RADICAL IDEAS (ver 2.0): Hosted by korn469

[Fugi the Great]

I think he was talking about a city improvement that gets subverted by the enemy, and instead of the improvement helping you to make citizens happier or get more money, it would do the exact opposite what it was built for, making citizens unhappier or taking money from your treasury. Somewhat like what they did in CTP where you could file a injunction, sue the city, set up corporate branches, using televangelists, subnural ads, clerics. I'm assuming that there will be some way to get rid of the "bad" city influence like they did in CTP. The Genejack improvement(if improvement you want to call it) of SMAC is more of a negative effect that is permanent until it is sold off, and you bring the negative effects to your city all by yourself.

[ember]

Divorcing resource gathering from cities.

My idea is basically that TI villages, all size 1, farm and mine. (size 2 might give a 50-75% increase, for late game). THese goods are all automatically sent to a nearby host city(you choose which) or region. The city only gathers resources from it's square, but all the extra population is in the form of labourers, traders, and scientists.

Cities are hadled mostly as now.
Villages are TI's. Vilage improvments are also TI's. adding advanced farms, or silos, or a bettermines are all TI's.
By this model, a farmer would have to support ~twice as many pop as in CIV2.
All Food and natural resouces are 'made' in terrain squares.
All industry and trade are 'made' in cities, by citizens.


------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[Gordon the Whale]

This is a biasic summary of the continued thread on Villages, which was ember's idea first. It got a fair bit of discussion in the Economy thread, but was respectfully asked to leave by the threadmaster. I think it makes a good balance between fugi the Great's system and the Civx system. Here are the basic components as I see them (anybody else who contributed on that thread, please correct me.)

1) Villages are the primary method of gathering resources. They are the only place to put "average" people, i.e. not specialists. However, they exist externally to the city, on the surrounding squares. They gather the materials from the square they sit on and nowhere else.

2) Cities contain only specialists. These include scientists, entertainers, and workers. (Maybe also merchants?) Workers produce Industry, which is used to process the resources harvested in the countryside.

3) Villages contain the agrarian population. If they are destroyed by an invading army, so is the population contained.

4) The food production from a tile must be approximately twice that in CivX, because Specialists (i.e. city dwellers) are now necessary from the beginning, and must be supported.

5) Villages would be built by a "Public Works" type system, rather than by a unit. They could be autobuilt by the AI or queued by the player.

I believe that is the basic idea, upon which all in favor of the idea at all are agreed. (Again, correct me) Here are additional suggestions:

1) Villages don't count toward the maximum people in the city from Aqueducts, etc.

2) Villages don't count towards any particular city, but are shared within a region. Obviously, this would require regions.

3) Villages are divided into at least two types, mining and farming. Each type will act differently, producing either more food or more resources. A farming village on a forest square could become a logging village.

4) Villages may increase in size beyond 1. When they do so, their maximum production increases, but with diminishing returns (size 2 doesn't produce double what size 1 does.)

5) The second point of size (and any more) may be of a different type, i.e., a size 1 farming village becomes a size 2 farming/mining village.

6) When a village reaches a certain size (3? 4?), it becomes a city on its own.

7) Villages must be built in a square adjacent to either the city or another village.

8) The maximum distance from the main city would be dependant upon the technology level, or perhaps whether it is linked by road, railroad, etc.


Now here are some I have come up with that are new:

1) Allow the farmers/miners/loggers to come into the city in times of war. The villages could still be destroyed, but those are quicker to build than population. The population would be saved, but the extra people in the city would contribute to disease, and you wouldn't be getting any resources from the land.

2) What about Ocean squares? It doesn't make sense to build Villages in the Ocean. 2 options I see, which could work in conjunction: Cities with Harbors may make Fisherman specialists, which each allow one Ocean square to be harvested, and coastal Villages would have the option to be a Fishing Village, which uses none of it's own square, but harvests out of an ocean square. Under idea 5, this could be combined with a mining or farming village.

3) As an extension of idea 6 above: This is the ONLY way to make a new city until the discovery of a certain advance, which allows settlers. A Settled City (Colony) starts its own region, while Grown Cities belong to the same region as the Village they grow from. This would take the necessity of production away from expansion, since one wouldn't need to necessarily build cities with settlers. There would also have to be a way to split regions… Maybe by building a provincial capital, you would get to select the borders of a new region.

I also posted to Terrain and TI.

[Gordon the Whale]

As to the complaints about construction dictated by the government being unrealistic and undying leaders, I offer this solution:

Go find the box you bought Civilization in. (I hope you didn't pirate it! Those boys deserve to be rich!) Civilization II would work. Even Call to Power. Now, what is the biggest word on that box? It isn't emperor, it isn't dynasty. It isn't government. What is it? Well, it's Civilization. To me, this implies that I'm not playing a leader, a government, or a dynasty. I am playing a Civilization. I'd like to see the entire concept of the "leader" thrown out. I am the Civilization. To anybody that says, "How can you play a civilization? That's not realistic," I would suggest that you go buy yourself a nice flight simulator, or indeed, stop playing computer games entirely and go do something real. You'll find that more realistic. But I find that viewing civilization as playing a civilization, rather than a leader or a government, makes it much more realistic and enjoyable. (It also helps to realize the scale of the map, assume cities to be city-states, and realize that units are armies.) The amount of controll you are given is much more realistic. To those who don't want to manage city production, I say, "Go buy a war game." Civilization is a civilization game, and if you remember that, I think everyone will be much happier. At the same time, I think Firaxis needs to make that more clear by dropping the pretense of having a "leader."

Fugi: I'm impressed. You're the only person I've ever seen who consistantly makes longer posts then me. Congrats.

[ember]

Gordon, I have a couple clarifications and extensions to add.

1) resources and food are generated in villages, any 'trade' or 'idustry' produced in them is used by the villages to support themselves. Only extra food and reosurces are shiped out.

2) cities produce all useable trade and industry. Varisu specialist types, the normals +laboureres to start and more types later.

3) villages are constructed without resource cost. It takes the same time as a unit fortifying to move or create a village. All expenses of this are covered by the resources not generated during the move. This allows you to ship the villagers back in to your cities.

4) costal villages. Put the icon for the village on the shore, but in the costal square. The pop is counted as being there, and can be killed by bombard capable ships. Oil platforms actually house their pop in the open ocean, this is the only time that deep ocean squares are harvested up to modern times. ( I don't see why you can harvest from deep ocean squares, when your treiems can't even go there...)

5) no need to deferentiate vilage types. Use regular tile improvments, like farms and mines.

6) settlers could be used to start remote villages without using them up (colonies on nearrby islands, etc. Still a distance limit, and only costal to start.

Other points:

a) terrain types that cities becomes even more imoprtant. they don't generate resources, but different terrain types would give growth and trade bonuses, espicially river, and costal.

b) I have proposed that food affects happiness, which affects gowth, not directly.
This removes the potential cheese of puting next to all your citizens on farms to boost growth. It would work a bit, but with highly diminishing returns...

c) At the start only one city per region, but as tech advances you get to select which ones go in. Regions would then split the villages according to the closest city. You could move the border if you wanted, but there is a max # of squares within the border depending on tech.

d) I think that vilalges should never be able to grow into cities without direct intevention ( a setler, which represents an infusion of infrastructure) spontanteous cities would be bad, because you would suddenly have a shift in available resources and loss of stratigc control.

That's all for now...

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[MBrazier]

Re: Xin Yu's "negative effects"

Over on the RELIGION topic, I suggested something very like Xin Yu's example. Here's a quotation from the RELIGION summary, giving the bare bones of the idea:

"Each populated tile would have its religion, and in end of turns each would try to convert others... Missionary units would try to convert tiles they are walking on. For every N (N being parameter set at config file) tiles converted to state religion one citizen would become content, and temples and cathedrals would lower N locally. On the other hand, for every N tiles unconverted one citizen becomes unhappy."

In other words, you would pick one religion as a state religion; citizens belonging to that religion would then become a little happier, and citizens who didn't would become a little unhappier. Temples, cathedrals, and similar improvements would intensify both these effects. And missionaries (a special non-attacking unit) would wander over the map preaching to, and hopefully converting, any citizens they met.

You will see at once that this would create a neat subversive tactic: sending missionaries into enemy territory to convert the other civilization's people from its state cult to yours. The enemy's temples slowly change from riot-suppressors into riot-generators as the religious balance shifts.

I wonder, is it possible to build other systems with the same sort of disadvantage? That is, a wonder/improvement with mainly good effects, but which also makes you vulnerable to a savvy opponent?

[korn469]

originally i must say that i was totally against all the various ideas of housing people in squares outside the city. however, with the last couple of post you have proved your case and changed my mind. you now have one more convert for the village idea. i don't think the idea is fully worked out yet but i think it's getting there.

first off i have a few questions i'd like to see clarified.

1.when you build a village with public works does this automatically add a point of population to your civ?

2. is there a limit to how many people can be brought into the city? lets say you have 15 village sqaures in your region and your city has a population of eight people, an army invades. can you suddenly bring in all 15 people?

3. how is unhappinessy handled in the villages?

hmm that's all i can think of for now.

here's a list of specialist that you can have in your city, the first name is their ancient name the second is their modern name. like in SMAC a certain technology upgrades the specialist. some of the specailists have subsets of specialists.

1. artisan/laborer: these specialist process minerals. starting off each of these specialist can only process 2 minerals. later on after the discovery of the assembly line or something, each one of these can process 4 minerals. if you have only 2 artisans then your city can only use 4 minerals on production, even if your mining villages are sending more minerals than that to your city.

modifers: process 2 minerals

2. merchant/trader: these specialist generate money and they allow your city to open trade routes. your city cannot engage in trade with other cities until you have at least one merchant specailist in it. the maximum number of trade routes are limited by the number of merchants in your city.

modifers:+4 to economy, establish tade routes

3. wise men/scientist: self-explanitory. these specialist allow you to discover new technologies. the more you have the quicker you research.

modifers: +4 to labs

4. actors/entertainers: these specialists make your citizens happy.

modifers: +4 to pysch

ok now these specialist are less conventional but would add to the game.

5. military specialists: these specialist represents the military-industrial complex of your empire. they represent soldiers, support, and the people making weapons. it takes money to support them, working for the army is a good job, and military research speeds weapons research. units are no longer supported by sheilds but instead by support points. each unit requires from zero (guerillas) to three (stealth bombers) support points. each city generates a small amount of support points (1 point for five people in a city) after that you have to have military specialists to generate more support points (your level of support in social engineering determine how many support points each military specialist generates)

modifers: -2 to economy, +1 pysch, 2 labs (+2 if researching war tech, -2 if researching peace tech) + support points (depends on your level of support)

6. official/buerocrats: these are the representatives of the government. they collect taxes and help to assimilate the population into your civ, and keep them loyal. however too many of these can be a burden on the people and make them very upset.

modifers: +2 economy, 1 psych (+1 pysch if you have two or less in your city, -1 pysch if you have more than two in your city) helps to assimilate people into your empire

7. priest/clergy: these represent your religious organization. these priest convert your population to your religion and in general make people happy.

modifers: +3 pysch +1 economy -1 research, converts people to your religion

8. philosphers/philosphers: these people look for the meaning of life and man's place in it. they seek for each person to find their place in society. however they look at the consequences of all actions and they are conscientious objectors.

modifers: +2 pysch +2 research -1 support point

so what do you think?

korn469
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited July 30, 1999).]</font>

[Jon Miller]

nice ideas on both villages and specialists, like the idea of laborers (maybe you can stockpile resources?)

don't see why philosphers are so good, I think that they where just an ancient cross between wisemen and preists (there have been more recent ones too, no argument, but they where like social sceintists and social priests), beauroctrats should take down corruption or something, maybe even certain se choices would demand certain levels of beauractrats for every 5 citizens

Jon Miller

[korn469]

Jon Miller

well i just came up with most of the specialist ideas today after i read the village idea thread. it is just a rough idea but iu think we can work it out. and the thing with philospheres is that i wanted to come up with around 10 different kinds of specialists. each one will have some kind of special ability (hence the term specialist). and they will provide positives and negatives, where they are balanced. so that you wouldn't just have one kind of specialist in everyone of your cities in every game you play.

the idea about stockpiling minerals is a good one. maybe you can only stockpile a certain amount, but you could have some kind of base facility to increase your storage ability.

i like the idea of beurocrats taking down corruption and making your people less likely to revolt. each specialist needs some kind of special ability. i have a challenge for everyone, come up with a balanced specialist type with some neat special ability. keep the discussion going and lets refine these ideas. they are really good. i really hope firaxis listens to the village idea.

korn469

ps do you like saving private ryan?

[Jon Miller]

hmm, Private Ryan was cool

wisemen were ancient religious leaders as well

we could have artists (mucisians, sculptorists, paintists, ect.): they would get better by certain technologies

such as classical music, maybe others (technology in arts)

different techs would give different powers to the artist special unit

most of the pluses would be in luxuries with maybe a similar minus to philophers in being pacifists (with certain technologies)

we could even have rock&roll be a tech (or electric guitar)

Jon Miller

[ember]

korn465: Here are some clerificattions for the village system as I see it. As always if anyone puts in a better idea, i'm willing to change.

To your questions.
1. NO. You can set the city/region to autobuild villages. Normally this would be about half of your pop. points in the city, half out, but it requires growth to make new villages. Under this system you would need twice the number of pop. points as with civX, so growth should be twice as fast.

2. There doesn't need to be a limit. You just have to have the infrastructure to deal with all the overcrowding and some way to get food and resources from elsewhere...
It would probably be easier to tell you villagers to pack up and move to a new location than into the city. In the late game (after UN built?) killing villages would be a minor atrocity. You can still pilage the mines and farms, etc. without penalty.

3. Unhappiness doesn't seem to much of an issue to me. Beacue the number of pop points in the cities will be the same as before, the happiness sytem can be the same.

On your ideas for labourers, I see idustry somewhat differently.
Labour is not directly related to resources for making units/structures. Labour represents the number of man-years needed to build things. Resources represent the physical material needed.
A legion and a musketter take the same amount of resources (iron, etc.) to build, but it takes much more work to build the muskets and assemble the unit, than a legion.
Some units only require one type. Spy's and other special units only require labour.
Labourer's (the specialists) are still good, they would just add much more industry than anyother city dweller.

I would also add some later types to your list, like the middle class for modern times, the middle class is overall more productive than any other type before, but is generalized (produces a bit of everything, rather than just idustry or trade). These would repalce earlier generalist types, like sefs or peasents.

A lot of the concept of speciallists is sort of silly. A whole pop point doesn't become scientists, only a few do, the rest are regular citizens. Maybe of your citydwellers only half the citizens after the 4th can specialize.

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[korn469]

ember

you lost me again
i don't see how your system works.

1. Under this system you would need twice the number of pop points as with civX...
Unhappiness doesn't seem to much of an issue to me. Because the number of pop points in the cities will be the same as before, the happiness sytem can be the same

you said that there needs to be about twice the people than in civ2. however you said that happiness really doesn't matter for villages since you have the same number of people in your city. on transcend in SMAC after your first person everyone is unhappy. in the village system if you have a city size 4, that means you have 4 villagers in the fields who are happy. and then only three in the city who aren't happy. that needs to be addressed. there needs to be some system for making the villagers happy.

2. The city only gathers resources from it's square, but all the extra population is in the form of labourers, traders, and scientists...
A lot of the concept of speciallists is sort of silly. A whole pop point doesn't become scientists, only a few do, the rest are regular citizens. Maybe of your city dwellers only half the citizens after the 4th can specialize

are villages a terrain improvement? if they are why have people live in them? what is the advantage over the current tile/city system? if you have to have a point of population living in the villages then what do the people in the cities do if they aren't specialist? the villages harvest the land and the city workers harvest the land? i thought that the idea was for all the people living in the city to represent specialized labor. in your system you have people living on the land working it, and what you are saying is that you have people living in cities working the land. it offers no advantages and only more micromanagement.

those are some ideas that contridict each other and they make the system hard to understand.

i'm not sure if i understand your industry system. tell me if this is right. it takes 10 shields to make a legion and it requires 10 industry. it takes 10 sheilds and 20 industry to build a musketeer. a artisan/laborer generates industry right? if that's how it works it an ok idea. but there still needs to be some wayto limit the number of resources a city can process in a turn. maybe you have to build factories or something to increase the amount of resources you city can process.

for this system to work it needs to be fairly simple. it needs to reduce micromanagement not add to it. it needs to address and solve the problem of ICS, and help to curtail an early cheese rush. it needs to add to strategy and give flexable paths to victory.

korn469

[DarthVeda]

I couldn't figure out where else to put this but...

How about having a tab-feature for the powergraph. The user could select which feature he or she wanted to examine. There would be an OVERALL, a MILITARY, a MONEY/INFRASTRUCTURE, and a TECH tab. Each one would rate the abilities of each nation.

The military tab would not only take in to account the number of units, but also their tech level.

[itokugawa]

About scoring:
every round adds some points to the total score. So the final score does not depend only on the final result (spaceship is included in the score only if you win the space race).

Factors to calculate score:
All demographics except these which lead to calculating twice the same things (i.e. family size affects the future of population so it should not be included).

At the end of the game also should be included points for city improvements (you cannot sell so easily the useless universities to buy spaceship), reputation, foreign affairs (war, peace, ceace fire, alliance, hostile, enthousiastic, cordial etc.).

Finally, Babylonian civilisation now does not exist. Nevertheless hanging gardens belong to it and we remember also Hammurabi's laws. The "score" of Babylonians in human civilisation is definetely far from 0.

[itokugawa]

Also I believe that attack must not be something easy. Germans in WWII were much more powerful than British in air but they didn't destroy all british military units by bombardment and then captured London with paratroopers. On the contrary they couldn't land in England.

It is totaly unacceptable by me that units can disembark ships and attack at the same round. When a unit disembarks from a ship it should have no more moves (as in Civ1). The exception of marines should remain but their power should be reduced by 50% when they make amphibious ansault. Similarly paratropers must finish their move after paradrop and do not be able to capture cities with paradrop.

At last, every army is vulnerable when disembarks from ships as well as a paratrooper during paradrop.