Civilizations version 3.0 hosted by Me

[Stefu]

Here's my humble suggestion:

While no special abilities should be fixed to civilizations, how about giving them one preferred Soc. Eng setting they will strive for, just like in SMAC, and make them angry to people who have different Soc. Eng setting in that category. For instance, if Greeks strive for Knowledge, they would shun Americans who only want Wealth. I doubt this even would be rasistic, as all examples can be clearly based on history: For instance, Zulus were nation that lived off war (It was their mean of getting cattle) and had huge, well trained standing army. Therefore, logically Zulus would have Power in their values settings.

My other proposal deals with Civ breakups. In rules.txt, there should be specified several nations that could be the independence-wanting parts of breaking-up empire. Here are some:

Americans: Confederates - Texans - Californians
Germans: Prussians - Austrians - Swiss
English: Canadians - Australians - South Africans
Celts: Irish - Scots - Welsh
Russians: Ukrainians - Poles - Finns
Vikings: Swedes - Norwegians - Danes
Romans: Palmyrans - Byzantine - Bosporans?

Well, you get the idea.

[loinburger]

Did I chop that summary up? Whoops. Guess I really should have slept more that day.

[Mo]

Instead of having a civ automaticaly dislike a civ because it has a different SE setting, I would like there to be a setting for the leader or for the civ how accepting they are of other SE settings. Also if two nations have been allies for a long time or have jointly saved each other from destruction they shouldn't become enemies because of SE settings. There are also several examples throughout history to support this: The US a democracy support the Iranian Monarchy before the revolution. The Fascists in World War two were allied with Japan which was a monarchy. The countries in the European Union(democracies) are on friendly terms with Cuba a communist country.
Two countrys who share several of the same SE settings should become closer allies/friends but it shouldn't affect how they treat other nations.

[Harel]

Hey.
Just wanted my 223 post.

Can't we all give up now and go home? No one bothers posting anymore, and frankly I am tired to check this site every day
But I feel drawned here...

Maybe I can brain-wash Sid to make him accept all my silly diplomatic ideas...

Oh don't mind me... too much apolyton made me a bit willy...

Oh, Yin, I see the light! The tunnel is so bright...
And look! It's Brain... waiting for me! I am coming Brain! We will have civ XXII. I always wanted to fix that bug that didn't give +1 prod to the english in XXI...

[Ruinexplorer]

Of course, from an Archeological or Historical perspective almost NONE of these are actual "civilisations". A real civilization would be something like "China", "The Romans", "Egypt" and so on. Things like the US or Russia would never make the cut. They are merely political entities, and the US merely an offshoot of various European civilizations. It has not developed a unique civilization of it's own. If the real world was a game, the same player would own most of Europe and the USA, Canada and Australia, as well as South Africa, and maybe Israel. They all have pretty mcuh the same systems and usually operate like parts of the same machine. Another Player would own Russia and Eastern Europe, another China and parts of the far east, another Japan and other parts of the far east (like Singapore), another most of the Middle east and Turkey, and yet another South America. Civilizations are not Countries! They are technically, places where Civilization occured, seperately from others, but for this debate, they should be basically groups of places that think and act/together alike.

How, exactly, were the Visigoths or the Vandals and so on "Civilizations"? - Answer: They weren't, they were merely invidual tribes in the greater "Teutonic tribal" whole, which could have counted as civilization of its own. The accurate historical definition of civilization is not too useful , I feel(otherwise we have too debate things like the relationship between the Romans and the Etruscans and so on). Real, honest-to-God, built from the bottom up civilizations are ones like:

China, Rome, Hellas (Greece), the various Celtic Civilizations (from Spain to Britain), Egypt, Other African civilizations (there are quite a few), Native American, Australian Aboriginal, The Teutonic civilisation(s) (from the Saxons and Vandals to the Vikings),
arguably the Japanese (they arrived as invaders a very long time ago, but so did most civs, so we can basically ignore that), several near-eastern civs, basically starting with the Sumerians and Babylonians and so on, the nomadic eurasian civs like the Huns and the Mongolians, and various island people of the pacific. Most of these groups of Civs should really count as single ones for playing purposes.

Colonies like the USA, or Turkey and so on really should not count as Civs in their own right (actually Turkey could, as it did have several civilizations, many of them quite interesting, but was colonised by the Greeks and then various other people, but it should NOT be called Turkey in the game, as there was no single "Turkish" civ. Turkey is a later political construct. The USA even more so. It is an example of the European civilization taking over another low-population civilization, not a Civ in its own right at all.

I would stay AWAY from using real leaders and limiting players to existing civs as well as classifying certain civs AUTOMATICALLY as minor. They may have been minor in our world, but might have been far more important in Civ III's randomly generated world. So the Romans dominated Europe for centuries... maybe they will be minor players this time, and, say, the Hellenes (Greeks) will fill their place, or whatever. One should remember that Alexander was not a Greek but a Macedonian and thus basically a memeber of a "minor" civilization and so on. Also avoid giving bonuses for specific leaders and or civs, as that smack of racial stereotyping, and that is just sooooooo 19th Century, not to mention bordering on the actually racist and insulting.

Do this instead: Give the player a huge selection of civs to choose from, as well as the opportunity to create his or her own (which in my case would be modelled on various real but obscure civs), and then give them a selection of bonuses and a couple of starting tech to choose from... They could have a total amount of points to spend or something, and say, get an extra settler or unit if they gave up a tech or whatever. That way, everyone would be happy, no-one could complain that they got "gipped" or worry about racism, and all would be good on the Earth =)

Seriously though, that IS the best way to do it.

------------------
"You're standing on my neck."

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Ruinexplorer (edited November 27, 1999).]</font>

[Mo]

One idea which was proposed a long time ago, but didn't go anywhere was that you get bonuses depending upon how you play. ex. If you build a lot naval ships and use them you will get a naval bonus. If you concentrate on improving your cities rather than conquring or expanding you might get an indeustrial bonus. ect...

With Minor civs I proposed earlier that any civ to be major would have to achomplish certain goals in a certain time limit at the begining of the game which would then seperate the minor and major.

[Mo]

bump

[Hugo Rune]

The "Swahili" Civilization listed above is highly dubious in it's current form. Sure, the Afro-Shirazi (Swahili) were an interesting civilization, but they were never really an integral state- the City-State of Kilwa had large landwinnings along the coast, but other cities existed in parallel as well.

Once Kilwa lost it's position as the controller of all Western Indian Ocean trade, Arabs took over, mostly from Zanzibar.

Tippoo Tib was an arabic slave trader almost 400 years after the glorious days of Kilwa, and wasn't a leader either... More appropriate names would be Ali bin Al-Hassan (Persian Prince and founder of Kilwa) Abu al-Mahawib al-Hassan bin Suleiman (Sultan of Kilwa in it's big day). They were both of Shirazi descent, therefore Persians, but since the culture was sufficiently different I'd say the Swahili warrant their own Civ. Maybe a minor one though- they were hardly more important than the Magyars in their heyday.

[Spartan187]

I would like to see the Jews/Israelis/Hebrews included as a minor civ at least, or preferably a major civ.

[Ekmek]

This is not really based on graphics but a suggetion on organizing graphic files.

a) For scenarios and games have separate folders for civ1, civ2 (meaning players) and in each folder you could have a culture specific files (i.e. units.gif, cities.gif, flag.gif, leader.gif, people.gif, throne room.gif, people.gif, even a rules.txt with unit characteristiscs and advances tree). So each civilization instead of drawing from one file like civ2 does now it would read from the the specific folder for that civ (not to big of a technology leap) this would also work well with civilization specifc units, wonders, city improvements so they would all have unique graphics, names, abilities. The trick would be having the rules text jump and read properly from the other rules text.

b) I think since the wonders videoes and graphics take up so much memory if Firaxis would sell the games as a multi-disc set. by this i mean like some of the games like byzatine have more than one disc for all the info. Firaxis would have one disc with the game gine on it. The second disc would have several folders as a graphics and even a civilizations library. several folders labeled romans, byzatines, etc. so when you start a game if you pick your opponents you select a folder that is a name of a tribe for major civ 1 - 10 and then pick the ones for minor civs (or however minor, major works). Or have a random function that randomly looks for the folders (maybe have an identifyier folder like D:\civs that the game looks for to find tribes). This would make it so if there are major minor civs or start up civs it would randomly pick from the disc each time (so it'll be different and you can probably store over 100 civs). This disc could also be the copyright disc that the game will probably have or this disc will be inserted after the game begins i.e. insert disc2).

c) This two disc system would also make add on future disc for more and more civs to add to your game possible. This could be linked to future scenarios discs that have scenarios and specific civs (and wonders etc.) that you can play with or if you build your own can access that civ folder on the disc 3.

[XarXo]

Well, this is my first message and I'm non-english speaker, so... Be patient with me please

My idea is that th actual "civilization" system (we can see it in Ctp1 and Civ1/Civ2) is totally obsolete. Better than a "civilization" or "tribe" selection we must select a cultural-ethnic zone. For example, in the Spanish civilization we can build cities like Barcelona or Madrid, but these two cities have an historial background totally diferent. It's like germans can build Paris because a time this city was under their power during the 2nd WW.

I preffer that when a player has to select the starting name it appears a map of the cultural division based in the actually survivors (the ones that support the Test of Time ). In each map that we do can perform this like a normal thing. So, in a Middle-Earth map we can divide in Elves, Humans, Dwarves, Valar, etc... In the Earth will be:

Amerindian
Occidental
Desertians (Arabians, Israel, Egypt, Persia...)
Oriental (Altaïr, Siberia, China, Mongolia, Japan...)
Hindosiamese (India and Pacific Southeast)
African (under the Sahara zone)
Australian-Polynesian

Inside these groups (if we don't select the random cultural) we can found a second level of divison according with the cultural base, in Occidental we can found:

Celts
Nordics
Gauls
Slavics
Mediterranean
Uralians

And inside it (if we don't try a random option) we found the ethnic group with (if is possible) a list of names of nations that formed. Some of these etnics appears in other
cultural-base zones (like english) because they have conserved the base but they are too mixed.

Celts:
-Welsh (Wales)
-Scottish (Scotland)
-Irish (Eire,Man)
-Galic (Gallic,Portuguese,Brasilian)
-English
(England, United Kingdom, United States of America, Australia, South Africa, Canada)

Nordics:
-Teutons (Germany, Austria, Holland,Flemish,Belgium)
-Vikings (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, England)
-Alpinians (Tirol, Retic, Friuli, Austria)

Gauls:
-Oïl (France, Belgium, Valonians, Luxemburguesians, Quebec)
-Oc (Occitane, Catars, Provence)

Slavics:
-Baltics (Bielorussians, Russians, Lituans, Estonians, Letonians, Poland)
-Carpatians (Ukranians, Bulgarians, Paennonians, Rumans, Slovaquians)
-Meridionals (Albanians, Bosnians, Slovenians, Croatians, Serbians)

Mediterranean:
-Hellenic (Greeks, Macedonians, Cyprus, Minoics)
-Italics (Italians, Romans, Etruscs)
-Iberians (Castillians, Catalans, Spanish, Argentinians, Chilenians, Colombians, Cubans, Caribbeans)
-Isolated (Corsic, Sardinians)

Uralians:
-Caucasians (Georgians,Armenians)
-Scandinavians (Finnish, Carelians)
-Westerns (Magyar-Hungary, Chequian, Basquian-Euskaldun)

Wow, and these are "only" the occidentals!

Also, depending from the time when you start, the starting city will one or another.
For example, in Castillians (Occidental-> Meditarreans -> Iberians) the first city surely wull be Logroño, Burgos or Valladolid. Not Madrid (these turned in to the capital during the XV). The same for Teotihuacan->Tenochtitlán, Cusco->Quito, Trondheim-> Oslo, etc...

Also there is another important thing. Some countries (Mexico, India, Peru...) have an important inavison from another countries, but they MUST don't be included in the invaders group.

I think that this is a great source of ideas for make an outsanding Civ III .
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by XarXo (edited August 12, 2000).]</font>

[noitazilivic]

I agree with ruin explorer- instead of chosing a leader the game should ask your name and then you can decide bonuses etc, with some kind of points system to make it fair.
This would make civ infinitley more variable and more personal, which is good!