Openciv3 - General Ideas

[heardie]

Sorry about how messy it is koorn469 did it in word..

My General Ideas for OpenCiv3

by

korn469

 

The ideas listed here are my vision of how civ3 should work…

The Map: The first thing I would do in starting out would be to use a hex based map. An average map should be 100 hexes wide and 75 hexes tall. Each hex should be of a certain terrain type, for example: desert, tundra, grasslands, etc. Some of the terrain will have special items on it that makes it more productive.

Number of turns: The game should have 600 turns and it should last from the years 3200bce to the year 2050ce. There should be a telescoping time system where turns early in the game represent more years than turns later in the game. There should be a number of ages and each one of these ages should get about the same amount of turns. We could have four ages each with 150 turns. Here are the proposed ages: ancient (3200-550, each turn counts as 25 years) middle (551-1300 each turn counts as five years), renaissance (1301-1900 each turn counts as four years), modern (1901-2050 each turn counts as one year).

Number of players: The game should have up to 32 distinct player slots. 16 of those slots would be reserved for starting civs, and 16 would be the limit on the number of civs you could start the game with. 12 of those slots would be for breakaways, rebellions, splinter groups, and other civs that would start as a result of actions that happen in the game. 4 of those slots would be reserved for barbarians, anarchists, and other groups of uncivilized people.

Cities: Cities should be where all resources are processed, where all people live, and generally the focal point of your empire, as they are in civ2. You will build a facility in your city and it will give your city a benefit. You will build all your units in your cities. You will use all of your resources in cities. Cities should have a radius of 2 so with a hex based map they will have 19 squares to work. Population in the cities should be represented by heads.

Growth Model: The game should abandon civ’s exponential city growth model in favor of a linear one. This alone would solve some of the problems of ICS.

Resources: The games should have four resources: food, minerals, money, and energy. Each tile will produce resources in a given range from 0 to some number below 20.

Food: Each point of population needs food to survive and food is need for a city to grow in size.

Minerals: Minerals are used to build base facilities and units. Also units may need minerals for support.

Money: Money is used to pay upkeep on base facilities, it can be used to complete base facilities and units. Money goes into research, happiness, and surplus.

Energy: Energy is a new concept to the civ genre, but I think it would have significant positive changes. Represented by an energy barrel icon and stored in a global surplus, this resource would have a few uses. First energy barrels would be needed for a city to change minerals into base facilities and units. Second energy barrels would be needed for a unit to carry out any action except for rest. Third, energy barrels would be what determines pollution, the more energy barrels used the greater the pollution. Only so many energy barrels could be stockpiled, and energy barrels would act as a strategic limitation on a civ, forcing it to seek out energy resources to remain competitive, and would also include the concept of real strategic areas into civ.

Base Facilities: Base facilities are structures that improve a city’s statistics. They fall into a number of groups: money increasing buildings, research increasing buildings, happiness increasing buildings, production increasing buildings, military increasing buildings, plus religion+culture increasing buildings. These facilities should have interesting effects not all of them being positive, and should not always operate the same under every governmental choice. I think that OpenCiv3 should start over from scratch here so we can reach a good balance of interesting buildings.

Wonders: Wonders are unique structures that for the most part effect the entire civ, or effect one city in such a way that it effects the entire civ. A good wonder is powerful, but not unbalanced, it is interesting, and it has a noticeable effect on the entire civilization that builds it.

Tile Improvements: Tile improvements are structures placed on the map that increase the productivity of a certain square. I think that we should look at the CtP publics work system and see if it could be adapted and improved upon so we could include it in our game.

Units: Units are built in cities and for the most part represent the military presence of a civilization. I think that we should increase the base movement of infantry to 2 spaces and then balance the movement of the other units accordingly. Moving one space has many disadvantages and it needs some work.

War: Combat between units. One thing that is vital to OpenCiv3 is a stacked combat system. Until I hear a better proposal I think that this is the system we should use for OpenCiv3. Units can be stacked together when a command unit is in the same stack. A certain number of units can be attached to this command unit. The exact number would depend on the era and on the technology level of the civ. Then add up the total amount for both sides (counting all of the bonuses) and then carry out combat. Combat would work like this, the attackers strongest unit would fire first (using the total to see if damage is inflicted) then if damage is inflicted a unit in the defenders stack is random hit. Then the strongest defender goes, then the next strongest attack and so on.

Diplomacy: Diplomacy is one of the key areas to the game. If there is not a wide array of options and realistic behavior for the most part then the game will be disappointing. The diplomacy interface must be smooth and easy to use, otherwise a great diplomacy model could get lost behind the clicks. All efforts in every area of the game must be taken to ensure a great deal of powerful options in an easy to access interface.

Trade: Besides diplomacy, trade is another vital area that needs to have a powerful influence on the game but needs a simple and clean interface that doesn’t create a micromanagement nightmare.

Governments: The SMAC SE system is a fine place to start when we work out our governmental models. The only improvements I can see to do are the following: give the player more options, have the SE models effect more areas of the game, have the different models have more characteristics than just effecting the Social pluses and minuses, have some compatible SE choices give extra benefits that makes the sum of the parts greater than the whole.

Reputation: Reputation needs to mean something. Having a horrible reputation should have dire consequences, while having a history of being a benevolent ruler should have its perks. Civs with bad reputations should become pariahs while civs with an undisputed record of helping others should endear themselves to their people and the world in general.

Civil Strife: Civil strife has to be included in this game if it wants to be a true sequel. Civs must be prone to disintegrating for there to be any excitement left in the game during the modern era. It should be very difficult to integrate newly conquered regions and there should always be the threat of rebellion of some sort.

Modes of Victory: Basically this is an idea to have three maps, one representing religion, one representing economics and culture, and one representing the military and the state. This is a good idea because it would allow a great number of ideas to be put into the game without increasing the complexity of the game too much. It breaks down the game into easily understandable game blocks, and it keeps all of the vital information together while at the same time allowing a far greater civ experience and increasing the excitement and replayablitiy of the game.

Victory Conditions: Goes hand in hand with the new modes of victory idea. You now have a number of different ways to win the game. Convert all of the heads to your nationality either through force or diplomacy, convert them all to your religion, control them all through economic domination, or send the space ship at Alpha Centauri.

Interface: The interface must balance two opposing forces. It must give the user a great deal of powerful choices, but it must also be very simple and efficient, and take few mouse clicks or menus to implement any of a players choices. It must be sleek and powerful. A bad interface would destroy the game

Please look over any errors, this is only the first rough draft.

[Guildmaster]

I dunno, these ideas seem a little too Civesque to me. I never liked the telescope time thingy. I always thought stopping just because you landed on Alpha Centauri was stupid. I don't want this to be a more advanced expanded version of Civ and Civ2, and a lot of these general ideas seem exactly that.

[dan ward]

There are limits on what we can reasonalby do. I'm not in favour of dropping feature just because they are like Civ2. Let's face it most of Civ2 works. Changing things just to be different is stupid. If we actually want to produce an end product we cannot redesign everything. Making incremental improvements is the optimal approach.

Trying to solve the ICS problem is definately a good idea.


[This message has been edited by dan ward (edited June 20, 2000).]

[Victor Galis]

"The Map: The first thing I would do in starting out would be to use a hex based map. An average map should be 100 hexes wide and 75 hexes tall. Each hex should be of a certain terrain type, for example: desert, tundra, grasslands, etc. Some of the terrain will have special items on it that makes it more productive."

-I think the map engine has already been made, though it could be just the graphics. I think the ideas already call for five additional variables to describe each hex.

"Growth Model: The game should abandon civ’s exponential city growth model in favor of a linear one. This alone would solve some of the problems of ICS."

-On the contrary, I think the growth model should continue to be exponential, with significantly more corruption and waste as you get higher up, allowing higher tech civs to gain advantages from having grown big, while their lower tech brethren can wonder where all their production went.


"Resources: The games should have four resources: food, minerals, money, and energy. Each tile will produce resources in a given range from 0 to some number below 20."

-I might call for more resources, like timber and such, and energy would not appear until late in the game.

I would add that money and food may also be necessary for unit upkeep.

"War: Combat between units. One thing that is vital to OpenCiv3 is a stacked combat system. Until I hear a better proposal I think that this is the system we should use for OpenCiv3. Units can be stacked together when a command unit is in the same stack. A certain number of units can be attached to this command unit. The exact number would depend on the era and on the technology level of the civ. Then add up the total amount for both sides (counting all of the bonuses) and then carry out combat. Combat would work like this, the attackers strongest unit would fire first (using the total to see if damage is inflicted) then if damage is inflicted a unit in the defenders stack is random hit. Then the strongest defender goes, then the next strongest attack and so on."

-Or you could look at my combat system, which is far more developed. Unit with biggest range fires first, then units close, then all units in range fire, then units close, until all units are in melee combat, unless all units have range in which case they close until they are all in range. That would sum up the big difference I think.