CIVILIZATIONS (ver2.1): hosted by LordStone1

[itokugawa]

Many great ideas indeed. I also believe that there should be much more than 7 Civs in Civ3. Also some dynamic way for creating new civs.
My opinion for some of them:
1. Nomadic Civs: They can build only units and they do not develop science (but they can steal, exchange etc.). Any civilisation can create nomads by some special nomadic units. When such a unit is created in a city, the number of citizens is reduced by 1. Nomadic unit does not require support and it always uses the square it occupies. By this way it can produce other nomadic (and only) units. Barbarians will act as nomads.

2.Barbarian Civs: Completely agree. When barbarians capture a city they form their civilisation. (Ofcource they change colour).

3.Schism: It can happen at any time. Reasons for that: i)Corruption, ii)Unhappiness, iii)Ignorance by the leader. For example if I buy libraries etc. for one city and another city builds only units, citizens become furious and they may revolt. This point means that I have the right in democracy to declare marshial law in some cities (but citizens will become VERY furious for long time after the end of this period), iv)As n master of Orion: Captured cities can revolt at any time.


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[Mo]

I think the units nomadic civs can produce should be limited to infantry and mounted so no vehicles. In the begining they should produce their own weapons but later in the game they will have to steal buy plunder trade for their weapons since they are going to be more sophisticated.

[jof]

I would like to "marry a cool concept from history" {Nomadic Civilizations} "with a thought out game effect" :
When a player starts from the very beginning (6000BC?), he gets one nomad unit (0a, 1d, 1m, 2h, 1f). Nomads are generated by splitting 1 unit into 2 units and removed by founding a city with them or adding to a city 1 population point (like settlers). While exploring the neighbourhood they live off the land and need no food or shield support.

Like a walking city a nomad unit gathers food&shield&trade from the square it is currently on (occasionally preventing a local city to use this square . It must move every turn or will get _no_ resources (e.g. fortified in emergency). Nomads can only produce units; they cannot produce city improvements or wonders and can't build roads, irrigation or mines.

Nomads may gain advances through the collection of trade points, just like regular cities. Once the "farming&settling" advance is acquired, they may build cities. A nomad unit has a name (reference for the supported units) and a food & production box, which are displayed, when it becomes the active unit.

With the appropriate civilization advance a nomad unit can build units (warriors, horsemen, settlers etc.) by emptying a full production box. 1 unit per nomad is free of support in despotism (&monarchy?). Further units are supported from the nomads production box with 1 shield per turn (or 1 food, if the prod. box is empty (and disbanded, if the foodbox is empty too)). Settlers need 1 shield & 1 food support.

When its food box becomes full, a nomad unit splits in 2 nomad units with empty food boxes, dividing the content of the production box as well as supported units. To provide a mechanism towards building cities (and getting civilised!? the food box is enlarged on every split (e.g. 10, 20, 30, 50 etc. food). This numbers should balance the
opposing strategies:
(chinese) Perfectionist, explore neighbourhood for a good city location, develop asap the advance "farming&settling", build city, granary, phalanx etc.
(mongolian) Expansionist, explore continent for goodie huts & weak civs, develop asap horseback riding, wheel etc., conquer cities and/or plunder their irrigated & mined squares with nomads.

[With the foodbox-sizes 10, 10, 20, 30, 50, 80, 130.. & approx. 1.5 food per turn gathered by a nomad unit, it would need 7, 7, 13, 20, 33, 53, 87.. turns to fill them. I.e. during the first 7, 13, 27, 47, 80, 133, 220.. turns there would be 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64.. nomads (of course if not killed or used for cities).]

Questions:
They're really weak and probably can't survive a heavy battle (they can fortify, but that would prevent them from gathering food). Should zones of control apply to nomads? Or should they support 2 units for free? Should this number depent on the form of government?

Shall nomads count towards unhappiness (riot factor)?
Can a city produce a nomad unit (kind of supply crawler unit)? How about
initial foodbox-size? Number of shields for nomad unit?
And can a nomad unit _produce_ a nomad?

[itokugawa]

I believe that nomadic units should be able to produce other nomadic units. The new nomadic units are free of support and function as the parent nomadic units.

A nomadic unit requires only 1 food (and no production) taken by the square it occupies with 2 modifications:
a)The food production of the square is only 50% of the normal production in monarchy (rounded up so plains, irrigated desert and grassland give 1 whereas irrigated grassland gives 2).
b)2 nomads in the same square can use all the available food of that square and divide it betwwen them.

Trade and production always as in despotism.
A nomadic unit cannot produce another when it has enough food but when it produses it with shields. Every nomad has its "granary" for i.e. crossing a desert, but it cannot have more than i.e 20 food units. Production as in a city.

Since they will have no factories, libraries, harbours etc. nomads will become weak at later times. Also a nomad can be bribed easily, can be disbanded, join a city, build a new city but not improve terrain.

In theory there can be even armor nomads if the civ has the necessary advances (Once I have seen barbarian armor when I was using cheat mode and barbarian map).


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[Francis]

I'd like to not only give civs different leaders, but, as has been said, make them act differently. Germany from 1939-45 was a feared and dangerous military power. Germany from 1946 to Kosovo was a damp, anxious, weak military power with a pretty good economy. Just to name one example. In fact, maybe the names of the leaders should NOT reflect what type of civ they are, nor should the diplo screen give away exactly what their chracteristics are. It would be more challenging if you had to figure out whether a civ was agressive or not, instead of being told.

I'd like to see AIs suffer or benefit from teh consequences of their actions. I'd like an "aggressive perfectionist" AI to be in Democracy to better attain its perfect. goals, but I'd like to see its cities in revolt when it sends out its aggressive armies.

I'd like to see a fundamentalist perfectionist government somewhere with a huge army that just sits at home for defense. Attack them at your peril, especially when they start buying their way into the space race and threaten to win the game.

I'd like to to see the AI once in a while do the human trick of expand, expand, expand. Or flood me with knights, because for a fantastic change they've actually researched monotheism.

Can't all these be achieved by providing a better mechanism for running the civs? I've heard that civ attributes are all controlled by 3 +1/-1 flags. Doesn't that seem way too simple?

As for more civ possibilities, I'm all for 'em. It doesn't take up that much room, and as for research, I would think that an intern spending an afternoon with the Brittanica could garner all the information faxis needs on cities and leaders.

[Cartagia the Great]

One diplomacy option i would really enjoy having was the ability to carve up an opposing nation. I know many people have been clamoring for the ability to set boarders at the end of a war, sio you coudl trade cities and the like with the loser. I'm completely for this, in fact I was one of the first clammorers

However, that is not exactly what I mean for this. I also believe it would be nice to be able to create new nations out of another older nation. This hs happened time and time again through out human history, and I believe it should be represented in this game.

How it should work would be:

The Russians and the Wisconsinites(I always add them..so sue me :P) have fought a large, expensive war, with ended up with the Russians being defeated. AS the war neared an end the Russians began to ask for negations. This would be done in the diplomacy screen, much the way askign for a peace treaty is done now.

Finally the Wisconsinites accept the idea for Negoations with the Russians. In negoations there would be differant catagoires listed such as:

Economics
Ethnic
Territory
Politicle

The Wisconsinites would then set each as they wished it to be for the final peace treaty. In Economics they would choose how much, if any, money is given to their nation.

Ethnic would be an option that would have the winning civilization demand that all peopulation of a certian ethnic group be sent into their territory, percecuted and such things.

Politicle would be the winning party demanding certian things on thel ose,r such as the type of government to have, who to ally to or soem other iinsidiouse things to hurt the nation(you could evne rename it if you wished to)

And finally ,the most important, territorial. Territorial is where you would dicker over the trading of citiesd and the like. Not only tha,t but I believe that one should be able to create new nations in this screen.

The winning faction would click on the "New Nation" option and then click the cities that should belong to it. They would also choose if this would have been an already existing civilization (like recreating China after the Russians conquered it). For this it would ahve to have a good deal of popualtion in the new nation that WAS ethnic Chinese. or it could be an entirly new nation such as the: The Frolini. This would not have to have the ethniticity in it, but would be, by deffinition, not very stable.

You would also be able to set up thel eaders name, it's policy and other types of things to name it a real civilization.

Now, you are most likly asking why one would want to do this. After all, if you can beat the civilization in war, why not just annex all you can, and destroy them for ever. Well there are a few good reasons for this.

1)In later stages of the game completely annexing another civilization would be looked down upon by other civilizations, and it could hurt your reputation.

2)you just BARELY won, and the other nation is still pwoerful. This slicing up of it's land would create buffer states between your nation and the other, hopefully keeping you both safe

3)you want to punish the other nation, but not to badly, because you fear that if ti's to badly injured a third party will destroy it. That coupled with the fact that your not strong enough to hold the outside territory would seem to make you want to carve them up a bit.

On another not,e I also believe it would be nice for allies(if two or more people are at war against another alliance) to be able to take part in the negotiations. Now it would also be possible for the other nation to reject your treaty and negate naother, but ,if you did not like it, you culd threaten with a retunr to war. Or, if you've captured their capital, you can insist on nearly any treat you want(muhc like in WW2)

Just a few of my ideas. Enjoy

[Cartagia the Great]

Well, actually, I would rather LIKE the idea of aliens, coming in the later stages of the game. AS you said they could be turned off, and would be rare, but if they arrived it could be in several differant ways. They could be benevolent and give you technology and other things in order to allow your civilization to prosper. they could try to manipulate differantn atiosn ofr thier own purposes(Shadows and Vorlon like) Or they could try to invade and conquer the planet aka Harry Turtledove's World War series(of course if it was the Lizards humans owuld ahve a good chance of winning :P)

[jof]

Cartagia: As I understand it, Firaxis will design the Trilogie "Sweep of time", consisting of CIV3, SMAC2 and a completely new game by Sid Meier. It will be possible to take the result of CIV (spaceship to alpha centauri) to SMAC, and that result (transcendence) to the new game. As SMAC (with its extension "alien crossfire") contains aliens and the new game (I see it as kind of galactic civilization with klingons, romulans etc.) probably will contain aliens I see no need for aliens in the historical part of the trilogie .

Itokugawa: You write, the NOMADIC CIVS (without factories, libraries ...) will become weak in later times. That's right, but why shall they not build cities to counter this effect? Ok, they will no longer be pure nomadic civs. But what shall they do with conquered cities? In my opinion their strenght could be the ability to conquer early weak civs based on cities and benefit from the mix later.
About one thing I'm not sure: In my proposal I suggested one new special unit, the nomad unit (all other units remaining the same). Do you propose the nomadic effect as quality of the existing units? For example nomadic archers, nomadic legions, nomadic phalanxes? Please explain your ideas in more detail.

Diodorus Sicilus: Are you still around? I think you can provide good ideas towards a successfull nomadic suggestion.

[itokugawa]

Nomads can have any weapons if they have the necessary knowledge so there should be many nomadic units. Probably only 1 available each time (i.e. nomad warrior becomes obsolete by nomad archer, nomad archer by nomad musceteer etc.).

I said that nomad units should be able to found cities. When capture a city they do not destroy it.

There are also some other points I haven't thought about before:

1)Barbarians: they should behave like nomads. They can even build cities and become civilized. There should be many barbarian tribes but barbarians of the same tribe should land near each other. If you do not destroy them soon they will become stronger (because they act as nomads). Cooperation with barbarians is allowed.

2)Units should not be repaired automatically but only with some cost in shields (i.e. in city production use the option "repair unit"). Nomads can be repaired by themselves with the shields they produce.

3)A nomad unit should require no support but the population of the city is reduced by 1.
So what the city losses: 1 square from its radius.
What the player gains: 1 square of exploitation (the square nomad occupies).

It is not advisable for a city with improvements or when you want to terraform. But at the start of the game you rather want to expand and your cities have not improvements. So it is in agreement with history: Nomads are not competitive for long time.

[Mo]

In modern times the equivalent of a nomad should be the partisans. They are self supporting but when they are near a friendly city they can recieve extra support from them.

[Iceman88888888]

What about this?
In the original civ 2 WW2 scenario, if you played as allies and germany overtook france and then you retook it you kept in... Why not if you go to war to help a civ and win you can give them back their citys... and keep the persons you attacked. Later in the game you could give back the origonal countrys citys and get lots of cash and a good diplomatic alliance. The ideas are limitless

[Mo]

This also being disscused in the diplomacy thread.

[Shining1]

Just as a suggestion:

You can have both options for Civs in CivIII. Firstly, you can include the main group of superpowers as the default civs for the game, similar to the list of Civs in CivII. With Brian as a History graduate, and based on CivII experience, this should make for a fairly comprehensive list. One proviso: each country gets listed once. So you don't get the Vikings AND the Swedes, just the vikings.

Secondly, have a custom list of civilisations that reads from a seperate game file and can include however many civs the player wants. All the main players can be here, as well as a list of all the others.

Include with this an IN GAME means to create a new civ and save it to this file/directory (however much data - greetings, pic files, etc) is saved for each civ), for future reference.


My other suggestion is that Civs be done in a fairly similar form to SMAC civs, but with a greater degree of customisability. For instance, being able to link each civ to a pic file that includes a basic settler unit and unique city images would be a great thing, especially for scenario editors. Naturally, you don't need a single file for each and every civ in the game, just a link to a generic file for that group (e.g European, Asian, etc).

With the custom civ files system, both the civ and it's pic files would slot conviently into a seperate directory.

[jof]

LordStone1: I would like to add the following to my suggestion from August 03, just behind "regular cities.": [Every civ gets 1 tradepoint per turn for free (to lessen the advantage for starting with the NOMAD-UNIT near river squares).]

Itokugawa: You have nothing written about the production costs of nomadic units - so I asume, you propose for cost: 1 population-point & as many shields as their non-nomadic pendants?
The approach to implement nomadic elements not with a single _nomad unit_, but with nomadic warriors, nomadic phalanxes, nomadic armor etc. (i.e. as optional _nomadic quality_ of regular units) changes gameplay a lot more and may unbalance the whole gamesystem:
For founding cities I wouldn't produce settlers any more. In the beginning nomadic warriors are cheaper & after gunpowder there are lots of "obsolet" nomadic phalanxes & nomadic pikemen.
As the nomadic units need no shield support (and cause no "unhappiness from home" in republic?!) regular non-nomadic units would only be used as garrisons. For exploring and/or advancing units this nomadic qualities and the effortless self-reproduction would be very useful.
Attacks may move from quick, surprising actions over good infrastructure towards slow movements, trying to duplicate the nomadic units just before attack.
Producing nomadic warriors in cities, duplicating them a couple of times as nomadic units and adding them back to cities would lead to quicker city growth than regular.

[Stefu]

Gosh, NotLikeTea, I didn't know you were a soc.history.what-if poster. I'm soc.history.what-if lurker...

Hmm. Maybe if Germany tries to attack Britain in Earth map British should get powerful Alison Brooks unit...

Anyway, make a random event where bunch of time travellers come to sell AK-47 to some country.