Idea generation for possible SLIC coding projects

[TP]

All,


This thread here is designed to bring together your ideas how to alter/add things to both CTP's games concept but also to its interface via SLIC.

Depp and myself will collect those ideas and pick a few on which we will be working next. So let's try to brainstorm. In a couple of days we will then write our project lists.

Here are a few ideas which have been floating around already:

1. Random events (but which ones?)

2. Immigration/emmigration based on city's happiness. Depp, I really like what you have done on the immigration/emmigration thing so far. I am going to test in the next days. One thing which comes into my mind to make this thing even nicer:

a) If we could somehow measure the distance between cities, we could give cities a decreasing chance to get an additional pop point from a unhappy city with increasing distance to the unhappy city. Which is more realistic than population wandering through whole continents to get to the happiest city.

b) If we could loop through players, we could even implement this immigration/emmigration thing between enemies ! Now wouldn't that be nice - a totally new kind of subversive warfare ! Just ensure that your cities on your borders are extremely happy and send a few clerics to make close enemy cities unhappy - voilà, people start moving from the enemy city to yours...

Mr. Ogre, is there a way to loop through players or to measure the distance between cities ? As usual, thanks very much in advance for answering.

3. Border implementation (how should they work?)


Hope this is stimulating you,
TP

[Depp]

Tp, great ideas. I thought of making it so that people move from one city to another, but that means i must check alot of cities each turn which can take quite a while when there are some 300-400 cities on a map. I don´t really know if it´s worth it timewise.

As it is now they are just put in storage and placed later (hopefully) as it will probably even out in the long run. The precentage is going to be plactested when SetCityByIndex() works. Or when i get help (psychiatric, ha ha) that is.

***SUGGESTION 1***
But what we should do is a new spy option that persuades say 1-3 pop to move to your own city. it should cost alot and have a successrate depending on hapiness/size or something like that?

***SUGGESTION 2***
Or maybe the immigration thing should be like this :
New unit, immigrants/refugees. Moved into a city they increase size by one.
When cities are unhappy there is a random chance of creating a refugee, that a random civ takes control over.
They ignore zones of control
Killing them lowers regard to every other civ by something
Maybe invisible to normal troops???

When cites are taken they decrese in size and spawn a number of refugees near the city, belongin to the player who had the city earlier...

That could be rather cool, or what?
[This message has been edited by Depp (edited July 25, 1999).]

[DOGFISH]

Hey slic dudes:

Is it possible that the 100 unit limitation of CTP can be overcome with slic coding... when a unit is obsoleted can it be upgraded to another... or at least could it's place in the 100 list be made avail to another... can you work in civ specific units??????
Can slic (I haven't looked at it at all so this may sound sophomric) do external calls to C or assemler routines...?
I had found a graphic sprite of HG Well's time machine and thought it would make a good alternate end game scenario... you build it, and you get to take a couple of advances and some % of your gold and return to anytime in your civ. This could be done by accessing the saved-games displaying the choices (saved games) adding the advances and the gold or whatever... the details aren't as important to me right now as the main concept.

Dogfish

[fasteddie]

depp:
that refugee thing sounds like an awsome idea, would it be possible to make the refugee only viewable by a special forces unit? they would be the ones with the brains to pick out a refugee in real life maybe..

------------------
I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, --Ozzy

[Harlan]

With the release of the second patch coming relatively soon (finally), maybe you should find out what SLIC changes are in there before you start on big projects like borders. Mr. Orge has already said there will be changes. Maybe we can even prevail upon him to slip something in the last minute that is vitally needed.

Big thumbs up on the borders and random disasters ideas. Here's how I think borders should be implemented. Enemy units already know how to tell the difference between city radius squares and squares outside them, for purposes of trespassing and so forth. There must be a way to simply extend the definition of what tiles the AI thinks are the enemy city square zones (for diplomacy and movement reasons, not city management reasons). It could be tied to roads, fortifications and other public works. When a person makes these, they and a one square radius around them become part of their controlled zone. If a civ it at war with another, whoever walks on the enemy's tile last gets control of it. When the war is over, the process of claiming squares stops until another war.

There could also be a process whereby if you control all squares around it, you own the square that is surrounded too. This would eliminate wierd pockets between cities. Borders should be tied to having a certain technology, because they only came into being later on in history.

On disasters, I saw on another thread people who like earthquakes, river floods (and coastal floods), volcanoes. I would second those, and also add plagues/epidemics, if that hasn't been mentioned already. Volcanoes could only happen if the city is near mountains. The gaining of new technologies could lessen or eliminate disaster dangers, so it would be good to program the disaster only happening if such and such a technology isn't owned.

[Depp]

Harlan: My Idea of voclanos would be a nuke in a mountain square.

And undersea volcanous should be able to become islands...

What did you think about the refugee stuff?

/ Jocke

[TP]

Depp,

I love your *suggestion 1* idea. An additional feature which is expensive but which is accessible by nobles, diplomats, spies and cyberninjas (the more spophisticated a unit is, the higher the success chance and the higher the amount of pop being moved). Suggestion is now in my project list.

*Suggestion 2* sounds good but in fact this will most likely increase micromanagement a lot, if you have to guide your refugee unit through a map. Technically there is the issue that I do not know how we could tell such a refugee unit not to move back to the city where they have been coming from. So from both a gameplay point of view but also a technical point of view I do not think that I will pursue this.


Dogfish,

Short answer: No I do not see a way to implement dynamic units (which means to "overwrite" obsolete units) as unit statistics are read by CTP when starting a new game. In my personal point of view, this limit is actually forcing scenario makers to concentrate on the important stuff: Please consider that quality is much more important than quantity.

Balancing a civ game in general is difficult, balancing CTP was extremely difficult for both the Activision guys and people like CD, but adding even more units ? I doubt that this would increase the fun.

But as usual, that's my view, you may have another one.

Harlan,

Wise words. Can not more than agree :-)

TP

[Harlan]

Depp, for your volcano= nuclear bomb idea, would it possible to do that without the radiation effects (dead tiles)? Cos after the initial destruction the volcano generally improves the soil, not ruins it.

Undersea volcanoes becoming islands isnt really appropriate for this time scale I think, that's a process that is noticeable over millions of years. In the last 6000 years I don't think any new islands have been formed though Iceland has grown a bit and the sea levels have gone up and down some.

But this reminds me- it would be nice to have natural climate change. The last 10000 years have been an incredibly calm period, scientists say. We take that for granted. Usually there are some kinds of ice ages or heat ages. Nonetheless, even in this calm time 6000 years ago the Sahara wasn't a desert and climates in places were very different. There was even a Little Ice Age in the late middle ages (which is why Viking colonies in Greenland and the New World failed).

Refugee stuff: I like it, if it is implemented properly. It wouldn't be good to have a steady stream of citizens moving from one civ to another, but rather the occasional citizen every now and then. Maybe limit it by gvmt type, technology, distance and/or if you have certain wonders. For instance, Democracies would be immune to losing citizens cos people hold out hope things will get better with the next election. Communism would be vulnerable, unless they had the Iron Curtain wonder. The process would only start once transportation technology reached a certain level, maybe Navigation. For much of history, most people didn't have the ability to leave their village, much less cross oceans to move someplace new. Feudalism depended on this fact to work.

[fasteddie]

hey heres an idea..
make an improvement to stop flooding
maybe:
airlift (city in the clouds?)- raises the whole city above the flood plain
levvy- small prod. cost, but only 25% chance of holding back the flood
-or even an add-on to the nat'l shield

then you could pollute all you want and crush the civs who weren't ready-- great for big maps!!

------------------
I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, --Ozzy

[Atahualpa]

I thought city walls stop floods. Like in Civ1, do you remember? But then of course, nobody would be affected by a flood because everybody has a city wall very soon. But then of course, the flood could destroy the city wall, leaving a city helpless until it can rebuild them.

I have another suggestions for random events: Barbarian invasions. Suddenly (like in Civ2) a huge crowd of barbarians appear on the map and move closer to your city. Of course, they can only appear on non cultivated land and a little bit away from cities. They should have units that are a little weaker than yours, but they shoudnt be able to reach a city within one turn, so that the player or the AI can do something about it.

ATa

------------------
if something is easy, something is wrong

when I do bad things it is called mad, but when god does bad things it is called nature
-- the devil

[Depp]

Harlan, there are actually a new island outside iceland, it grew up 7 years ago...

[fasteddie]

oops double post.. thought i caught it in time but i guess not


[This message has been edited by fasteddie (edited July 27, 1999).]

[fasteddie]

hard to say ata, since ive never made a flood but then the city wall could just be washed out.. more improvements just makes the game more fun and thats what its all about.

------------------
[temporary]
nigga please --old dirty bastard
[/temporary]

[Big Dave]

Harlan,
That was my post you're refering to, I think. I've coppied it from that other thread over to here, just for you!

As for random events, volcano's would be nice, possibly a slave revolt (city with the largest slave population and lowest happiness looses half it's slave population), floods (not like the eco-disaster, but a local flood of one river (see also Egypt and the Nile)that lasts a turn, costs 1 population from the city affected (if pop greater than one) and halves food and production in the tiles affected, then doubles food production for 3 turns afterwards), rivers changing course (can this and the next idea be done in SLIC?), maybe new rivers being created. And Barbarians should not just be set up at the start of the game, they should randomly occur throughout the game up to a certain point, maybe the Diamond age. Can this be done with SLIC?
Well, enough rambling, what do you think?

And after reviewing it, I'd also say that a flood ought to reduce the strength of all units in the affected tiles by half of their remaining "hits" and the pop (and any units in the city) should only be effected if there is no city wall. I like someone elses idea of the volcano having the same affect as a nuke with no pollution, and I have to agree that food production should triple or double for the next 3 to 5 turns afterward. As for the slave revolt, the slaves should become free citizens of the nearst city with happiness greater than 80, or something like that.

[fasteddie]

whoo baby you go all out dont you?

------------------
the problem is you, so whatcha gonna do? --megadeth