RADICAL IDEAS (ver 2.0): Hosted by korn469

[ember]

M@ni@c:

A few points.
Hitorically all major cities are on major rivers or the ocean. Or both.

The village system allows you to have early cities only on these squares and have all the food and resources brought in from the inland and fishing villages.

Happyness can be seen as how much people want to live in a city... In this case it is the biggest factor in immegration/emmigration. Up unitl recently unemployment has not been an issue. Everyone could have some work, even if that was as a labourer or in the fields.

A river/costal city square would give a bonsu to trade and a bonsu to growth, making these very attractive spots for cities.
No food or resources are gathered from theses squares so the resouce formula is N + M, where N is the labour/trade from N city pop, and M is the food/resources from M village pop.

One unit of labour does not neccisarily 'work one unit of resources' It depends on what you are building.
Ancient units are an even mix, modern units require more labour than ancient.
NAval units require more resources than land.
Improvments require lot's of resources.
Spy's, etc. require only labour.

I have proposed 'fractional pop points'.
These would allow a city to grow and recruit as you describe, but keep the simplicity of having less than 200 specialists to keep track of...

I believe that a straight recruitment system is needlesly complicated, but if you build units as normal and if the unit is killed have a certain amount of pop removed from it's home city. The nation as a whole should provide for the support, but the home city would take the pop hit. Max units suppoted = 2-5 x pop. Play balance decides this.

To upraged units I agree, move them in a city, say upgrade, x gold and y turns later They are the next class of unit better.



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

[Fugi the Great]

Man, I thought my posts were long, but I think M@ni@c takes the cake. I think I'm going to have to print this one out and see if I can find some time to read that book of his with out falling asleep.

[Cartagia the Great]

Sorry for the miss post of this on Social Engeneering. here is where I meant to post these.

Many people have put forth their ideas for diplomacy in this thread, and I have helped. However, I believe that I would like to try and post down my entire thoughts on how treaties should work. I apologize if this has already appeared.

let us start out with the war between the Russian Empire and the Republic of Wisconsin(I always add them to the game, so sue me :P). The war progress, with neither side able to take each other's capital, but Wisconsin is deffiantly on top. In Desperation Russia sends a message whihc reports that they would be willing to discuss a treaty.

Wisconsin ,war weary, and with unhappiness due to this, agrees to this. Immediatly they go to the 'Treaty Screen'. This would be the screen which would allow you to set the peramiters of the treaty. They would be divided into 4 catagories


Government:
Economic:
Social:
Politicle:

GOVERNMENT:

The Government header more or less speaks for itself. This would impose on the other nation the government of the winner's choice. Waisconsin could demand that Russia becomes a Republic, Monarcy ect.

ECONOMIC:

Once again this is rather self explanitory. This is where Wisconsin could demand a certian monetary exchange to Russia, forcing them to pay tribute either per turn, or in one lump sum.

SOCIAL:

This one is a bit more intersting. Under this catagory one can set certian permaiters dealing with the people in the other Empire. For instance, Wisconsin could ahve a large minority of Chinese in their Empire who are on good terms with the government. They could demand that all Chinese under Russian government are sent into Wisconsin. Like wise they could also say that certian nationalities, such as the Romans should be opressed.

Tarrifs could also be demanded, as could differant building resrictions in cities.

POLITICLE:

This might prove to be the most intersting of catagories, and the easiest way to contain another nation if need be. It would be under here where you owuld demand the status of protectorate from another nation, as well as cut up their empire and take certian cities away.

Those are, however, the most common things. Other options would be available as well. For instance, you could demand that a nation take up alliances with other nations.

the most intersting option, in my opinion, could be the creating of other nations. In this area one would be able to create new nations, giving them names, leaders, and politicle stances. They could either be based on a prior ethnic group(in which case a majority of the people in this nation must be of the ethniticity choosen or atleast contain a few of thier cities)

One could also create a ficticiouse nation such as the Philonthroper Republic. All people owuld hodl their old ethnic ID, but would devleope into that nationality after a while.

Each nation you create, you would be able to set up it's boardres, government, it's leaders and it's relations with other nations.

Now, you might ask yourself why you would wish to do such a thing, and not jsut annex the entire nation. First of all, you may feel that you don't ahve the streangth to hold on to the rest of it, and you wish for your enemy to be strong enough to resist OHER nations. Also you might only have wanted to free a religion or ethnic group. Finally, heaving to strict of a treaty might very well destroy your relations with other nations.

Also the other nation coudl reject the treaty, and dicerking could go on(FUN!), but there is always thei dea that if you want peace enough, you'll take what you can get.

[Fugi the Great]

Cartagia the Great - Hey cool, a fellow Wisconsinite.
You bring up a good point, that not all wars are started just because one nation didn't want to give another nation a certain technology, or feel like giving in to pressure to pay for the continuing protection / friendship of another. That you don't always want to beat the crap out of another nation, and just leave them for the wolves, they sometimes are needed for a buffer area between you and another large empire on the other side of the guys you just got done fighting.
I also would like to change the way we do diplomacy so there is more compromises and haggling over options in a treaty. Something like: I want to buy a nice chunk of land from someone (Louisiana Purchase), they come back with a price for it (credits per hex), I say its too high priced so I ask what the price would be if I threw in a tech they don't have, or a chunk of land I have no use for, or a quantity of food I may have stockpiled, or whatever. They come back with a counter offer with a price per hex + the tech + stop fighting their friends. I agree, treaty is signed, techs get traded, and land gets annexed. Where we could set the trade limits, tariffs, or even allow free trade.
Treaties that allow students of other nations to learn in your schools. Treaties to set who gets the rights to fishing in a certain area and where do the territorial waters around your country extend. How far the agreeing nations keep there military units from the border. Treaties to jountly discover something instead of - you do this and we'll do that and then we'll trade techs. Or maybe even a jount venture to build a WoW that both nations would reap the benefits from. Treaties that would allow your nation to use their military bases in a war with a third nation, eventhough we are not allied with the nation we have the treaty with. Treaties to ALLOW your country to move military troops through or retreat into another country, the nation that agrees to this is usually seen as an automatic ally by the attacking nation and could become a target of aggression itself. Mutual defense treaties. Treaties that would limit the amount of expansion in a certain direction, or will allow you to attack a certain nation but only up to a certain point. Treaties where two nations would become allied against a third nation if it should attack. More discussion with other nations to get multiple nations to join a NATO or Warsaw Pact. Treaties that ban certain weapons or make nations help in the fight against pollution. Treaties to buy food or other resources from another nation for an agreed upon time.
It just seems that when you get into the more modern eras, that there are not enough treaties to keep the peace, where nations would find it more advantageous to remain friendly with another nation then to kick the crap out of them and ruin your economy.

P.S. - It would be easier to set up border treaties, or sell land to another nation if you didn't have to worry about how screwed up your cities would get if you stay with the current city ideas. Or even trading a city if you wouldn't have to worry about the other 20 squares that go along with it, the nice chunk of your nation that disappears with it, and the corrisponding border shift if you were playing SMAC. That was one of the reasons I wanted to throw out the current city concept, and let each hex have a population. Borders would then move like they are supposed to, instead of huge chunks of empires trading places, you also then trade individual hexes and not care too much about it. If your troops didn't move into the hex, didn't buy it or trade it, then it doesn't belong to you - yet.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Fugi the Great (edited August 26, 1999).]</font>

[jof]

Proposal: Add to the game Nomadic Civilizations on a Mobile Population Base
Purpose: A larger spectrum of strategies to start a game with and more flexible paths to victory.
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As first part of the "sweep of time" trilogy, civilizations could start a bit earlier without the knowledge of agriculture, as nomadic civs: tribes of hunter/gatherers. (The traditional start with the advances "settling", irrigation, mining and road building should be included as one of the accelerated startup options). The nomad-tribe-based civs have advantages in the beginning; once their city-based opponents get gunpowder, they start to seriously hurt. By then, though, most of them will (to survive) have conquered a few enemy cities and settled down, as they did historically.
This proposal (V990831) for an implementation of nomadic civilizations is based on one new special unit, the _NOMAD TRIBE_ UNIT (all other units remaining the same). The _nomad tribe_ unit as population base represents a Tribal Group with many of the characteristics of a city plus the ability to move.
When a game starts from the very beginning (8000BC?), every civ gets one weak _nomad tribe_ unit (0a, 1d, 1m, 1h, 1f) with 1 population point. _nomad tribe_ units can have multiple pop. points (limited by happiness) and are generated by splitting 1 unit into 2 units and removed by founding a city with them or adding to a city their population point{s} (like settlers). While exploring the environs they live off the land and have no home city, ie. need never food or shield support.

Like a WALKING CITY a _nomad tribe_ unit gathers food&shield&trade from the tile it is currently on (occasionally preventing a local city to use this tile). It must move every turn or will get _no_ resources (e.g. fortified in emergency). The first/only population point of the _nomad tribe_ unit reaps _all_ food&shields&trade points from the occupied tile according to the current government type -- Nothing is subtracted as maintenance for the unit itself! Further pop. points reap additionally (shields+1 & trade+1) per pop. point, but _no_ food from the occupied tile. Thereafter this tile is exhausted for "pop. points"-number of turns (yield=0), symbolized by a pollution-like icon. So the multiple _nomad tribe_ units leave temporary traces behind them, happy hunting -- this also prevents them from occupying the same (special resource or self-improved) tiles "too soon" again (for example on automated patrol routes).
Every _nomad tribe_ unit has a name (reference for the supported units), a short list of TRIBE IMPROVEMENTS and a food & production box, which are displayed, when it becomes the active unit. _nomad tribe_ units can't improve terrain with roads, irrigation, mines etc. and cannot produce wonders; they can produce units and some mobile(!) equivalents to city improvements:
Chieftain's Hut - requires warrior code, equiv. to Palace
Sacred Grove - requires ceremonial burial, equiv. to Temple
Shaman's Hut - requires map making, equiv. to Library
Bazaar - requires currency, equiv. to Market Place
Wagon Burgh - requires wheel, equiv. to City Walls, but not as strong.
When a _nomad tribe_ unit founds a city, the tribe improvements are changed into their city equivalents(??).

_nomad tribe_ units may gain advances through the collection of TRADE POINTS, just like regular cities. Every civ gets 1 tradepoint per turn for free (to lessen the advantage for starting with the _nomad tribe_ unit near river tiles). Once the "settling" advance is acquired, they may found cities.

With the appropriate civilization advance a _nomad tribe_ unit can build the tribe improvements mentioned above and units (warriors, horsemen, settlers, diplomats etc.) by emptying a full PRODUCTION BOX. 1 military unit per population point of the _nomad tribe_ unit is free of support in despotism (&monarchy?). Further units are supported from the _nomad tribe_ unit's production box with 1 shield per turn (or 1 food, if the prod. box is empty (and disbanded, if the food box is empty too)). Settlers need 1 shield & 1 food support.
The MILITARY UNITS produced by a _nomad tribe_ unit are some of the regular types, except higher Morale/Experience than ordinary units and mounted types have slightly better mobility. The units it can produce should be limited to infantry and mounted, so no vehicles. Maybe they could not build units requiring beyond a certain Production cost, which would be a quick way to prohibit them from building things they never built, like Musketeers, Catapults, Cannon, etc?

When its FOOD BOX becomes full, 1 _nomad tribe_ unit _may_ split in 2 new, independend _nomad tribe_ units with their own, empty (and scaled up) food boxes, dividing the content of the old unit's production box into their own, independend production boxes as well as dividing supported units of the old unit between the 2 new units; tribe improvements remain together at 1 (the bigger) new unit.
Alternatively to the split the _nomad tribe_ unit _may_ accumulate, ie. clear & scale up its full food box and increase the pop. points by one.
To provide one mechanism towards building cities (and to escape the general "exponential growth" problem!), the food box is enlarged on every split or accumulation (e.g. 10, 10, 20, 30, 50 etc. food). This numbers should play-balance a variety of starting strategies between the following extremes:
(mongolian) EXPANSIONIST, explore continent for goodie huts & weak civs, develop asap horseback riding, wheel etc., conquer cities and/or plunder their irrigated & mined tiles with swarms of simple _nomad tribe_ units. [Overrun your inert enemies behind their fences while your own population base is highly flexible: suitable distributed moving targets between nowhere and everywhere. Hurry up, your advantage is diminishing, conquer enough cities with your superior (in terms of mobility & morale/experience) horseXXXX units before your wild & free life is finally doomed by the advance of gunpowder...]
(chinese) PERFECTIONIST, explore neighbourhood for a good city location, develop asap the advance "settling", build city, irrigation, granary, phalanx etc. [Improve your cities & agriculture, dig in and build up city walls, defend tenacious every of your precious improvements. Grow fast, grow faster than you loose power to your nasty enemies in the dark ages. And hold on tight, your time will come, to throw them back and finally destroy them and prosper peacefully...]
As long as _nomad tribe_ units want to grow, they would avoid desert, glacier & mountain (0 food) and prefer grassland, special resources & irrigated tiles (2+ food), mainly mixed with forest & plains (1 food), and so gaining approx. 1.5 food per turn (net).
[With the FOODBOX-SIZES 10, 10, 20, 30, 50, 80, 130.. & approx. 1.5 food per turn gathered by a _nomad tribe_ 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 max. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64.. _nomad tribe_ units (of course if not accumulated or killed or used for cities).]

Another mechanism towards building cities and balance between the splitting or accumulating of _nomad tribe_ units is provided by UNHAPPINESS (riot factor): Unhappiness/Inefficiency from distance translates into rebellion after a time unless serious steps are taken to avoid it. Own rioting (redhead) _nomad tribe_ units on the circumference of the empire turn into barbarian (redflag) _nomad tribe_ units after a couple of turns (10?) and split off from the starting civ.
[Early-game BARBARIANS should have more options than just attack anything that moves: provide trading partners, info about other civs they contact, middle-men for tech transfers. Variety in Barbarians comes both from giving them a range of attitudes and mentioned interactions, but also some diplomatic exchange as well: You can buy off barbarians into not attacking you, joining you, attacking someone else, etc. Trading a lot with them would make them like you more (or, occasionally, lust after what you've got and raid you if you don't keep some military force around. And they should rely a lot on the way nomadic civs worked, by raids or hiring themselves out as mercenaries or try to join your empire but settling in the borders... There should be many barbarian tribes, but barbarians of the same tribe should land near each other. If barbarians stay too long without being attacked, then they should found thier own cities and become a small city-state. Finally the threat to civs also change over time and/or technology: barbarians to peasant rebellions to religious fanatics and terrorists.]

Goodie huts can result in a _nomad tribe_ unit.

Questions:
_nomad tribe_ units are 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 them?

I think cities should be able to produce _nomad tribe_ units (kind of supply crawlers). When such a unit is created in a city, the number of citizens is reduced by 1. Number of shields required to produce a _nomad tribe_ unit?20? How about the initial foodbox-size of the _nomad tribe_ unit?80?

Taking the resources from a tile improvement is just 'living off the land'. If a _nomad tribe_ unit destroys a (foreign) improvement (pillage it), should it get a one-time bonus depending on the improvement? How big should this bonus be?
On the other hand, they might get peaceful bonuses in diffusing Tech and in Trade, because they tend to contact a lot of Civilizations informally in their wandering. Each time a _nomad tribe_ unit trades with a city, it increases the chance of gaining a technological advance, as does wandering through a populated area. How can this be modelled in more detail and terms of game effect?

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[Radegast2]

I trust this is the correct thread for the following, I apologize if it's inappropriate topic.

SETTLERS, PUBLIC WORKS and ENGINEERS

While I don't want to enter the Public Works/Terraformer/Settlers debate I would like to say that all three have their attractions, and certain individuals style and likes/dislikes influence their opinions of each method. So, why not allow all three methods to be available? The Civ settler/engineer is a really useful unit in the early game, your city will produce one, it will irrigate/mine one or two squares and then build a road off to where it finally decides to build the next city, possibly exploring on the way. This formula is then repeated as required. SMAC's implementaton of the former/colony pod forces the strategic decision of founding a new base or improving existing ones, the support costs acting as a natural break on the quantity of formers that could be produced. Formers also have the advantage of being emergency defenders/perimeter defences too. The public works concept with pure settlers has the advantage of being an excellent model of the civilization working together, wealth produced at the core of the empire can be used to improve the periphery quickly and efficiently. It also can significant speed up gameplay by reducing micromanagement in the later stages of the game.

However, each of these methods have their drawbacks. In all cases, the settler function seems to become redundant about half way through the game. By this stage, the space near you is pretty much taken by your own and opposing cities, if you want more lebensraum you go capture it. And in any case the time it takes to build a city up to any reasonable production level means there is little benefit in founding new cities int the 'new worlds' past a certain point. Only if settler units can be used to shift population from one city to another do they have any use. In Civ (and SMAC?) this can only be done to bring a city to a certain size, in CTP I've yet to work out how this can be done. And the build cost is fairly high for simple population transfer. The terraformer facility suffers in the end from there generally being far to many of them to manage without wasting a lot of time each go, so for me at least by the time the end game comes round and I'm in planet conquer mode I just don't bother. Public works allow the tactic of massive improvements to a city in one hit, suddenly everywhere is mines, farms etc. Also, in order to avoid resource wasteage in the early game (there is precious little to go round, why waste any), you should be altering the PW percentage every turn, rush buying when the job is almost complete and maxing public works for one turn.

In effect, terraformers give the player a challenge to resolve during the early game but too much micro-management towards the end, public works are sort of the opposite.

So, why can't all of these types co-exist within the game, as time progresses. Initially, the settler/engineer does the work, these early descisons of what to improve and where to build are absolutely crucial to sucess or failure. But these boys can only develop to a fairly primitive level, public works expenditure is needed to improve these squares further. Now the ability to fund public works only comes with the governments above despotism where presumably your civilization has developed from local tribes to a city state conglomerate. There is probably a case for limiting the total percentage a given government can assign to public works as well. However, if public works are applied to an unimproved square, they are significantly more expensive. This simulates the experts laying the groundwork, public works being considered gradual maintenance and improvement over time. It also will have the effect of limiting just how much improvement can be done to a single city at one time, but it may be that absolute limits may also need to be applied (i.e. only 3 squares in any city radius can be improved at any time, upgrading a square losses ALL resource from that square etc.). Public works improvements also take time as would settler improvments. But, settlers and public works can be combined together to produce improvements in a more cost effective manner.

Utimately perhaps, the longer you apply your settler/public works bugdet the more productive the square becomes. For example, say that 'farming' a square takes 5 turns, costs 50 and improves production by 10. So each turn production is increased by two and the PW budget is decreased by 10. So partial/interrupted improvments become allowed.

Settlers however carry a relativly high resource drain on the city/civ that supports them, and contain a population point. Their prime function really is to found new cities, the terraform ability is there to allow a civilization/city to kickstart. As the civilization progresses, a new unit becomes available, say with the advance of engineering. These are civil engineers(!), and are to all purposes the SMAC terraformers. These are cheaper and cost less to support than settlers, but cannot found cities. They can however construct certain terrain improvements that are not available through public work, I'm thinking here of maybe fortifications, bridges, tunnels, airfields etc. etc. When these improvements first become available civil enginers must build them, with probably some public work investment too, but after some time or another advance, they can be built by public works alone. There might even be some form of evolution with these engineers as well, you need a different type of engineer to build forts from airfields. I always used to love my 'combat engineers' in civ II, the guys who went in and built the road/railroad/fortess combiniation that let me get next to a city without the risk of one hit destroying me. Not possible in CTP, not required in SMAC.

Around about this time also, a 'migrant' unit could be produced. This simply allows a population point to be moved from one city to another, but does not have the capacity to form a new city. However, this would not be without disadvantage to both the producing and recieving city. In addition to the resource cost to build (which need not be that high), there is also a support cost that is much higher in terms of food especially, than that of a population point in a city. The purpose of this is primarily to discourage players from stockpiling migrants to overcome say happiness or resource shortfalls. To the recieving city, perhaps a happiness hit (immigration invariably causes discontent, on both sides) for a time and possibly a resource hit as well to simulate the additional infrastructure needed. This will discourage the player from dumping 20 migrants into a new city all in one hit.

This migrant unit would allow rapid growth and development of new or conquered areas at some cost to the established center, therby allowing colonization in the later game. After all, founding a new city after 1800 in pointless in CIV and CTP, but look at all the great cities of the USA, and how big were they in civ terms in 1800?

As the game progresses further and spreads into the colonization of undersea, space or, who knows, Alpha Centauri, the settler/engineer makes a re-appearance. Radically more expensive, and only able to work in its designated realm these bring us back to the management technique of the first few turns. But then, when you first expand to the sea bed, or space, or AC then you want to micromanage these ventures, but the main civ should be fairly autopilot, i.e. public works. These units should found new cities at sizes greater than 1, probably 3 so that again they can be kick started. They perhaps also come with a package of improvements ready built. There could also be the option of a 'super settler' for land use, allowing effective very late game colonization to the last bits of the world.


I have deliberatly not been precise with when and how much things should cost in here, I belive that only the game designer can be precise on that score. And I accept that there are bound to be some drawbacks that I have not yet considered, I'd be delighted to hear them. But, perhaps the debate between seetler/public works can be resolved by taking the best elements of both systems into CivIII

[Radegast2]

I guess this one goes here too, there doesn't seem to be a topic on victory conditions.

WINNING the GAME of CIV III

CIV, CTP and SMAC are all won either by conquering the entire planet (or thereabouts) or by building some massive special project (Spaceship, trancendance etc, Alien life). Perhaps CIV III needs a different ending?

So, try this for size. Your task is to unite the world to face the Alien Invasion! Diplomatically, militarily or by means of special projects you bring the planet under your control. At some point, perhaps semi random based on progress in the game, the aliens invade. If you are not in charge of the all the world, some of the civs will ally with you, some will ally with them. If you are the stongest, perhaps you get the weakest etc.

Anyway, the Aliens invade, you don't know where, or in what strength. They might come with primarily naval, air, ampibious or ground troops, or they could be balanced. But they will be tough. They will have super units. And they will be aggressive. Defeat them you win, or face extinction.

This has sort of been done before, in Colonization, with the War of Independence. But there you could choose the time, and predict the place. But with this, you would be forced to keep them in the back of your mind, and be forced to maintain a balanced defence against the possibility during the late game. Because you won't know where and when (well vaugely) they're gonna come.

Just thought it might make the end game that much more worthwhile.

[Fugi the Great]

Include sickness, disease, pestilence, epidemics, earthquakes, floods, mini ice ages, volcanos. And why not an asteroid or comet strike the Earth?

The year is 1999. Two years ago world scientists discovered a mile wide asteroid heading for Earth, set to crash into the earth in 2028, which will destroy civilization as we know it. At first they thought it was going to hit, then they thought it would miss us by a comfortable margin, but earlier this year, they found an error in the calculations (not really), and found out it will definitely hit the Earth.
Can you successfully get every faction / nation on Earth helping and cooporating to find a way to stop it from hitting or try living through the after effects of the nuclear winter. Do you plan for it hitting and build a ship to carry a small population to a different planet or star, try destroying the asteroid, deflecting the asteroid, or do them all at the same time depending upon the help you are getting and the funds and/or time you have available? You could even have a few fall to Earth even earlier, since there is a record of the sky falling in recorded history. After all, that's where the legend of Dragon came from.
Having large chunks of the heavens fall on densely populated areas earlier in the game may not really be fair, it might even make you not want to finish the game, but if you could maybe have them fall in remote areas, where the effects can be felt world wide may be fair. Of course if you have a large one fall early on wiping out civilization, then the reminents will have to just start over, trying to rebuild from scratch, and maybe even relearn the old technologies. Maybe in a game like that there should be NO time limit, since it may keep on happening over and over again. Of course with a game with no time limit, where there is the possiblity that your civilization gets wiped out, then we should be scoring every turn like some else has already suggested.
Maybe even have the colony of humans that got away help to try rebuild the shattered cities.

Just a couple of stupid ideas I had after watching something on TLC.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Fugi the Great (edited September 02, 1999).]</font>

[SWPIGWANG]

No nomand troops Only SETTLERS

[SWPIGWANG]

I just have an idea.
We all know Civs have diffent culture, but
thouse AREN'T IN CIV

So How about research culture like tech(But
With lux+trade).

learning culture can do the following things
1.make people happy
2.help trade
3.affect SE
4.speical troops

Each Civ would have diffect set of culture
to reasearch.culture world be transfered
slowly when two civ trade.

[Jimmy]

SWPIGWANG: your idea sounds really good. It has a lot of potential.

[Odalrick]

I like the nomads idea, and also the village idea. These could be combined and would also solve a problem, or lack of realism.
You start the game some millennia earlier and get one Chief Nomad (the leading tribe) and a couple of friedly tribes. You would have no control over these extra tribes but they would share their knowledge of the world with you while within a certain range of the Chief Nomad. Across the map several barbarian nomads are also dropped, as well as all the other Civs chiefs.
Now, you move about exploring for about say 40 turns after which you discover the advance "Settling" and you can found a city with your Chief. While you have moved about the tribes have divided into more tribes and fought the barbarians and so on (whatever you want to make of it) but the point is, now all those tribes will start to settle down, some chance each tribe will build a village. You will go looking for a good spot to place your town centre, surronded by villages and so on.
Benefits from this are:
1. A small area already known when you get your first city. I think that the first cities knew a bit more about the area they were founded in than CivX grants.
2. The first cities won't magically appear from nothing, instead they are placed in the vicinity of existing pop centres.
3. The tribes can be used as a base for cultures.

Rater than being the one and only place for resource gatering, as per CivX, cities will only be a node where things happen in the beginning.
I was thinking something like this:
The Village are the first in the line gatering resources from the tiles they are placed on.
Cities gather resources from Villages within 3 tiles, and house smaller upgrades like Marketplace and Temple. Cities may not be placed less than 4 tiles apart.
Strongholds become avilable from Feudalism, gather resources from Cities inside an 8 tile radius and construct regional improvements like the Bank and Cathedral. Cities may not be upgraded to a Stronghold if less than 14 tiles from another stronghold.
The Capitol (not the same as a Place) is heralded by the advent of the Railroad and can potetially pool all of a nations resources, as long as a chain of cities can be traced to the Capitol, liked with Railroad and no more than 8 tiles apart. No two Capitols may be linked to each other.
Capitols are places of commerce and as such are the places to build Stock Exchance and Research Lab.

This would naturally require a ratio of resource spending for each Node, with categories including, but not limited to, Military, Infrastructure, Expansion and Public Works.

Revolt would be handled on the highest level possible, making it possible for entire nations to break off in one fell swoop.
This would explain USAs independecy as a whole (London couldn't trace a chain to America, making it nessecary to build another Capitol. Is this "theory" historically acurate?)

Wonders would be built in specific tiles and Nodes inside a radius would contribute to their completion.

Military Units could be built in special TIs (mostly useful under a Capital)or could be handled as i intend to show in another postin thes thread after i get some sleep.

[jof]

Proposal: Add to the game Nomadic Civilizations on a Mobile Population Base
Purpose: A larger spectrum of strategies to start a game with and more flexible paths to victory.

Synopsis: The nomad tribe unit represents a Tribal Group with many of the characteristics of a city plus the ability to move. It can have multiple population points, gathers food&shields&trade and can build some "tribe improvements" & slightly superior horse-based units, but has no military value on its own. Potential growth problems are countered by scaling down their ability to reproduce and the risc to lose permanent unhappy (rioting) nomad tribe units spontaneously to the barbarians...

Description: As first part of the "sweep of time" trilogy, civilizations could start a bit earlier without the knowledge of agriculture, as nomadic civs: tribes of hunter/gatherers. (The traditional start with the advances "settling", irrigation, mining and road building should be included as one of the accelerated startup options). The nomad-tribe-based civs have advantages in the beginning; once their city-based opponents get gunpowder, they start to seriously hurt. By then, though, most of them will (to survive) have conquered a few enemy cities and settled down, as they did historically.
This proposal (V990909) for an implementation of nomadic civilizations is based on one new special unit, the NOMAD TRIBE UNIT (all other units remaining the same). When a game starts from the very beginning (8000BC?), every civ gets one weak nomad tribe unit (0a, 1d, 1m, 1h, 1f) with 1 population point. Nomad tribe units can have multiple pop. points (limited by happiness) and are generated by splitting 1 unit into 2 units and removed by founding a city with them or adding to a city their population point{s} (like settlers). While exploring the environs they live off the land and have no home city, i.e. need never food or shield support.

Like a WALKING CITY a nomad tribe unit gathers food&shields&trade from the tile it is currently on (occasionally preventing a local city to use this tile). It must move every turn or will get no resources (e.g. fortified in emergency). The first/only population point of the nomad tribe unit reaps all food&shields&trade points from the occupied tile according to the current government type -- Nothing is subtracted as maintenance for the unit itself! Further pop. points reap additionally (shields+1 & trade+1) per pop. point, but no food from the occupied tile. Thereafter this tile is exhausted for "pop. points"-number of turns (yield=0), symbolized by a pollution-like icon. So the multiple nomad tribe units leave temporary traces behind them, happy hunting -- this also prevents them from occupying the same (special resource or own improved) tiles "too soon" again (for example on automated patrol routes).
Every nomad tribe unit has a name (reference for the supported units), a short list of TRIBE IMPROVEMENTS and a food & production box, which are displayed, when it becomes the active unit. Nomad tribe units can't improve terrain with roads, irrigation, mines etc. and cannot produce wonders; they can produce units and some mobile(!) equivalents to city improvements:
Chieftain's Hut - requires warrior code, equiv. to Palace
Sacred Grove - requires ceremonial burial, equiv. to Temple
Shaman's Hut - requires map making, equiv. to Library
Bazaar - requires currency, equiv. to Market Place
Wagon Burgh - requires wheel, equiv. to City Walls, but not as strong.
When a nomad tribe unit founds a city, the tribe improvements are changed into their city equivalents(??).

Nomad tribe units may gain advances through the collection of TRADE POINTS, just like regular cities. Every civ gets 1 tradepoint per turn for free (to lessen the advantage for starting with the nomad tribe unit near river tiles). Once the "settling" advance is acquired, they may found cities.

With the appropriate civilization advance a nomad tribe unit can build the tribe improvements mentioned above and units (warriors, horsemen, settlers, diplomats etc.) by emptying a full PRODUCTION BOX. 1 military unit per population point of the nomad tribe unit is free of support in despotism (&monarchy?). Further units are supported from the nomad tribe unit's production box with 1 shield per turn (or 1 food, if the prod. box is empty (and disbanded, if the food box is empty too)). Settlers need 1 shield & 1 food support.
The MILITARY UNITS produced by a nomad tribe unit are some of the regular types, except higher Morale/Experience than ordinary units and mounted types have slightly better mobility. The units it can produce should be limited to infantry and mounted, so no vehicles. Maybe they could not build units requiring beyond a certain Production cost, which would be a quick way to prohibit them from building things they never built, like Musketeers, Catapults, Cannon, etc?

When its FOOD BOX becomes full, 1 nomad tribe unit may split in 2 new, independend nomad tribe units with their own, empty (and scaled up) food boxes, dividing the content of the old unit's production box into their own, independend production boxes as well as dividing supported units of the old unit between the 2 new units; tribe improvements remain together at 1 (the bigger) new unit.
Alternatively to the split the nomad tribe unit may accumulate, i.e. clear & scale up its full food box and increase the pop. points by one.
To provide one mechanism towards building cities (and to escape the general "exponential growth" problem!), the food box is enlarged on every split or accumulation (e.g. 10, 10, 20, 30, 50 etc. food). This numbers should play-balance a variety of starting strategies between the following extremes:
(mongolian) EXPANSIONIST, explore continent for goodie huts & weak civs, develop asap horseback riding, wheel etc., conquer cities and/or plunder their irrigated & mined tiles with swarms of simple nomad tribe units. {Overrun your inert enemies behind their fences while your own population base is highly flexible: suitable distributed moving targets between nowhere and everywhere. Hurry up, your advantage is diminishing, conquer enough cities with your superior horseXXXX units before your wild & free life is finally doomed by the advance of gunpowder...}
(chinese) PERFECTIONIST, explore neighbourhood for a good city location, develop asap the advance "settling", build city, irrigation, granary, phalanx etc. {Improve your cities & agriculture, dig in and build up city walls, defend tenacious every of your precious improvements. Grow fast, grow faster than you lose power to your nasty enemies in the dark ages. And hold on tight, your time will come, to throw them back and finally destroy them and prosper peacefully...}
As long as nomad tribe units want to grow, they would avoid desert, glacier & mountain (0 food) and prefer grassland, special resources & irrigated tiles (2+ food), mainly mixed with forest & plains (1 food), and so gaining approx. 1.5 food per turn (net).
{With the FOODBOX-SIZES 10, 10, 20, 30, 50, 80, 130.. & approx. 1.5 food per turn gathered by a nomad tribe 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 max. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64.. nomad tribe units (of course if not accumulated or killed or used for cities).}

Another mechanism towards building cities and balance between the splitting or accumulating of nomad tribe units is provided by UNHAPPINESS (riot factor): Unhappiness/Inefficiency from distance translates into rebellion after a time unless serious steps are taken to avoid it. Own rioting (redhead) nomad tribe units on the circumference of the empire turn into barbarian (redshield) nomad tribe units after a couple of turns (10?, fix or with increasing 'chance' to happen?) and split off from its civ.
{Early-game BARBARIANS should have more options than just attack anything that moves: provide trading partners, info about other civs they contact, middle-men for tech transfers. Variety in Barbarians comes both from giving them a range of attitudes and mentioned interactions, but also some diplomatic exchange as well: You can buy off barbarians into not attacking you, joining you, attacking someone else, etc. Trading a lot with them would make them like you more (or, occasionally, lust after what you've got and raid you if you don't keep some military force around. And they should rely a lot on the way nomadic civs worked, by raids or hiring themselves out as mercenaries or try to join your empire but settling in the borders... There should be different barbarian tribes, but barbarians of the same tribe should land near each other. If barbarians stay too long without being attacked, then they should found their own cities and become a small city-state. Finally the threat to civs also change over time and/or technology: barbarians to peasant rebellions to religious fanatics and terrorists.}

Goodie huts can result in a nomad tribe unit.

Questions:
Nomad tribe units are really weak and probably can't survive a battle (they can fortify, but that would prevent them from gathering food). Should zones of control apply to them?

I think cities should also be able to produce nomad tribe units (kind of supply crawlers). When such a unit is created in a city, the number of citizens is reduced by 1. So in later stages of the game the nomad tribe unit can be used to migrate pop. points between cities. Number of shields required to produce a nomad tribe unit?20? How about the initial foodbox-size of the nomad tribe unit?80?

Should there be a (variable, dependent on number of turns or advances?) latency time for a nomad tribe unit between the build-command (b-key) and the actual foundation of the city (for play balance, e.g. to increase or decrease 'migration' in modern times)? 5-10 turns?

Taking the resources from a tile improvement is just 'living off the land'. If a nomad tribe unit destroys a (foreign) improvement (pillage it), should it get a one-time bonus depending on the improvement? How big should this bonus be?
On the other hand, they might get peaceful bonuses in diffusing Tech and in Trade, because they tend to contact a lot of Civilizations informally in their wandering. Each time a nomad tribe unit trades with a city, it increases the chance of gaining a technological advance, as does wandering through a populated area. How can this be modelled in more detail and terms of game effect?

Thanks: This proposal was improved with the help from Diodorus Sicilus, Alfonso, Hugo Rune, mindlace, mhistbuff, itokugawa, Mo & E

[raingoon]

Korn469 has asked me to substitute summarize this thread for him.

If anybody else wants the job, or is already doing it, let me know! Otherwise, I'll post the summary for this thread after the weekend.

[JamesJKirk]

Here's an idea I've been thinking of:

Once the UN is built, there will be a UN pseudo-civ, somewhat like the barbarians, not under the control of a specific AI, they act under orders from the general assembly, and are considered "bad" to kill. But then again if you're doing bad enough stuff to get UN troops sent to your place, you probably won't care.