OpenCiv3 Discussion thread

[Steve Clark]

If you guys want to see how good hexes can look in 3D - check out this screenshot from Talonsoft's West Front (it is a large load)... http://www.talonsoft.com/pix/west_fr...ere_eglise.GIF

Talonsoft has done more to perfect hexes and what makes it work great is that you can view the map in both 3D (to check out terrain) and 2D (to actually move units).

[korn469]

Failure of the State
by
korn469


The ideas presented here are my ideas for how we should model the decay of a civilization…

Civil Wars: civil wars happen when a group of cities change their allegiance. Listed below are types and causes of civil wars. Though civil wars could happen anytime the chance for a civil war would increase greatly if a civ lost its capital.

• Break-away republics: this type of civil war happens when a group of cities with a similar culture forms a new civ. The effects of this are local to those cities with a similar culture. This process should happen over a very short amount of time, between one and three turns. All units supported by the break-away republics would have a chance of defecting to them, regardless of where they were at the time, and all units supported by the break-away republic inside of their territory would automatically defect to them. All units inside of their territory (only from the civ they are breaking away from, not units from other civs) would have a chance of defecting to them, regardless of where they were supported from. The only exception would be the units supported from the capital.
  
• Colonial Wars: this type of civil war happens when a group of colonies form a new civ. The effects of this are local to the colonies. This process should happen over an extended period of time, with some of the colonies revolting and then as time passes other colonies join them. All units supported by the colonies would automatically defect to them regardless of where they were. Units inside of their territory would have a chance of defecting to the rebels if they were supported from other colonies that didn’t declare independence. Units supported from normal cities would not have a chance to defect to the colonies even if they were inside of colonial territory.
  
• Defections: this type of civil war happen when a city, or group of cities (or colonies) switch allegiance to another civ. This would happen if the cities had a similar culture, or similar social engineering settings, or those cities had a very low nationalism. Also a factor would be the ratio of two civs power and wealth, poor weak cities would be more likely to defect to a strong wealthy civ. This would happen in one turn and would be local to just the cities most like the civ they are defecting to. All units supported by the defectors inside of their territory would automatically switch allegiances to them. Units supported by the defectors, but that were inside of the original civs territory would not switch allegiances, and units outside of both the rebels and the original civs territory would have a chance of defecting to the rebels. All other units inside of their territory (only from the civ they are breaking away from, not units from other civs) would have a chance of defecting to them, regardless of where they were supported from. The only exception would be the units supported from the capital.
  
• Sessionist States: this type of civil war happens when a group of cites with similar ideal settings would declare their independence. There would have to be a great deal of difference between their ideal settings and the rest of the civ’s ideal setting for them to just declare a civil war. However after the capital fell, they would have a great chance of defecting. All of this would happen fairly quickly with all of the cities that are going to defect, defecting over a short period of turns, say less than five. All of this would be localized to the cities with the similar ideal settings. All units supported by the rebels inside of their territory would automatically switch allegiances to them. All units supported by the rebels outside of their territory would have a chance of joining them. All other units inside of their territory (only from the civ they are breaking away from, not units from other civs) would have a small chance (maybe 25%)of defecting to them, regardless of where they were supported from. The only exception would be the units supported from the capital.

Coups: coups happen when your own military units turn against you. Coups are not always violent, and they usually happen fairly quickly, unlike a civil war which can drag on for an extended amount of time. Cities never switch allegiances during a successful coup, but during a less successful coup there might be a few break away cities.

• Ambitious Generals: An ambitious general is when a high morale command unit decides to topple the government. This is very likely to happen where the government isn’t very effective and the people are unhappy and unproductive, the worse the civ is doing the more likely a general is to seize control. Also a better general will be more likely to lead a coup, so if a command unit is green morale they will be less likely to lead a coup than a command unit that has elite morale. All units attached to the command unit will turn against you, the command unit also can effect all of the other command units around it. When a command unit decides to launch a coup, all of the command units close to it does a loyalty check. Basically this should work like psi combat in SMAC on a 1:1 attack defense ratio with no modifiers (except maybe something like polymorphic encryption could act as trance and high morale could act like empath song). If a command unit turns then other command units near it have a chance of turning but the loyalty check is made based on the coup leaders morale. Also if the command unit that launches the coup is based in the capital, the coup has a larger effective radius on recruiting other generals. If the coup manages to capture your king unit then there would be a greater chance of the coup succeeding. The results of this would be one of two things. Either part of your military forces would be hostile towards you (counts as barbarian units) and you would subdue them or the coup would take over. If the coup was successful, then for a few turns the AI would run your cities and then you would play on representing the coup leaders, with the command unit that led the coup becoming your king unit. If the coup is not successful but the renegade general does take over your civ then it is like you have been overran by barbarians.
  
• Failed State: If at anytime you lose half of your civs power bar in less than ten turns there would be a great chance of your entire military structure revolting against you. The less time it took for your power bar to go down the greater the chance of the military replacing your government with a new one. This would happen in one turn and when it happened it would always be successful, but it wouldn’t always happen. Once again the AI would control your civ for a few turn, change social engineering setting and production to what it thought was acceptable. Then after a few (between 3-10) turns you would be in control of your civ again.
  
• Hard Liners: Would work in the same manner as an ambitious general, except it would only happen after you change social engineering settings. The more radical the social engineering changes the greater the chance of a coup. The longer you kept a social engineering setting the greater the chance of a coup. If the coup was successful, then not only would the AI take over for a few turns but it would change the social engineering back to what it was originally and the player couldn’t change it for 25 turns. If the coup is not successful but the renegade general does take over your civ then it is like you have been overran by barbarians.
  
• Rouge Military Units: units should require money for support, and when disbanding a unit it should cost a small amount of money to do so. When military units are not paid then there is a great chance that they will turn into rogue units that act basically like barbarian units. If rogue military units overcome your entire civ, it would be like barbarians overran it and you would not get a second chance.

Popular Uprisings: This is when the people turn against you. Usually not as quick or as organized as a coup or a civil war, this represents the civil strife that constantly tears at your empire.

• Peasant Revolts: this is when unhappy citizens try to seize control of a city. This would happen spontaneously and bad conditions would encourage it. If a peasant revolt happened a number of peasant units would appear in the city and they would fight the military garrison. If the Garrison won the battle the population would go down by one. The size of the peasant army would be based on the size of the city. If the city fell to the peasants it would count as a barbarian city.
  
• Resistance movement: This is when a city, or a group of cities actively support a guerrilla war against your civ. This would only happen spontaneously with unhappy occupied territories, or if your reputation dropped to dangerously low levels with your people. Cities that support the resistance would have a chance of partisans appearing nearby, and the partisans would have an increased chance of carrying out guerilla activity against the city. This could tie up a large number of military units trying to combat the guerrillas.
  
• Revolution: a revolution would occur when great changes tug at your empire, especially if your entire civ had a different ideal setting than what you currently had. It would basically have the same effect as a failed state, except it would not always be successful when it occurred. After a revolution you would not be able to change your social engineering setting for 25 turns.
  
• Student Demonstrations: this would occur in more advanced civs, and would basically be peaceful riots. All production in the city would be cut in half because of student demonstrations. Students would take to the streets in support of a cause, whether it was to end slavery in your civ, or to disband your nuclear arsenal. Only cities with a university would experience student riots. Student demonstrations would end when you appeased the students. If one city had a student demonstration they would quickly spread to all of the other cities with universities. Students would only de4monstrate over socially acceptable causes. Military units would no longer cause a set number of drones, but instead military units outside of your civ could trigger student demonstrations. The more peaceful and democratic your civ is the more likely students will demonstrate. Some causes would be, slavery, war, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, a more democratic form government (ie they want you to change your SE setting), greater education spending, greater health spending, starving cities ect. The students would be your civs conscious. Though marshal law could temporarily end student demonstrations this would hurt your civ's reputations and could lead to resistance movements forming.

[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited March 21, 2000).]

[korn469]

ok that is just the rough draft for my decay model but here are some new concepts associated with it

culture: though i am still determining what this is in civ terms i think that it basically represents a people's simularities
support: although i believe in a global support budget i believe that units should still have a home city representing where they are from and where their loyalties are
defecting: this is when a unit or a city switch sides to another civ
capital: this is your civs headquaters
colonies: when you found a new city it starts out as a colony, and it takes 50 turns to assimilate that colony into your society...colonies are more likely to spontaneously revolt than normal cities
nationalism: this would be a social engineering parameter like growth, it would partially replace the probe rating it would determine how much your people wanna stay part of your civ
ideal settings: this is the social engineering setting, tax rate, ect that the people want...the more you differ from what the people want the more likely bad things are to happen to you
command unit: a noncombatant unit that lets a player form military units into a stack. players form a stack by attaching military units to the command unit. the command unit gives bonuses to the stack.
king unit: a special command unit that you could only have one of at a time. this represents the player on the map. besides having all of the abilities of a command unit, it would also have other abilities like it would make a city happier if it was in it, it would decrease corruption and lower the likely hood of revolt. losing this unit would be a serious setback to your civ, but you could rebuild your king unit.
peasant units: weak military units for the age, representing a peasant army. they would have the special ability that any number of peasant units could be in a stack without a command unit.
reputation: how your civ is veiwed by other civs and its population. carrying out atrocities against your own people could galvanize them against you.
guerilla activity: partisan units should have some of the special abilities of probe team units besides their other abilities. incite riots and carrout sabotage would be the most likely candidates. partisans, though not the toughest military units they would be problem to an occupying army.

korn469

[korn469]

Joker

the reason i picked the game to start at 3200 instead of 4000 was because the math worked out correctly for 600 turns...also i really don't think we should go that far out into the future

i see at least two problems with having the game lasting 1500 turns...

one is the length of the game which could be too long...being too long decreases replayability

two is keeping the game challenging through all 1500 turns...whats the point of having 1500 turns if the player can consistantly win in 400

but if we can solve those two problems i say sure lets go for it...

as for having 100 AI entities...well map size and game length and game balance would be the most important factors...i would rather see a smaller numbers of major competitive superpowers than a great number of small and very cut throat civs...i feel that about 30 (including splintered states) would be about the most number of civs in any one game, and that might be too many...but the number definantly needs to go up from 7

Youngsun

something about your corporation model doesn't feel right to me yet, but i will look over it again and then go on a brain storming mission and work with you on it

Steve Clark

nice pic! looks like that could work to me...how about the rest of you?

korn469
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited March 21, 2000).]

[The Joker]

What has happened here? Let's get some action back into this thread!!

I like the corporations idea although I think corporations should be AI controlled entities with their own agenda. I also think the civ should be able to produce processed food/MFG's and services. How about being able to turn 2 food into 1 processed food, and so forth? This would make it possible, but expensive to live without corporations.

Pris:
I don't ever think the AI has actually been using much computerpower. The stuff that needed the mhz's and the mb's have always been stuff like graphics. I would be satisfied with Civ2 style graphics (SMAC graphics was too dark and ugly) if it meant having loads of AI's and loads of gameplay options. If I am completely wrong here, please tell me, but at the moment I think it could be done.

I like the Combat model. It is complex, but still simple enough to be doable. I think a unit should be of a standard size, so no 1568 men phalanx against a 985 men archer. That would be way too complex and annoying.

[heardie]

I definatly think that we should encorprat the spy suggestion in the other section. That is cool. for those that were wondering there is are from the game maybe at http://members.xoom.com/acchiron/opensource/art.htm and coode is up to at http://members.xoom.com/acchiron/opensource/code.htm so have a look and see what you think
Korn I think you ar spot on here. Just a quick question to Korn also - is your emial working yet?

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

[korn469]

heardie

what do you mean by

quote: Korn I think you ar spot on here.

i didn't understand...my email is still giving me problems, messages often get delivered late and it doesn't always let me view my messages in my inbox but it doesn't seem as bad as what it was...but if you need to contact me, i have a temporary email address at commieXTC@hotmail.com

i will look over the spy thread, the slave thread, and Youngsun's corporation thread and write another design document

all of my documents are just first drafts and i encourage debate on them

korn469

[Youngsun]

Korn

I'll be happy even small part of my ideas of corporations makes it. Since there is only I talk too much on that thread I need someone who really suggest something new and help to simplify it more for easier understanding.

There was no significant objection from other people about introducing "corporations" into the game but the problem is many people seems unhappy about the complexity of the model.

The ideas are entirely based on CIVII, so if there are some significant changes on city view/economy/trade in CIVIII only basic concepts can survive thus do not mind many details that I wrote.(They can be changed anytime)

[Victor Galis]

Here are some of my opinions:

About the command unit, it should not be required to form a stack. Each unit is assumed to have a commander, a commander who could command two such units; however, the stack would not fight quite as well as if it had a real commander. So for instance two phalanxes would fight at -25%, or like 1.5 phalanxes, but with a normal leader they would fight at 2 phalanx strength.

Secondly, I think non-standard sizes are very important. You can not create a unit in a non standard size; however a unit may become damaged in combat and lose some of its strength. Thus a unit that has fought through many other units, and lost half its men would fight at half strength, but to be fair if that unit lost 43.7% of its strength it should fight at 56.3% strength. Since the units would be created in increments of 1000 (bigger in later ages), 43.7% percent would translate directly into 437 men, so it wouldn't be some abstract number.

I don't have much time to do anything now, so I can't add much else to the discussion for the moment, but I think we should begin doing something, like seeing what code we can "borrow" from freeciv (I'm sure there's some), and what we have to make ourselves (most of it, essentially).

[heardie]

quote: Originally posted by korn469 on 03-22-2000 01:39 AM heardie what do you mean by

Hmm beats me!!!


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

[The Joker]

korn:

The Failure of state idea is great. It points out just how civs could break apart. But the rebels should not be barbarians. They should be a new civ. After all, if they win they should be able to negotiate with the other civs and so forth.

The concepts in the game:
Culture: Couldn' it simply be the nationalistic entity of which the people felt attached too? This would make sence.

Support: I agree completely!

Colonies: I like this idea. A colony should be all newly started cities and all newly conquored cities. But a colony shouln't at all just become an integrated part of your civ after x turns. Integrating a colony should be something you chose to do when you felt it would be good to you. A newly built city could propably be assimilated after 10 turns, but a conquored city or a city that had often rebelled against you could be colonies for a very long time. I think a colony should have certain SE effects to that city. It would be something like: -3 efficiency -3 happyness -3 nationalism +5 police. This way you would be able to surpress a city that was very hostile to you, but it would need a strong military presense in the city. A colony would be controlled by officials directly chosen by your government and so you could, even in a democratic government, do more or less what you wanted too there.

I think there should be 3 kind of modes a city could have within your civ: integrated, colony and protectorate. Protectorates would be semiindependant and could be previously conquored civs (it could be bad in the long run to have a large foreign group within your civ), previous colonies that you didn't want to stay in direct control over due to the cost of the military needed, or small civs that had simply asked you for protection. You could also demand to an enemy that he joined you or you would destroy him.

Nationalism: I think each city should have a nationalism rating.

Command unit: I can live with this.

King unit: I really do not like this. The game shouldn't be too focused on persons. Kings die in very few turns civwise, and so I do not think there should be such a unit. Having a capital should be enough.

I agree with the last 3.

About the future, I can live with limited amounts of SF, but the takeoff to AC should happend at a somewhat realistic time. And it is not realistic to fly there in 2050. We propably wont even have a Mars base there yet. But like all I am in for compromises. How about 2100? It is a nice, round number!

Number of turns: Personally I would like to be able to spend weeks, even months, on the same game. But as I can see how other people might disagree, how about making it optional? There could be anywhere from 200-2000 turns, with the advance rate happending at an appropiate speed. Of cause we should focus on getting a playable game before we get into such details.

100 AIs: I think the beauty of having so many states would be, that there would naturally evolve superpowers, medium powers and small powers. There could be civs of all shapes and sizes. Another thing would be, that it would give a whole new dimension to diplomacy. You could become a great power if you made a pact with most of the small powers of the world, that could beat the great civs, and you via diplomacy could get the majority of the votes in that, you could increase your power by supporting resistance groups (these should also be some of the AIs) in large civs, or you could get other civs to join you as protectorates. If the civil war thing is to work every civ has to have loads of these during the game (something like 10-15 - most of these would be destroyed early), which demands a lot of AIs. And a large civ with 40 cities should have at least 1 or 2 rebel groups within it. These would propably mostly just annoy it with terrorist actions (there should be a terrorist unit capable of doing stuff like destroying improvements and killing population - if a normal civ used one it would be a medium atrocity), but enemies of that civ should be able to make secret alliances and provide the rebels with money etc.

[korn469]

The Joker

some times they should be barbarians, but other times they should be new seperate civs...though i'm not sure exactly every instance of each...

as for culture being the nationalistic entity of which the people felt identified with...well if we went with the three maps idea then we could have citizenship on the cultural map, and culture or on the culture/economic map and culture would be the nation people identified with...an example of this is Iraqi kurds, yes they are Iraqi but they think of themself as kurdish and identify with other kurdish people...how does that sound?

colonies: i like your idea that colonies have different SE values...but i don't think cities you capture should be colonies...they should be occupied territory and have different SE values than colonies...colonies should also harvest more resources than normal cities...the farther away a base is from your HQ the more harder it is to change it from a colony to a normal city so colonies should have a formula based on distance and SE factors that determine how quickly they could turn into normal cities

i like protectorates but i think they should be more like submissive pact brothers in SMAC, except you could have more control over them...like you could set their objectives and set them to build/explore/conquer/discover like you do a govenor so they are semi-autonomous but you still have lots of control over them

i think command units are very important...also i think that a units should have two values, morale and experiance...morale could never increase, except if you increased your society's morale rating...experiance would only increase after a unit engages in combat, and all units would start off with low experiance

king units would be your king exactly...it would kinda be like a HQ in unit form, but if you think it is a bad idea then we can toss it

number of turns is negociable, but still it shouldn't be too excessive

as for 100 AI's...if you had 10 civs with 20 cities each, and 10 civs with 10 cities each, and 10 civs with 5 cities each, and 70 civs with 1 city that would mean that you have 420 cities on the map...that would mean either a gigantic map or very small cites that completely overlap covering every space of land on the map...the first solution would increase game time while decreasing system performance and the second wouldn't be very fun

what is the problem with having like aound 15-20 civs starting off and having an additional 10-15 break away civs, and a few barbarian/uncivilized/collapes+disarrayed civs? couldn't that solve most of our problems?

korn469

[JacobH]

quote: as for 100 AI's... [snip] ...the first solution would increase game time while decreasing system performance and the second wouldn't be very fun

Computers tend to become faster and faster. I think that is what we should have in mind when setting arbitrary limits. Why 100? Why not 101? Or 64? I feel strongly that there should not be too many predetermined limits. Instead, there could be a user-configurable maximum on the number of units and the size of the map.
I always found the maximum size of the map in Civ II to be too small. I would not mind if it would take longer to play the game. In fact, that was exactly why I wanted a larger map. I definitly think it would be preferable if there was a default limit, and people could easily change this. There could optionally be a warning that it could possibly be less fun to play the game if the limit was set really high.

Jacob

[Matthevv]

Re: nationalism

The idea of nationalism as we know it today is quite a recent development as a political force, only really in the last couple of hundred years. So I don't think it should be something in the game from the beginning. It could be a "technology" like fundamentalism, that would allow you to have a Nazi/Fascist government, and would allow your spies to foment nationalist uprisings in the parts of your opponents empires.

[The Joker]

korn:

Barbarians:
Perhabs, but most of the time they should be a new civ.

Culture/nationalism:
This is exactly what I had in mind. Great!

Colonies/occupied territory:
I like the idea of having occupied territory being different from a colony. But I do not at all think that a colony/occupied territory/protectorate should assimilate into your civ automatically. When it happened it would be something you had chosen as you thought the time was right. As I said before a colony should sometimes stay that way through the entire game (or untill you finally gave it up due to the cost).

Protectorates:
Great idea of letting you set their objectives. But they should still have full control over their units. You could move your units freely in their territory and inside their cities, but they couldn't do the same thing with your territory. A protectorate should be controlled from a central government (all the cities would work together) and have a capital. It should also have it's own SE settings. This would mean, that in a democratic protectorate you might not get it to build what you wanted it to all the time, due to the legislature. You could make certain deals with the protectorate (like "Sell me 200 energy for 100 gold per turn") that the protectorate could not break. Whether Science and Tax should be payed to you (you could say something like "30% of your net income is to be shipped to me") would be set by you when creating the protectorate, and could be changed by you at all times at the risk of creating unhappyness. The protectorate could declare independance at all times, but would have to fight a war with you to gain it. A protectorate that was not very strong would usually be satisfied with being a protectorate.

Command units:
Then let's include them!

King units:
I still don't like this.

Number of AIs:
I think Jacob asnwered this one nicely...