OpenCiv3 Discussion thread

[korn469]

well what is the verdict on the map? squares or hexes? and if we do go with hexes how do they look at an angle?

also from a programming stand point what are the most basic foundation areas of the game?

i would assume that the map is the most basic of all the elements...then what would come next? how many civs? or is it something else?

also my opinion about the code is this...if its good code that we can use we should take it from any legal source as long as it doesn't limit what we can do with the game

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The OpenCiv3 website
korn469
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited March 16, 2000).]

[MidKnight Lament]

I hope you guys know what you're getting yourself in for. Professionals are taking over a year to develop Civ3 full time. And I don't mean to sound rude, but it doesn't sound like there's too many pros here. I'll be the first to applaud you for noble intentions, but if you're going to do this you better be prepared to put in an absolute crapload of work.

Also, why don't you trade ICQ numbers or something? It's not that I'm unhappy with you posting in the forum. It's just that I think you'll get heaps more done if you're chatting than posting. Otherwise, it'll take foooor-ever.

- MKL

[JacobH]

quote: I hope you guys know what you're getting yourself in for.

Thanks for reminding us, I think you are the second or third person to do so. I am sure everyone who would like to see it finished sooner could participate.
However, I do not do this just to be able to play the game. I do this for fun and to be able to influence the game. I think some of you tend to forget that not all of us see this as hard work, and that the creation of the game is just as much fun as playing the game should be, if not more. I can only speak for myself, though.

quote: Also, why don't you trade ICQ numbers or something?

There is already a mailinglist, but using ICQ as well would probably help.

Jacob Hammeken

[heardie]

quote: Originally posted by MidKnight Lament on 03-16-2000 05:43 PM Also, why don't you trade ICQ numbers or something? It's not that I'm unhappy with you posting in the forum. It's just that I think you'll get heaps more done if you're chatting than posting. Otherwise, it'll take foooor-ever. - MKL

W have but there is a little problm of tim zone diffrncs thy might b one when I am fast asleep

[korn469]

My General Ideas for OpenCiv3
by
korn469


The ideas listed here are my vision of how civ3 should work…

The Map: The first thing I would do in starting out would be to use a hex based map. An average map should be 100 hexes wide and 75 hexes tall. Each hex should be of a certain terrain type, for example: desert, tundra, grasslands, etc. Some of the terrain will have special items on it that makes it more productive.

Number of turns: The game should have 600 turns and it should last from the years 3200bce to the year 2050ce. There should be a telescoping time system where turns early in the game represent more years than turns later in the game. There should be a number of ages and each one of these ages should get about the same amount of turns. We could have four ages each with 150 turns. Here are the proposed ages: ancient (3200-550, each turn counts as 25 years) middle (551-1300 each turn counts as five years), renaissance (1301-1900 each turn counts as four years), modern (1901-2050 each turn counts as one year).

Number of players: The game should have up to 32 distinct player slots. 16 of those slots would be reserved for starting civs, and 16 would be the limit on the number of civs you could start the game with. 12 of those slots would be for breakaways, rebellions, splinter groups, and other civs that would start as a result of actions that happen in the game. 4 of those slots would be reserved for barbarians, anarchists, and other groups of uncivilized people.

Cities: Cities should be where all resources are processed, where all people live, and generally the focal point of your empire, as they are in civ2. You will build a facility in your city and it will give your city a benefit. You will build all your units in your cities. You will use all of your resources in cities. Cities should have a radius of 2 so with a hex based map they will have 19 squares to work. Population in the cities should be represented by heads.

Growth Model: The game should abandon civ’s exponential city growth model in favor of a linear one. This alone would solve some of the problems of ICS.

Resources: The games should have four resources: food, minerals, money, and energy. Each tile will produce resources in a given range from 0 to some number below 20.
Food: Each point of population needs food to survive and food is need for a city to grow in size.
Minerals: Minerals are used to build base facilities and units. Also units may need minerals for support.
Money: Money is used to pay upkeep on base facilities, it can be used to complete base facilities and units. Money goes into research, happiness, and surplus.
Energy: Energy is a new concept to the civ genre, but I think it would have significant positive changes. Represented by an energy barrel icon and stored in a global surplus, this resource would have a few uses. First energy barrels would be needed for a city to change minerals into base facilities and units. Second energy barrels would be needed for a unit to carry out any action except for rest. Third, energy barrels would be what determines pollution, the more energy barrels used the greater the pollution. Only so many energy barrels could be stockpiled, and energy barrels would act as a strategic limitation on a civ, forcing it to seek out energy resources to remain competitive, and would also include the concept of real strategic areas into civ.

Base Facilities: Base facilities are structures that improve a city’s statistics. They fall into a number of groups: money increasing buildings, research increasing buildings, happiness increasing buildings, production increasing buildings, military increasing buildings, plus religion+culture increasing buildings. These facilities should have interesting effects not all of them being positive, and should not always operate the same under every governmental choice. I think that OpenCiv3 should start over from scratch here so we can reach a good balance of interesting buildings.

Wonders: Wonders are unique structures that for the most part effect the entire civ, or effect one city in such a way that it effects the entire civ. A good wonder is powerful, but not unbalanced, it is interesting, and it has a noticeable effect on the entire civilization that builds it.

Tile Improvements: Tile improvements are structures placed on the map that increase the productivity of a certain square. I think that we should look at the CtP publics work system and see if it could be adapted and improved upon so we could include it in our game.

Units: Units are built in cities and for the most part represent the military presence of a civilization. I think that we should increase the base movement of infantry to 2 spaces and then balance the movement of the other units accordingly. Moving one space has many disadvantages and it needs some work.

War: Combat between units. One thing that is vital to OpenCiv3 is a stacked combat system. Until I hear a better proposal I think that this is the system we should use for OpenCiv3. Units can be stacked together when a command unit is in the same stack. A certain number of units can be attached to this command unit. The exact number would depend on the era and on the technology level of the civ. Then add up the total amount for both sides (counting all of the bonuses) and then carry out combat. Combat would work like this, the attackers strongest unit would fire first (using the total to see if damage is inflicted) then if damage is inflicted a unit in the defenders stack is random hit. Then the strongest defender goes, then the next strongest attack and so on.

Diplomacy: Diplomacy is one of the key areas to the game. If there is not a wide array of options and realistic behavior for the most part then the game will be disappointing. The diplomacy interface must be smooth and easy to use, otherwise a great diplomacy model could get lost behind the clicks. All efforts in every area of the game must be taken to ensure a great deal of powerful options in an easy to access interface.

Trade: Besides diplomacy, trade is another vital area that needs to have a powerful influence on the game but needs a simple and clean interface that doesn’t create a micromanagement nightmare.

Governments: The SMAC SE system is a fine place to start when we work out our governmental models. The only improvements I can see to do are the following: give the player more options, have the SE models effect more areas of the game, have the different models have more characteristics than just effecting the Social pluses and minuses, have some compatible SE choices give extra benefits that makes the sum of the parts greater than the whole.

Reputation: Reputation needs to mean something. Having a horrible reputation should have dire consequences, while having a history of being a benevolent ruler should have its perks. Civs with bad reputations should become pariahs while civs with an undisputed record of helping others should endear themselves to their people and the world in general.

Civil Strife: Civil strife has to be included in this game if it wants to be a true sequel. Civs must be prone to disintegrating for there to be any excitement left in the game during the modern era. It should be very difficult to integrate newly conquered regions and there should always be the threat of rebellion of some sort.

Modes of Victory: Basically this is an idea to have three maps, one representing religion, one representing economics and culture, and one representing the military and the state. This is a good idea because it would allow a great number of ideas to be put into the game without increasing the complexity of the game too much. It breaks down the game into easily understandable game blocks, and it keeps all of the vital information together while at the same time allowing a far greater civ experience and increasing the excitement and replayablitiy of the game.

Victory Conditions: Goes hand in hand with the new modes of victory idea. You now have a number of different ways to win the game. Convert all of the heads to your nationality either through force or diplomacy, convert them all to your religion, control them all through economic domination, or send the space ship at Alpha Centauri.

Interface: The interface must balance two opposing forces. It must give the user a great deal of powerful choices, but it must also be very simple and efficient, and take few mouse clicks or menus to implement any of a players choices. It must be sleek and powerful. A bad interface would destroy the game

Please look over any errors, this is only the first rough draft.


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The OpenCiv3 website
korn469

[Victor Galis]

"Victor:
Didn't you post an advanced combat model back at the Firaxis Forum? I remember someone did, and it was really great. If it was you could you please post it here or as an email so we could check it out."

-Someone remembers I'll go bump it. It is in the Civ3 List forum.

[Victor Galis]

On second thought, I'll just post the link.

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000159.html

[Urban Ranger]

I strongly suggest that we adopt FreeCiv as our starting point. This is exactly what Linus Trovald did. He started with Minix and slowly replaced the code.

There are things in FreeCiv most people won't know how to program, such as low level communication sockets.

At any rate, I don't see there's anything wrong with improving on FreeCiv or adopting it to our needs. IIRC it is based on the OpenSource philosophy.

Somebody has asked how hard it would be to switch from a rectangular map to a spherical map. I guess the answer is "it depends." That is, it depends on how the underlying data structures are designed.

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audentes fortuna juvat

[korn469]

victor

i re-read the combat summary (ok i did a comprehesive skimming over it) but it looks good...it is a great starting point for a combat system...i really liked the section on seiges...

urban ranger

well if free civ can handle the drastic changes we want and it would be easier to go that route, then kewl use it as the starting point...if not, well then maybe we shouldn't

korn469

[Urban Ranger]

korn,

Ugh, you used that word, "kewl!" Run away!

At any rate, it would be better if we don't have to do everything from scratch. I think we can at least reuse parts of freeciv.

[The Joker]

I think the most important thing we could do to OpenCiv3 is to make it changeable. We should always make the code so that it's wasily changed. This will make it possible to improve it as much as we can and want.


Great idea concept, korn!

Here's my comments:

Map: Great. I would LOVE a spherical map at some point, but for now this is fine.

Number of turns: Why should the game start at 3200BC in stead of just 4000BC?? I would like more turns, per year as well as including some point of science fiction, up to 2200AD (I guess we'll need a compromise or a vote on this one). I would like about 1500 turns in the game.

Number of players: I don't know if this is technically doable, but I would like up to and perhabs more than 100 player/AI entities (!!). There could be something like 10 civs at first, another 10-15 coming along the way and then 25-40 for breakaways etc. I would like civs to have civil wars numerous times throughout the game! The rest of the slots would be for the protectorates (which should control themselves and have an agenda, but be limited in their actions due to their semi-indepencance).

Growth model: Of cause. The size of the food growth box (default size 40) would be determined by SE growth rating, improvements, happyness and trade per pop in the city.

Resources: Again with the x10 system. This will make stuff like having an advance giving +10% food output possible.

Energy: It is a must. But I don't think it should be a factor untill inustrialization. Having horses or wood give energy is too wierd. Energy should be used to get factories and other production increasing
improvements to work.

Improvements: Cool. I think the improvements should increase/decrease the SE effects ratings. So a Factory could give +10 pro, which would be added to the national pro level.

Tile improvements: I agree on the PW system. It could propably be improved though.

Units: I agree.

War: I think we should use a modified version of Victors system. Unfortunately I do not have the time to read it at the moment. I think I will do it tomorrow.

Trade: Trade should definately have a huge effect. Most of your income in the later half of the game should come from trade with other civs, which would make atrocities very bad for you. It would also force you to stay nice to at least some civs.

SE: I have and SE system, which is included in The List v2.0. It is pretty complex and of cause horribly unbalanced, but I think it includes most of what we should have in the game and so it could be used as a foundation.

Reputation: I agree.

Civil strife: This is a must. I think using the CIVilians idea could work with a lot of what we want.

The 3 maps: Should be in.

Victory conditions: There should be numerous victory conditions: Make the trip to AC, conquor the world, a diplomatic victory, an economic victory (it should be more complex than SMACs lousy one - having monopoly on numerous goods and/or on the energy market is a good start), a cultural victory and a religious victory. I am not sure how the last 2 would work as I don't think a culture nor a religion should be connected to a certain civ. Religions should be individual, and operate within the civs. You could of cause support/accept/outlaw certain religions, but not control them.

Interface: Of cause!


Victor:

Again I will have to take a look at your model tomorrow.


Urban Ranger:

I think you're right.

Again I think an essential part of the game should be that we should be able to make the map spherical sometime.

[pris]

100+ Civilizations means the Ai will either be 10 times stupider or 10 times slower. IMO neither option is desirable.

It would be good to have an interface similar to SMAC which is, as far as I'm concerned, the best in the genre.

[heardie]

quote: Originally posted by The Joker on 03-19-2000 12:09 PM BTW how many are we working on the project at the moment? And are more people joining?

I think around 7 have exprsseed interest. Anone can participate just see http://members.xoom.com/acchiron/opensource or mail me
youo can join our mailing list at the site also

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-Chiron Creators-
"http://members.xoom.com/acchiron"

[The Joker]

BTW how many are we working on the project at the moment? And are more people joining?

[Youngsun]

Korn

Please add my "corporations" ideas into your general ideas. If you don't like the idea then tell me which part of the idea needs more works,etc. So we can work it out to the possisble compromising point.