Openciv3

[amjayee]

=Creative energy

Instead of using old "light bulbs" or "beakers" as units of science, let's use certain abstract amount of creative energy. This simulates the fact that the humans tend to want to do something when they do not work. It can be used for recreation (using the results of culture), for creating culture (like art, sports), for creating new solutions to problems (technological advancement), for religious activity, or in some cases for rebellious actions. Some professions transform their workhours directly towards some creativity-requiring task, like scientists and priests.

The use of CE also solves the problem how to simulate the cultural/religious part of human civilization. Some of it will go to waste, of course. This way, all three can be treated in the same way. This is discussed later in more detail. This also holds the key for simulating the unhappiness of the people, I think. Of course the CE should be only one part of it. The goal should be, that all three, science, religion, and culture, are needed. Player's score should be affected by the level of progress he has made on these fields.

NOTICE:
By using this system, the older specialist system is not necessarily needed. What do you think?

What kinds of things affect the amount and distribution of CE? Some base amount of CE created by certain amount of population should be determined. This simulates the fact that the people cannot be stopped from using their creativity. (Well, perhaps except if they are kept in slavery.) The size of the city puts certain limits to how the CE can be used: in smaller cities, the religious needs come first, then comes science, then culture. Also, some social matters affect the total amount: how hard the people need to work, how controlled the society is, how the people are encouraged to use their creativity, what's the cultural environment the player creates; this could be done with SE. Player could use sliders to control his society. The properties of the society decide the total amount of CE produced.
These should, though, have only relatively minor effect. This simulates the fact that the government can't very efficiently guide the people's minds. It can only create an environment, where the CE is used.

How to make the most of the CE? If the city has an academy/university, the CE is much more efficiently used for science; they are places where educated people gather to learn more and to meet other educated people. Similarly, theatre/concert hall boosts the cultural life, church/cathedral religious life. This should be the principal means of controlling the CE. Another important means should be funding: the player should budget some of his incomes to science, culture, and church. The goal should be, that all three of these need to be funded, and there should be also other expenses: military, infrastructure, governmental, social, etc., so it wouldn't be possible to put 70-80 percent of the money to science, like in former civs.

[amjayee]

=Professions

Each city has certain amount of individuals exercising each one of the professions. Each profession produces something.

Settlers: this is a special group. Usually they work as units.
Refugees: likewise.

Slaves: The people with no civil rights. The corner stone of every ancient economy. Generally, the player needs slaves in the beginning of every game. Notice though, that the slaves need necessarily not to be treated badly.

Workers: Produce workhours to be used for building, producing food etc. They include farmers, fishers, miners, builders, artisans (pre-mocern producers of things), laborers (factory workers) etc. If needed, it could also be possible to create an own profession for each worker type.

Merchants: produce trade goods from other nations.

Artists: produce cultural advancement. This could also include full-day sportsmen and -women in modern times, as funny as it sounds...

Scholars/Students. They become eventually priests, officials, scientists or professionals.

Priests: Produce religious advancement. They can be as well Monks etc.

Officials: run the businesses of state. Indispensable for every advanced nation.

Scientists: Produce scientific and technological advancement.

Professionals: Educated people of modern times. Are at service of companies, and produce mainly taxes.

Soldiers are treated differently. They are not counted to the city population.

Primitives: a special group. Primitive people, hunters, gatherers, etc.

The profession system is not complicated. The professions of the people are not permanent - the people can change professions flexibly according to what is needed.

It works like this: if there are unemployed citizens, the program tries to search the current location for work. If work is found, the unemployed citizens are assigned to that job. If work is not found from the same tile, it is searched elsewhere. The area that is searched depends on the era-people are not willing to travel very far away to look for work, or they might not even have possibility for that.

Certain professions need education, for example not everyone can work as priests or scientists. Therefore, the scholar/student profession is needed. Scholars can be found only in cities with academies or universities. The population properties, its size and era decide, how many of the citizens can become students. Certain percentage of the students each year become a member of one of the "educated" professions. The students are more willing to travel long ways after work, even to different countries. Also, the knowledge-thirsty people are more willing to travel to universities. Thus, the first universities shouldn't have problems getting students.

Generally, the people tend to find themselves a job. First, the need of food must be fulfilled. When there is enough food, the people are able to attend to other jobs. The players or other ai entities may start building projects, that are explained in more detail later. The people will find an open job in one of the projects available. If there is no work, the people will first look for it inside their home region, then in other regions of that nation - but much more reluctantly - and finally from other nearby nations. If work cannot be found, or the people can’t or don’t want to go further to find it, they become unemployed, which may result in unwanted effects - like the people living in poverty or starting to rebel in frustration.

[amjayee]

=Cities

City is a densely-populated, well organized and defended center of trade, production and government. Building cities keeps your empire organized and centralized. Cities are built mainly by the central government of the civilization.

There can be only one city per tile. Cities can be built in adjacent tiles. Cities can grow larger than one tile.

Generally, all production takes place in cities.

There's more to come here, I will send more ideas for this later.

[amjayee]

=Villages

These are small population centers, that are built mainly automatically by your people. Usually they tend to appear within the mines and farms you build. Villages don't build anything, they only host the population in that tile. They could be shown on map.

Villages could grow and become eventually cities. In modern times, the suburbs of cities could be modelled with villages; when city grows, suburbs start to appear in the adjacent tiles.

Also this section needs some refinement.

[amjayee]

=Regions

Region is a restricted geographical area, that is a part of some civilization. The region has a certain level of independency. Every civilization has at least one region. Every growing civilization has to be divided to many regions. When the size of the region grows, severe penalties occur.

The region system would make it easier to allow the small civs, that have been conquered by larger ones, to break apart; the small civ is merged to the larger one as a new region. The region will preserve its national identity for some time, depending on the situation.

Each region should have at least one city, that is the region capital. All food and resources produced in the region are collected to the capital, and redistributed where they are needed. Regions produce taxes to the civ they are controlled by, in form of money, food, and resources. If a region hasn't got cities, they work somewhat inefficiently, since each tile works independently. Also if there isn't a capital, collecting taxes is very inefficient.

The military units are hired, upkept and owned by the regions. Even if some region has some independency, the ruler could order the region to create certain units for his army.

Regions can have different names, depending on the situation. Like: provinces, territories, states, colonies, protectorates etc.

[amjayee]

=Civilizations/Nations

A civilization is a certain amount of people in certain geographical area, that is under the rule of one government. A better word for it could be "Nation". Civilizations fall, and can rise again. New civilizations can be created as a result to many kinds of game events. Minor civs are not treated differently, they are just small civilizations that can work in a special way.

Each civilization has to have at least one region, and preferably at least one city. One of the cities has to be the national capital. Serious efficiency penalties occur, if the capital falls, until new capital is set. The capital collects the taxes from the regions, and stockpile and re-distribute them. If there are no cities in the civ, it is in some kind of anarchy, and works inefficiently. Also collecting taxes is very inefficient.

[amjayee]

=Units

The military unit system is a little different from the earlier games. In this game, creating units would require three things: The men, the equipment, and the training. You could build the unit equipment in some city, then transfer them to some region, where you hire the men for the unit from the region's population. When you don't need the unit anymore, you could "disband it" - let the men go to their work - but the equipment are stored, so you can later create another unit, in another time.

This is the system that has been used throughout the history, when the ruler has wanted to wage war, but hasn't got money to keep a regular army. The setback is, that the men don't get proper training.

The third thing, training, is needed to get more experienced and skillful units. For a unit to reach a certain experience level, a certain amount of training is needed. Training costs money. Also engaging in combat rises the experience level of the units. If the units are held in service for a long time, their experience drops. To preserve the experience, some further training is needed. This is because the men in the unit don't live forever - they need to be replaced. The new men need to be trained. Also the skills of existing men need to be replenished.

In the game, it could be possible to use some time - a couple of turns - to train the men before the war. It could be done anywhere, but if there are barracks in the location, it would be much more efficient. Of course the men would be unavailable for other work during that time. When the war is over, the men could be freed, and the experience would be lost. It could be possible to preserve the unit for some time, by placing the men in "reserve". During the few next turns, if new war starts, the same men could ba called to service again.

Yet another possibility would be to create a regular army; the units are available any time, until they are disbanded or destroyed. This would be the most costly option, but the men would be far more experienced. Also, the men would be unavailable for other work. There is, however, a possibility that was used at least in feudal china. There, the soldiers were kept in a not so densely populated region, where they farmed land with their families part of the year, and trained soldier arts the another part. This could be possible for the player, too, to save something from the costs, but losing in unit experience.

With the regular army, a service time for the men needs to be set. This would decide the rate at which the men are replaced, and also the amount of training the unit needs. In certain point in the game, it could become possible to create a reserve army. In that system, a certain percentage of male citizens are trained, and then placed to reserve. If war starts, the trained men could then be called to service. Of course their experience level wouldn't be as good as with professional soldiers, but there would be plenty of them, with relatively low cost. In all times, war has needed both "cannon fodder soldiers" and elite warriors.

[amjayee]

=Culture

Culture includes sculpture, visual arts, drama, music, literature, poetry, cinema etc.; the more CE is used to exercise these arts, the better they will be mastered. I suggest that each one of these fields will be given a "skill". The skills need to be "invented". For example, when writing has been developed, eventually someone starts to write poems; to achieve this, certain amount of cultural CE needs to be used. Skill of poetry is invented; As time passes, and more and more CE is used for poetry, that civilization's skill of poetry increases. There should be some limitations to prevent the skills being increased too high; for example, the amount of libraries you have puts certain limitations to the skills of written arts. Also, when you have reached certain skill level, you need to spend certain amount of CE to preserve that level. If enough CE is not available, the skill will get worse. This way, the cultural development is dependent on your development on other fields. Of course, the cultural information should spread among civilizations in contact with each other quite freely. This simulates, quite realistically, that the civilizations close to each other will be culturally quite similar. I think that like this the cultural life can be modelled pretty well.

[amjayee]

=Religion

Religion is an entity, whose purpose is to convert as many people to their faith, and to worship something. Religions could work in similar way as civilizations. They are the only entity, that can own temples and other religious structures, though they could be built by civilizations and given to the religion. Religions follow their own ai, and they usually don't care about political or geographical borders.

Religions rise and fall like civilizations.

The religious system is little different from the others; there are no "skill levels" or such; There is only an overall figure of "religious activity", RA; the more the player gives power to the church, and the more he funds it, the more CE is used for religious work. Certain amount of CE would be needed to maintain current level of RA, if more is used, the level will raise.

The RA count will be used to determine the role of church and its effect on people and society; Very religious people is easy to convince to go for "crusades" against the "pagans" of evil civilization x. If certain religion is powerful, it will spread to other civs, making certain influence on their religious life, eventually causing them to believe in the same way as you, giving you possibility to gain certain level of control of their civ without needing to conquer them.

But, the more the church has power, the less you have it; there should be also some disadvantages for being very religious. Quite obvious consequence is the stagnation of science; the concept of "heresy". Also, the church will probably take some authority from you. These are visions; this is what it could be like. Of course certain theological information could be researched, too, as science; monotheism or polytheism, cult seremonies, dogmatic clashes, etc.

[korn469]

amjayee
i am looking over everything that you have put down (wow it's alot but hey that's great!) and i will respond here shortly...

[amjayee]

=Companies

These could work like the religions - they would be an entity, whose purpose is to collect money. They could own factories etc, and hire people to produce things. The people working for companies would produce only taxes for their home civilization.

Civilizations, religions etc. could buy things, like unit equipment from companies. They would also satisfy the modern people's needs for "stuff" like home electronics, tools, etc.

There doesn't need to be very many companies. They would just represent the "public sector" of producing things. In communist states companies wouldn't be allowed.

Here are only some ideas. This needs some refinement, too.

[amjayee]

=Technologies

Wow, this is a long one.

Information should be divided to theoretical and applied - science and technology. Technology is knowledge about how certain thing is done; science is knowledge about why that is possible. Deeper understanding leads to better technology, and so on.

Scientific information could include:
-natural sciences like mathematics, physics, biology, medicine
-human sciences like philosophy, psychology
-economics
-geography
-history
-military science (tactics): infantry tactics, cavalry tactics...

Technological information could include:
-military technology like sword making, cannon making, machine guns...
-transport technology like shipbuilding, airplanes...
-agricultural technology like farming, domestication...
-community technology like road building, sewer building...
-etc.

My idea is, that each of those fields would have a certain value: scientific fields would have a certain level of knowledge, technological fields would have a certain level of skill. The higher the value, the better you understand the mathematics or the better swords you can make.

When the skills are used, some CE will be spent to achieve better and better results. Once a certain level of skill is achieved, some CE will be needed to maintain the skill. If you don't build ships for centuries, it will be hard to start over again.

Scientific knowledge increases in the same way, but much slower; however, scientific information won't disappear as easily, but it is more dependent on written information; if the libraries and universities are destroyed and scientific work is not continued for some decades, the information will start to be forgotten quickly.

The key element of this system is, that there are many smaller fields of information, and they are all developed simultaneously. You don't need to spend centuries to discover "the ultimate sword"; even the most primitive swords and firearms kill people. Instead, you learn quickly, what a sword should be like; then you will slowly learn to make better and better swords. This gives small bonuses to your troops using swords as weapons.

Certain revolutionary ideas make rapid changes in science and technology. Newton's laws caused great progress in physics. Damasc steel gave the sarasenes great advantage during the crusades. Let's call those advances "milestones". Most advances used in former civs go under this category. Those ideas cannot be kept secret very well; the news about the breakthrough travel quickly to other civilizations. However, the civilization to reach the milestone first should get some kind of bonus. After some time the others could get a bonus, too, but smaller. Example: civilization x develops damasc steel. This causes dramatic enhancement in sword technology and gives the civ x a 10% additional bonus for their swordsmen. Civs y and z hear quickly about the advancement and learn the secret, too. After some turns they will get a 5% bonus to their swordsmen, but the civ x still has a slight advantage.

In order to learn the secrets of certain field of information, some requirements need to be met: for example, to learn how to domesticate horses the civ needs to have some experience on domestication of other animals. For scientific information there could be some "infrastructural" prerequisites: in order to research philosophy, you need to build at least one academy etc.

When the prerequisites are met, certain amount of CE would be needed in order to find the new field of technology. The amount of CE needed shouldn't be excact, but a value "betweem x and y", and when the total amount of CE is between those values x and y, there would be each turn a certain possibility to make a breakthrough. This would create an element of randomness, which add realism. Especially with the milestone ideas this simulates the fact that often great geniuses make the final effort to combine the information properly.

When the new field of information has been found, certain amount of CE would be needed to advance in level: when certain progress has been made, some CE and perhaps some practical exercise is needed to maintain that level; for instance, if you spend X turns not building or repairing any ships, your shipbuilding skill goes down. One prerequisite for progress on certain field could be certain progress on some other field. This is how it has been in our world, too.

The produced CE should be distributed 1) depending on how much the skill is used 2) with some random factors thrown in 3)the player could choose how to emphasize the development; when certain level of excellence is reached, the player would choose to slow down the development on that area and emphasize some other area. On scientific fields, player's funding and emphasizing should be most important factor.

The information "leaks downhill" from civ to others; this means that if civ x is better shipbuilder than the others, the shipbuilding skills of civ y make certain progress because of the "leakage", depending on the connections between those two civs. Usually there is no way to prevent this, and the system should be, that it wouldn't even be wise. They get some of your technology, and you some from them. This also makes the differences between civs smaller. Not fair, perhaps, but realistic. The exchange of scientific information should be much more effective; the scientists from different countries have always cooperated. The progress on scientific fields should be so difficult, that the cooperation would be indispensable. This would add realism.

In the modern world, perhaps after some milestone has been reached, you could build secret labs and make certain information "classified" to make the leakage smaller. By using espionage it shouldn't be possible to steal the whole technology the others have; You should order your spies to "infiltrate" other civilization and use many turns to slowly raise your own level of skill; each turn there would be a possibility that other civ's counter-espionage units notice your actions, depending on their espionage skills.

The good sides of this system are guite good realism and versatility; you don't need to spend centuries to gather a large enough pile of information to be able to build frigates; instead, you can slowly enhance your skill and make your ships better and better. Also, you can research many fields simultaneously.

The bad side is its complexity; but if the system is created skillfully, the hardest part would be to balance the system and synchronize the techs.

[amjayee]

=Building projects

Everything that is built in the game by humans are building projects. Each building project needs certain amount of workhours by certain professions, and certain amount of certain resources.

Infrastructure: When a new city is found, the people build infrastructure - that is, the streets, houses, electric wires etc., depending on the era. The city is ready when the infrastructure is built. Then, the built infrastructure needs upkeeping, repairing and upgrading. This drains each turn a certain amount of workhours and resources. Infrastructure also includes roads etc. The infrastructure of the city decides how many people can live comfortably in it. If there are more people than that amount, it causes unhappiness, slums, etc.

The infrastructure could also be divided; like buildings, streets, water supply, power supply, carbage disposal/sewering etc.

Improvements: These are special purpose buildings or complexes. They can be built either on cities, or outside cities. This depends on improvement, some of them could be built only into cities. Each improvement requires certain amount of workhours and resources. Usually there’s also a worker limit; this means there’s a maximum amount of workers that can take part to that project at the same time. Larger projects could have more workers working on them. Also it might be possible that player could assign more jobs on that project, but that would affect the efficiency - some time would be wasted because of overcrowding at the building site. If there’s less, the work will take a longer time. There could also be a minimum setting for the worker amount. Also the improvements need upkeep, repairing and upgrading, when they are finished, but generally less than the infrastructure.

The types of improvements could be pre-set, but it could be possible to create an "improvement workshop"; the pre-set improvement types would have a range of values for each property. The player could adjust the properties, and the larger, better, and more luxurious the improvement is, the more it would cost. Example: a standard granary would store 1000 units of grain. The player could choose to build a larger granary, that could store 3000 units. Another example: a standard temple has a "luxurious setting" of 5. The player could build a temple with the same setting at 9. That temple would be more beautiful, and draw more attention.

Here is a list of possible improvement types. This is far from final.

Granary/storage house: This can be used to store food or other resources/trading goods.

Temples/churches/mosques: Religious buildings, places of worship. The name could depend on the owner civ or religion. It could also be possible that these buildings can be owned only by religions. Civs could build them and give them to the religion they favor to get "blessings" from religions.

Monasteries: These would be used to create "religious advances".

Theatres/Concert halls etc: Culture buildings. These create progress on cultural areas.

Academies/Universities: Schools giving the highest-level education. They mainly produce scientists, and scientific development.

Workshops/Factories: These are optional. They could be owned also by companies. Usually they increase the efficiency of production, thus decreasing the time needed for building. They are especially good for producing large numbers of military unit equipment. This is also the main thing they are used for - isn't it silly to build a building in a factory?

Military bases: These would be built somewhat like cities; you build "infrastructure" or living and training areas for certain amount of soldiers, storage space for certain amount of equipment etc. Then you could build other "modules" like certain kind of defenses and security systems, air defenses, airfields, radar stations etc. The following are the basic types of military bases. You could also have a combined ground - and air force base etc.

Garrisons/Barracks: These are used to train and accommodate the infantry soldiers. Each unit needs garrison space to be effective. These improvements could perhaps have a setting telling, how many soldiers they can accommodate. Preferably only one generic garrison that can be used for all unit types, rather than one for cavalry, one for infantry, one for archers etc. like in some other games.

Naval bases: Used to train and accommodate your sailors and marines. (Yes, the infantry soldiers operating on ships were called marines even in ancient times.) They also have the docks for building and repairing your ships. The ships could be built and repaired also without docks, but in docks it could be faster/more efficient.

Air bases: Used to train and accommodate your pilots and air force soldiers, and for storing, fuelling, arming and repairing your airplanes. The airplanes are built in factories, though. Like with ships, the planes could be repaired anywhere, but in airbases it could be faster/more efficient.

Fortresses/Castles: These are more like defensive structures. They protect the troops in them, but are not recommended for long-term use. On each good military campaign, these have to be built to serve as outposts for your offensives.

Power plants: They create electrical energy. There could be many kinds of power plants: coal, oil, gas, nuclear, fusion, solar etc. Each of the types would have certain benefits, and they would be available only when the necessary technology is researched.

Water dams: These work essentially like other power plants, but they need to be built on rivers. They might also create a lake in the same tile, or even in some other tiles upriver, if the dam is very large.

Wonders: These would be special improvements. For certain improvement types, the game would keep track of the world's greatest improvement of that type. The current greatest improvement would give its builder some bonuses, in addition to its original effect - until even a greater one is built. This way, the wonders would have some sense in them, and the "number two" in the contest would also get some benefit - his improvement is still more efficient than an ordinary one.

Secret Projects: (or just Projects) These are wonders, that are not buildings. Each one of them could require some extra work, in addition to the funding. For example, Magellan's expedition would require moving a ship around the globe. Apollo program would require building a space center, and eventually moving a spaceship to the Moon. Some projects could be carried out internationally, some of them would require international cooperation - like the Internet.

Units: These are ships, aircraft, equipment and other objects that are needed to create a military unit. They could be built in special workshops or factories, but not necessarily. Building workshops would increase the efficiency of the work. Also they need upkeep, repairing, and upgrading.

The equipment would be created as "sets"; like, a set of equipment for one infantryman, or one battleship. The unit "sets" could be pre-set, like phalanx equipment, legion equipment, or they could be modified in a workshop like with the improvements.
[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited May 18, 2000).]

[amjayee]

Ok, that was all for now. But even with this huge amount of stuff, there are still areas left out. I didn't mention anything about trade, diplomacy, or combat. But after all, those are more advanced things. The topics discussed above are the basic game features, and they need to be thought over before continuing.

Korn, I saw your message. It got trapped under my flood. I will check back later this evening. Comment all those ideas here, all of you.

I will make a complete document describing the game system based upon the discussion. I will also comb the apolyton list for the best ideas. I would be glad for any help, though, since I work mainly as a programmer. If you are especially interested in some topic, you could start working on a document describing that, checking the apolyton list and forums for useful ideas. The documents need to be kept available for everyone at all times. You could send them to me via email: amjayee@kolumbus.fi so I could handle all the design stuff, check it, and maintain it in one package.

Notice that most of the ideas presented here are not final. They can be affected, and new ideas are taken into consideration. Most of them I haven't even discussed with the other members of the team.

So, now it's your time to participate. Spread word to all civers out there, that now they have a chance to take part to making the ultimate civ game in open source. Also all programmers are warmly welcomed. It is important to finish the basic design as quickly as possible, since we need to know what the system needs to be able of doing, before we code the final game components.

Wishing for good cooperation,
amjayee

[korn469]

turn system: i'm going to skip this one for now

so lets get to the good stuff

ethnicity+population: ok i do think that the head model in civ2 is bad and needs to be changed...in SMAC each head counted as 10k people, so if you had a size one city and a size ten city, the size ten city was only ten times as large. now the SMAC head system was not perfect, but that system sounds alot like your population point idea...there is one major problem switching from a head system to a real population system...when you switch then you no longer have one head working one tile...and tiles are one of the foundations of the civ genre in my opinion...

now to me a SMAC head and a population point are very much alike, but i agree that more could be done to advance from SMAC to OC3...maybe all buildings can have a certain amount of pop points assigned to work them...the more pop points assigned the more productive those buildings are...without any pop points assigned to them the buildings won't function at all...same with the tile improvements, maybe each tile improvement can use so many pop points

if each city had enough pop points then military units could realistically be made from these small pop points...though there is one huge problem...micromanagement! can we make it so that it isn't completely tedius? that is my biggest worry and my only concern for adopting a pop unit system

we could maybe get around it by adopting a percentage pop unit system...where we assign a percentage of the total population in each city to building and tile improvements...each building and tile improvement would have a certain percentage of the population that it use (this could be either more or less than 100%)

as for ethnicity i think we are thinking about the same thing

that you have political entities called civs, and that you have ethnical entities that are seperate from those political entities

so for example you have an american indian reservation

everybody has a political affiliation to the US government (though not necesarily willingly)

then the people have a ethnical affiliation

then people have a religious affiliation

then would they also have a cultural affiliation?

so lets say you have four pop points

one is crow
one is comanche
two are apache (one is a christian one believes in the apache religion)

now would they all be the same ethnicity and would crow/comanche/apache be different cultures or how would that work?

i can see religion

i can see political affiliation (maybe you have a group of sioux that lives in canadian territory and a group that lives in US territory)

but how would culture/ethnicity work exactly?