First some phylosophy. ;)

There are two main paradigms of the history. First one, originally the marxist, approaches to history as to an exponential process of collecting human knowledge and power. SM's Civilization is based on it as well as most science fiction. The second paradigm, which is more popular in fantasy, speaks about rise and fall of ciilizations. :D Knowledge is gained and lost, cities are built and ruined, civs reach a peak then go down and hardly survive for a long time. etc.

FFH is fantasy in style and lore but in gameplay it still keeps science fiction essence.

Is it possible to make a real fantasy gameplay (I mean theoretically infinite gameplay) with civ engine? I believe yes. Here are some ideas:

Exponential growth of everything should be removed. The size of save after some time should fluctuate around more-less constant value. That means nothing permanent.

-Each tech discovered needs some beakers to be supported each turn otherwise it is lost.
-Each building in a city has its price in gold and/or hammers, if not paid it is abandoned.
-Mechanisms to abandon certain building and tech should be presented.
-The price for GP is always the same but great people's life is limited (maybe by the chance of disappearing each turn).
-No inflation.
-Each city with culture more then "poor" suffers culture penalty.
-Each non-unique improvement outside the cultural borders has a chance to be destroyed (including roads).
-Each unit outside the cultural borders has a chance to die.
-Each unit in unfriendly terrain suffers negative healing rate.
-The tech is concidered forgotten when it is abandoned by everybody.
-The forgotten tech can be researced after some time for "researched first" bonuses.
-Any religion can have only one holy city. If the city is razed indestructable terrain feature "holy place" remains.
-Diplomatic connection can be lost (like in Rhyes and Fall).
-Dead non-national hero can be rebuilt after his tech is forgotten and rediscovered.
-Maintenance cost from the number of cities and distance to palace grows drastically.
-If some civs are destroyed new random civ has a chance to spawn each turn in random inoccupied place.
-Some disasters as rare random events are presented.
-Rarely terrain may change, resources may spawn or disappear.

etc.

The objective is to survive and/or to complete some quests. Most victory conditions are mainly acceptable still - maybe not as something final.

fun.

but maybe boring in the long term ..
and it would make it very difficult to ever attain a tier IV unit... maybe won't be so fun.

In fact the points the most difficult to attain are the most essential for a cyclic game : forgetting culture and tech... after "no inflation" all your points are nice.
before, they are nice but difficult to do the mechanismes while conserving interest and game play and being consistant.

for units :
maybe have units cost more money if the tech is forgotten ?? or healing of units using forgotten tech being longer? and if the tech+ requirement is forgotten : the units gets a negative healing.. your advanced tech-units would become really precious. (it would be necessary because without those kind of mechanisme you would go for arhmage, get 3 of those, get some mages, then abandon the tech tree, and go toward another tech tree..

for the tech forgetness you would need something that explain how you lose techs ... : each turn of anarchy loosen some techs. ? AC rise loosen some techs ? loosing a city ? changing religion ? events ?

but maybe boring in the long term ..

That's true, so you need an imagination and initiative to follow your own objective in game. And I believe it is really good for scenarios: you have a goal, go one way - insuccessfull, survived disaster, have a time to go other way. Time does not pressure you. You can make an expedition and settle very far faway, abandoning your previous capital. You can make an oath to found a Graa... Pool of tears on a huge map and liberate it from somebody. For this you should resettle as from far away you can not protect it. And so on.

for the tech forgetness you would need something that explain how you lose techs ... : each turn of anarchy loosen some techs. ? AC rise loosen some techs ? loosing a city ? changing religion ? events ?

If you do not make efforts to preserve a tech then you lose it. Now medieval techs of making cold weapons and use it are mainly lost. What is written in paper is not enough to reproduce. But japanese were making some efforts all the time to preserve these arts and they did keep it. Therefore japanese cold weapon arts are so popular now: they are only remained from that times.

I like the idea and I've many times thought of making something like it. I haven't is because I get bored fast and I would get bored long before I finished such an ambitious project.

I like the idea and I've many times thought of making something like it. I haven't is because I get bored fast and I would get bored long before I finished such an ambitious project.

Yes, that is increadibly difficult. Maybe even not in coding but in balancing (as it needs completely different kind of balance) and adjusting AI. :(

The more I read this idea, the more it would heavily favor the Sheaim and Sidar.
The Sheaim would need to only keep the AC rising at a steadily positive rate and basically let entropy (the concept, not the mana) do the rest. A nudge here and there, and each passing empire is a bit weaker then the last. They need only last as the constant, shadowy malevolence upon the land, focusing their efforts on remaining alive and keeping the world sliding towards decay. Eventually, one final empire would fall... and what was left of the planet would be unable to support another. Except the Sheaim.
Where the Sheaim would need only to assure their permanence for victory, the Sidar are defined by that concept. As empires rose and fell like flies, the Sidar would expand their immortal cities. They wouldn't have to expand much... just cling, as is their nature, to existence. They could dedicate their metropolises to preserving everything they had and continuing their existence. If they managed to placate the fiery lesser races for the first few cycles, and then became too permanent to be rid of afterwards, their steady expansion would assure their inevitable, if slow, rise to permanent dominance.
EDIT: I might actually enjoy a modmod focusing on a cyclical game, but the only way I can imagine it would be to pit the Sheaim and the Sidar against each other as the main players, maybe also the Mercurians, Infernals, and Illians, with the rest as minor civs, pawns in a grand game where each turn would represent decades or centuries...

IMO these balance issues are minor in comparison to many others. :D You see - it needs not a minor tweak to FFH but vast rework. Just my fantasy.

Well let us see how to balance Sheaim: Assume that AC with time is slowly going down - let us call these phenomenon "AC entropy" that means sins with time becomes less concentrated and to make an Armageddon you need to rise it more intencively. Nothing permanent. ;)

About Sidar I did not understand. What ingame mechanism allow them to preserve anything better then other civs?

About Sidar I did not understand. What ingame mechanism allow them to preserve anything better then other civs?
The main thing is their flavor. They're defined as being immortal, focused on preserving their existence indefinetly, breaking the cycle of life and death. As Morgoth Sandalphon says, "Our friends tend to die off before we Sidar notice."
Their mechanics don't hurt either. They can replace their city's Great _____ specialists by training up units, giving them an advantage even if we have their Great Specialists die off. Great Specialists are quite useful... again, the Sidar would need significant tweaking for such a game.
To preserve their artistic flavor, some sort of limit would have to be placed on the Sidar to compensate for their immortality, unless they were entirely reworked. Perhaps every civilization could have powerful Golden Ages that would mark their peak, and Dark Ages thet they would have to struggle through... and the Sidar would have neither. That makes sense. They'd be stable, but they would never be great, unless they managed to simply outlast everyone else.
The Sheaim could compensate for the suggested AC entropy. Doing so wouldn't be easy, and would probably be the point of playing Sheaim...
This is all theoretical, of course. I know nothing of modding, but sometime after the release of FfH 1.00, if there is interest, I can see a Rhye's and Fall style mod for it, sort of like what you imagine...

The main thing is their flavor.
There was much discussion about their flavor and its implementation. I am not perfectly happy with what we finally got. Still I do not think that it is something breaking. Maybe the cap will be slightly higher, but it depends more on the AI behavior. In any case super specialists are not much help against, let us say, Gurid. :)

In general I think there will not be many barbs as in this world an initial settler party should be able to survive mainly always and everywhere. (Except of rare random monsters) And civs are usually not so close, so waging war is tricky as well as gaining lvl 6 units.


This is all theoretical, of course. I know nothing of modding, but sometime after the release of FfH 1.00, if there is interest, I can see a Rhye's and Fall style mod for it, sort of like what you imagine...
Rhye's and Fall is a great work and nice gameplay but it is in some sense completely opposite to what I would like. :) RaF provides severe mechanism of artificial restrictions to "model" real world history while I'd like to have self-regulating self-balancing world with unpredicted combinations.

It's RFC, not RaF:p

That's it. Does "RaF" mean something else?

The Royal Air Force

The german commie terrorists

The third meaning might be not suitable here

Poor my english! Sorry for the third. :blush: I didn't really mean...

Nifty idea!

That's true, so you need an imagination and initiative to follow your own objective in game. ... Time does not pressure you.

I think I'd rather be pressured by time. In this manner:

The scenario comes with a goal, or a well-developed Quest and/or Event system supplies me with a goal... or I make up my own, of course. The time-pressure comes from the nature of the world you've made: You "win" if you accomplish your goal before your civ. falls/fails/gets wiped out. Otherwise, you lose.

If you pare your idea down to the essentials you might be able to go most of the way - far enough to make a good mod - toward realizing your idea with a not-terribly complicated modmod.

"The essentials" would include a variety of mechanisms that'd tend to make civs impermanent, yes?

Some extra disaster events would probably be relatively easy to add. This might be the hardest part of what's absolutely needed. Well, apart from balancing everything to make it really work...

Tech maintenance would be very good. I have no idea how easy it'd be, though. (Assign many techs to a mini-wonder? If the wonder gets destroyed you lose the tech or several related techs? Supply the wonder automatically with the tech? It represents the place where the people who really _know_ how to work and make bronze are, for example. There's reasonable precedent for that in the ancient world.)

Building maintenance is easy. At least if it's in gold or research, and probably culture.

Maybe culture penalties for most production oriented buildings? (The assumption here being that production and culture or fundamentally opposed.) So a civ would need a steady supply of Great Bards or some other cultural boosts or face an inevitable decline. Or forgo the production buildings.... and face a greater risk of getting wiped out. :)

I like the negative-healing for units outside the cultural boundaries. How'd that be done?

Increased maintenance costs for # cities and distance would be very good. This in the xml?

Seen jdog5000's "Revolution" mod? It adds a number of (excellently done) features to reflect how difficult the internal dynamics of an empire can be and could fit very well with this. A lot of the mod is in the .dll, unfortunately. I'll see if I can figure out how much is contained in the easier-to-work-with xml and python.

One possibility is have civs start with an extra-good "golden age." A "founding age" where the various maintenance penalties don't apply. (Or, more likely, are canceled by the "age" bonuses.). This might require abandonment of the game's normal golden age mechanic.

Which would be too bad, because...

On the Sidar:
"The main thing is their flavor. They're defined as being immortal, focused on preserving their existence indefinetly, breaking the cycle of life and death."

The idea about depriving them of GAs is a good one, I think.

I think the Sidar would be well suited to such a game, though. their goal is to _actually pull it off._ Being immortal, I mean. There'd have to be a time-limit for practical purposes, of course. But they could refrain from conquest, questing, etc. etc. and just try to build up a small but unassailable position.

Perhaps a "win" could be awarded for X # of permanent great people and/or Shades created. ("Arcane" units would need to be either disallowed or have the # of xps needed increased.)

Maybe give them a number-of-cities limit? One?

In a hostile civ-crushing world they'd probably need some extra opportunities to create that unassailable position. But I don't think story behind the civ would need to be changed significantly. (Though maybe I'm missing something about the story...)

Apologize for any incoherence. Being eaten by dog, gotta go...

Further thoughts

What follows is kludgey and limits re-playability (but not as much as traditional scenarios). But I think it'd be relatively easy, may not be _too_ kludgey, and contributes to the the "rise and fall" idea:

Set up the mod(mod) to be played as only a handful of the available civs. A few of the neutral or good ones, say.

Some of the other civs are re-balanced. Imbalanced, in fact, to act as villains or obstacles.

The mod is a pseudo-campaign where the goal of each scenario is to make the world a little better in preparation for the next scenario. The next "cycle". Whenever possible use the already existing features of FfH2.

The scenario's goal is accomplished by claiming a holy site (if you can get that working) or building a specific wonder. Hopefully a pop-up can be added informing the player (in as flavorful a manner possible) that, if they're playing scenario X, they've won. Feel free to quit now or play on until you're wiped out...

For example:

Scenario one: Nasty, Brutish, and Goblin. Play with Raging Barbarians and/or the option (Lebsomething?) that seeds the world with barbarian cities. Select the AI opponents from a list. (The important thing is to not include certain civs.) The goal is to create a wonder that will "tame" the barbarians in the next cycle.

Scenario two: The Bleeding World. Turn off RB and Leb. But now add the Calabim. They're rebalanced to be the heavies. They start with extra settlers and perhaps their basic melee units - especially vampires - are cheap. The goal is to wipe out the vampires.

Scenario Three: The last vampire put a curse of the world, turn on the Living World option. The Events in the mod are tilted strongly toward bad ones, so this makes things tough. Create a certain wonder or claim a specific holy site to win.

Etc...

Some other possibilities: Rise of the Dwarves. The Khazad have emerged to claim the surface. They're an obstacle. They start with lots of settlers but lack upper-tier units. Fiddle with the diplomatic files: They're very reluctant to go to war (Is there a "No war" option?) but aren't helpful either.

Decline and Fall of the Elves: Early scenarios have the Ljosalfar that are "rebalanced" to fail. That's "Decline" - A latter scenario might feature resurgent but angry elves- the Svartalfar are the heavies. That's the "Fall."

The Immortals: The powerful and enigmatic Sidar must be persuaded to release some of their secrets to the other civs: Achieve a "Friendly" relationship with the Sidar and trade at least 1 tech.

Heh. The final scenario could be that the world has been "fixed", nasty cycles no longer take place... but now everybody wants a piece of the pie: Play a normal FfH2 game at a higher difficulty level than you normally do. ;)

Nifty idea!
The scenario comes with a goal, or a well-developed Quest and/or Event system supplies me with a goal... or I make up my own, of course. The time-pressure comes from the nature of the world you've made: You "win" if you accomplish your goal before your civ. falls/fails/gets wiped out. Otherwise, you lose.


Usually time-pressure is good for RTS, FPS etc. The worth of RPG is a world where you can live without hurry. Kael made progress much slower then in vanilla civ to feel more free...


"The essentials" would include a variety of mechanisms that'd tend to make civs impermanent, yes?

Let us say to make time impermanent. I do not like any civ to be completely destroyed. Maybe if a civ have no one city any unit can act as settler and create a city.

Tech maintenance would be very good. I have no idea how easy it'd be, though. (Assign many techs to a mini-wonder?

A wonder for each tech? Too much! I'd prefer something like a new menu with a list of techs (and their prices) allowing them to disband. I have few ideas about modding and just have ideas about interface. :) What to do if you disband early tech and want to keep later? Logically it is correct. What about units and buildings which need disbanding tech? I think they should remain.

The exponential growing of tech price should be removed so later techs are much cheaper then now. You do not need to maintain all the tech tree but only a few prerequisites for the next tech you research. And some techs supporting civics and bonuses like Agriculture and Sanitation. But then event "city fire" is introduced. Few buildings are burnt and you have no tech to rebuild them.

That may be very tricky with FFH giantic tree.

Building maintenance is easy. At least if it's in gold or research, and probably culture.
Even hammers should be I think. Though they are hardly collectable. The problem is disbandind when you have no resources to maintain. First - manual disbanding. Then if you run over resources you are not allowed to end turn. Again micromanagement may become a problem.

Maybe culture penalties for most production oriented buildings?
Do not know. Not sure.

I like the negative-healing for units outside the cultural boundaries. How'd that be done?
It was done in former FFH versions - some promos were able to provide negative healing.

Seen jdog5000's "Revolution" mod?
Haven't seen. You recommend? :)

One possibility is have civs start with an extra-good "golden age."
I don't like that. It's looks too artificial.

Maybe give them a number-of-cities limit? One?
I think that real problem are Kuriotates, not Sidar. One-city limit may be good for them.

This sounds like a good Idea for a Mod-Mod.
I'd not want to play every FFH Game like this, but quite some for sure.
I like the never-ending-game concept.

Further thoughts
That's too far from the beginning for me... :mischief:

This sounds like a good Idea for a Mod-Mod.
I'd not want to play every FFH Game like this, but quite some for sure.

Sure it is very far from FFH as it is.

Multi-quote isn't working with my browser, so bear with me...

Usually time-pressure is good for RTS, FPS etc.


_Usually_, yes. :)

I do not like any civ to be completely destroyed. Maybe if a civ have no one city any unit can act as settler and create a city.

Ah, I see what you're going for now. The mod would be more difficult than I thought then - the "balance" more finely tuned.


A wonder for each tech? Too much!

By "many techs" I meant "A single wonder would act for the maintenance of many techs." If you lose the wonder you lose all the techs associated with it.


I'd prefer something like a new menu with a list of techs (and their prices) allowing them to disband...

I think (I'm far from sure) what I propose above would be easier... I wanted to explore how difficult the mod would _need_ to be... but other than that I think your way would be better. A lot more flexible at the very least.

And you're going for a system where players voluntarily "disband" a tech, yes? Because they can't/don't want to pay the maintenance costs?

And some techs supporting civics and bonuses like Agriculture and Sanitation. But then event "city fire" is introduced. Few buildings are burnt and you have no tech to rebuild them.

So someone who has built all the farms they want and who doesn't want to use the Agriculture civic might disband the Agriculture tech, hoping he won't need it again? Though I suppose usually players would keep things like Agriculture but might allow Drama to slip away.

How do you see it usually working in a game? Someone might attempt to pursue too many branches of the tech tree and, when they re-focus, they "disband" the techs in the branches they won't be following up on?

The Revolution mod:
Haven't seen. You recommend? :)

Very much. All the civ games I play are either FfH2 or Revolution. I'd love to see a merged mod but I don't see it happening:

a) I'm pretty sure it'd be difficult.
b) I'm not sure if most of "Revolutions" changes, which reflect the "real world" pretty well, are suited to FfH. Or, at least, well suited enough to make a merge worth the trouble.

An interesting thing you could explore with this idea would be to tack on some science advancements at the end of the tech tree. Thus allowing people to leave the age of magic behind them and attempt to explore machinery, but still have to cope with a neighbor who has refined their magical arts and will not let them go :)

Actually, were such a massive mod-mod made, I would love to see it so the main incentive to go for science is that those technologies do not have any kind of maintenance, but ramp up (so basically you move into a normal Civ tech tree), making it so maintaining the upkeep of your magical technology/units is essentially impossible by the classical era. (actually might be hard to make them force you to let go of the old Magic if you managed to balance keeping some of them available, so would need to maybe make them still have upkeep, but you can no longer forget/disband the tech. So keeping a very expensive, high-end magic tech would limit how far into the Science tree you could get, and the more science you gain the less room to hold onto the fable, with no way to go back).

The second paradigm, which is more popular in fantasy, speaks about rise and fall of ciilizations. :D Knowledge is gained and lost, cities are built and ruined, civs reach a peak then go down and hardly survive for a long time. etc.

Try Rhys and Fall of Civilization, which models this fairly well.

Civ (the base game) actually does model aspects of this. Civs do fall, cities are ruined. They just don't rise later on in the game.

Rhys does this, but the problem is that if you want to play a later civ, you have to wait for the computer to play out the game until the era when you spawn. Alot of people (myself included) find this frustrated, even with the option to play an early civ until then.

There are two main paradigms of the history. First one, originally the marxist, approaches to history as to an exponential process of collecting human knowledge and power. SM's Civilization is based on it as well as most science fiction. The second paradigm, which is more popular in fantasy, speaks about rise and fall of ciilizations.

Actually it's the Marxist view of history that does call for the rise and fall of civilizations as an inevitability. It's called dialectic materialism, and the core mechanic of dialectic materialism's analysis of history is a process called the thesis-antithesis-synthesis cycle, whereby new cultures emerge. A culture or way of life - called the thesis - generates an antithesis as time goes on. The thesis and antithesis clash, and destroy one another, but give birth to a new mode, called the synthesis, which inheirits some elements of the previous two but also possesses its own, novel features. In this sense, the process is evolutionary - history is seen as a linear evolution into increasingly complex societies, through a process involving the intermittent destruction and subsequent creation of societies.

Be kinda nice if you had to rise up and overthrow yourself every time you changed civics, or in the case of FfH, alignments :) Then a civilization can wane and another take its place, but you get to keep on playing.

And you're going for a system where players voluntarily "disband" a tech, yes? Because they can't/don't want to pay the maintenance costs?


Yes. maintenance will be high while research cost sufficiently lower, especially for high-level techs. So with rather weak empire you can have all techs, but need go through the long path of techs researching-disbanding... So you have an alternative: slowly grow in size or go forth with research following some objective. With one city - one palace - no buildings, with farms and towns you can research Omniscience faster then if you will build much.

So someone who has built all the farms they want and who doesn't want to use the Agriculture civic might disband the Agriculture tech, hoping he won't need it again?
Yes, but agriculture is good for civic which you can not use without supporting tech.

Though I suppose usually players would keep things like Agriculture but might allow Drama to slip away.

Maybe disband even Agriculture if you do not need civic. You may want to go faster to the high tech and then collect money to upgrade your 2 warriors to highest level units, then disband everything and go to something else.

An interesting thing you could explore with this idea would be to tack on some science advancements at the end of the tech tree.

Actually as i said in another reply I would like to see more-less free walking over tech tree while simultaneous support of several techs should be very expensive. As well as units. Building, resettlement and all kinds of support are expencive while research is relatively cheap. Even of the high-end techs.

Actually, were such a massive mod-mod made,
:( I am not much optimistic about that.

Be kinda nice if you had to rise up and overthrow yourself every time you changed civics, or in the case of FfH, alignments :) Then a civilization can wane and another take its place, but you get to keep on playing.

Errr... That is a roleplay so the personality should be persistant. But it would nice to have possibility to switch between civs in the same world if you sick f one. :)

Try Rhys and Fall of Civilization, which models this fairly well.

Well... That is why I used those sentence - as a reference to RFC. I played it much - As it came with BTS.

Civ (the base game) actually does model aspects of this. Civs do fall, cities are ruined. They just don't rise later on in the game.

But not as a general trend, only as episodes. Overall world is always in progress.

Rhys does this, but the problem is that if you want to play a later civ, you have to wait for the computer to play out the game until the era when you spawn. Alot of people (myself included) find this frustrated, even with the option to play an early civ until then.

Why? It is not so long time even with my not so new PC. If you do not want to restart much that is reasonable.

Actually it's the Marxist view of history...
Great! Someone from Ontario explains to ex-Soviet Hedgehog what is Dialectic Materialism! :lol: I was not able to avoid learning Diamat. :(

...history is seen as a linear evolution into increasingly complex societies...
And increasingly complex societies correspond to the increasingly complex productive forces and infrastructure. And everything simultaneously grows in quantity as quality comes from quantity (dialectics again and again). That is what I meant and would like to avoid in fantasy. Actually the process is not linear but exponential (If referred to the size of save. :D)

So what you're looking for is something where one era is not necessarily better or more efficient than the next? Where technologies, buildings and units that are good are sometimes replaced by ones that are not as good? Where you might have something like instant travel (say teleport magic or something, an equivalent of the airport) in the ancient era but it's gone by the middle ages?

That's pretty easy to do. It could be done just with xml.

As far as the exponential size of the save, I think this is fairly unavoidable, just because what's the point of the game if there's never any sort of progress? If you can't build up your armies and develop your cities? There is a mod out there which limits the number of cities you can build, though, which might help to keep it somewhat less exponential.

So what you're looking for is something where one era is not necessarily better or more efficient than the next?

Basically there are no eras at all. :)

As far as the exponential size of the save, I think this is fairly unavoidable, just because what's the point of the game if there's never any sort of progress? If you can't build up your armies and develop your cities? There is a mod out there which limits the number of cities you can build, though, which might help to keep it somewhat less exponential.

The idea is that the progress is in your adventure, not in the world overall. Even if there is progress of the world or your civ that does not necessarily mean enormous increasing of the number of objects. Better quality not always need more quantity. And your objective is not to build everything or conquer everybody as it is impossible.

What is usual civ game? First few units, cities, buildings, each of great value. Then you produce them more and more and each turn needs more and more management. What was vital tactics and strategy in the beginning later becomes boring micromanagement. I want to avoid that.

Limiting number of cities is an artificial restriction - macro restriction, it should follow naturally from microproperties, from the balance.

* BUMP *

... Awesome thread :p

An interesting thing you could explore with this idea would be to tack on some science advancements at the end of the tech tree. Thus allowing people to leave the age of magic behind them and attempt to explore machinery, but still have to cope with a neighbor who has refined their magical arts and will not let them go.

If the game was harder to wage war and games actually lasted longer, an Age of Industry would be a really cool addition to the Fall from Heaven mythos. That way you could implement magic slowly fading away and being replaced by machines.

I still think Badboy would be a great addition to Civ and FfH and if I can ever get the complier to work, I'd love to add it to MEM to limit the average Warmonger (whether Player or AI) to only taking 1-2 cities every war. That way builders have a built in cushion to protect them from being overrun.

As much as I appreciate your vision I have to say many of your suggestion would result in some hard-core micromanagment and personally I find that big maps require enough microing as it is.


-Any religion can have only one holy city. If the city is razed indestructable terrain feature "holy place" remains.
-Diplomatic connection can be lost (like in Rhyes and Fall).
These ideas I like alot.

-Maintenance cost from the number of cities and distance to palace grows drastically.
Maintenance can be pretty difficult allready if you play big maps. Inflation do increase the costs alot. Large-scale warfare allready costs loads because of "away unit maintenance", inflation added to that. Also potential loss of traderoutes and unhappiness, not to mention general army maintenance and the necessity to build military instead of infrastructure.

-If some civs are destroyed new random civ has a chance to spawn each turn in random inoccupied place.

Try FiRe, BarbarianCiv option does this. Or well, barbarian cities turn into civs.

The Revolution mod:
Haven't seen. You recommend? :)

Very much. All the civ games I play are either FfH2 or Revolution. I'd love to see a merged mod but I don't see it happening:

a) I'm pretty sure it'd be difficult.
b) I'm not sure if most of "Revolutions" changes, which reflect the "real world" pretty well, are suited to FfH. Or, at least, well suited enough to make a merge worth the trouble.

I realize after allready posting this thread is ooooold and it explains this reply. Because currently it is in the works, modmod called FiRe. Yep. Apologizes for my stupidity of double posting and falling for le Bump Trap.

Gekko;7496196']* BUMP *
... Awesome thread :p
Thanks for reviving it. :p

As much as I appreciate your vision I have to say many of your suggestion would result in some hard-core micromanagment...

This thread is... err... was more the play of mind than modmod project. I know it is far from the workproject, just a way to formulate some very general ideas. More of basic science then engineering let us say. :crazyeye: I dream about strongly different kind of gameplay but do not know eactly how to implement it.

This thread is... err... was more the play of mind than modmod project. I know it is far from the workproject, just a way to formulate some very general ideas. More of basic science then engineering let us say. :crazyeye: I dream about strongly different kind of gameplay but do not know eactly how to implement it.

I realized as I read through the rest of the thread after my first post. Was so tired last night I mixed up this thread with another I browsed at the same time and I didn't see the date nor any replies, I thought this thread was all fresh :crazyeye:

Concerning the aging of units I have some ideas.
1. Experienced units could act as mentors for new build units (units with a low age). This could be a spell that's enabled after a certain age (let's say ten turns, before the unit dies a natural death), and distribues half the experience the mentor had among his scholars (similar to the Great Commander effect of vanilla). This spell is disabled after it is cast.
2. Another possibility would be to introduce a promotion that extends the live of the unit that's only available for disciple and adept units and can only be chosen after combat V or some other hard achievable promotion.
3. Another possibility for evil civilization would be to sacrifice a certain number of adepts to extend the life of their evil master :devil:
4. Of course all non living units should be immune against natural death.
5. The health rate of your empire should be the base of the anticipated average life of your units (In the demographics screen you have it, haven't you?). So expansive would finally be a big advantage and the whole compassion civics would become much more interesting.

The health of your empire DOES control the demographics screen "average lifespan" Or more specifically, the excess health over disease in each city.

I thought this thread was all fresh :crazyeye:
True worth never expires!

Concerning the aging of units I have some ideas.
Actually the more I thing about aging and natural death of units, the less I like it from the gameplay point of view. I don't see the way to make it non-frustrating. Roleplay is in building the character: collecting promotions etc and in case of aging we'd have something like time-pressure which i would like to avoid. Finally I believe the financial maintenance is enough good limiting factor by itself. Moreover I'd like to have more accessible mechanism of hero resurrection.

The health of your empire DOES control the demographics screen "average lifespan" Or more specifically, the excess health over disease in each city.

I knew that. I meant that if we worked with an aging mechanic, the maximum age of the units could be the avarage lifespan.
Concerning the frustration-factor of this mechanic, it would be a game mod, therefore not something for the avarage player. I think that those who know about the aging will see this as a strategic element you have to work with (For example to increase the avarage lifespan of your units or to drown them to make them a nonalive unit). With the mentor mechanic I proposed you can still have a roleplay factor, as you're still rewarded for having well trained units.

I'm not entirely sure I understand the philosophy you're going for with a rise and fall style of gameplay.

For example, technologies are only lost if they are tightly held and some disaster wipes out those who know it, or if it becomes obsolete. If a civilization uses farming, they don't forget how to farm just because they decide they need to research new weaponry.

Maybe it would be better for each civilization's technology to decay unless it is currently in use. That means that if you've researched Calendars, but you don't have any plantations anywhere, your knowledge of Calendars would decay over time. Once the decay reaches a certain threshold, you'd lose the knowledge. As another example, Mysticism might decay if you're not running God King and you don't have any Monuments or Elder Councils (I think I got that right).

The amount of decay could also be tied to the size of the empire, so that maybe you only need one instance of the technology in use with 1-3 cities, but two instances for 4-6 cities. If you had, for example, 4 cities and only one instance of the technology in use the decay would be halved. More advanced technologies would decay more quickly, so that they need more effort to maintain.

There are many more natural disasters in Earth's history than in Civ, so those contribute to the ebb and flow. For this to work, tsunamis, earthquakes, plagues, and drought would have to be fairly common events. The strategy of spreading out helps to mitigate the potential damage of a natural disaster, but spreading out increases maintenance and potential for the decay of knowledge, so it's a balancing act. If a fire or earthquake destroys your only Elder Council, you may be in danger of losing Mysticism. If a hurricane wipes out your fishing boats, you may forget the secrets of Fishing. These disasters would play a big part in the rise and fall of civilizations.

Maintenance would need to be increased somewhat for number of cities and distance from palace. Higher tiered units should cost more maintenance. Do you want to keep around your one champion, or 4 axemen? What if you have 2 cities to defend?

Buildings should have maintenance, in hammers or gold, and this maintenance is crucial to maintain your technology.

Games should require complete kills, so that the lone settler can start off and restart somewhere in the wilds. Since the other civilizations would hopefully be struggling to advance, you might actually have a chance, but be quick before you lose your advanced knowledge!

There's quite a bit more that could be done, but it certainly sounds interesting.


Summary:

Natural disasters and vicious enemies would threaten your civilization's advances, while prohibitive maintenance would prevent any one civilization from becoming an unstoppable juggernaut. In such a game many civs might blaze brightly for a time through conquest, or luck, or perhaps a golden age, but eventually they, too, would fall.

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That's a problem of personal preferences. Gamplay with aging and death may work in principle but I personally hate to be destined to lose my favorite units in the middle of the game. In this sense I am an average player. ;)

Summary:

I got your idea and I think it can work being properly balanced. Now the biggest problem of both my and your systems is complexity. They are too complex to provide a good gameplay and effective balancing. Let's continue thinking.

And I don't like much random disasters - prefer chess-like gameplay.

As for general philosophy about modelling technological progress, IMO your model is also not absolute. Sum of knowledge needed for passive support of existing mechanisms may be different from what is needed to expand tech or to build new tech objects. For example with farming: you can buy the farm with the fully outbuilt irrigation system and use it effectively but you may be unable to plan and build irrigation on the new place because you have no enough skills in topography, engineering, fundamental agronomy etc.. Finally you have no trench excavator. :)