How many Civs?

[LOGO]

I ask the question, how many civs are we gonna have at one time in this game? I like the idea of having some 32 civs that start even in the begining, I don't like the idea of having pre-destined minor civs and major civs.
[This message has been edited by LOGO (edited January 13, 2000).]

[Harlikwin]

I agree that the more civiliaztions the better. I also think there should be some sort of way to turn a "minor" civ into colony for some amount of time and so forth...

-Harli

[Mark_Everson]

Gentlemen:

There aren't going to be any arbitrary constraints on number of civs (or barbarian cultures). The only limitation on the number of civs will be how long you want to wait, and how good your computer is. I don't expect the number of civs to radically affect game speed, but as the number becomes really large it might degrade things somewhat. My personal guess is something like 30 to 50 will be an average. Right now, the number of array "slots" for holding civs is something like 500 or 1000.

[Krenske]

Mark
I was wondering about your take on barbarians.

Will each set of barbarians be treated as a seperate new civ. Or will they just be a more generic menace.

As well will it be possible to have new civs appear with a slightly below average set of techs. This would allow for the fact that propogated scientific knowledge will become the basic starting level.

My final question, is regarding civs and the possible merging of them. If a Civ becomes quite dominant in a region and achieves what can only be cosidered mastery over a smaller civ. Can it just eventually absorb the smaller civ diplomatically. As a example I give Rome, dominating the Italian peninsular and slowly absorbing the ally states until they are all effectively Rome. The later civil war was mainly about inequalities of taxation and political concerns.
[This message has been edited by Krenske (edited January 20, 2000).]

[LOGO]

I'm curies about the idea I've heard form differant people about city states. How could they work? Could you play as a city state? Would you enjoy playing as a city state? Anybody?

[Henrique Duarte]

Krenske

A comment on Barbarians

The way I see it what we label as barbarians are just tribal cultures neighbouring more complex social societies with higher tech.
The social model and tech model should somehow simulate these realities. Hard techs should easely be transfered while social advances should have a certain social structure as a prerequisite (everybody knows that techs are faster to achieve and develop than social, cultural changes).

Take Rome and the germanic peoples. Rome had a quite advanced society, it went from the military to the entertainment advances.
The german on the other hand had a strong tribal organization, their social structure did evolve as they became more sedentarized (mainly agricultural advances aquired through trade contact from rome) but they were way behind the romans on that aspect. On the other hand when you compare their military organization and power in cent. 1-2 AD with 5th century they cought up really fast (ex. The Gots organized heavy infantry tactics), never becoming top roman legions equal but still much better than before.
Now just add another "small" factor, numbers. A tribal society is much easier to mobilize massively than a urbanized one.
The germans aquired enough tech so that, with their numbers, once the romans showed a hole they would storm through (and so it happened).

Bottom line. if social-tech-military model conections are well established you will have barbarians and advanced civs banging heads all the time.

By the way, Civs never lasted forever..., how are you going to put this into game play?

[Mark_Everson]

Krenske:

Barbarians... will have cultures all their own, we will need special rules to make pastoral barbarians work right

New civs... cultures will have their own tech levels, when a culture gets promoted to a civ, it will inherit the previous tech level. Frequently the tech level of cultures will be significantly below that of nearby civs, but not always. (I see Henrique already figured this out!) We are trying to get diffusion of technology to work reasonably well.

Merging civs... absolutely!


Logo:

I don't know why anyone would prefer to play as a single city state. You are almost certain to get swallowed up eventually. However the government model can handle the player running a Group of semi-autonomous City states.


Henrique:

On civs never lasting forever... We had a big discussion on this a ways back. I tried to search for it but couldn't find it. Our basic framework at the moment is:
1. When a revolution starts the player can pick either side for them to run (some care is needed here)
2. If your civilization is conquered from the outside, if your people try to "throw the bums out" you run the "resistance" and regain your civilization if the rebellion is successful.
3. If your civilization conquers an area that is too large to hold in a unified fashion given that technology or other factors, you can arbitrarily split it and rule whichever party you want.
4. There may be other rules needed...

These rules allow for the player to stay in the game over transitions like Norsemen become (3) Normans who become (3) English who become (1) Americans.

I think an approach like the above is the best compromise between realism and fun.

[Henrique Duarte]

Mark
It´s wonderfull the team thought of the civ´s continuity issue.
It was one of the biggest turn downs for me in the commercial civ games
by the way, I aggre with the solutions you described (will they be discussed more thoroughly, is there a model worked out already?)

[Mark_Everson]

There were a few more details in the thread from before, but I don't remember exactly. I'm not sure the previous thread went too far beyond the principles above though.

[Lord God Jinnai]

There is some discussion of civs not lasting forever in the character model under dynasties.

[Henrique Duarte]

Looked at the dynasty model

If I understand well you have all the corners taken care of except one.

1 - one VERY frequent thing to happen should be a civ being runned over, killed, dead, kaput (well - things close to GENOCIDE/forced migration/slavery etc).
Big invasions where reasonably frequent and more stable frontiers only started to get a definitive form when Nationalism became a cultural characteristic. So civs prior to nationalism (and all the tech social diplomatic advances that come before and after) should accept that the end might be just arround the corner.

My idea on this is that when there is no way you can get back on top of your civ, you should be given the chance of playing a AI controlled culture/civ that resembles the most the one you lost (geographic and ethnic affinity should be the big factors). This way you would get the - I was the saxons now I am the normans felling.

I hope I am note repeating older discussions but from what I understood of what I read so far this wasn´t very clear.

[Kanzid Stonebreath]

Personally I think that if you get totally wiped out you should lose unless your people rebel etc. Otherwise how would you lose, and also it would be weird if you start off playing a civ, and you get it killed off, and then end up in control of a fairly powerful Civ.

I would say that you should change Civs at most about twice in the gameeven if this is not realistic it seems morelike it should work for me. Or possibly could this be optional like set it to high number of chages, etc

------------------
What does this box do I wonder?

[Henrique Duarte]

Kanzid

Find me a civilization that endured from pre-history to modern days and I will agree with you. My guess is there arent any. With the rebellion option (the you get conquered then you revolt thing) the only civs I remember that would be simulated by the game are China and Japan (maybe there are more, I am not sure)
Remember all the ocidental countries were built on the ashes of other cultures.
Now I wouldnt like to keep losing just for the sake of realism but if there is a way to keep the flow/fun of the game and allow for the rise and fall of empires then I´ll be happy.

[Henrique Duarte]

Kanzid

Just started to see the implications of your last paragraph...
If we could only change to a smaller culture(less tech and/or social advance and/or population) and be able to do it only twice or something like that, maybe it would work.
We would make our best not to lose (only two lives left :-)), and when we lost we would never get something bigger for our pain.
the game fell and civ fell at the same time :-)))

[Lord God Jinnai]

Southern India was pretty much until the british came.
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited January 21, 2000).]