RADICAL IDEAS (ver1.0): Hosted by Rong

[JT]

Having your territory extend up to three ocean squares away from your land.

"Your battleships are in American waters! Remove them now or they will be destroyed!"

It's pretty realistic, actually, since countries do own waters in the real world.

[Jason Beaudoin]

I really like what peopole are suggesting here! Don't be afraid to be different is a great theme and I wholeheartedly support the ideas here!

Sefl Evolving States!

I like the idea of a natural self-evolution of an empire that you as a leader would encourage with your decisions but not actually create --something like SimCity. As a leader one would encourage growth by obtaining new lands for your citizens to expand through exploration and conquering. Great idea!

Cities?!

Yes, instead of cities, why not change each map to regions (based on the amount of squares in each) that have multimple cities within them. No more micromanaging cities! This way you can have a real monarchy with Dukes and Counts ruling each region and you as King must rely on them to support your decisions. This would work equally well once the Republic and Democratic models come in. Some governments are more centralized than others so one must be careful which one he chooses. This would be great for the introduction of charismatic characters once in a while that gives your civ a mild special bonus.

Economic Self-Evolution

Encourage the growth and development of land rather than directly developing it, again reducing micromanagement. Totalitarian governments would have to directly interveen in order to develop the lands, whereas, more liberal ones could offer some of the natural resources to private investment so that the lands develop automatically at no cost and no administration. Much more efficient, but part of the production goes to the company. There are alot of possibilities here, such as foreign investment and foreign companies buying land and taking a portion of the income that helps a rival, just as in real life.

Real Domestic Politics

Appointing too many politicians from one region to influencial posts premotes jealousy and hatred among other reagions.

Minorities

All nations have minorities and they are a very powerful force in any civilization and I can't believe they've been ignored. They could play a vital role in domestic policy making, especially in democratic countries.

Just a few ideas of my own.

[Mark_Everson]

*My first post in this thread*

Can I be a Token Radical guy? I had Radical in my Sig. file before this thread was here .

The open alpha/beta is a great idea. Its easy for any group of a few people to get slowly led down the garden path...

I think the extensible AI idea is good too, but I don't think Firaxis will ever support it. To put in all the right hooks and triggers to do allow someone else to do Good AI would take more work IMO than the Whole Amount of Time they seem to put into AI.

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Mark Everson
Project lead for The Clash of Civilizations
(That means I do the things nobody else wants to do )
This Radically different civ game needs your suggestions and/or criticism of our design.
Check our our Forum right here at Apolyton...

[crusher]

I want to be able to buy land! Some sort of louisiana purchase going on.

Over use of resources should eliminate the.When was the last time you hunted a dodo?

The fact that you have a resourse in your possesion should mean that any unit using that resource builds 50% faster.

Tank cost(in shields)without oil-50

Tank cost in city with oil-25
oil drums owned 10

This comes out to: if you have 10 oil tanks would 50% faster for the next 10 turns. If you have 10 steel also the result is 75% faster for the next ten turns half of a half added.



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"War does not determine who is right,It determines who is left."
-Crusher-

[Singularity]

Customizable space exploration missions.

[Goob]

Thank you Rong, great ideas posted.
Comments:
Let's remember that at least in western culture the idea of th Nation State did not really emerge until the 18th and 19th century. Before that the "nation" was what ever the ruler could control with their military. I can not speak to whether this was true in eastern or Meso-American cultures.

But in looking at CIV III this way then the idea of a "nation"or "empire" as a collection of powerful provinces and urban areas "city states" for the ancient and middle period is still realistic.

mindlace, I love the idea of the terrain having an inherant population that can be managed into cities. I would like to see cities be created in any one of three ways:

Normal Civ:
Colonists from an existing city "Go West" to find their fame and fortune.
City as selected Military/Regional center:
When you as the leader of your people see a square/hex/pixel area/ that is just so strategically significant you can build a city there with the inherant population of the square/area.
City self creates as a result of Population pressures:
A square/hex/ collection of pixels reach a population threshhold and a city is born.

With the final method "neutral" or non-faction cities can generate and grow as well as cities within an empire. Colonists would be used to "peacefully" expand into areas outside your territory. Or to speed the growth of an area within your territory.

Your territorial borders in the early game are not set as specifice distance from your cities (as in SMAC) but as the Sphere of Influence (SoI) of your military and/or economy. Thus a small city with a weak economy and no military will have a small SoI, while a Large powerful city with a strong - dominant economy with a weak military would still have a larger SoI.

Then once the technology of "The Nation State" is discovered the setup changes. Borders will become less fluid, and can become fixed by diplomatic agreement between factions. You can claim territory as manifest destiny. But if you have a poor reputation then the intrinsic population of that area could refuse to recognize you as there leader and revolt against becoming part of your empire.

One other idea mentioned is that of Civilizations emerging through out the time line. I like this. How about taking it one step further, as a player you can choose to start at any point in the time line. The computer will randomly set the existing Civilazations (some strong and some weak) you can choose to be at the tech level of the advanced civ's slightly behind them or way behind them. This would add a degree of difficulty. You could choose to be an emerging Aztec empire when some other powers were on the verge of the industrial revolution. Or you could choose to be the American civilization in 1776.

Summary:
1) Tiles have inherant population
2) 3 ways to create a city: Colony pod, selection of a site within empire, and self growth of inherant pop crosses city threshold.
3) The Nation State technology to be discovered and modeled after existing nations.
4) Allowing the not only AI civ's to start during the game, but also allow the player to choose where in the timeline/tech tree to start.

Goob
p.s. Jason, remember that until recently, and not even now in many countries Minorities have been at best ignored and at worst persecuted. Do we want to model that in the game as well?

[EnochF]

I think we should totally redesign Civ III in so that it plays more like a real time first-person shooter, like Quake. The techs should be scattered around the globe like ammunition clips, and the guns are your military units.

Oh, I also think Civ III should be able to do my taxes and help my son with his O-levels.

[Rong]

Singularity,

Can you be more specific? When I said sum up your idea in 20 words or less, I didn't mean it ends there. You should explain your idea verbatim, as detailed as possible, so we won't misunderstand you.

[EnochF]

Okay, seriously though. This is an idea that Sieve Too agreed with:

A system of post-republic government management. Instead of slogging through city-by-city management, the game would give you the option to switch to National management, at which point there would be some fairly major (and hopefully positive) changes that would make the late game much more playable, enjoyable and even addictive:

* No more endless strings of messages appearing on the screen each turn (so-and-so built a library, so-and-so needs an aqueduct, so-and-so is celebrating, etc.)
* Instead, at the end of each turn, you would speak to a group of advisors who would summarize things for you ("These cities are reaching their population limit, Comrade. Shall we add an aqueduct to their built queue?" "These cities request new building orders, Comrade.")
* You would also have the option to add a city improvement (or military unit) to the build queues of every city in your civilization
* You could set national minimum wage, begin a system of rationing, declare martial law, or (with the permission of the senate, where appropriate) establish all sorts of national standards. (Maybe even a standard build queue for all newly founded cities).

Imagine, you would actually *need* the High Council!

[Darkstar]

First off, I didn't see any other place for some of the following ideas. I don't believe most of these are radical so we must be missing threads... or I could just have had a brain hiccup.

You know, I am waiting on one seriously original idea on any of these threads. I've seen all these suggestions so far elsewhere and elsewhen. Oh well, I suppose Firaxis wants us to feel involved. (And no, I don't think my ideas are any more original than the others posted. Many are from other games, computer or board, or wherever...)

City Production Radi

People per square. Hate it. Seriously. That situation does not take into account say... the colonization of the USA. There were lots of people per tile already, but England and France sent over their own colonization forces. Most of the Native Americans DIED... not assimilated, nor displaced. They died. What I would prefer to see is a production radius around the City based on Tech and current improvements BUILT (and supported) in the city (ala Destiny, a Civ clone put out by I-Magic I think). Say in the stone age, 1 square (walking, you know). When you master Horsemanship, you can build a Stables, which permits you to build Horse based units (Mounted Infantry (they dismount to fight), Mounted Scouts, Lt Chariots, whatever) AND you gain +1 Tile radius for resource usage. This continues throughout the tech trees with certain advances obsoleting other facilities or their effects (cars and modern farm equipment replace the horse and oxen, yeilding +2 Tile radius utilization, regional highway transit network add +1 utilization (and consume +2 Work Units and +2 Energy and +1 Minerals to maintain), the Special Projects: Super Highway Transit System adds yet another tile to the usable radius yeilding 4 tiles out from the City).

Special Projects

Reusable Special Projects... Wonders are Unique Special Projects which can only be built ONCE and confer some special bonus onto the World, or at least your Nation. A Special Project is a great project or undertaking on a national scale, but can be done multiple times and by any nation possessing the qualifications. Example: The Hover Dam WONDER confers a hydro-electrical plant onto every city for the possessing NATION. It also confers a +50% bonus to build Continental Hydro-Electrical Plant (CHEP) Special Project as well as enabling all nations to now build the CHEP. The Hoover builder gets the build bonus for CHEPs due to the pride and engineering know-how in dam building that his nation possesses.

Canals

Once you have the requisite terraforming options, you can build CANALS (river roads) just like roads. Naval units can traverse canals, and land units can cross them. The act as rivers for encouraging trade/energy.

The Rise and Fall of new Civilizations

There are no such thing as "Goody huts that are free city". Rather, all those free cities start out as minor nations, just as the player does. In addition, as a featured random event a NEW CITY-NATION is sometimes generated. This represents: Radical Religious movements that migrate from other nations to a point that is considered Holy or simply far enough away from their former nation to pratice an "outlaw" ritual or religion. (Example, Monotheism is discovered ... the Cities of Aries founded by devote Arian priests refusing to give up their ways and going to someplace they can continue their calling); Shipwrecked/Lost military expedition - It was not unusual for officers or career men to take along wifes and children, depending on culture in question if they expected to be away for a long time. Also, many armies had a nomadic "liberty city" of followers that followed along (hence, camp followers) that provided all the services an individual in the army could want. Often family travelled with this van; a rich old "noble" leader "retiring"/expelled from the nation's elite and taking a small "servant" staff of a few hundered and their families to live a life of peace in their remaining years... yada yada yada. This would tend to lead to the occasional minor nation gaining strength or becoming a vassal state of a Major Nation. I'd also like to see far flung colonies occasionally break away and become their own nation. A nasty random event could also be a Civil War where a significant portion of the nation breaks away, due to whatever reason.

Overlapping Resource Usage

When allied/same nation cities try to use the same square, they SPLIT the resources derived.

Utilizing Tech Required Resources

I would like to be able to buy or lease the rights to harvest the resources of other nations that they either can't due to lack of tech, or have no cities/towns to process the tile for.

Buying Land - I second this. I suggested it elsewhere, and think it a wondrous idea.


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-Darkstar
(Knight Errant Of Spam)

[Trachmyr]

A possiability to "Expanding Cities":

Similar to terraforming/PW, you can build additions to your city in surronding tiles... some examples:

Suburbs: Reduces overcrowding (+happy/+health)
Industrial: Give % bonus to industry, + pollute
Port/Airport: For truely massive facilities
Military Bases: have you seen the size of 'em
Reaserch Campus/University: ditto
Theme parks: Disney would need 5+ tiles!

these are just examples, but graphicly, it would make each city very unique.

[Trachmyr]

Genetic Engineering, similar to social engineering ala SMAC. The Nazi's were the first to try...

Turning people into cyborgs in the late game (assuming post-modern tech)... no food needed, just support like buildings and/or units.

[Goob]

Darkstar(r) ignoring the existing inherant population does not take into account that they are... there.

In the system I was suggesting then the English or French Civ would send colonists to this new land with some inherant population, the native population adds some small benefit to the cities by supplying some resources.

To model the aspects that you mention we could A) introduce disease, B) have inherant population not help an incoming civilization without the use of slavery, indentured servitude (slight differance) or a tech discovery of enlightened interaction which would cause the empire to treat the inherant pop as equals.

Inherant pop that is near your empire's territory would be more willing to become members of your empire, areas further away would be less willing. There could also be factors for the absolute differance between tech levels of the Civ and the non-civ populous. When close the peoples would work together, when further apart there would be a greater chance for hostility and contempt.

Or this could be handled through Social engineering settings the closer these are the more likely, etc.,.... Inherant pop's could hve social agendas with differant map areas having differant agendas.

I think there is a lot that could be done with this.

Trach. - other countries could then view genetic engineering as an atrocity.

Darkstar(r) I can see food resources being forced to be close to the city, but if there are "mineral" resources that I am mining 3 tiles away and am forcing my people to haul back to the city by whatever means, then that should still be usable.

Goob

[Possibility]

Darkstarr, you did not read my message carefully enough. Having people living in some (not all) of the squares as neutrals, is also like having native inhabitants. (there would be small pockets of them scattered all over the map). If some were isolated on seperate islands, they would be technologicaly inferior because they wouldnt have any of the techs of that had become common knowledge in the more crowded parts of the world. Also what I said is you could plant down a city and then move people to your new contintent, as in colinization of a new land. Also if were to build a new city, and your empires newly expanded borders were to incorporate some neutrals, they would either join your empire, or possibly move out of your borders to another empty square, creating waves of migration. Once they join your empire you can then move them around as you please, of course at the cost of some gold or something.

Thinking along the lines of incorportaing neutrals into your empire and if they didnt join, they would be pushed outside of your borders, where they would start to build up and then be more likely to form there own city. Also, maybe if you were a freindly democracy, you would be morelikely to have these natives freely join your empire where as if you were a ruthless dictatorship, they would be more likely to not join your empire. Of course if you were ruthless enough you could easily go and kill the people natives in the squares as I stated in my original message. This kind of action would have repercussions though, becoming an atrocity later on in the game.

What I said is almost exactly what you want Darkstarr.

Possibility

[Freddz]

Rong,

just wanna say thanks for accepting this thread. Good luck. I see this one may turn out good