RADICAL IDEAS (ver1.0): Hosted by Rong

[Captain Action]

Not to hijack the thread but why not replace the civ's square with a hexagon?
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[Possibility]

Please let me know what you guys think of this very long but good idea.

I'd like to see the rise and fall of multiple civilizations in the course of a game. I want see new civilizations come into existence half way through the game.

The idea I have for this is to have people that inhabit the squares. When you start off the game and make your first city and then go off exploring, you will encounter ordinary squares with people on them working the land. Not all squares will have people in them, and if the game is implemented with high-res graphics and 32bit color you will see small little houses on that square. The number of little houses indicative of the population there. With a single square type only supportive of a certain amount of people based on how much food that square can produce and how many people can survive off that food, and that amount will increase with tech and terraforming. In the Stone Age, maybe only 5000 people can live in a single square, but in the present age, that number would be 1,000,000 or even higher.

Now this square that you find with workers on it would not belong to any city or any civ. They would be just neutral inhabitants of the land. There would be relatively few of them in the beginning but as time progresses they will grow, and when they reach the capacity of that square, they spill over to the next square. As these neutral inhabitants expand into several squares, they will eventually form a city. A brand new city will pop in the center of these small clusters of inhabitants, and thus a new civilization will be born. It will have its own color and will become a full fledge computer controlled civ.

For your own civs, you would also have these workers working the land and they would contribute the food and minerals that they work on each square to the city it belongs too. The food produced by all squares in the city would be evenly distributed so you could have as many people in a square as you have people in your city (although all people in one square would not produce enough food from that one square to feed them all). The way food production and resource production in a square would be calculated as follows: For the people that are working the country side, each extra person you have working a square a would only increase the production by #/n where # is the original production of the square and n is the number of citizens already in that square +1. So if a square produces 10 food, 1 person in that square would produce 10 food, 2 people would produce 15 food, 3 people would produce 18.333 food and 4 people would produce 20.833 food, this would limit the amount of workers you could support per city, until a new tech is discovered that would increase that base amount of food production. When you go to the industrial age, and you start to build factories, the number of people you have working them would increase production at a linear rate. For example, your city builds a factory, then each person you move to the city square would increase production for the entire city by +10% for each person in that city square. So you would have to balance production with the amount of food you want to produce. You would also have to consider over crowding and other things that go along with to many people in a small area.

Before the industrial age (and also in the industrial age still and beyond), people working in the city square would produce more money and science, but not produce any food and rescues.

Now you can also take people from your cities and move them too empty squares outside of a city radius, but still within your empire's borders. These people working the empty land would behave like neutral inhabitants, but you can still chose which direction they expand in. Going along with being able to move people around, you can also move people to other cities, but moving people should cost you some money. You would receive NO resources from citizens to empty squares, but eventual you could establish a city there and then already have people there to inhabit that land. You should also be able to build a something to allow that square to utilize the resources being produced there, something like a supply crawler. I would infact just suggest connecting that square to a city with roads (no supply crawler needed, just roads). You can then decide where the production will go, to any city it is connected to by roads. Of course, the further away the city, the less of the actual production you would get. You would lose certain amounts do to corruption and such. City sizes in the first parts of the game would remain relatively small, as they really were up until the industrial age. Cities would have to rely on these squares outside of a city for more food and resources. You would also want to move people to outside squares when your city can not grow any further, when all of the food is being used up and none is left over for growth. You could then move people to empty squares to allow your empire to still grow. Move enough people into a region and you could tell them to make a city (this would mostlikely cost some gold or something). This is a more realistic approach then having everything centered around the city as in the previous games. The countryside is where most of the people in the world live up until the 20th century.

When you destroy a city, you dont necessarily kill all the inhabitants of the city, mainly you would just kill the citizens working in the city square. You would have to pillage the land surrounding the city square to kill the people working that square, and eventual later in the game, doing that kind of an action would be an atrocity. In the real world (the past) when cities were attacked, most of the inhabitants in the city were killed or sold into slavery. Combat should reflect this by usually wiping out the whole city when you take it. But the people that were working in the city, not in the city square, would survive.

When you destroy a city or civilization, there should be the chance that those civs techs will be distributed to the whole world, or to any other civs in a certain radius, becoming common knowledge. I believe that in the ancient past there was a civilization that first discovered iron working (not sure which one) and this civilization was eventually destroyed by other civs that did not posses the knowledge of iron working because that first civ that got it highly protected their iron workers and made sure they never left their empire, but when the civ was crushed, those iron workers were now free to go where ever and the knowledge of iron working quickly spread through out the region to all the empires. When you destroy/conquer huge cities or capitals or finally take over the last remaining city of an empire, there should be a certain percentage chance that that civs techs will become distributed to all the local empires with in a certain radius.

As for civs rising and falling, and rising again, when you destroy enemy civs, and DON’T commit genocide on the remaining people still working the land, they return to a neutral status unless they are inside the borders of another civ. These now newly formed neutrals will continue to grow and expand and will eventual form cities again and thus NEW empires. I would suggest the time it takes for a neutral square to expand and create a city would be 10-20 turns, so that new civilizations are constantly popping up. These new civilizations would start with the techs that have become common knowledge in that area. I would also suggest to firaxis that civs would be able to grow quickly compared to already established civs. I would balance it so that a city's growth was limited by the amount of food it could produce, not whether it had an aqueduct or not. So a few neutrals working the land could expand into a modest size empire in about 50 turns (about 5-7 cities). And cities would hit their max size in population rather quickly. This would lead to lots of new civilizations popping up seemingly out of the middle of nowhere. So an average game would have about atleast 30 civs on the map playing at any one time. If the unfortunate were to happen, if your own civilization were to die, and you were say, had a huge empire like the Romans, then when you were finally wiped out, you would get the chance to watch “your” neutrals reestablish themselves and then you would take back control of that newly built city and start over again. You would have to try and retake your land and to crush all the other new upstart nations created from your empires ruins. After all, in the real world, no single empire lasted the test of time, most only lasted a hundred years at most. Of course in order to make the game playable, you should be able to keep your entire empire for the whole game. But it should also be easy for new empires to become world dominators. The great empires of the British, French, Russian and others of that era weren’t even formed until several centuries after fall of the Roman Empire. The game should be played such that the original civs most likely won’t survive the whole game on a difficulty level the player finds hard.

Possibility
May the possibilities remain infinite.

[zaz]

Possibility: You're suggestion about rising and falling civs, is something I've always wanted to see. On the same line, I'd also like to be able to cede cities. Say I conquer a city, but don't want to keep it, my current choice is to disband it or keep it, but how about if you could give that city independence, creating a new nation. The nation by default would be allied with me, but over time, this could certainly change.

[Darkstar]

Goob and Possibility - If Firaxis wants to do it, fine. But I don't want neutral idiots per square. At that point, lets just strap Civ III into Age of Empire or Populous III and get those people working in a RTS 3D world.

Seriously, being near does NOT traditionally lead to understanding. It leads to stronger racism, hate, discrimination, burnings, hangings, tortures, and all the Dark side. That is because people only get to see a small portion, and unless educated tend to focus on the differences. That is how racial hatreds get started... Black against Brown, Lowlander against Highlander, yadda yadda yada. People focus on you taking their stuff, of not sharing your stuff, and that you got gal/guy and they don't. And you aren't a REAL person as you are not one of them, so therefore you aren't a Human, deserving of Human respect. And therefore they can and WILL do as they please. You can't truly hate what you don't know, you have to have a handle to make it real to you. But heathens and demons pretending to be Human is EASY to hate. You have to Humanize them to prevent that, and few belief systems ever did that as implemented by the leaders. Remember that the Irish were considered lower than any one Ethnic group in social standing, and they certainly did not have a soul, and so therefore wasn't human. This wasn't long ago in the USA. Human literature is FULL of nations and people considering their neighbors to be less than human. Native peoples would be no different, nor would the Emigrants or Colonists.

Goob... if that ore vien is 3 tiles away, and the city hasn't the tech or infrastructure to reach it, build a new outpost beside it to work it or a supply crawler to carry the goodies back.

Another thing I want to see though... a real Hydrology and Meteorlogical system! Go to Maxis and get their code for weather modelling from SimEarth or SimLife. Those ran on 286s and 386s, and require little computational power. As it uses cellular automata as well, it fits into the phase resolution approach. Yeah! Tag an interface to display the wind directions and rainfall and you have a matching kick butt system to help in terraforming those lands up and down.

-Darkstar

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-Darkstar
(Knight Errant Of Spam)

[Asmodeous]

Whoever the hell Possibility is. I like this person.

I must say I far prefer his idea for city-setup than any I've seen. (i.e. workers in a square, they get X production with X number of people, as they get bigger they get more, when they overflow into the next square, it grows in size and adds in another tile) this would lose the city-radius idea, and make for a neat graphic/macromanagement ideal.

Building walls about a city would put the walls about the workers, and then, to conquer a city, you need to break throug hthe walls and kill the troops. The civillians that are left alive (as some would likely die) are usurped and may be ceded or whatever.

Interesting. But would make city-building and whatnot a pain in the butt.

Me.

[mindlace]

OSExAI:
please move conversation about the AI to the AI forum... Radical is fine. We want to give BR the best ideas, no?

POPULATION:
Intrinsic population wouldn't be on every square... they'd be spread out, like it was, I guess. you'd just have to stack 'em to get cities.

Maybe resource limits (like Arid, Moist, Wet) are limits on the number of people that can do that thing:
1 person farming for Arid, 2 for Moist, 3 for wet... improvements would do the same sort of thing for research, econ, and production- 'on' a factory would allow, say 5 citizens as 'workers', nearby (light industry) 3, farther 2 (cottage industry), and no production booster, 1.

So as your tech improved you could have _more_ specialists, not just different specialists, same as it was.

You would still have production boosts over time.

This does, however, imply a lot more citizen units.

[zaz]

Most rada-ical idea yet!

DO AWAY WITH WONDERS!

99% of the time, the civ in the lead gets the wonder, which just continues to put them further ahead. In civ2 if I built the Pyramids first, I was invincible from that point on. etc., etc., etc.

[Jason Beaudoin]

About the Self-Evolving Cities:

One thing that is good about this idea of self-evolving populations that grow and spill over onto the adjacent tile is that it allows cities to grow as an organic city, which is a great idea and a very realistic model.

The best thing about this new idea is that it would greatly reduce the amount of micromanagement AND it would force the player to think strategically, rather than tactically. Players would have to think more in broader terms, and it would become a game of actually governing rather than building. I like that idea. I would rather make decisions that influence a civilization as a whole rather than micromanaging each city. I would like to appoint governors that can make things happen or make choices that bring advancement and change.

[Druid2]

<u>Buying land</u>: SMAC, at least, has this already, on the Diplomacy screen tho it's indirect. "You must give me one of your cities." In return "I will give you some credits." That's a purchase.

<u>Hex grid for the map</u>: NYET. I like the direct mapping of movement to the cursor pad. Makes game play faster and easier.

<u>Indigenous People per Square</u>: I like the idea. Pop/sq grow or shrink on their own. If they get big enuf, they make an outpost, or eventually a city. If you build your own town/city there, they come and join eventually. They could be *better* workers for local food production, worse for industrial production.

I am unmoved by the "didnt work that way in North Amer" argument. This is not a historical sim of New World colonization.

[Goob]

How close to real life should we even attempt to model. As Civ stands it does not reflect the current world or even the evolution of cultures and countries across time. We do not have a world now of a half dozen or so competing civilizations that btween them control all the territory on the globe. Sure you can probably break down the world into several differant competing ideologies, but is that what Civ is modeled on? There has been no "empire" that lasted for more than 1000 or so years.

We have "western Civilization" as a Greco-Roman descendent. There is the "oriental" civilization, and we could say there is an Arab Civ and an African one. Whatever Civ's existed in the new world were consumed and spat out, by the "western" civilization. Is that what we are modeling? If so then lets throw the concepts of borders back out and a lot of the other suggestions.

If we are going to be truly radical then we should start at the beginning and choose the founding model that we think CIV III should be based on. What is it in the scope of Historical events that we want to cover? How do we want to cover this?

I know I would like a game that reflects the birth, growth, militaristic expansion and maintenance of empires, throughout history as ideas and knowledge slowly weave there way through time. And since history has shown that All empires fall, I want to go through the death throws of empires as well, I want to try and hold on to the Roman Empire as the Goths roll over it.

What if we could change Civ III (almost) entirely?

At the beginning of the game you can choose first from one of 4 or 5 basic Civilization Cultures, each one has there own version of a the tech tree. Then you would choose to portray a individual fledgling empire within that Cultural group. For example, I could choose the Western Culture group, as opposed to the Oriental, Meso-American, African, Arab, and Oceanic groups. From the Western Culture I would choose the Greeks. Who really would be no differant from the Romans but would be significantly differant from the Chinese who have a differant Tech tree set-up.
Now, I build and expand my Hellanic civilization and defend it from barbarians and Romans and Persians, and maybe at my height I take over all of the Mediterranean world, and head off towards the Orient. My military might is unparalleled, my tech unmatched, but I still do not have the tech and science and communications to manage an empire this size for long, at some point my empire starts to decay from within and civil war breaks out, and as I am dealing with internal strife the Germanic tribes or Goths ride in form the north, and Sub-Saharan kingdom comes bounding up from the south and my great civilsation is torn asunder. End of the game,... I think not.

Because I had reached such glorious heights, and the Hellanic civ had lasted as long as it did with the knowledge we had uncovered important even to the Goths and Africans, the influence of the Greeks live on...

And a new fledgling kingdom emerges in one of the fringe (or core) cites of the old Hellanic Civilization. I guide this new kingdom, that is determined to preserve the heritage of the Greeks, and we rise from the ashes of the fallen empire. Whatever knowledge of the Greeks that my "people" have lost can most likely be found in the libraries and colleges of some of the old great Greek cities, or they have been carted off to neighboring cities, or some may be lost and completely forgotten will have to be reresearched.
If I am a good and wise leader I can again build an empire an carry it out of the dark ages, maybe I'll fall again and will form a new empire based on the remenants of this one. Always working towards the goal of... (Fill in the victory conditions).

My suggestion is to make CIV III a type of open ended campaign game. You set the world and Civilization parameters at the beginning, and whenever your empire falls (The AI will be designed not to out smart the player, but to be near to overwhelming, after certain triggers are met.) during the game you will have the option to continue as a new empire forged in the ashes of the old one, carrying on the ideals of the of your overall Civilization.
Empires starting throughout the game would not be starting from scratch you would have one of the cities of the old empire (maybe slightly war damaged decayed a little) you would have a good deal of the researched techs, some would be lost to you but available in other cities to be conquered, and some may have to be reresearched. The starting strength of your subsequent empires is based on how big you previous one became and how well and long you withstood the barbarian hordes, jealous enemies, and opposing religious foes. Victory in the campaign will be when your chosen Civilization is the dominant one on globe (cooperative/diplomatic) the only one (conquering/economic) or the first to reach and control space.

Remember that having a "empire" brought down is not a defeat as long as you can continue climing the tree of knowledge (Tech Tree). With this idea it would be a built in challenge that your empires can be overwhelmed, a very skilled and lucky player could overcome this and continue with their original empire, the challenge would be to overcome all the adversity. All the major AI factions would go through a similar rise and fall cycle as well.

This idea really just emerged as I was writing a differant post for this thread. I abandoned that and wrote this instead.

Obviously I would be interested in comments, (Darkstar(r), Rong, anyone?)

Goob

[23 Skidoo]

Here's a truly radical idea that could change the entire complexion of the game, and extend the appeal to a broader segment of PC game players: 2 games in 1, i.e., Civ3 Lite & Civ3 Full Flavor.

Civ3 Lite would be a simpler, conceptual implementation like Risk / Diplomacy with perhaps a bit more meat to it, while Civ3 Full Flavor would be our beloved high complexity version.

Properly implemented, this could provide a lot of new grist for the multiplayer mill, bring a rash of new adherents to the Civ conventicle, and give us a fun new Civ outlet: quickplay gaming.

Civ3 Lite would be a distilled version of Civ Full Flavor, with the speed of play and excitement of Risk. As for advances & trade, perhaps a crossbreeding of AH's Advanced Civilization and SSI's Imperialism. Maybe even a trading card concept a la Magic or Risk's army cards.

Think of the fun we could all have building mods for a Civ3 Lite template. And multiplayer LAN/Net games wouldn't last a thousand realtime years!

[Igor]

Radical Idea: Change of Viewpoint.

This is the necessary answer to the conflict between demand for greater realism (i.e. complexity)and the demand for a playable game (i.e. simplicity).

At any turn during gameplay, the player would have the option to change his perspective within the civilization. For instance, he would have three choices:

1. To be the absolute ruler of his civilization, which is currently availble in Civ/Civ II.
2. To be the mayor of a specific city.
3. To be the admiral/general of a partricular military effort.

By default, the player would be the absolute ruler, and set the general practices of gorvernment to his taste. In this mode, he enact all the complex, sweeping changes that are only done at the central government level. (Set tax/interest rates, science endowments, religous tolerance, field of study, governement type, start/end war, issue military goals....) All else would be automatically decided: city build queues, troop movements, tactics, etc. In a developed civ, this would give the cities a mind of their own, simulating a realistic state of cooperative competition between local and national government. (Can anyone say "Republic"?)

Later, as he wanted specific changes to occur in a particular city, he would yield national power to AI, which would make no sweeping changes, and try to conform to his set guidlines. (I.E. Wars would not be started by the player's CIV, though funds may be diverted to necessities like happiness.) Switching to the perspective of mayor allows more precise control, i.e. specific build options, like a settler rather than a temple.

Also, when a particularly crucial battle occurs, the player could become the closest general and follow orders, such as "conquer city X", while controling specific tactics, like requisitioning more troops, directing movement, timing the strike, seiging, etc. (Certainly the battle engine must become more complex at this level and take into account elevation, terrain type (i.e. swamps are harder to march on than desserts), morale, hunger, fatigue, etc.)

A system like this (and I know it needs work) will add an exciting and radical new dimension to gameplay, and allow for a more intuitive realism. For instance, there is cooperation and competition between cities and their central government that requires a more complex thinking to overcome.

Example:
If a player needs to build up his military and strengthen a particular city's economy, he can cause the central government to make a general offer to buy arms at a set price. On the next turn, acting as the mayor of the city, he can lower his tax rate on arms producers, causing companies to move or found themselves locally, making that city uniquely qualified to produce arms, and take government cash.

Likewise, the military, when given general orders by central government, will obey, but be commanded by mediocre generals who have average chances of success. A player could consider more complicated factors and simply employ superior tactics.

Strategy would be enhanced by allowing the player to take only one role per turn (or year) so if he wanted have his superior skills excercised on the battlefield or in a single city, his central government would suffer mediocrity.

Such a game would require a much quicker engine than Activision provided for CIV:CTP and also an AI with a little variety FOR PETE'S SAKE! Additionally, there should be a huge amount of creative time in development, so it would never be possible to build every wonder, improvement, and unit in a game, as is routinely done in CTP, Civ, & Civ II. There should be a more than numerical reasons to build Storm Marines rather a War Walker. Perhaps rather than making people happy with generic improvements, a city depressed by loss of slaves will be MUCH happier only when city walls are built or troops are trained to protect them.

***And if you don't like a really complex game....there should simply be a starting option for a unified CIV, which would provide a similar interface to the one available now, so that all of you "Give me the same game with better graphics" types can be happy.

P.S. Firaxis, if you're looking for a desginer, I'm available.


[This message has been edited by Igor (edited May 21, 1999).]

[Fugi the Great]

Just a few questions that popped into my head at work:

Lets say we go with the every space has a population idea, and hexs since you could now make a truly round globe. In what order does the computer figure out the population growths and emigration out of the hexs and immigration into hexes?
_ _ _
/A\_/B\_/C\_/
\_/D\_/E\_/F\
/G\_/H\_/I\_/
\_/J\_/K\_/M\
/ \_/ \_/ \_/

Example:
All hexes above belong to the same empire, somewhere in the center of it, so you don't have to worry about any borders with an enemy. Hexes A, B, C, have normal growth but no emmigration from hex. Hex A is just about ready to send out people due to major unemployment, lack of food, or just getting close to its maximum limits. Computer now gets to hex D which has a huge population with large growth and now has emmigration due to major overcrowding.

Questions:
Is emmigration from hex D in all directions equally or a percentage of population goes to each surrounding hex based on what the population is already in that hex they are moving into? If emmigration is now to hex A because it is less overcrowded than hex D, does the computer now have to refigure hex A's population growth and emmigration all over again or do they just move in automatically putting the population into a minor overcrowding condition with the computer worrying about it next time through? Does hex D only send people to surrounding hexes only if it will not put them into an overcrowding condition, eventhough hex D is still has a major overcrowding condition, possibly forcing the Emperor to step in to uproot several thousand people and move them elsewhere?

Its questions like these that will have to be answered before we can convince everyone else in the other threads to think differently, not more of the same.

Its amazing how crappy graphics get when you change fonts, oh well at least its close.

[This message has been edited by Fugi the Great (edited May 21, 1999).]

[Darkstar]

Re: People per square

Possibility and others - The more I have thought about it, the more I think you are just wanting more information of what is essientially already there. As the City is merely the City Center, and its production radii considered to be its suburbs... the question becomes when does the number of people in a square equal that Civ Hamlet? 10,000 = 1 pop is the initial figure, but its not a linear thing by far... Poss, you are right in that you are providing for a mechanism for something I would like to see in the game as well. New Cities and nations popping up. But if there is people in the squares, then that should raise SPYING, and wipe out Fog of War. While I have always figured that there was people living in the wild squares near my cities (since barbarians and rebels pop up in them) they were insignificant then. My main concern is the amount of micromanagement that would be needed to move and encourage people to be in certain TILES so that I can get them to stripmine or borehole or what not. And how do you deal with commuters? There ARE people that commute a tile or two's distance NOW in the US (and probably elsewhere) to work. If people have to be in the square to work it... but as far as handling it computationally, it would be a Cellular Automata sequence. You calculate out what each cell WILL do, disregarding what its neighbors are resolving to due, and update your map. So people emmigrate out of tile A, into tile D as people from tile D emmigrate to the other tiles.

Druid2 - I don't get one whisker of a dead cat you are unmoved. But History has shown us that is how things work. The Dark Side has to be FOUGHT with the Light of Truth and Humanization or else people's natural tendency to rationalize their selfish desires will rule. In most cases, the indigenous people are destroyed by the self-righteous and greedy. Fact of history. Take it up with the Creator of the Universe when you meet It in person.

Goob - Very Neato idea. But WHY would your empire collapse? In gamish terms. And would you really find that REPLAYABLY fascinating?

And I really like the building suburbs and whatnot on the tiles idea. But aren't we giving Civ an Acsendancy look then? Not that that is a bad thing...


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-Darkstar
(Knight Errant Of Spam)

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Aren't "people in the blanks" represented partly by "goodie huts"? How else do they appear as settlers or settled cities when you investigate?

Civilizations should vary depending on the map, terrain and surroundings. This is one of those things that has never been adequately modeled in games, and is long overdue. For instance, if your first 2 cities/regions/settled areas are all inland, you will not get the Advance leading to ship building to research. Icons on the map should be more numerous and specific to civ development: Examples:
1. Horses and Elephants are not general in the world in 4000 BC: an icon should indicate if you have horses nearby. If there are Units available requiring either Horses or Elephants, you can't build them regardless of your Tech until you get access to the animals (trading with the 'Barbarians' should be much more likely - once you've shown you can whip 'em, they should be willing to trade resources from the Blank Lands and even Tech they've picked up from other civs)
2. Tin, Copper, and Iron are all required for certain Very Significant early Advances (Bronze and Iron Working) but are not available everywhere. They need to be found and exploited, or traded for with those who have the icons in their territory - or them trader-type 'barbarians' (let's call them Natives, it's a more general term for what should be a wider set of possible interactions)
3. Icons on the map should change over time- the horse spreads over the landscape (unless you're an isolated continent) and civs look for, and find different things as time goes on - there should be no icon for Oil on the map until someone needs it, and then it should be required for certain units to function.
4. There should be more civ changing of the landscape. I've touched on this before, but cities will deforest the area around them in the ancient world, and exhaust the soil, at least temporarily, and generally go through some serious changes in the relationship with the landscape: none of which is modeled now...