence with the possibility of a full-scale civil war) should only occur if there are real hardcore reasons for it; like wars with huge losses*, revolutions, nationalism, religious strife, too many conquered nationalistic subjects, huge corruption/ bureaucracy and so on.
And the probability of this to happen rises significantly with really stretched-out and powerful empires. Too many conquered nationalistic subjects can (and should) by itself be a growing breakout problem.

*Only huge losses in unprovoked attack wars, that is. In forced-upon defense wars such losses don’t matter – your OWN people always stick together.

Some “softcore” problems should also occur even if your people are happy and way superior to everybody else. Empire disintegrations may never happen under these conditions - but the player should (under republic, democracy) instead be confronted with a growing challenge in trying to “persuade” the senate to do this or that.
You can, for example, NEVER persuade your democracy into Hitler-style conquering land-grabbing wars. You just have to switch government downwards to do that (which by the way, shouldn’t be so easy – why not being forced to “downsize” (get rid of) some of your own city happiness-improvements, in order to get a lower happiness-factor under a certain point, BEFORE you can switch from Democracy. No more erratic “tactical government-switching” back and forth). What do you think about the latter?

Also, if the empire is really superior in terms of land-area, science, culture and happiness, the internal debate how to make best use of that lead increases – especially under democracy. Some your cities perhaps become more decadent and self-fulfilling. Adding new ”pleasure-faces” on some of your cities can indicate this. You can choose to go to those cities, in order to do something about that – just as if it was an unhappiness-faced riot-city.

The “simultaneous turns” idea is great - although not start/stop real-time style. I prefer it like in the “Risk II” game, from Microprose.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited July 03, 2000).]

[rremus]

Hello all,
I think income and trade should be the edge on which cities are balancing pro/against independence from you.
As a city generates more income, its will to separate shall be stronger. Also, this should be correlated with the distance from the capitol.
Trade will balance it. The more trade a city has with the rest of you empire, the more it will desire to remain within your empire.
A big city should have an area of influence. When the will to separate overcomes the will to stay with your empire, then the city should try to break away, peacefully or by force. Smaller cities within its area of influence should join the breakaway city to form new civ's.
If a civil war begins, then the will to separate on other cities should increase, triggering other breakaways.
Menace from other civ's should increase the cohesion within your empire, maintaining them within your borders.
What do you think?
Remus

[Grier]

I disagree that it should take a large event to create a large fall of an empire, instead IMO it should just be a matter of time before your empire goes belly up.

There should also be mergers between civs with you taking control of the sum of the two parts. I think the goal of the game should be just to try and survive until the latter parts and when that time arrives I think that anyone who has survived will still have a chance of total victory.

Of course the fall of empires would make total world domination impossible, though still achievable for an allied force or maybe even a bliztkrieg to control the world in only a few turns before the world has a chance to revolt against you (which it eventually would).

This system would work best IMO if you had lots of civs both Minor and Major (though none would be restricted in their potential).
[This message has been edited by Grier (edited July 04, 2000).]

[Adm.Naismith]

Sorry Grier, may be I misunderstand you, but I'm not sure the fall of empire is "only a matter of time".

I mean some important factors (economic, religious, cultural, etc.) grow up until they reach the point when an empire collapse.

If you are really good at juggling that factors you can be able to live the empire for many years. Of course your decisions (alliance instead of brutal attacks, goverment choices as SMAC S.E., developed trade etc.) can help or make things more difficults.

If you don't let this opened, every player will be forced to a low-profile development, but thats simply too unrealistic.

Maybe U.S.A. or E.U. tomorrow will almost dominate the world, but Switzerland doesn't have a chance!

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[Ralf]

The Diplomatic solution would be if some of the more radical aspects of rise-and-fall were chooseable through pre-game options. It don’t always have to be "my way or the highway” in these matters.
I only want to stress out the big need for instability-factors what goes BEYOND “penalties for bad management/ unhappiness”. This alone only going to “kick on those who already lies down” – in other words: its only going to affect newbies who haven’t learned yet how to play the civ-game well enough to avoid these things.

The Joker (quote): “I think one of the major flaws of Civ2 is that bigger is always better”.

Well, a big (well-managed) empire SHOULD always be better – but ONLY in certain areas. In other areas “more cities” should have many potentially game-loosing disadvantages. And vice versa: a small (well-managed) empire SHOULD always be worse – but ONLY in certain areas. In other areas “fewer cities” should have many potentially game-winning advantages.

I don’t know if I can state it clearer than that. Catch 22 – no matter how you turn, you always have your vulnerable butt faced backwards.

Rremus: I think trade can only be one of many factors. Remember that the AI have a hard time playing as good as you. If your empire grows way superior to any AI-empire, these AI-cities (that you have maximal trade with) are going to defect to YOUR Empire.
How likely is it that generally inefficient managed AI-empires is going to combat this effectively trough domestic trade? AI cannot compete with you on equal terms – that’s the problem. Perhaps there are work-arounds solutions for this idea though.

[jdlessl]

How about bringing in barbarians as empire-forming groups? That could take care of the 'minor empire' problem. A barbarian tribe takes over a city and starts a new empire with it. Not minor empires, per se, just small empires with great potential.

Over and over again in history, you've got hordes of barbarians overrunning centers of civilizations, usually just destroying them, but often taking over the reigns (ie, the Hiskos in ancient Egypt, though they were eventually kicked out). Right now, all the barbs do is attack (historically, some empires have paid tribes to keep an eye on the borders) and when they succeed in taking a city they just drive it into the ground (really, just how long can you rape and pillage a city?). The map could have a large area (ie, central asia) which absolutely sucks for cities but is steppe nomad heaven, out of which you periodically get attacking barbarians. Have specific tribes, like Visigoths and Mongols (were Celts originally from central Asia? not sure..) that will happily attack you and one another. Now these guys will have their own set of rules for making units in that until they have an empire, they don't need cities. Their units make more units. This way, if they attack with lots of units and lose, you don't have to worry about them for a while.

What else to make life tougher for an aspiring empire? The only thing I can come up with to limit technological innovation is to not allow directed research before the Renaissance. After all, King Oog did not command his tribesman to invent something round. Perhaps put in conflicting social settings: higher 'innovation levels' (pre-Invention tech research) mean less stable empires (distant provinces more likely to revolt) and vice versa.

How about Dark Ages? Losing more than, say, 50% of your population (not counting cities captured by the enemy) in a 10 turn time span will cause you to start losing techs. But then re-researching them only takes half as long. This would also be very appropriate for nuclear wars.

Maintaining terrain improvements! Very important. The Great Wall and Roman roads may have lasted for thousands of years, but those are very much the exception, not the rule. So if you slack off on the upkeep on your aqueducts, you're population will go down, resulting in even less money... Instant downward spiral.

The idea here is to make it a struggle to simply survive until modern times. After all, not one single empire has survived without being conquered from without from 4000bc to the present. That could be another victory type, though not as rewarding as, say, developing Warp Drive or colonizing Alpha Centauri.

Jared Lessl