Spontaneous Starts

[DarkCloud]

-Following the rise and fall of empires; there should be random risings of empires in different parts of the map; (ie you start with 7 civs and later in the game; about 500 BC two other civs start in Australia and America (Native Americans, Australians).

[jdlessl]

I like it in principle, but it'll have to be implemented well to be useful. If I have to run around killing off civs that pop up right in the center of my empire, I'm gonna be pissed. Civ2 used to do that, and I'd have to rescout areas within my own borders to figure out where this latest annoyance was coming from.

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Jared Lessl

[DarkCloud]

With the new BORDERS hopefully that threat will be eliminated.

[OreoFuchi]

quote: Originally posted by DarkCloud on 12-07-2000 06:54 PM With the new BORDERS hopefully that threat will be eliminated.

Are there definitely going to be borders in Civ3?

[Ribannah]

quote: Originally posted by DarkCloud on 12-07-2000 06:28 PM -Following the rise and fall of empires; there should be random risings of empires in different parts of the map; (ie you start with 7 civs and later in the game; about 500 BC two other civs start in Australia and America (Native Americans, Australians).

You could generate this effect by adding an era of "nomadic wandering". Some tribes would settle in villages earlier than others.

Climatic changes could perhaps account for the fall of some empires, but mostly it's conquest.



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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[UltraSonix]

I've never figured out why this forum loves the rise and fall of empires idea - especially all the old posters - when I play Civ2/SMAC I switch off "restart eliminated civs"...

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards... Despite any stupid advertisments you may see to the contrary... (And no, koalas don't usually speak!)

[Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto]

I do like this idea.

And also, I am pretty sure BORDERS will be implemented, 80% of everyone Ive seen on these threads say they want them.

Although, dont make too many civs pop up, or the game will go on forever. The game gets pretty boring after about 2200 AD.

[DarkCloud]

At most there should be 4 random empires, any more and it would make the game too complicated; also, they should not be too weak, for they should not be crushed easily.

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by UltraSonix on 12-08-2000 07:37 AM I've never figured out why this forum loves the rise and fall of empires idea - especially all the old posters - when I play Civ2/SMAC I switch off "restart eliminated civs"...

The idea of "Rise and fall" is about something more sophisticated then just switch on/off "restart eliminated civs". The idea have instead much more in common with the BAB-problem (Bigger Always Better) and the idea of "changing human ideals through the ages".

In Civ-2 is just too easy to maintain an evergrowing empire - and its almost always and only a big advantage to have more well-deloped cities then everybody else. Somewhat bigger empire-corruption problems is not near enough. Economical-, minority- and efficiency-problems should arise. It can be battled - but only so much, and NOT simultaneously in each and every city.
Also; once such a downward-spiral empire decline have started, it should be much more difficult to "turn the tide" in a huge 35-50+ city empire. It can be done, but only at a cost.

Finally, war- and dark power-ideals that once was worshipped in ancient times, shouldnt work as easily anymore in more modern times. Ideals changes.
Translated into Civ-3 reality this means if you are a ruthless, treacherous and militant warmonger under modern times - especially under democracy - then the senate always works against you.
Infact you should have to EARN democracy, before you are granted it (= XX number of turns of peace + 2-3 attempts - who said establishing democracy should be easy?) You cannot both keep the cake and eat it, at the same time. You have to choose!

Under democracy you can only retaliate one unit/stack for one unit/stack, or one conquered city for one conquered city. After that the senat almost always blockades any further war-desicions from you.
You can of course overthrough your democracy, to a more war-friendly government, but only at the expense of several turns of anarchy, and then only gradually increased efficiency upto the choosen government. Erratic government-switching back and forth, should be costly - epecially VERY costly from democracy downwards to a totalitarian government.

Some last words:

The closer you are in conquering the world, the less is the benefits of the remaining still free AI-trade-routes worth. Also, the captured cities perhaps can be forced/bribed out of anarchy, but they dont work as near as efficient as they could (equivalent to "silent protest" or "make a fist within ones pocket").

Needless to say, this means increasingly huge, almost intolerable problems in continuing the war-effort.
[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited December 10, 2000).]

[S. Kroeze]

quote: Originally posted by UltraSonix on 12-08-2000 07:37 AM I've never figured out why this forum loves the rise and fall of empires idea - especially all the old posters - when I play Civ2/SMAC I switch off "restart eliminated civs"...

There are several reasons to love the Rise and Fall of Empires idea.

Historically it makes sense: the only ancient civilization that is still a major power is the Chinese civilization. But where are the Sumerians, the Egyptians, Indus civilization today?
And the Chinese empire was during its long history conquered several times by barbarians or it disintegrated. (on this last point Urban Ranger strongly disagrees, but he has more rather peculiar views on history.....)

And the idea of Rise and Fall would contribute much to make the game a REAL CHALLENGE!!!

During the voting procedure for the EC3 list it became quite obvious who were the experienced Civplayers. Most of them supported the idea; and mine too!

My severest criticism of CivII is that the game is too easily won. (And I NEVER ever cheat, not in any way!) Even on Deity level it becomes highly improbable that an experienced player will lose a CivII-game, which results in decrease of suspense. After about 1500AD when half of the turns haven't passed yet, its clear who is going to win.

Civilizations lasting for more than two millenia are the exception, not the standard. CivIII should try to depict the rise and fall of civilizations/great powers. When a culture is succesfull it will almost inevitably grow conservative and convinced of its own superiority, causing other cultures to surpass the once dominant civilization. In this way its decline becomes inevitable!

The very linear, predictable structures of CivII should be broken,
CHANCE EXISTS!


So my question to you is: Are you an experiended Civer or not? Do you want the game to be more easily won or not? Because precluding the restart of eliminated civilizations only brings your victory nearer.

In my view CivII is the only truly interesting computer game. Unfortunately it is very hard to lose...

[S. Kroeze]

from the Archives:

• an excellent post by Foobar:
  
  In real life the great empires like China, The roman Empire etc has suddenly lost their importance, lagged behind technologicly or been destroyed.
  This can never happen in Civ. E.g if you have a strong lead over the other civs in say 1200AD you are almost bound to continue having that and win. That is what I find so boring with civ sometimes. That I very early realize that I will win but there are so many cities left out there to conquer so it will still take a lot of time.
  
  This should be changed in some way. E.g great powers should suffer stagnation one time or the other, or it should more easily leack technology to other weaker civs.
  
  E.g. China was so dominant in it's region about 1500 that nobody could threaten her military. Thus military inovation stagnated.
  While in Europe there were many small states that fought among themselves, this spured a lot of military inovation.
  
  The same can be said about the ancient greek city-states. They fought a lot against each other and thus they developed the best armies in the world at that time.
  
• and an excellent post by FinnishGuy:
  
  Theben, I cannot agree with your analysis of "the modern Roman empire". The historical fact is that western half of the Roman empire was conquered by barbarians. Modern day Europeans descend ethnically much more from these barbarians, although European culture has adopted a lot from the Romans. When you go east of the Rhine and north of the Alps, there isn't even that tiny drop of ethnic Roman blood any more in the populace. In "CIV terms" this would amount to Roman cities being conquered by barbarians, the barbarians stealing several "tech advances" in the process and later founding their own civilizations (which isn't possible in CIV/CIV2). Foobar has a good point there too that once you've properly established your civilization (i.e., have enough cities), there just isn't any real threat to you no more. If you have a counterpart of historical Rome on its' height in CIV/CIV2, you simply can't lose it to a bunch of barbarians!
  I think you have a good idea, Foobar. Maintaining a large empire especially in ancient times should be a difficult, yet not impossible, task in CIV3. Yes, there's already the "increased unhappiness from too many cities" factor, but the effect of it alone is all too weak to really make a difference. Besides, this factor was originally patched to CIV1 explicitly to discourage a certain abusive strategy ("despotic conquest"; you stay in despotism, crank out only military units and conquer everybody), not to reflect some historical experiences in ruling large empires.
  
  The unhappiness factor could be just a first step in a series of increasingly severe penalizing effects taking place the more cities you own:
  
  1. increased unhappiness [starts when # of cities goes over limit]
  2. increased corruption = less science, money, production
  3. low military unit morale
  4. chance of spontaneously falling to anarchy = civil war, or throne war, can happen several times
  5. increased military unit costs = military service less appealing to populace
  6. chance of massive barbarian hordes invading = they are looking for an opportunity to plunder a weak, overextended empire; may happen several times
  7. chance of empire breaking up [may occur when you have more cities than three times limit]
  
  Also the strength (or chance) of each effect would increase with increasing number of cities. Note that items 4, 6 and 7 are _chances_, so there's also chance that they won't occur.
  
  I've tried to design the above list roughly according to what historical Rome "experienced". The Chinese did not (?) break up (item 7) while Alexander the Great's short-lived empire did not face barbarians (item 6). To certain extent, the penalties could be applied even to such a relatively advanced empire as the czarist Russia.
  
  If a civilization breaks up, one or more new civilizations split off from the old empire, and the above penalties are then reapplied to each (including the old) according to their new number of cities.
  
  Later, new inspiring ideologies (and religions) and more advanced forms of government would increase the city limit and thus reduce or even finally eliminate (with Nationalism) the penalizing effects. IMO, Nationalism should then introduce a whole new set of problems in ruling a civilization, but I won't get into that here (see posts in TECHNOLOGY and CIVILIZATIONS threads).
  
• and an excellent post by Matthew, Junction City:
  
  First of all, what major civ did not start out as a minor civ? At the time the small city of Rome liberated itself from Eutruscan rule around 500 BC I would say that it was a pretty minor entity compared to China, the Persian empire, or even some of the Greek confederations.
  
  Want realism? Make it possible for a small, insignificant city state to become a major power in 200 years and the greatest economic power in history, up to that point, in another 200. Make it possible for a few tiny cities on a far off continent to revolt from their mother country and then in 150 years time dwarf that mother country in population and industrial might, all without conquering any major population centers. Make it possible for a minor civ confined to an island chain the size of California with few natural resources, still in the iron age when the major powers are for the most part quite industrialized, to in 50 years be able to compete with those industrialized civs militarily (Russo Japanese war, Japanese won), 50 years later conquer half the pacific, get throttled and bombed back into the stone age, and in another 40 years have the 2nd largest economy on earth and be #2 in industrial output, all without (succesfully, anyway) expanding beyond its original borders or skyrocketing in population.
  
  Actually the story of a minor civ becoming a great power, sometimes even overshadowing older civilizations, is the rule, not the exception. Of course this degree of realism would be hard to impliment, so for practical purposes we should probably content ourselves with the myriad of China type eternal civs that we have gotten so far. (Yes, I know that some of these success stories can be achieved against the AI (artificial idiot), but not likely in MP.
  
• and finally the final draft of the Rise and Fall of Empires idea, made by Matthevv, Crawley:
  
  Empires should become increasingly difficult to hold together as they get larger. As in real world empires, they should be subject to a risk of civil war, rebellion, secession, etc. If that happened it would not be the end of your Civ, but you might have to rebuild from a small base again if you can't deal with your internal opponents and lose part of your empire.
  
  One benefit of this idea is that it would make the later stages of the game more interesting: in Civ2 once your empire reaches a certain size, you can't lose, and there is not much fun left in the game. If your empire was increasingly likely to crumble as it expands, the challenge of conquering the other Civs would be replaced by that of keeping your empire together.
  
  A second benefit is that, unlike Civ2, you could not predict the eventual outcome early in the game. Getting off to a slow start in BC4000 would not inevitably mean that you will also be behind in AD2000, as is the case in Civ2.
  
  A third benefit of this idea is that it makes the infinite city sleaze approach to the game not as effective, as with all those cities, you would be constantly at risk of rebellion in one or more of them.
  
  Instead of the steady exponential power graphs of Civ2, my idea would result in a graph with ups and downs, as one empire grew great and then collapsed. You would have the possibility of building up an empire in a number of different eras. Maybe there could be some kind of mega-wonders that you could build in each era if you have a rich enough empire, as part of the scoring system.
  
  The thoughts I had about implementing this idea quite simply were to:
  1. Increase the factors affecting citizen happiness, so that for example the level of availability of food and trade goods, and whether the population is of the same nationality/culture/religion as the leader, etc. would affect the happiness rating.
  2. Make the effects of unhappiness non-deterministic, so that as the unhappiness
  increases, there is an increasing risk of a rebellion in that city. Unlike Civ2, there would be no way of being certain that a city would or would not fall into civil disorder, it would be a probability dependent on the happiness. The probability could increase as you get more distant from the capital.
  3. If a city goes into civil disorder, it rebels and becomes a minor Civ and starts out on its own. All units from that city from then on belong to that new mini-Civ. With regionalisation, you could also see a region rebel.
  4. Presence of a rebelling city would increase the likelihood of other cities nearby rebelling, so you get a domino effect: if you don't deal will a rebel city promptly you could see others rebelling too.
  4. You can station your own troops (not from that City) in a City to combat rebellion. A
  city will only rebel if the strength of any local units plus the City militia (low quality units in a number proportional to the population) is greater than that of your troops.
  5. You can sell arms using a spy to an enemy City to increase the quality of the militia, making rebellion more likely.
  
  I provide this as an example to illustrate the idea. There would be other more sophisticated ways to implement the same idea of course.

I would like to point out that this idea received a convincing majority of votes when we voted for the EC3 list.

[jdlessl]

I've been trying to come up with a way to make tech research stagnate for a powerful Civ, and I can't do it.

Why does an otherwise highly developed civilization lag behind its neighbors in research? China would be a excellent example. All through the European expansion China's rulers sat back and didn't do anything; probably thinking that all those pesky euro-trash explorers couldn't do anything against the might of Cathay. Why on earth would they think that? They evidently didn't realize the power superior technology has.

The problem is, nobody who plays Civ ever thinks that way. The whole game is about developing tech faster than your competition, so the only way to lag behind is to not build up your cities as fast or as well. No player is going to purposely skimp on the tech. Yet here we propose to make it so that if you build a fair number of cities and have a large, powerful empire, you can sometimes fall behind some 2-bit upstart off in Timbuktoo.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea, but I haven't the slightest idea as to how the guys at Firaxis would do it and do it fairly.

Anyway, excellent archaeological work, Kroeze; those were some nice posts you dug up. It definitely supports an 'easy to build, not so easy to keep running' civ. I think that games are going to end up with far more turns, as development in the ancient era is much more important than it currently is played.

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Jared Lessl
[This message has been edited by jdlessl (edited December 11, 2000).]

[Ribannah]

One possibility to slow down research would be to increase the demand for luxuries. If a large empire would require a higher luxury rate, you get the effect you're looking for.

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire