The discussion in the 'Rev BTS' thread about BarbarianCiv got me thinking while I was wandering around the National Museum of Scotland ...

Currently, when barb cities settle down into a full civ 1-3 cities will immediately flip to the new civ. They'll then be considered either peaceful builders or militaristic warriors and given an initial batch of units or buildings depending. While there are several factors which adjust the odds, which type of settling a particular BarbCiv does is fairly random. For militaristic settling, the size of the army and target for invasion are also fairly random. While it works fairly well in producing a nice variety of situations, I think I've figured out a new system which will produce similar ultimate results more deterministically.

New Scheme:

Settling will now happen in two phases. First, individual cities, when they reach a certain size, will flip from the barbarians to a new, minor civ. These little city states will have a their ultimate culture, but given the Minor Civ tag which means they can't engage in diplomacy and will be at war with everyone. They'll be set up with some initial units techs, a toned down version of the current setup without any builder/militaristic specialization at this point. Then, when this minor civ has achieved something noteworthy, they will organize into a full blown civ and given some extra perks to help them on their way. If they acquired a city by conquest, they'll be militaristic. If they built a wonder or reached a high level of culture then they'll be builders. If they built another city, founded a religion, or had their city grow to some large size, then they'll have a chance at both styles.

Since they will have been around for a little while before this second phase, things like who they've met and who they've been fighting with can be used to determine victims of militaristic civs. They will also build up more gradually, rather than exploding on the scene with no warning allowing players to react and prepare. Even if the little city states are conquered before they become full civs, their culture will still be planted in the area and give a more natural basis for choosing rebel civs for different areas in the future.

I've hesitated to use minor civs before with the reason that why use a limited no diplomacy civ when you could use a full fledged civ. However, having this little transitional minor period seems to work fairly well. When the minor civ settles, your status and the outlook of the other AIs with respect to the city won't change ... you're still at war. However, the new minor civ will now be at war with the other barbarians around it. Instead of having groups of barb cities settle together, the biggest city will now form a minor civ and try to conquer one of the others. If they succeed then the result will be like before, a full-blown civ emerging in the area based in those cities. Another minor civ could emerge from one of the other cities in the mean time, however, and they might have to fight it out for supremacy. Regardless, when they transition to being a full civ their initial setup will be determined by how they got to that point and what they've done, giving more of a sense of meaning to any barbarian hordes that may assault your gates ...

There are several things to figure out and balance so that these minor civs get a fighting chance in the world they're born into. Beyond that, with this new system I think boosting the appearance of barb cities (and maybe units to cut down on early exploration) is certainly worth exploring.

Anyway, let me know what you think!

I was actually thinking something similar the other night. I kept thinking about how occasionally you'll get the "such and such has formed the _____ civilization" message, and they'll just have one backwater city, and it's laughable that they'd be considered a full civ. So my idea was to require that there must be 2 unified cities in order to be considered a civilization, and anything below that (1 city) would just be an independent state (obviously a few problems with that). If you look at Rhye's mod, he has a whole mechanism for cities breaking off and becoming independent, or entire nations collapsing into a mass of independent cities. You declare war on each city separately, and I think you'll become peaceful with them if neither of you do anything for a while, but this is the only diplomacy you can conduct with them. This is all without requiring a civ slot or needing a leaderhead, so maybe you could incorporate this somehow so you don't have to "waste" a full fledged civ for a minor tribe. And once, as you said, they achieve something noteworthy, they'll develop into a full civ.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. I think this would be a great idea.

I think this is a great idea.

I was just wondering what would be considered an acheivement, for this minor civ, because of course if it was something like founding a religion, you might not get any barbs settle own at all.

Perhaps a whole new dynamic could be added, so if a leader had just been ousted from power in a revolution (and replaced by another leader), in a nearby civilisation. This leader could escape and take the reigns of power in this new kingdom? Would this be implementable? Because i think It'd be really intersting to see, expecially since you might see Hannibal fighting Hannibal II, but both form different civs.

What do you think?

I was just wondering what would be considered an acheivement, for this minor civ, because of course if it was something like founding a religion, you might not get any barbs settle own at all.

I'd imagine the achievements to be something like either: Capture a city, reach a certain culture threshold, found another city or two, have a certain number of military units, build a wonder, reach a certain (high) population level, or found a religion.

EDIT: I came up with those off the top of my head, and they so happened to be exactly the ones jdog mentioned in his post. haha.

Yeah, those sound about right ;)

If a minor civ's achievement is founding a religion, it seems like it could be interesting to give that civ some kind of "missionary zeal" advantage, where they get a whole bunch of missionaries for that religion right off of the bat.

An interesting idea! They probably won't have very many places to send them immediately, but in their first turns not having to build missionaries would help get them started.

I really like this idea, but even more, I think it could be used in application of the new world on Terra maps. Maybe keep civs that start there as minor civs until it starts getting colonized, and then maybe they can slowly turn into full-fledged civs. Maybe they can even be allowed to make achievements before colonization, and let them count afterward. But then again...if a feature gets put into place where you can later switch to new civs popping up, they wouldn't be too much fun to play. But I still really think that this could be used to nerf new world civs in a simple way.

Did this mechanism get impleted sounds good ?

It is being implemented now, will be in the next version (1.30).

cool sounds good :)

i wonder if this concept could be transformed into a good representation of nomadic tribes, like the north american navtives or african tribes. What i mean is maybe, as an alternate to a barb or minor civ, there could be nomadic tribes. u could use a cross between the camp unit in the warlords gehngis khan scenario, for movable city, and the batle station in final frontier, for a tile improvement that spreads culture. i know this is kind of vague, but if u r interested, im working out how it would work.
PS: love how this mod has developed, hardly play without it : )

Nomadic tribes would certainly add some fun flavor to the early parts of the game ... to a certain extent, now that I think about it, the roaming barb units in the early game can be thought of as such a tribe. However, having a few nomads that were more established could be interesting. I'd certainly like to here what you come up with.

the problem with the roaming barbarians is there is no diplomacy with them. My idea for nomadic tribes would make them basically movable civs. first of all, there is the camp, a unit that when fortified spawns other units every couple turns (but low tech units), and has small cultural borders. second, they would need to automaticlly have all resources in borders without tile improvments. third, trade must be possible and the nomads must be willing to trade all resources for gold/turn. the purpose of this being that upon getting x amount of gold they will be able to afford to upgrade the camp to a settler and then build a city. This would establish them as a full fledged civ similar to barbarians settling down. The nomads would also have to be very peaceful, as barbarians would rep agressive natives. Nomads could also settle down by conquering a barb city, if they happen to. Until settling down, nomads would be similar to the independents of Ryhe's and fall, but with trading.
So, could this be done?;)

Most of it sounds pretty good, and certainly doable. I'm not so sure about the trading part, without some fairly major overhauls ... how would connections between civs work with a camp unit? Roads would not really apply to the nomads (and there wouldn't be many at this early stage in the game anyway). Seems like they'd only be able to trade if they camped next to a river. Also, for a large part of the early game where such a civ would be viable GPT trades are not yet possible. So, some other mechanism would be needed to cause settling into a full civ ... thoughts?

Let's just say... don't worry about the nomadic camps :mischief:

(But seriously, I'm currently working on a modcomp that adds nomadic civs to the game.)

So as I understand it, minor civs are just kind of like a civilization that you can't conduct diplomacy with, right? So if one of these minor civs does not do anything noteworthy, it will still be taking up a civ slot right? I'm not saying this to criticize you, since I think this is an excellent idea, but I am just curious how it functions in the game.

Yes, minor civs are always at war with everyone since they can't conduct diplomacy.

Generally what happens in my tests is that a significant percentage (~70%) do succeed in becoming a full civ. They will frequently attack outlying settlements of neighbors with a decent stack and take cities from other players regularly. Other civs will also launch stacks at them quite a bit, but their defenses are better than barb city defenses so they often survive unless the other civ is firmly established and can throw a lot at them. Those that fail to become full civs usually have spawned next to one of the early powers in the game and have the misfortune of being their only target.

Those that do survive and rise to full status seem to generally function like BarbCivs in the previous version. When they do get conquered, yes they still take up a civ slot. Often, they will be seen again as rebels at some point in the game which is one of the bonus side effects of this system I like. It sets up more meaningful "homelands" for smaller ethnic groups for later in the game. However, it does mean that their civ type will only spawn in that general region of the map (which is logical) but they won't be available for other revolts where their type would be preferable (ie America rebelling against British).

My main hope for this update is for the new world on Terra maps (which I prefer because of their similarity to Earth). Yet revolutions has the consequence of putting new civilizations down on the other continent that take up almost all of it. I'd like to see a feature that makes something like 50% of it be settled by natives, with small weakened empires, but a few with strong ones. (I've heard of some modding restrictions into the game that either keep them from settling down until other civs arrive there or limit them to forming only a few cities. I think this might go a bit too far though.) This would be like the different parts of the Americas on earth, like conquering the Aztecs and Incas (who were both actually quite strong but conquered by illness, treachery, and revolts from subjugated tribes, actually ;) ) , or just settling down where there were few natives (like with the 13 colonies and Canada) and expanding further inland by slow war with divided natives (although having many different divided native civilizations would be nice, it would also take up a lot of civ slots). I'd like to see some better incentives for old world empires to take over the new world without having fierce opposition (and what are the current rules/restrictions for new world empires rising?). Any other ideas to consider?

What exactly are your plans for what to do in the new world with minor civs?

i've played a couple of games with the new version, and the minor civs thing is working good. i've noticed that a lot of them do not remain as minor civs very long, but instead quickly settle. very few barbarian cities cause they all become minor civs within about 20-30 turns, and then full civs in another 20-30. im not complaining, just wondering if this was the desired effect.

I've put a config option in the BarbarianCiv section of Revolution.ini for 1.3 and later which now gives you pretty thorough control over the state of the new world. There are 5 different options, though if you're looking for "historical" then probably the default (1) or option 2 are the way to go. Option 1 slows forming of minor civs in the new world and gives them fewer starting bonuses. They can still become full civs however. Option 2 is similar, but the minor civs can't become full civs until an explorer shows up. This means they'll be constantly at war with each other, which should keep them from expanding as much. The higher options keep minor civs from forming before outsiders show up or colonize. Option 0 treats the new world the same as the old world, so it's like 1 without any penalties.

The exact situation in the new world will vary from game to game and also depends heavily on when you get there. Based on my tests on large maps, with the default setting at around 1500 there are between two and four small civs, several barb cities, and some empty space. The more time ticks by, another couple civs will show up and the others will expand. By 1800 the only real space left are Caribbean like islands or tundra lands. Usually I see a couple of AIs make some claims in the new world, but it depends a lot on the diplomatic and space situation in the old world ... cramped civs tend to really want to expand into the new world, big wars keep AIs from contemplating sending out colonists.

If you have ideas for how the handling of the new world could be better or at least the config options increased, definitely post. I also find Terra maps to be particularly fun to play with.

Option 2 is similar, but the minor civs can't become full civs until an explorer shows up.

I logged onto this board to post that very suggestion. Awesome! How big is the window of time between contact and transforming into a full civ?

Right now that window is of length 0, as soon as "Old world" units land in the new world then the civs can start to settle down. You raise a good point, since settling is not probabilistic but is accomplishment based, there will probably be a rash of settling into full civs on the turn explorers land ...

Maybe I'll change this option so that once the explorers land there's a chance for each minor civ will have its accomplishments analyzed. I'll create a config variable that lets you specify the 'half-life' of these minor civs, ie the average number of turns until they settle.

You comment also made me think of a new, similar option which would be based on the number of old world civs the minors had met ... it'd work like the new idea above, except that the number of old world civs they'd met would increase their odds of settling down.

That's two good ideas precipitated from basically a two sentence post! That's efficiency for you ... :)

Maybe I'll change this option so that once the explorers land there's a chance for each minor civ will have its accomplishments analyzed. I'll create a config variable that lets you specify the 'half-life' of these minor civs, ie the average number of turns until they settle.

How about an option that will prevent them from settling down until one of the Old World civs conquers a city of theirs? The idea being once a city is captured, they realize they need a great leader to organize them (and the other old world civs who see the city get captured realize this too).

:agree:

I like this idea. It's pretty similar to the events actually happening in the new world, with the huge alliances like the Iroquois not being contemplated until natives were threatened. Although it wouldn't allow nations like the Aztecs or Incas (although those only really came into power right before European exploration- close enough for now I guess).

And thanks Jdog for making several settings available for this subject. I'll have to see what I like best.

Really enjoying the latest incarnations on Barbciv. It will take some time to fully appreciate all the subtleties :crazyeye: Love the distinction between barbs, minors and full civs plus some sensitivity to historical context.

Got a question about this feature in 1.31:
"Adjusted barb city placement to emphasize placing in areas with other players early in game, less so later as map fills up"

This one seems initially controversial to me because my understanding was that barb civ emergence is more tied to bountiful resource opportunities leading to birth and growth. However I wouldn't be surprised if Jdog was thinking along real world lines with this chang as well. Although I have no qualifications in human history, I guess that culture in all it's various forms, tends to spread by osmosis, to the barbarians that exist closer to a real civ, thus giving credence to this change in 1.31?

Cheers and a big thanks for this component!

"Areas" has a fairly specific meaning to me as a modder that may not be transparent ... for those that don't know, a CvArea object is a group of connected tiles that are all either water or land. If you're playing a Terra map, then there are two big land areas and other little islands that are also their own area.

So, barb cities don't settle closer to other civ cities exactly, but they'll first settle on continents were there are other players. As the map fills up, then you'll start to see them colonize empty continents or islands.

Placement is also now less random and more weighted based on the quality of the land around the start position so that the new civs will be more competitive and, as you were mentioning glider, it makes sense historically for cities to form in "good" places ...

Hope that clarifies what the changes really are.

Yes, in the future, perhaps you should use the word "continent" instead of "area" when explaining it to the lay people... ;)

I also didn't realize that areas pertained to water tiles. I thought they only referred to land.

On another topic, you heard the latest on how homo-sapiens spread? There was contention between whether the species spread out of Africa or simultaneously emerged on various continents. According to the DNA and archeological evidence, it seems that they started spreading from a single area in central north Africa about 60,000 years ago, and then in a period of only 5500 years, moved east and followed the coastal fringe of southern Arabia, then India, then along the coast into Indonesia, did some island hopping and ended up in Australia. Only then did they start colonising central asia and europe. So the coastal fringe seems to be the key to the quick march.

Thanks for the feedback on what is an "area"!
Cheers.

Yes, in the future, perhaps you should use the word "continent" instead of "area" when explaining it to the lay people... ;)

I also didn't realize that areas pertained to water tiles. I thought they only referred to land.

I'm not entirely sure how it applies to water tiles, since it's never really come up. But I believe it applies to them as well, so a lake would be an area for sure. What I don't know about are the oceans ... all one area I guess.