Openciv3

[korn469]

professions:

i can sort of see how it fits into OC3 but i think that it could increase micromanagement to unplayable levels...

i think by assigning a percentage of the your units to a facility that it could simulate professions and not add to the overall micromanagement total for the game

we could put in certain demographic prerequisits that are something like this...you have a city of 50,000 people and you have just built a univsersity...however you have only been allocating 2% of your budget to education and your literacy rate is a miserable 15%...maybe you could only assign your literacy rate minus 10% to a university so that means you couldn't assign any more than 5% of your people in that city to your university...however if you had a 85% literacy rate you could assign up to 75% of your population to the univsersity if it could handle that much

[amjayee]

ethnicity+population+professions:

Korn: Thanks for your comments. It's good for me to notice what needs to be clarified.

Your concern of my system increasing micromanagement is justified, like the concern of losing the essential elements of civ. I try to relieve some of that concern.

The key to creating an ultimate civ game is to simulate certain things to increase game depth, to automate certain things to let the player concentrate in the essentials of civilization - empire building - and to create an AI that can beat the human in that. These things will help each other.

The population belongs to category of "simulating". It simulates how the people of your empire works and how it reacts to your choices, thus giving you a feeling of actually ruling something. People can be controlled only to certain extent - you cannot force them to do something they don't want, unless you have a powerful, loyal army that can control them, so you can force them to slavery. So, you can give direct orders only to slaves. Others only live in your empire, and try to make their living.

This belongs to the automation stuff. To live, the people need work. When they don't work, they use they time for reproduction (well, sex), for recreation, for religion, for rebelling... (wow all start with "re") and a little for technological advancement. But let's concentrate on working. To work, the people need job. Job is created either by player (or ai), or by a governor. The following things increase work:

-Resources (food etc.) are produced in tiles. Each tile is able to produce certain amount of each resource, depending on its properties and the infrastructure on the tile (farms, mines etc.) The actual amount produced depends on the amount of people living on that tile, thus "working" it. The need for food is the most important thing to fulfill. The player can either build farms, or order the region governor to increase food production.

This way, the tiles are still worked by the people, but there doesn't need to be 10000 people per tile. Instead, there could be a population of 2540 people. The more people, the more it produces - to certain limit. More realistic, but it is automatic. No micromanagement.

-Building projects are owned by the region. They create short-time jobs.

-Upkeeping and upgrading the existing infrastructure, improvements etc. create permanent jobs.

-Civilizations will employ scientists.

-Religions employ priests.

-Later, companies can employ workers and professionals.

-etc. (more to come)

People will find themselves a job. They prefer finding it in their current home tile, to stay within their own population. If their home tile can't offer work for them, they must move, but they won't go very far, and try to find another population with same ethnicity and religion. If the player has much unemplyoment in his empire, one solution for him would be to find new colonies. Otherwise, the people might start to emigrate from his empire.

The profession system is also automatic. They are needed, because different professions produce different things, there are quite few members for some professions (like priests) and because it is harder for the people to switch to certain professions. So, the people don't switch just jobs, but professions, too. Certain professions are needed for certain jobs.

The population unit system is only for simulating the ethnical/religious aspect of the game. It simulates the fact that the people with same ethnical identity and religious beliefs tend to stick together. The population unit has nothing to do with the former head system. It only "sorts" the people to groups that are expected to work similarly.

I'm not sure how the culture works. It seems to have two sides: the first one is the "cultural life", meaning exercising the different cultural areas (art, literature) and the level of excellence and activity in those areas. This is decided separately for each civilization. The other part is the collection of habits, customs, ways of life etc. specific for each people. Perhaps these two must be separated.

The first part would be dealt with cultural "advances" as explained by me earlier. The second part would be a unique property for each population. It would be a collection of cultural influences that group has adapted. For example, a population would be ethnically french, but it could have major influences of british culture. If the british influence is high, the population might eventually "immigrate" to the british population, but leave some french influence. If you consider the modern european countries, they each have many influences from all other european countries, from america and from Jews, but still they all have their own unique cultures. This is something that definitely needs to be simulated. It adds game depth, and it is of use when determining the changes in populations.

One more time: there will be as little micromanagement as possible. The player's job will be to create the best strategy for the current situation, and guide the building of his empire. I hope it will be both fun and satisfying. If someone wants something more civ-like... well, the game will be essentially like former civ games, but many things will be changed - hopefully better. There are many commercial civ-like games, and many open source ones. We have to come up with something new to justify our project. In my opinion, we already have enough civ-clones available. We intend to take turn-based strategy to new heights with our game.

[The Joker]

It is really great to finally being able to do something usefull in this project.

This is all very impressive! It is really odd to see a game grow from the very beginning. When making suggestions for Civ3 we always assumed that the basics were all done. But here everything is possible. The amount of work laid into these ideas is impressive. And the quality is great.

I definately think that there should be a thread for each of the most important ideas here. If we really get some discussion going it is a necessity.

I am looking forward to reading all of your ideas, Amjayee and the others. I don't think I will be able to read it all today, but here goes:


Turn system:

I think it will work good with both systems. It is hard to say what is good or bad about them when you have not played them. But for now it sounds great.


Ethnicity:

This should definately be included. I think that it should be possible for a part of a civ to develop it's own ethnicity with time (maybe it could be made in a way like the Liberty Bells of Colonization?).

I think that there should be some civs at the beginning (4000BC) - 10 or so - and then more coming. Some of these later civs should emerge on their own in areas where no other civs are, and some will be splinters of other civs. I would like a game with as many civs as possible. I also think that each ethnic groups should be controlled by its own AI, with it's own agenda (independance if they dont have this, if they do it owuld be power, wealth, knowledge or something).

It should be possible to add or remove as many ethincities as you wanted in the game. The splinter civs of each ethnicity would be named after their motherciv. So an English splinter could be called the Americans or the Australians etc.


Population:

Number 2 number 2!! Always. I think it could work if we had population units (PUs) of 1000 people each. There should be no amount lower than this. Each unit built would remove at least 1 PU from the city it was built in. I am not sure how the ressource management system would work here. I would like the game to be without squares, but I guess this is too hard to do at the moment...?

Each PU would have an ethnicity, a religion and a culture (the culture could be stuff like consumerism or power or such).

It could be cool to have people living in the countryside. Not sure how it would work though.

I think that in a conquored city there should be a pretty fast change (over 10-50 turns) to where the people in the city still have their own ethnicity, but accept that they are now part of a new civ. They will not cause any more unhappyness, but if the conquoring civ is weakened they might try to break away. This process would be determined by your previous actions towards the civ they belonged to (was it you who started the war etc), your current relation to the city's old civ (as long as you're still at war there should be no assimilation), the relative power of the 2 civs (if you are very rich and powerful where the civ they used to belong to is a third world country they would quickly assimilate) plus how well your SE settings fit with the city's Individualism rating (if you have not heard me describe this I can do it again).

The time it takes for the civ to actually become a part of your ethnicity would be much longer. They would be determined a lot by how you treat the city (if you build a lot of improvements there they will quickly become assimilated, if there is a lot of migration between this city and your other cities the assimilation will also go faster etc). This assimilation period will take anywhere from 50 to 100s of turns.

I am not, however, sure that stuff like workhours should be a part of a civ game.


CE:

I really like this concept. It is only very vague described, so I'm not sure how it would work, but I feel as if it could be used with great benefits. I like the fact that science comes after religion in small cities. This could help solve ICS. I think that a part of the science budget should be used for education, to preserve the knowledge you already have. The more people the larger this amount. This would help making sure that larger civs do not neccesarily make more research than smaller ones.


Professions:

I really like this! It must remain simple, but it could be a really great addition to the game.

I see one problem though: How to portray unemployment. In all previous civ games there were always work to do. Even with an unemployment model you could always just have people making units. To solve this I think raingoons famous Energy model could be at help. If all production needs energy (in modern times) and energy is something you dont just throw away on meaningless projects, plus that units are expensive in upkeep, you could have people that simply didn't have anything to do!


Cities:

I am not sure if all production should be made in the cities. In ancient times there were production outside of them too. I think, that when you have built a factory the only workers who would benefit from this factory would be the people you actually made work in them. These would have far greater productivity than all previous production methods, but would also require a certain amount of energy to work. So in order for a factory to have 1 PU make 2 production in stead of the usual 1 you would need 1 energy. It should work as simple and yet as realistically as that.


Villages:

I am not sure I think this should be needed. If we make it possible for people to live in every tile there would just be people living there as farmers and not neccesarilly in villages. I guess that when a tile gets over 10 PUs on it it would become a city. It should also be possible for you to move peple from the countryside to the cities (needed for the industrial rev), which would cost some money and create a bit unhappynedd (depending on your gov type).

I am not sure how all this should work. It must remain simple enough for it to work when you have 20 cities. I think it should be dificult to have more cities due to your empire collapsing etc.


Regions:

I don't think I like this system. I think that if a civ's SE structure is a Federation, a Unitary or a Confederation it should have regions (these types would be needed if you are a large civ). A civ with a central gov, however, would not need it.

Apart from this I think that there should be a lot of territories inside of your civ that had their own status. These should be Protectorates, Colonies and Occupied territory.

Occupied territory would have a very high police rate, no matter what SE settings you had. It would be high enough for you to supress all cities, if you had the suficient military to control them. Unfortunately an occupied city would produce no (or very very little) trade, as it would be very chaotic with local people fighting your forces all the time, and very little production. In other words it would be very expensive to have occupied territory and you would not have it unless you thought that the territory would later be of some use to you. Of cause the unhappyness in occupied territory would be enormous, but it would not matter if you had enough military power to supress it.

Colonies would also have an improved police rate, although not as good as the occupied territory. They would be runned by an official directly pointed out by you, the leader. So if you were a democratic civ (in which I think the people should have a lot of power - like being able to overrule a production order you had made, if they really didn't want it) you would be able to whatever you wanted in your colonies. Unfortunately there would be some corruption and unhappyness.

Protectorates would be areas within your sphere of interest where you did not have total control. They would most likely be populated by another ehtnicity than your own. The protectorate would have a capital and it's own SE settings (which you would have some power over), and could build whatever it wanted in it's cities. You would be able to see all the protectorate could see, and move your units freely in it's territory and cities. You would decide when creating the protectorate how large a part if it's taxes you would get (a very high amount would create unhappyness in the protectorate) and whether it would do it's own research or give all of it's research to you (if the latter was chosen you would have to give discoveries to the protectorate - it would create unhappyness if you had stealth while you wouldn't give the protectorate the wheel, but if you just didn't wanted it to have nuclear fission it would be ok.


Civilizations:

Sounds great! It is good that minor civs are not treated differently. I think that it is imperative that the AI is aware of it's own situation. A very weak civ would not threat a powerful one. It would more likely try to ally with it. If there were a lot of war in the world minor nations should come to the large ones and ask to become their protectorates - they would give some of their freedom for protection. Powerful civs should end up with clientels of smaller ones. This could, if done well, let us have cold war situations in the games.


Units:

YES! This is excactly what I want the conscription system to be like!

It should be very expensive to have a large standing army. This would especcially be as the men in the army would be unavailible for work. If a demographics model is included it would be the working population that was used for military. If they stay away for a long time the people at home could end up starving. Having a large part of your pop away for war could also end up ruining your economy. This could cause peasant revolts, and, if you are not careful, full scale civil wars.


Culture:

One question: What would you use culture for? Why would you want to be good at poetry?


Religion:

A good religion model is nice for the game. I think the disadvantage of having a very strong religion should be, that the religious leaders could tell you what to do ("Go to war against civ x or we will cause massive unhappyness and civil wars"). You could end up going at war against your will.


Companies:

I think a revised model of Youngsun's Coorporations idea could be used. I will check it out within the next few days.


Technologies:

Hmm, this does sound pretty complex. It seems hard to imagine. I am not sure I would like so much complexity in the Technology area. But I am not at all sure. If done right this could be really great.

One thing I can agree on is the spread of technology. I think that technology should spread, so that it is hard for the first civ to make a discovery, significantly easier for the next (if this civ is in contact with the civ that has the discovery) and so on. If more than 50% of the civs of the world has a discovery the research time should go down to 10-20% of the original time. This would make sure that civs started out later than the others would not be completely pathetic.


Building projects:

I like the infrastructure thing. This could be described by a thing as simple as a number (so no dividing it into houses, roads, sewering, broad band internet lines etc. It would become too complex). I think this number should have a maximum, which could be increased by technological breakthoughs. It is a good idea that if the pop of a city is above the amount the infrastructure can handle it creates unhappyness etc. These people could then have a certain chance to move out of the city and either just to the countryside or to found a new city. I actually think that all ancient expandation should happend this way. Not untill your capital has a certain amount of people in it can you begin making more cities.

Improvements sound great. They should require upkeep, which would be both money and production (and maybe more).

the list of improvements sounds ok for now. After some thought we will propably expand this.

I dislike having the worlds greatest improvement being a wonder. I think wonders should remain what they are, certain buildings (or, in cases like the WWW, other things) built especcially for their purpose. They could still have certain other effects, like having agendas and aversions with the SE settings.

Secret projects: First of all I really dislike the name. I always thought it was ridiculous in SMAC that it was blasted up in your head whenever a faction had built some "secret" projet. I do, however, think that some wonders would require other stuff than buildings (like Magellans expedition). Besides from the wonders there should be National Projects. Things that all civs could build one of, which would give national bonuses to that civ. These could be the Manhattan Project (allowing Nukes), The Agency (like the CIA and KGB - would give an expionage bonus) and more.

Units: I don't like the workshop from SMAC (too much management, too little benefit). In stead I suggest we just have predefined sets for each unit.

[The Joker]

Korn:

I agree that having a "real" pop model does create micromanagement. But I dont like the percentage system, as I think that it is more important knowing how many people you have working on something than know how large a part of a city is working on it.

We have a problem here that needs to be solved. I can not do so right now, however.

Professions:

I am not sure if this would work well. I think the best thing we can do is make it all customizable. If you want to play without professions and ethnicity etc you can do so, if you want to play with you can too. We sill need to solve the micromanagement problem though.


Amjayee:

I would also like to help scouting the forums for ideas useable in our game. Not right now, however. I am in the middle of exams and I really need to study. In about a month I should be done, and I can begin.

Untill then how about posting a thread at the Civ3 ideas forum in which we just quickly describe the project and invite people to help? We could write that this is their chance to be there at the very beginning of a new game and influence it. And that they do not at all need to work a lot on it. Just read a few ideas, comment them and maybe give us some ideas too.

I would do it, but I am too tired to do anything contructive right now. Guess I'll go to bed...

[amjayee]

Joker:

With some team members, we agreed on making several threads for our project in the Alternate Civs forum. I thought of a possible division. What do you all think about these:

-Population (includes workhours, CE, Cities etc.)
-Building Projects (infrastructure, improvements, wonders, unit equipment)
-Empire (ethnicities, civs, regions)
-Religions
-Culture
-Technology
-Units

Later, when I manage to finish the ideas for them, I would add:

-Map (this will come quite soon)
-Trade
-Diplomacy
-Combat

-any others?

It would help a lot having multiple threads. At least my messages get too long otherwise - like this one. In addition, everyone could concentrate on the field they are interested.

Population:

I think we could use PU's of 1000 individuals. But with this system, there would eventually be a massive amount of PU's (6 billion people would mean 6 million PU's). That's why I prefer to use only one PU per tile with the same properties (ethnicity, religion, culture), and it would have a number telling the excact amount of the individuals in the PU. It might sound like it would add the micromanagement in the game, but that's quite the opposite. The key idea is, that the population is a independent entity of the world. No civilization can control it very tightly - it just tries to adapt to the environment created by players (ai or human) and make its living. So: the players build the world, and try to control the land and people (in the form of PU's). The people react to the players' actions, and try to adapt to the living conditions they are given.

Slavery

Players have an opportunity to turn the people into slaves. They can be controlled and told what to do, but this requires that they are guarded and kept under control constantly. Humans are not like sheep. They want to be free and do as they please. If forced, they might obey, but they don't accept that. When they get a chance, they will break free.

About people living in the countryside, it would be done simply by giving each tile a population, or multiple populations, if they have different groups living in them. And yes, with this system the villages would not be needed. But a new city shouldn't be created each time the tile's population exceeds certain level. The inefficiency of production in tiles with very much population would increase. In certain point, it would be more favorable to build a city to get things organized. In a more free government, the citizens could build a city. Or an advisor might suggest player to build a new city.

The people "work" the tile they are on, working in the fields and mines created by player, or build farms themselves. They will serve their rulers, pay taxes etc., but they demand they are taken care of. People want food, security, religion, entertainment etc. If they don't get those, they are unhappy, and might rebel.

All that sounds complex, but it doesn't need to be so. In any case, creating a good population system needs work. Most of the functions needed by this system would be done with any kind of system. So why not make it good? I always hated the kind of population micromanagement that was needed in civ2 (optimizing the output of the tiles by moving people around). With this system, the population would work quite automatically. And it would be the same for AI, too, so the human player would not be in disadvantage.

Of course it could be enhanced even more. Keep commenting, every comment gives me more ideas.

Workhours/years:

This concept is quite fundamental in the system. Perhaps I explained it too briefly. It works quite like the "shields" system in former civs. Certain amount of population produces certain amount of workyears. That amount depends on your SE settings - you don't set the workday length like in CTP. Instead, the form of society you have chosen decides the amount of workyears produced.

Each building project requires certain amount of workyears, and certain amounts of certain resources. Also the workers must be paid (unless they are slaves), so the projects require some money. The more people working in a project, the faster it is finished. But usually you don't assign the workers to a project - you just start the project, thus creating jobs. The "project supervisors" (they are not modelled in any specific way, I just have to explain it somehow) then hire workers for it. You could order the "project supervisor" to speed up the project. This requires hiring more people, and costs more money.

Scientific advances could require some workhours by scientists, religious advances (or whatever they are called) might need workhours by priests etc.

So, workhours are needed, but they are not visible to the player. Even when starting a project, required workhours need not to be shown - advisors just could estimate, how much time it would require. Generally, the advanced functions would be hidden inside the system, and many things could be automatized by using advisors. This creates the feel of actually ruling something, and allows the player to decide what is essential in the game for him. He could even decide to play as a governor of some province - or in a scenario the player could be a governor whose goal would be to throw a revolution and become the ruler of the whole empire (For example a Julius Caesar scenario. You remember, that he was the governor of Gallia Transalpina. Then he conquered whole Gallia and part of Britannia, allied with two other governors, and became the dictator of Rome. Off-topic, sorry)

Professions:

Yes, I think professions are needed. They would replace the specialist/talent system in civ2/SMAC, though the player wouldn't directly "convert" the people to other professions. Profession are required especially by trade (merchants), science, and religion. Of course it could be possible for the player to spend some money for hiring "court scientists", for example. The player could then order those to try to find a solution to some problem - for example he could ask them to develop better warships for his army. If the player pays well, he could draw the best scinetists from other countries. These kinds of tasks are the ones the player should be doing in empire building building game, not optimizing the tile production.

About unemployment, it could be possible to have two groups for the professions: workers/unemployed workers, scientists/unemployed scientists (very dangerous, they are highly likely to travel to other countries for work) etc. And yes, there would most likely be unemployment throughout the game. A high number of unemployed workers would lead to risen poverty in the empire, which increases unhappiness.

About energy, I agree it should be added. I have heard of Raingoon's model, but I couldn't find it. Could you copy it here? Perhaps with the discussion about it too? If it's very long, send it to me via email to amjayee@kolumbus.fi, so I can check it and include the best parts of it to the ideas.

Actually, all production requires energy. In ancient times, most of it comes from workhours. In modern times, it could be possible to use steam and electrical power to create "workhorus". It could be created in power plants. You could create power lines to transfer electrical energy (not visible on map, they fall to the infrastructure category) Also some units would require energy, like modern ships. They would have their own power plants, but using them would cost money... I will eleborate on this, when I see the raingoons ideas. What do you think about these ideas?

Cities:

Oops, I used wrong terms when I said cities would be main places for production. Most of production (meaning production of food and resources) takes place in countryside (tiles without cities). Most building takes place in cities. Basically you can build most things almost anywhere, but building in cities gives some efficiency bonuses, due to better connections and infrastructure. If some major building projects are needed outside cities (remember you can build most improvements in countryside, too) you could build a worker village, roads etc.

Regions:

I disagree. Throughout the history, every even a little greater empire has had to divide the empire to regions. The government type doesn't matter - central gov just gives less independence to the regions etc. The larger a region is, the more penalties it will have. The penalties would become smaller with time, but even in modern times they would be there. It is difficult to rule a large area without some local government. The penalties would be corruption, inefficiency, disorder etc. The farther the tile is from the region capital, the larger the penalties, but of course this would not be the main factor when determining them. This is much the same as in civ2, but stronger, so you need regions.

Your suggestions about the territories are good, that's what I had in mind, too. I just called them regions, and added the fact that local government is needed to keep the empire together.

Civs:

Yes, the AI needs to be a lot smarter. And it will.

Units:

I agree completely. It is good to see it is liked.

Culture:

This wouldn't be the most important factor determining your success in game, but it does add some depth to game doesn't it? The civ2 world was very dull, only meaning for building an empire was either to conquer the whole world or to build a spaceship. What is human civilization withou culture? Also a rich cultural life would give many bonuses, and it would also affect the game score. Of course it could be adjustable by players, but I think in the basic game, you would need science, religion, and culture to succeed. Those are what people need and want - remember you can't control them very much. What would you do if someone would ban movies or football? Culture is not only art, but also sports etc.

Religion:

Yes, religions would have their own goals, and they could try to control civilizations. Also, a good player would be able to control religion and use it for his own purposes. It might also be possible to play as a religion.

Companies:

If you find the Youngsuns model send it here.

Technologies:

Yes, it is more complex than earlier, but also it is mostly automatic. Player could increase the scientific progress by building universities, budgeting more money for education etc. but mainly it cannot be affected as directly as earlier. I need to describe the system better, and find out how it would be possible to start more simply, and add complexity.

I agree about the spread of technology. That sounds quite good. Also it is important that a large empire doesn't automatically be good in science and small one worse.

Building projects:

Yes, I think also we could start with simple infrastructure model. I hope in future I could make a more complex system for those that want to manage their cities in more detail.

About the people moving out of the city that hasn't got good enough infrastructure, I don't think it would be that straightforward, but basically yes. Mainly, the lowest-class people (workers) can't move away as they please. Highest class (scientists etc.) are more likely to do so.

About improvements, the upkeep includes also some workhours (otherwise there would be very large amount of unemplyed people). I will refine the improvement system, too.

About wonders: some of them are clearly buildings, like great library. So I think some of them could be the world's greatest improvements - I think it makes more sense than the older system. But they would not be declared as wonders right away, but after some time. Also the wonder effects need to be refined, I think the ones in civ2 were dull, and not very interesting. They would get the effects of normal buildings, plus some extra effect that has something to do with the building. This can be debated though, and could perhaps be adjusted by player.

About projects: OK I don't like secret project name either. National project sounds good. I agree that they are something every civilization could build once. Perhaps the first builder could get an extra bonus.

Micromanagement etc. in the second message:

As I have said, micromanagement will not be a problem in this kind of system, since everything can be automated. It is up to the player to decide what he wants to concentrate on.

Also I think that the population is much better modeled by making it "free". If it cannot be controlled (except with slavery) there is no need to micromanage. Then, you just need to use some statistical maths to decide how the population interacts with player's deeds. No need for complex percentage systems.

[korn469]

sorry i was gone for a few days and i missed your post

about slavery here is my idea

i feel that discontent people should produce less than content or satisfied people

discontent (decreased production)
content (normal production)
satisfied (increased production)

however with slaves they would always have the same production as content people (normal production) however it would require police/military/secret police units be present for them to work at all...if there wasn't any of the units presents slaves would produce nothing (and have the chance of launching a slave rebellion also)

how does that sound?

korn469

[korn469]

before we advance any further into the OC3 project i would like to state one thing about civ and civ2

in those games you were not the government or a corporation, or a single ruling dynasty, or the military high command, or a business cartel

you were the entire civ

from the most oppressed slave to the most pampered politician you were every single person in your civ, you were also every single institution and every single tradition

that was your role in civ

now what are we making a player's role in openciv3? there has not been one single dynasty to last from the begining of recorded time to now...would the player warp into the new government? or would the game end when the player's rule collapse or what?

korn469

[VetLegion]

Hi Korn,

This is interesting to mee too. I have thought about it ( even made a poll in civ2-strategy section ), and now I think it is rather irrelevant. You are a despot/king/president/cancellor whatever.

Someone wrote once that under democracy in civ2 you have even more control over people than in monarchy, so it is "unrealistic". This is true. However, democracy has other disadvantages that balance it in the terms of gameplay.

If we made a determined statement who a player is, we jump into a "realism" trap, so I left the question open.

A point I am trying to make, is to let loose a little on the "realism" argument. This is a very often argument in civ3 suggestions, and it needs the "handle with care" label.

Steffen Gerlach made (c2e) a few good points on his homepage. About strategy vs. simulation and such. http://www.steffengerlach.de/cz/

The balance is needed between historical accuracy and gameplay. However, history is one of civs strongest arguments, and I give an example of SMAC, which is great, but not the same as civ.

I also added the ideas you orriginaly made about idea-making (remember? ) to the game FAQ. It will get uploaded soon I hope, I think we should stick to those guidelines.

[amjayee]

Korn:

The slave ideas etc. were good, I can agree.

About the player's role, I think too the player is the "spirit" of the civilization. Players should not be given a name of a specific person, but the name of the civ. It is ridiculous to play 6000 years as Julius Caesar. Also no dynasty lasts that long (well, the Japanese Yamato dynasty has lasted for 2600 years.)

Although it might be possible to make it so, that every once in a while, each civilization gets a strong leader, that stands out from the other leaders that civ has had. The leader would have his special abilities, like war, economy or diplomacy. Then the player should make use of those abilities. After some time, the leader dies.

But even if the player is the spirit of civilization, the population should be autonomous, and not very controllable - possibly depending on the government type.

VetLegion:

Also I have read Steffen's texts about simulation vs. strategy. There are some good points in it, but with some things I disagree. It is all cool to have "pure strategy", but if the environment doesn't feel real and doesn't give you a feel of ruling something, it isn't interesting.

Civ2 had a good gameplay, but it wasn't interesting. It was nice to play, but left me an empty feeling. It didn't make me care about the people. Also the player had to do very much repetitive actions, and he repeated same strategies over and over again.

I know that is what some people want. They are free to do so. My point is, is there any point in making this game only one more clone of the old civ1 idea? There are plenty of games, even open cource, that those players may choose. To make this game stand out of the crowd, it has to be different.

In order to do it, I think we have to increase realism, without adding micromanagement, which is done by automation of certain repetitive and "micro-level" tasks. That means, there is plenty of simulation in the background, that gives player the feel of having a world to rule. The world works even without the player. Then, there is strategy. Strategical decisions mean large scale planning. Player makes the big decisions by giving orders to his advisors and governors, controls the units etc.

It might sound like this wouldn't give the player much to do, but since the timeline of the game is 6000 years, there will be plenty to do. The performance of the empire could be fine-tuned ad infinitum, even without need to perform repetitive micro-level tasks. Each historical era would be given its own characteristics, with new challenges to the player. Just read history books, world history is full of events on evey corner of globe.

With some devotion and new ideas we would make this the best strategy game, and the most fascinating simulation. Isn't it worth it? Isn't the world already full of meaningless games? Will this game be one more member in that group? I don't think so, what about you?
[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited May 22, 2000).]

[VetLegion]

Amjayee, very inspired post

Yes, realism is important, as we both claim.
Most of the ideas in civ3 forums are ideas how to make game more realistic. I agree, if we only wanted gameplay, we would be doing tetris The objective is to implement as many real-world mechanisms in OC3 as possible. There are some problems that emerge to me when I think about levels of abstraction that are needed.

The most recent example is the one with 3D map. Given the abstraction level of the game, civ2 didnt need 3d engine, even if they had the means to do it!

Civ2 is game that has its set of abstractions very set and defined. Tiles to represent terrain, cities to represent population and production centres. We are going to redefine meaning to most things civ2 depends on, starting with tiles and cities.

Now in all that redefining and adding new features, we need to keep in mind Korns guidelines and "realism" vs gameplay issues.
We also need to have in mind the scale of this game.

One of the most beautiful things in civ for me ( unlike to you amjayee ) is the possibility to detach myself from "the people". I send masses to death without second thought, I starve cities if they are unhappy. People often suggest: "I want to give my units names, like 7 strike brigade, etc". I dont want to do this, they are all alike, a spendable good in my civ games.

May I make a suggestion? Can we keep this thread for these "high-level" / "philosophical" matters, and keep others in separate threads (as korn started)? Or even better, start a new tread called "Scope, abstraction and realism", or something like that.

Keep discussing

[amjayee]

VetLegion:

Thanks for a good reply.

I am well aware that some people like to playthe game as you. That's perfectly ok. The big question is, can we make a game that both groups want to play.

Naming cities is easy, if someone wants to do it, he can, if someone else doesn't, he is free to do so. We just have to add possibility to name units. It should also be possible to turn off this feature, so the units would not have names, they would just be called with the unit type.

Map is another easy task, eventually there might be a 3d map, but the player could choose a 2d height-mapped map or flat 2d map. No problem.

I think most of the problems can be solved by giving players wide possibilities to change the game rules. This causes a problem, that Steffen Gerlach noticed quite well: changing rules makes it difficult to make a good ai.

I think this can be solved with a compromise: the rules couldn't be changed freely, but in certain ranges; player has certain options to choose from. Then ai is teached to handle each one of these options. More work, yes, but more flexibility for the player.

So, I think our eventual goal should be to create that kind of system. Of course we should, and will, start out simple. But we have to design the system so, that it allows these kinds of options. Like you proposed, I will make an own section for that discussion. Also I am making an own thread for every game area. Expect to see them here shortly.

The first message of each section is a description of the system discussed so far. I will be updating that description. Also I will list there the "realism-adjusting possibilities" the player should have.

The first prototype will be simple, in it we will not need to care much about those. But whe we start to make the final components, we need to have an idea of how to allow the realism etc. settings. I will keep that discussion in the programming mailing list.

I will create also a General Discussion thread. I will keep there the most recent info about the project, and the general discussion. I hope this thread will be gradually abandoned.
[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited May 23, 2000).]

[amjayee]

There, now I have made a new thread for all game areas I could come up with for now. I also sent an advertising message to the general ideas forum. Hopefully some people get interested.

So, now I officially state that the design work for Openciv3 project has started. I will be updating the threads regularly. Please concentrate the discussion to the appropriate threads I started. This thread can be abandoned.

[S. Kroeze]

This is one of the oldest threads of this Forum. I still enjoy reading these discussions and ideas.

And here is a link to my favourite thread of Apolyton. It also contains my first post ever, 7 December 1999.
You can meet some old acquaintances there!

[Maniac]

Really? I didn't even notice you then. I thought I first met you here at GGS. And personally I look back with very bad memories at the Civ3 SE time. I remember acting very childish then at certain times. I still feel sorry for that... Oh well, I guess it's my young age which causes me not to give a high importance to keeping things for remembering.