RADICAL IDEAS (ver1.1): Hosted by Rong

[Flavor Dave]

What a cool pair of ideas!! And if you've followed my trail thru these threads, I've dismissed alot more ideas than I've praised!! Let's massage them a little.

Bigcivfan--if I'm understanding you correctly, you're suggesting interaction between races and empires. Perhaps, you could even make it so that at the border between the reds and the whites, you have a small band of pinks; between the reds and blues are the purples. Say, a different "map view" would have colors reflecting the races.

If you, the Romans, start out as whites, and you found a city in a pink area, as time goes by, the people get whiter and whiter. If you expand further into the red area, you have a (*slight,* to preserve game balance) happiness penalty. Perhaps the city counts twice in the "riot factor," so you'd have to expand slowly outside of your home racial area.

As time goes by, the people start to turn pink, then white. And if the city goes into revolt, they turn one shade redder. Or, at each milestone, they become more "acculturated." If the red city gets a trade route going with a white city, it turns 10% whiter. When it gets a temple, another 10%. A city wall, another 10%. You get the point. But, a city never completely forgets its original heritage, so you can't completely screw up later without it coming back to haunt you.

Francis--let's have another advisor, the political advisor. Every city has a "leader" who changes over time from noble to senator to governor (democracy). Or apparatchik or priest. For certain actions, you have to get approval from the leaders. Noble George is from a size 8 city, so he gets 8 votes, while Noble Flavor from a size 2 city gets 2. Before declaring war, or starting a wonder, you have to get permission from 1/3 the nobles, 1/2 of senators, 2/3 of governors, etc. They will give permission based on happiness in their cities, or happiness + city power.

Let's take this a little further. If a city has a food surplus of +3, that's a point in your favor. If no surplus, that's a point against you. If a city feels well protected, with a city wall and 2 units, that's a point for you. No city wall and only one unit, a point against you. City wall and 4 units, that's two points for you. You ask you political advisor to do a vote count. You get a screen that tells you which cities are for you, and which against. Your vote count comes up 3 short, so you try to find a size two city that you can turn around, perhaps by rushbuilding another military unit.

I don't think this would lead to excessive micromanagement. But with both of these ideas, Firaxis would need to be careful that they didn't overemphasize happiness or the military or...anything. But what has me excited is the COMBINATION of the two ideas. The first idea makes democracy/republic stronger. These forms of government handle racial minorities better. But the 2nd idea makes authoritarian govts stronger. So, balance between govts is preserved.

[Francis]

Flavor Dave, I like your idea on the political advisor. Funneling management through one hotkeyed screen would certainly help management. And changing the approval level for your major decisions helps reflect the different levels of popular representation in different govs.

I'm all for different religions, although as I've said elsewhere I think it might be simpler to have one "national religion" per civ. The culture idea is intriguing. I guess that would impose a penalty for too much goody hut chasing/searching for a good location--you might be out of your ethnic area when you found your first city!

The ethnic-area idea relates to something else I'd thought about--immigration. This is one of the ways advanced countries grow fastest, as people see opportunity and come to chase it. Perhaps you'd get an advisor screen announcing "immigration to Paris." Now, this would be good, because everyone wants to grow their cities as fast as possible. However, to reflect the social and cultural strain on both native and immigrant population, immigrants would be unhappy for a set number of turns--maybe their heads would be in an "immigration box" until they assimilate; there'd be a number next to them idicating how many turns to assimilation. Immigrants might strain the food capacity of a city, so you could even close your borders--but that would carry a penalty in Demo/Rep, perhaps hostility from other civs. To handle or encourage immigration, you could build things like "Employment Centers" or "Cultural Institutes" that could reduce or eliminate unhappiness by speeding assimilation. And of course, you'd be most likely to draw immigrants from the CLOSEST civ and the POOREST civ. The closest would have an easier time assimilating, maybe they'd be pink in color terms. The poorest--because they might be far away--could show up as purple, and it would take a while to get them to lavender and then white.

Some of this sounds too complicated even as I write, but I still think immigration could be cool.

[Flavor Dave]

Let's cut the Gordian knot, and make immigration related to We Love days. Experienced players know the power of we love. I think it would be good to rein in the power of We Love a little, to avoid the "strategy funnel" of 1. Build SOL. 2. Go we love in democracy to get huge cities. 3. Go fundy or commie for war.

That's too easy. Perhaps every second immigrant is a foreigner, who takes time to be acclimated. So, you'd make those who weren't completely "white" (using my Rome example) susceptible to unhappiness or revolt in forms of other governments. So, if you use SOL to boost your population in preparation for fundy or commie war, you run the risk of revolt when you switch to the more oppressive govts. This would make you think more carefully about how long you want to grow with We Love days. And make you think about waiting a bit after growing before going to war. This would create a window of vulnerability, when you have to stay in democracy to acculturate your immigrants, but you're waiting to go to war.

[Bigcivfan]

Good ideas on the cultures for the game. I like the idea of being able to turn off certain micro-management areas for beginners. To tell the truth, the micro-management is one of the reasons I find the game of Civilization so fun. (and replayable) I would like to reply to the idea of citizens and race. I think it is important to have differentiate between citizens and civs. Countries like America and Canada may be one nation, but are composed of many different cultures (which makes them more diverse.) So lets apply this. You are the White civilization of Rome, with 4 cities, Rome, Caesarea, Pompeii and Carthage. Rome, your home city, is composed of 5 "purples". The "purples" are happy as they are treated fairly and they are fed. Caesarea, has 2 "purples" (decendants of your pioneers) and 2 "blues" (natives of the lands to the north) Now the purples are happy because of they again are treated fairly and fed, but the "blues" are treated poorly in Caesarea (used to do menial tasks, nearing slavery) So the "blues" in Caesarea are unhappy, and possibly will revolt against their "purple" masters!!! The next city, Pompeii, is on an island to the south, next to the Carthaginian Empire. Pompeii consists of 1 "purple" (your pioneers) and 2 "green" (natives on the island) The "purples" and the "greens" co-exist peacefully in Pompeii and therefore both are happy. Your final city, Carthage, also on the southern island, has been taken by your army from the Caraginians. Now Carthage consists of 2 "greens" (again, Natives to the island) and 1 "purple" Representing your army from Rome. (I think that an army unit should be drawn from your citizens, like a settler and that units should represent 1 citizen if they are based in a city.) The "greens" in Carthage are still a little peeved that you took their city, but your governer has been good and the army courteous, so they are in a so-so mood. The army (your purple citizen) is pleased over its victory and is happy.
Sooo...we look at the "Culture" menu under "Races" and see that the "purples" in Rome are all very happy. The "blues" however, resent your empire, and are unhappy. The "greens" are between content and happy. (2 were content and 2 were happy) Now throw religions (image that have your greens were "Zoobists" and the other half were influenced by missionaries and became "Globbites") and some other cultural icons into this and you got a game!!! What I am trying to show is that Romans are not always "purple" people, and Carthaginans are not always "green". A vast empire, such as the Soviet Union, will be composed of more ethnic groups, having more problems, BUT more advantages (lets come-up with some advantages of being multi-cultured). Whew!!! Quite a spiel but I think it contains some valid ideas....

[Bigcivfan]

I want to expand on my idea about units. Although it is about units, it is fairly radical. I think it would be neat if your units counted as one citizen, and were drawn from the civilian pool. (This could help reduce tiny, young, empires with huge armies.) Furthermore, I think that your unit will be drawn from the what "races" you have in that city. So you have a "blue" phalanx and a "purple" horseman. To add even more fun, "purlpes" might be natural horsemen and give +1A,+1M if a "purple" becomes a horse unit. (One of the advantages of a multi-cultural empire, as described above) So, this can represent the fact that historically, the Mongols were superior horsemen and the English were master sailors. So if your "purple" horseman occupies a city, he counts as one citizen of that city, (to represent a boost that troops have on the local economy), he is also "purple", so if he was in another "purple" city then they would get along, but say they were in a "blue" city, traditional enemies of the "purples"....

[yin26]

O.K. How about this:

Once you discover the stock market, you can actually engage in investing your money. The stock market would be made up of the other civs and reflect not only the actual commodities that are being traded in the game (plus other stuff), but would fluctuate depending on wars, diplomacy, etc.

Not only would this give the player something fun to tinker with, it would be another reason to think twice about killing that rival Civ you just invested 10,000 gold in! Of course, stock market crashes and things of that sort would apply.

I'd also like to be able to gamble, but without a good way to get around the 'try-lose-reload-win-save' thing, it could become pointless. But this idea came up on the SMAC forum:

What if you could only save every 10 minutes or so? (At least on higher levels) This would make it much less appealing to try that 1 in 10 strategy or to bet all your money and then quickly reload if you lose. Of course, you can still just restart the game or even the computer...Hmmm. How do we get around that? I guess the computer could just NEVER let you go back to an earlier point in the game. Even if you restart the computer, you enter the game exactly where you left? Cruel? Maybe. But fun.


<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by yin26 (edited June 15, 1999).]</font>

[Flavor Dave]

Big Civ--In my adaptation of your idea, you'd have 4 citizens which were half blue and half purple. You have 2 of each. Same difference, mostly.

Good call on the first citizen automatically being from the civ's race. That's obvious but for some reason I didn't think of it.

The advantage of a multicultural empire would be if one race made better warriors, another better scientists, etc. But I don't like that general concept. Too much of your game would be set by whatever race you start as.

In my idea, all Romans wouldn't be the same race. When they start in Italy, they're the same. As they expand, they start to take on shades of other colors. If the successfully colonize India or Central Russia, they'll be completely another color. So I think we have the same idea there.

But, if I'm reading your idea correctly, some "races" will get along with the dominant race, and some won't. In my conception, every other race had the same, slight, tendency toward unhappiness. I feel pretty strongly my idea is better. Your idea seems to 1. make the game alot more complicated (trying to remember all of the relationships) 2. make the "racial" makeup more important. Given that if one city in a democracy is in revolt for 2 turns, your whole government collapses, managing racial minorities would be too big a part of the game.

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THREAD UP*=-

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THREAD UP*=-

[Darkstar]

Speaking of stock markets... will there be a complete and total economic collapse? This would be interesting to SEE happen to the Opponents, but obviously not me.

Yin, why would you like to play the stock market? You should be playing Civ3. It might be amusing to see how your market compares to the other nations, but Stock Market? Isn't there a game for that?

-Darkstar

[Urban Ranger]

<strong>Hexes, Cities, Regions, and Nations</strong>

These are good ideas that combined into one. Break the map into hexes. Each hex might contain some population, but chances are most hexes will be empty in the beginning. The players are required to group hexes into regions as units of administrative tasks. For a very long period of time cities were far and few between and land was just taken up by villages and small towns scattered about the landscape. Regions allow these low density population areas to be productive.

Number of hexes under a civilisation's control could be determined in a number of ways, perhaps by cultural influence and military presence.

Cities spring out of hexes when population reaches a certain point. Cities act as central collecting points for a region. If there are more than one city in a region then the city where goods and materials go can be determined by distance (modified by ease of travel, such as presence of a road or river) and prices such goods and materials can command. Cities also act as regional adminstrative, cultural, and research centers.

Growth of population should not be determined by exccess food alone, but for most part the ease of production of food and amount of wealth that can be made. That's why population centers occurred along rivers and coasts. Therefore, delta areas, where rivers intersect with coast lines, were generally the wealthest areas in the ancient times. I was rather surprised that salt was not one of the trade goods in civ or civ2. Salt was big -- at least in China -- that gangs sprang up to smuggle it.

The growth of cities should be determined by various gradients, i.e., how much it is better than the surrounding areas, and inversely affected by the travel distance required. These gradients include: wealth for most people, research facilities for academics, and living conditions for professionals. This requires a sophisticated and optimized economics engine.

Under this four-tier organisation there should be improvements at each level. Irrigation is a hex improvement. City Wall is a city improvement. Courthouse is a regional improvement. Canal is a national improvement. Improvements at each level will be paid by that level. Some improvements don't cause money but appear naturally over time, e.g. irrigation.

Under this scheme city radius should be abolished, so cities can grow as much as in size as dictated by actual conditions. In this way cities can grow into irregular shapes just like most of the acutal cities are.

There are two ways that a city can grow. Naturally as it expands outwards under population pressure, or by administrative declaration, assigning an adjecent hex to the city.

This raises several questions. Obviously, villages and small towns should be allowed to build walls around their settlements for defense. These walls probably wouldn't be as thick and strong as city walls. Also, now that cities can be as big as they want and arbitrarily shaped, how do they build city walls? Last but not least, some cities had thicker and taller walls than others. How could this be reflected?

One solution is to allow several grades of defensive walls, and the cost of each grade is per hex side. Further, since you can upgrade from a lower to a higher grade, there should be different costs for upgrading and building from scratch.

Production under this scheme should be computed on a hex by hex basis. A hex can be permanently populated if it can produce food. If a hex does not produce food but valuable resources (e.g. a mountain iron mine), then it might be worked by people from surrounding areas within travel distances if food can be supplied by these hexes. All populated and worked hexes produce food, raw materials, or commodities, or a combination of these.

Various levels of governments make money by taxation. One possibility could be: Population in a city pays tax to the city. Population in a region but outside of a city pays to the regional government. Cities (except for the capital) pay the regional goverments. The capital and regions pay the central government. Amount each city and region pay could be set in actual amounts or as a percentage.

Taxation schemes are affected by government type. The crudest way would be each adult pays a flat rate. Paying a percentage of income is a rather modern method.

[JamesJKirk]

Okay, in the past it was impossible to colonize the whole world because of technological and manpower limitations, but now it coule be possible, yet no one tries because of societal limitations, so how about having a transition in the game from colonialism to neocolonialism, and the trigger for that could be the building of the UN, scores and reputations could be lowered if you continue to have colonies after the UN is built. But instead, you could have UN mandates over uncivilized areas, and you could keep your former colonies dependant on you through trade and military treaties, this would be a difficult era for the humongous powers, and would give the smaller civs a chance to catch up.

[Theben]

This fits under 3 categories-units, combat, and radical ideas-so I'll post this at all 3:

I've suggested before-and this would work great with the SMAC workshop-the attack/defense values should be scrapped and replaced with the following: land/air/sea/space (or LASS for short). Both attack and defense would be based off of the appropriate terrain. FE, a phalanx would use it's air rating vs. a fighter (none or low) while the fighter would use it's land rating vs. the phalanx (low to middle for modern units, but still much higher than the phalanx. Also with more hp's and firepower). Reasons:

1) Combat in CIV/SMAC/CtP is on a strategic scale; although tactics are a part of the combat, you don't make those decisions (thankfully). Combat consists of charges, feints, counterattacks, etc., so the idea of attacker & defender on this grand scale is lessened unless the defender is in a fortification of some sort (which can be taken into account).

2)This is regarding SMAC unit construction mostly, but it appears it will be used in civ3. In SMAC combat is resolved by comparing the weapon strength(attacker) vs. the defender's armor. This is ridiculous; the defender's weaponry and the attacker's defenses aren't taken into account but I think anyone would agree that they should.

3)It would work very well with a modified workshop. The player could buy each attack level for each category when the appropriate technology is gained. FE,
Fighter(WWII era): land=low, air=high, sea=low, space=none
Dive bomber: land=medium, air=low/medium, sea=medium/high, space=none
Torpedo bomber: land=low, air=very low, sea=high, space=none
phalanx: land=low/medium, all others=none
musketeers: land=low/medium, all others=none
marines(20th cent): land=medium/high, air=low, sea=none, space=none
Each category would also be divided by their hit points, and the strengths of each would overlap. FE, Ancient units (1 hp) can have a a strength from 1-5 land(approximately). Gunpowder units (hp 2)would have STR's from about 4-7, modern(hp 3) 7-12, etc. The weapons, etc. for the graphics would change when the hp level is selected in the workshop (where the reactor is now).

To differentiate between similar units, such as legions vs. legions, there would be modifiers:
-Terrain, which would apply to both attacker and defender (infantry bonus in cities; horsemen, tanks in open; special units-alpine, marines-in their specialized terrain); forts could count as terrain that only benefits the defender, but allows attackers to retreat easier & defenders less easily
-Morale, social engineering(happy soldiers fight better than unhappy soldiers), & tech bonuses (techs that would give a minor advantage to combat that are otherwise too small for the workshop; i.e. writing, telegraph, satellite mapping).
-The Random Combat Events: RCE represents the things that happen in combat that are unforseen and out of your control. Applied each and every time units engage in combat. Using a scale from 1-100, whereas 1=disaster for the attacker & 100=disaster for the defender. Most of the time results fall in the middle, which has no effect on combat. Other results give a minor bonus to the attacker or defender. Can be modified by military "leader" units & attacks launched from surprise(to be discussed later). Allow a toggle at game start to turn this effect on or off.

[Flavor Dave]

First things first--salt is, in fact, a trade good.

You have alot of good ideas. Here are my comments.

1. The biggest--you seem to be turning the game a bit into Sim-Civ. You seem to be raising the importance of city management, relative to the military, pretty drastically.

I think an easy way around this is to give a happiness bonus for conquering cities. You get one content citizen turning happy in every city, for as many turns as the size of the city conquered. If you beat a size 2 city, you get two turns. Well, I said it was an easy way; may not be a good way. But you need to think about this.

2. City walls--I made this suggestion on the city improvement thread. First, you have a 40 shield improvement, barricades. Works like a fortress; doubles, lose one at a time, but you still lose population for every loss. 2nd, for 40 shields, you can upgrade to the city walls we all know and love. Finally, you can upgrade to fortifications, for another 80 shields--doubles defense against howies, triple (like CWs) against everything else, 50% bonus against air units.

I think that fortresses could also accomplish alot of what you're aiming at.

[DarthVeda]

(Forgive me for being negative, but...)
Realtime simply has no place in the civ series. Take Star Wars Rebellion as an Example of why this doesn't work. The game was basically a clone of Moo2, which was basically a space-clone of Civ2. Controlling production becomes tedious in your empire when in real-time.


I love the idea about expanding populace though. Terraforming a square (with settler-type unit or with public works--there should beboth) would allow more people to settle there, and make it more likely for people to expand there, but once the population had gotten high enough to start forming a city, you should be able to control where the population will get its work and food from like in Civ2.

Settlers would settle land, but would not instantly form a city.

When populations clash from different empires, there can be small ethnic wars (or big ones like these days). There should be an option to (and this may or may not be PC) ethnically clense an area with your military units. Loyalty to your empire then would be 100%. There would obviously be diplomatic fallout with nations that sought to protect humanity.

If they are going to create the workshop, I request that it contain realistic weapons and their names. IE arming a tank with a pike is kind of unrealistic. You should also be able to name your units, instead of having, oh say "Pike Tank". I would prefer realistic weapon names to bland categories like "High air attack vs low air attack".