OC3 Project scope.

[markusf]

I think the scope of the project should be defined soon. There is nothing worse then wanting to impliment every feature you can think of. The only thing this will result in is a game that will never be completed. What i suggest is that when we move to stage 2 we try and impliment the basics of the army/trade/government etc systems. Then as we move on we impliment a more detailed system each time.

[Guildmaster]

Agreed, it is important to outline exactly what we want to do.
Here is my proposal:

Economy: One needs to be able to manipulate the economy without controlling it. The ammount of control needs to be reflected by the capitalist-communist index. Info such as employment rates and trade will be closely monitored, as these figures play heavily in the economy of a nation. As far as naming companies are concerned, it's unnecessary. They could have generic names such as "Atlanta Monorail co." or "New Orleans Widget Factory." Players would have the option to name them themselves, but it isn't necessary.

Military: The Military has always played a heavy role in a nations economy. If not, war has. Size of the military needs to be restricted by the economy (ie. the ability to buy and maintain weapons and men). I believe military should be more of an overlord strategizing position instead of moving units. One needs to be able to order aircraft squadrons to fly sorties turn after turn, attacking targets of opportunity, or performing surgical strikes as needed, after all what's the use of air superiority? Air power MUST be a truely devastating asset for one who yeilds it, as is only logical.

Terrain: I think three stats are necessary for the terrain model... Elevation, temperature, and rainfall. We can assume that vegetation will be determined by temperature and rainfall as will agriculture, and we can also assume that points of differing elevation will be more rocky terrain that others while several adjacent hexes of the same elevation will be relatively flat. I wand a hexagon system, I have always wanted such and have always found the four-directional system used by earlier civ games too limiting. Effectiveness of agriculture will be based on an index of all three. The trick will be to accurately label them.

I will have a complete economy model available soo as I am currently working on it. You will like it I promise.

[amjayee]

I agree with markusf. If we have a meeting soon, there we could decide those things. I will try to create a rough agenda to discuss.

About Terrain: Those three are not enough - if we have only a couple of properties, it might turn out to be more complicated, when we try to model the terrain with very those. As I have suggested, we need fertility (how well food can possibly grow there - this is not affected by rainfall and such), rainfall (how much water - if very little, it's a desert, even if the tile is fertile), temperature (this is mainly affected by the latitude), elevation, roughness (this has nothing to do with flatness - that's decided by elevation; roughness means how rough the terrain is - how much rocks etc. there are) and vegetation amount (the type of vegetation is decided by other factors).

About military, I agree the emphasize should be on deploying troops rather than moving them tile by tile. I'm not sure how this should be done, but I try to make some ideas for it.

I will wait your economy ideas until I comment on that. But the company system should not be too complex.

[The Joker]

Guildmaster:

quote: I will have a complete economy model available soo as I am currently working on it. You will like it I promise.

Sounds great!

I have a lot of ideas for a complete remake of the economy system for OC3 (check the trade thread), and I am looking forward to seing your model!

[Victor Galis]

I disagree. The movement of units is critical to the civ-genre. True it should be streamlined, by using armies and similar large groupings of units, which move all at once, and also a very good pathfinding algorithm, so the user only needs to click on a destination to be shown a route and an ETA.

[Guildmaster]

That's what I meant. You should be able to decide where to deploy your units, and then decide how they get there. The latter needs to be there in order for your enemy to be able to sink ships, shoot down transport aircraft, etc. But either way I don't think it should take 100 years for a bomber to go from point a to point b even though it may be half way across the world.

[amjayee]

I agree with Guildmaster. The units should move a lot faster. Here are some ideas to solve the unrealistic movement in earlier civs:

1. Each unit type has a distance they can move per year. Or, perhaps more appropriately, the radius inside which they can operate during the year, and the distance they can theoretically "deploy" during one year. Armies moving by foot have a small distance and radius, fleets have a longer distance and a radius depending on the ship type, and the airfleets have an unlimited distance but a limited radius.

2. To deploy unit to certain location, or to make a maneuver, the player clicks on the terrain. The route appears, and then player could "drag" it on the screen to adjust the route.

Inside the movement radius, the units can be deployed instantly, without any further trouble.

Outside the radius, the units need supplying; armies can have a supply convoy with them, or supply routes are used, or they can plunder the countryside. Fleets need to have supplies in cargo ships, or they need to resuplly in the shore. Airfleets need to be refueled, either in friendly airbases, or with fuel planes.

To deploy outside the movement distance, several turns/years are needed.

3. The armies/fleets/airfleets (later only armies) can have special units to scout the area they intend to deploy to. If enemy is spotted, the armies act accordingly, or the player can change the orders.

4. The armies would take care of the supplying themselves - player wouldn't need to bother about that. That's what the commander units in armies are for! The player would be informed about what they need; the supply routes would be drawn on the screen, and the armies would have supply units that would be used for transfering goods along them, automatically. The player would be presented the costs of the campaign year by year - or the player could give certain amount of money for the units, and they could not use more than that. In emergencies they would ask the player for more money.

5. If an enemy unit is spotted maneuvering, the player's armies could react to that; either automatically (under the command of the army commanders) or the game could pause, so the player could give orders to their units. The orders don't need to be specific, just answering a question to the army commander; like, "Keep an eye on them", "Persue them, don't cross our borders", "Move to point x and take a defensive stance", "Make short attacks, not engaging in battle", "Close and engage in battle". The armies could attack targets inside their movement radius instantly, without any need to supply - outside the radius the same kinds of supply routes would be needed as earlier, but including also spare weapons and armors, reinforcements, ammo, first aid etc.

"Campaign" here applies to all unit movement. It can as well be a colonization of a new world, or simply a routine deployment of troops on peace-time. Also each individual war is considered a campaign.

Even during the peace-time the armies use some money and resources for movement, like patrolling/scouting the area they are assigned to (each army could be given an area to watch; the smaller the area and the larger the army, the better they can guard it), and for battle training.

This was a messy message. I hope it gives some ideas how the unit movement could be dealt with. I made this in a hurry, but I really do like it. Please give further comments.

[Guildmaster]

I like the radius thing, I think it could work quite well. But here's what I think about supply lines...
I think they are important. There are two ways to supply a rampaging army, from home or from recently conquered territory. The prior requires lots of planning and can slow down advancement while the latter can be sabatoged by "Scorched Earth" policies. Plus, vast armies have been destroyed by very small ones, simply by cutting the supply lines. How do we implement this?

[amjayee]

Here are some thoughts about the supply system, etc.:

I think the supply lines could be visible on the map, like trade routes. The enemy could order quick raids against the lines, causing a loss of some supplies per turn. You could order some troops to escort the supply convoys, to prevent some of the loss. These operations would be automatic - the army is ordered to intercept some particular route. Another army is ordered to protect that route. They would use some of their attack strength for that. Intercepting a supply route wouldn't cut it off completely, but it would disturb the flow of supplies - and some of the supplies would come to you. An army could intercept a supply line that passes through its movement radius.

To cut off the supply route, you need to move a unit in one of the tiles the route passes through. Then, the enemy would need to re-organize the supplying along some other route. If a unit is completely blocked from their supplies, they will soon be forced to surrender, or to break away from the encirclement.

The supply could also be done with airdrops, and then enemy could intercept the transports with their fighters - you would need air superiority in the area to protect the supply route.

The supplies need to be drawn from a place that produces those supplies; food can be got from any place producing food, ammunition from a military base, that might get the ammo from a weapons factory in a city; etc.

Basically the supply routes would be arranged automatically, by the army commander ai. Although, the player would be able to view all the supply/trade routes at any time, and perhaps change them if he likes. Also the intercepting the enemy supply lines could be automatic, if the commanders are given permission to do so. So the players, who don't want to bother about them don't need to, but the players who like to micromanage could do so.

One more thought about unit movement; managing the transporting of troops would be automatic. You would build transport ship/plane capabilities, and then when you need to move your soldiers long ways or overseas, you could order to use the transportation capabilities; the ships or transport planes would appear automatically when the units are loaded to them. Ships need to be loaded at the shore and planes at airports - so the soldiers would first move to the best location in which they can load to ships or planes. The route along which they are going to travel is shown on map, and you can change it by dragging the "waypoints" on the map.

If we use simultaneous turns system, all the movement of units could be planned simultaneously by all players before the turn, in pause mode. The routes would be drawn on the map, and the possible attack orders also. Then all those orders would be executed simultaneously, showing units moving, planes and ships carrying units, possibly paradropping them to the ground or the units making an amphibious assault to the shore from transport ships, armies attacking other armies etc...

Once again a messy message, but hopefully it gives some ideas.

[Guildmaster]

Just a quick thought, or a random idea. In times of war, do we want to have the same timeline?
Here's a possibility:
Under normal game terms, the timeline could be expressed as years, with unit production quotas in X# of units per turn/year. Also taxes, movement, etc. But War often happens too quickly for something like that so here's an idea,
Under times of war, you can drop the timeline, and go with 1/12th year increments, or 1 month per turn. This allows for a little more realism during combat, everything else would drop as well, production would go from 600 units per year-turn to 50 units per 1/12th year-turn. Same thing with movement. Something like this would give modernized countries a severe advantage (as they rightly deserve) over outdated militarys.

[markusf]

that would totally screw up multiplayer

[Victor Galis]

I don't know, Guildmaster. That kinda screws with existing civ strategies. That compounded with the expanded movement range... I say just stick with the extra range and don't compress timeline (besides nations have historically been able to boost production dramatically in times of war.)

[amjayee]

Also I have been thinking of the "slowed down war time" system, since it always bothered me that those wars lasted for millennias. But I have come to a conclusion, that slowing the movement of time during the wars is too complicated to do, and harms the multiplay, as pointed out. But, I might have found a solution. Judge for yourselves:

1. All production and unit movement is kept track of year-by-year.

2. It could be possible to have turns lasting for many years; with a 10-year turn, the production, population changes etc. would be calculated year-by-year, but ten times in a row.

3. All production and empire-management orders would be given for the next turn in advance; if the turn lasts for ten years, those orders would be given for the next ten-year season. Then, those orders would be carried out during the next ten years. If we manage to make intelligent advisors and governors, the player wouldn't need to give very accurate orders for them. If the advisors encounter a problem they don't have authorization to decide for, the turn would be paused, and they would ask the player, who gives just some quick orders, and then the turn continues.

4. Units would be moved one year at the time. If we implement the movement radius / deploying distance system proposed by me earlier, giving unit orders would be carried out quite quickly. And, most of the time the player's don't need to give new orders for their units, so the turns would pass quickly.

5. During wartime, the players could change the production and empire management orders -they could also define the crisis-handling orders in advance; if war breaks out, I want you to do this. If advisors are made well, this would also be quite quickly made.

6. Wars would make the turns longer, but that's the case in the current civ games, too. The players, who are not involved in the war, would suffer from longer turns, but it might be possible for them to fine-tune their empire-management orders for the next turn.

7. As said many times in this message, the key element in making this system good and smooth is the ai. If ai can handle some of the most tedious tasks - like moving all your units tile by tile, which was always freaking me out with civ2 - the game would be relatively quick.

8. It would be possible to start with a system, where the units are moved in longer turns, as with the empire management, not year-by-year.

So, any thoughts? This can be possibly refined.