UPDATED Dec 24th

In this thread post your ideas for features to include that will require some SDK/Python modifications. A number have been tossed around and I'm sure we all have others floating around in our heads... so let's get them all in one place.

This first post will be for modifications we have decided to make for sure.

Several of these will tie in with each other, and with other mods we are including. The way I see it (and I'm often wrong), our gameplay modifications seem to be falling into two categories; war, and economics.

To be included so far:

Economics:

Trade Organizations (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=302824)
Deficit Spending (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7575201&postcount=19)- Includes IMF rating/screen.
Corporation changes (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7584345&postcount=56)
Universal Oil/Quantitative Oil/Oil Storage (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=303766)
Increased/improved AI lending


War:

War Escalation (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7567387&postcount=5)
Asymmetric warfare (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7567294&postcount=2)- Plus page two of this thread.
Ethnic Cleansing (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7577694&postcount=30)
Arms Trade (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7575062&postcount=18)
Weapons licenses (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=303812)- Already exists in the Blood and Iron mod.
War crimes (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7577876&postcount=35)- nuclear first strikes, ethnic cleansing, and terrorism have similar effect to defying UN resolutions.
Modifications to nuclear warfare- including seriously limiting the AI's tenancy to launch first strikes.



Doesn't fall into either category:

Improved Statistics (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7575224&postcount=20)- Share your ideas for more additions!


I'll try to keep an updated master list in this post, so let me know what I am forgetting.

We also want to make sure that we don't start working on anything that is already covered by existing mods (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=302733) we can include. So if you see anything in here that you've seen elsewhere, speak up!

UPDATED AGAIN

Asymmetric warfare

Thanks to Damburger, ianinsane, and NikNaks for their ideas which have resulted in this feature.

Asymmetric (or terrorist) units will be invisible and operate like spies, using espionage points.

Units:

How about having a 'Terrorist leader' unit, which can spawn other terrorist units in the same way a worker produces terrain improvements (not sure if this is viable to code at this point). The other units then can be used offensively, for example:

Insurgent: Basic infantry unit
IED: Invisible, immobile unit that automatically does a one shot attack at the first enemy unit to enter its square
Technical: A weak armoured unit.
Suicide bomber: One shot bombard unit
Katyusha: Multiple shot bombarding unit
Modern Pirate: Naval unit that can blockade
Hijacked plane: One shot bombard, more powerful than a suicide bomber and airborne. Must be used on turn created.
Terrorist aircraft: Works like a bomber, but weaker

These are all examples drawn from recent real-world events

We have to figure out our limitations before we know whether we will be able to have the terrorist leader recruit units. I suspect we will be able to do this, but again it is something the AI would have to be able to do. If not, I suppose we will just have to have each of the units above buildable in cities that contain a terrorist headquarters building or something.


Missions:

So my suggestions for terrorist operations are:
- Bomb attack (cheapest, causes unhappiness)
- Bomb building (destroys building, causes unhappiness)
- Concerted bomb attack (causes much unhappiness, chance of switching certain civic to less liberal)
- Assassinate great specialist (kills a great specialist, causes unhappiness)
- Bomb wonder (extremely expensive, imagine like 9/11, destroys wonder, causes extreme unhappiness, high chance of civic switch)

Unhappiness should not only be caused in the attacked city but in every city of that civ. But less than in the attacked city.


As NikNaks suggested to me, we could have certain attacks take food away from the city. This would reflect the loss of lives, without removing hundreds of thousands or millions of people.

I think we all agree that we can represent non-state sponsored terrorists by simply having the barbarian civ create them. It could also be done through events as ianinsane suggested, but for the sake of simplicity we may as well keep all asymmetric warfare under the same tent.

Idea: Insurgents

Update: As explained by Joecoolyo below, most of this can be done with the Revolutions mod we are going to include. So we will leave this one alone until we see how the rev mod works in our game.

This thread is looking grim so far, someone please post a happy idea or two. :lol:

I've done my best to compile the various ideas for this into one plan.

Local War
For example, this might be war where US and China fight over Taiwan, NATO and Soviets for Cold War Berlin, or from history, alternative version of beginning of WW2.

Can be declared over only 1 city, which must have less than 60% culture of enemy civ or must be in riot
AI (original civs and all their allies/vassals) will attack/defend only this city (though may attack enemy units nearby)
After 5 turns will either come to Cease Fire or Total War (given choice to both sides; if pre-war relations were at least 'cautious', high chance that both AIs will choose peace, not depending who owns targeted city)
No nuclear weapons
Fairly insignificant negative diplomacy changes for aggressor
Total War
More or less standart war from CIV4, but:

Around 2-5 civs involved
Cease Fire can't be declared for the first 10 turns, because if civs wanted peace, they had a chance during Local War
AI tends not to use ICBM unless they lose more than 50% of original army or 50% of original territory
If any ICBM is used, switched to Nuclear War (player is warned)
Serious negative diplomacy changes for aggressor World War
Larger scale version of total war

7+ Civs involved
All UN Resolutions become null and void, UN Wonder ceases to work
Activates all offensive\defensive treaties
War cannot end till one side or the other has vassalized the enemy or destroyed their Civ
If any ICBM is used, switched to Nuclear War (player is warned)
Very serious negative diplomacy changes for aggressor
Nuclear War
(Using both the M.A.D. Nukes mod and the Nuclear Arsenal mod)

Every civ involved in Total War launch their ICBM on enemy cities, targeting cities with ICBMs at first
Some devastating and/or end-of-the-world (but not game) events occur
Proxy War
The armament supply among civs should become more important. I'm not sure how to make it work but it should be custom that Civs supply wartime enemies of their enemy with units. That way they can weaken their enemy without having to go to war themselves.
I can think of several ways to do this:

If a Civ gives a unit to another Civ the usual way (moving into the others therritory and donate it) it should have effects on diplomatic relations...like +1 for every few modern units
If a Civ asks you to join its war against another there should be a third option to answer like "No, but I will [secretly] supply you with weapons." Then a new diplomacy screen pops on and you can choose which of your units to transfer to the other Civ. But you can't just put a warrior on the table to buy your way out of it. The other civ has to accept it like any other trade. If you put too little on the table the "you refused to help us during war time" malus will appear. If your offer is accepted then there is no effect on relations. To gain a positive effect you additionally have to donate units the way I described before.

EDIT::lol: Cross-post with DVS there. I guess this doesn't count as happy.

Idea #2: Insurgents

from another thread:

Modifying barbarians to represent modern day insurgents:




This is where we will use our Janja weed, Taleban, etc unique units. It would be great to have different regions of the world have different style barbarian units (insurgent units)


This is were we can use the Revolution mod I recommend before. Within the mod if cities you've captured don't like you (they usually don't), a couple things can happen, if your still at war with the civ you captured the cities from, "reinforcement" units will appear outside the city, if you've destroyed the civ, either it will pop out against with units outside the cities or barbarian units will appear outside of those cities. We can use this to simulate Taliban like groups without having to modify or code a bunch. Plus, when the civ spawns back, it receives a great general on the field and usually gets guerrilla and woodsman promotions. This makes them at least a formidable foe and makes it harder to put down.

I would just like to point out that, from a realism point of view, 'suitcase nukes' do not exist. The closest thing is backpack nukes (only developed by the US) which are very large, heavy, and have small yields:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition

Other than that, good ideas. If Civ isn't going to shy away from representing Stalin and Mao, then it shouldn't shy away from representing Bin Laden should it?

I would just like to point out that, from a realism point of view, 'suitcase nukes' do not exist. The closest thing is backpack nukes (only developed by the US) which are very large, heavy, and have small yields:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition


Ok, thanks for that info. For some reason I always thought it was true that Russians had suitcase nukes in the US during the cold war. :crazyeye:

So maybe we should scrap the nuclear terrorist all together, and just keep the regular terrorists that damage buildings, remove population, and possibly add unhappiness.

Other than that, good ideas. If Civ isn't going to shy away from representing Stalin and Mao, then it shouldn't shy away from representing Bin Laden should it?


That's what I figure. I have done horrible, unspeakable things to the people of eastern Europe while playing as Hitler in civ mods, so representing present day bad guys can't be a big problem.

there is no such thing as a nuclear terroist at the moment so doubtful it should be included aye.

This is were we can use the Revolution mod I recommend before. Within the mod if cities you've captured don't like you (they usually don't), a couple things can happen, if your still at war with the civ you captured the cities from, "reinforcement" units will appear outside the city, if you've destroyed the civ, either it will pop out against with units outside the cities or barbarian units will appear outside of those cities. We can use this to simulate Taliban like groups without having to modify or code a bunch. Plus, when the civ spawns back, it receives a great general on the field and usually gets guerrilla and woodsman promotions. This makes them at least a formidable foe and makes it harder to put down.

Indeed, I wasn't sure if that mod brought in reinforcement type units. So, it looks like we won't need to do this ourselves, that's great. We'll see how things work with the revolutions mod and we can modify it if we have to.

Thanks a lot :D

For example, with the revolutions mod, it would be nice if we could modify it so that the units are different depending on what country/region the rebellion is taking place in.

For example, with the revolutions mod, it would be nice if we could modify it so that the units are different depending on what country/region the rebellion is taking place in.

Well actually (having experienced rebellions in my games) the units that appear as "rebels" are only the type of units in those cities. For example, if all you have is archers in those specific cities, then the only unit that will appear are archers.

Well actually (having experienced rebellions in my games) the units that appear as "rebels" are only the type of units in those cities. For example, if all you have is archers in those specific cities, then the only unit that will appear are archers.

Ok sweet, glad we have your input. So that is what we will have to modify.

Awesome. I knew there was something like that in it.

Awesome. I knew there was something like that in it.

you did tell me so.

I'm responding to something Mattygerst said in another thread because I didn't want to post my big off topic response in that thread:


Question/comment:

I've played many mods where there are "unit specific" to a certain country...yet you can still build them as other countries. For example: The Panzer tank in WWII was, I believe, a German-specific tank...so it should only be able to be built by the Germans (yes, I know that unit is in the past...just using it as an example). Just making sure that we are going to keep country-specific units only build-able in those countries.

I get what you're saying, and we are. I think this has been discussed somewhere else, I'll dig around.

As far as I know we haven't decided how we're going to handle who gets to produce what. We are certainly going to have country specific units, but how to handle them is wide open. Someone suggested having licenses that can be sold (but not brokered). So you'd have to buy the rights before you can build Russian (American, Chinese, whatever) military units. At the start of the game, countries should only be able to produce what they can actually produce themselves right now in reality.

We should be able to do this with a minor modification to techs, so the AI should be able to do it. One problem I foresee however, is the AI wasting money on redundant licenses like they do in maxriga. So we should try to limit civs to one license per unit type.

Another Feature I would love to have that has been discussed here.

ARMS TRADE

The major producers could sell units to smaller, rich nations. If we have to, we can make it as simple as allowing units parked in the city with the building that allows this to be sold as you'd sell a tech.

I think it's such an important part of how the world works, it certainly merits it's own section on the diplomacy screen.

You'd be required to have a military, air force, or naval academy somewhere to be able to purchase related units (to train the crew).

The only problem with this, is having the AI actually use it properly. It seems like something we should obviously have, because it's what happens in the world, but if the AI won't buy or sell on it's own, or if they use it in stupid ways, we'll have to make due without it.

Also talked about elsewhere I believe...


Deficit Spending

This and other modifications that we want to make to the GDP function should be figured out once and for all. Personally I think we should try to make the trade system better, and increase the use of lending.

Right now, when you're trading you are limited to spending your surplus gold. But if a country has a large treasury, shouldn't they be allowed to increase their deficit by spending money beyond their surplus to buy resources? It is stupid that AI civs that are spending to the max on research/espionage won't go farther into the red to buy oil they need when they are under invasion.

Hopefully we will be able to make this work, and we can get a little fancy with it. We can prevent small AI civs from being totally irresponsible by cutting them off when they start screwing themselves over. Even give civs a rating, lowering it if their economy begins to struggle, and that's when restrictions kick in. Human players could see the ratings on the "International Monetary Fund (IMF)" screen. IMF rating is also hurt by certain economic civics. Being in a trade org should probably give you a bump.

We could also try to make the AI handle this better by only letting it increase the deficit to buy things it really needs. Extra oil only when they are at war, happiness resources only when their happiness rating is low, etc etc. Again varying degrees of restrictions based on their IMF rating.

I also think it would be nice if we could increase the frequency of money lending. Poor nations should more often borrow money from rich ones and use it to hurry production. Interest rates/availability dependent on the attitudes of rich nations towards you of course. The US and EU should be making big loans to some of our micro states and weaker unions. Ideally.

The amount of loans you have and have had would also tie in to the IMF screen.

As always all of these changes are dependent on how the AI will react to them. If the limitations are there to prevent the AI from extreme stupid spending then we will have to forget about this.

If anyone has seen a mod that modifies the GDP in any way, please share.


Also, on a side note, I think we should remove all references to "gold" and replace them with "dollars"; including the icon. (as long as the USD remains the world's reserve currency... who knows, we may have to change it back!). Please don't anybody mention exchange rates etc until well after V1.0 comes out! :crazyeye:

Improved Statistics


I'm sure we'd all like something changed in regards to the statistics.. so let's decide what.

Hopefully someone familiar with the programming end of things can enlighten me as to what is possible.

Personally, if it won't slow down our game any, I would like to be able to view the full lists of each of the demographics (rather than just your info, best/worst/avg, and your ranking).

Also I don't think it should take any espionage points to see everyone's details. It should require modern computers at best. Needing espionage to view GDP and military strength makes sense in 1492, but in the modern world all of that info is available on one website. :D

I think there may be an existing improved statistics mod, I will look around.

I haven't got the links, but I'm pretty sure that there are mods for:
Immigration
Natural disasters (this could be pretty cool, ie: hurricanes only affect US and Pacific where they occur naturally, or it could just be plain annoying for the player.)
And another ideas:
Human Development Index? This is a measure of how developed countries are using GDP, life expectancy, etc. Something similar might be a good idea?

Another Feature I would love to have that has been discussed here.

ARMS TRADE

The major producers could sell units to smaller, rich nations. If we have to, we can make it as simple as allowing units parked in the city with the building that allows this to be sold as you'd sell a tech.

I think it's such an important part of how the world works, it certainly merits it's own section on the diplomacy screen.

You'd be required to have a military, air force, or naval academy somewhere to be able to purchase related units (to train the crew).

The only problem with this, is having the AI actually use it properly. It seems like something we should obviously have, because it's what happens in the world, but if the AI won't buy or sell on it's own, or if they use it in stupid ways, we'll have to make due without it.I'm pretty sure smitty and the Blood & Iron guys already have something like this.

Concerning terrorists: I'd like to point out two things.

1. I think there should be 2 ways of terrorism. As it is in reality: Terrorists are not trained and sent on their missions by governments as a way of international warfare. At least not in the majority of cases.
Terrorism as we know it is conducted by criminal organisations that operate on their own accord. Of course you can't deny that this often happens to the pleasure, with acceptance or even with support of certain governments.

So I think we need another terrorist force that is not steered as a unit.
We could let it either work as a random event (both: aggressive ("a terror cell from your country is planning an attack on your enemy...will you support them?" or defensive "a terrorist attack...needs to be specified...was conducted in your territory...how do you react?"). The probability of this happening should be rising with the dislike of your civ in other civs.
Or we could let them operate as invisible barbarian units that randomly spawn when other civs are furious at you.

Of course we still need the governmentally steered terrorists. These should affect the relations between the two civs far more than the "independent" terrorists, when discovered.

2. I have a different opinion in the effects a terrorist attack should have.
How does terrorism work? In the first place, like the name suggests, in terrorising people, scare them, make them unhappy. Not so much in killing hundreds of thousands of people like it happens in real wars conducted by armies. After all, compared to wars, the number of casualties in terrorist attacks is rather low and would not justify e.g. the reduction of a city size.

So my suggestions for terrorist operations are:
- Bomb attack (cheapest, causes unhappiness)
- Bomb building (destroys building, causes unhappiness)
- Concerted bomb attack (causes much unhappiness, chance of switching certain civic to less liberal)
- Assassinate great specialist (kills a great specialist, causes unhappiness)
- Bomb wonder (extremely expensive, imagine like 9/11, destroys wonder, causes extreme unhappiness, high chance of civic switch)

Unhappiness should not only be caused in the attacked city but in every city of that civ. But less than in the attacked city.

Underground network (trains)?
Needs certain population level to be viable, but will give production and money a boost. Production, as people get to work easier and money as it's a public thing so profit goes to the government.
Just an idea...

Can I just suggest steering away from the word 'terrorism' and making more general units for 'asymmetric warfare'?

Pretty much every modern nation state has at some point in the recent past involved itself with what someone else considers a 'terrorist' group, and they all say they are opposed to terrorism which is utter rubbish.

Essentially I think all terrorism should be (invisible) unit based, and all sides can if they wish use those units - however they should also be available to the barbarian side to represent any terrorism which isn't directly run by a state.

How about having a 'Terrorist leader' unit, which can spawn other terrorist units in the same way a worker produces terrain improvements (not sure if this is viable to code at this point). The other units then can be used offensively, for example:

Insurgent: Basic infantry unit
IED: Invisible, immobile unit that automatically does a one shot attack at the first enemy unit to enter its square
Technical: A weak armoured unit.
Suicide bomber: One shot bombard unit
Katyusha: Multiple shot bombarding unit
Modern Pirate: Naval unit that can blockade
Hijacked plane: One shot bombard, more powerful than a suicide bomber and airborne. Must be used on turn created.
Terrorist aircraft: Works like a bomber, but weaker

These are all examples drawn from recent real-world events

Thanks Damburger and ianinsane, great ideas. Let's use exactly what you talked about as a guideline for our final terrorist feature. So, we'll start by renaming it:

Asymmetric warfare

The terrorist leader is a great idea, and if we can do it, lets. Maybe he has to recruit from cities, including foreign cities, and the resulting units are more likely to be successful if they are drawn from the civ you are attacking. But it would be much harder/more expensive to recruit compared to doing it in your cities.

Whether we can do it this way or not, we have to include Damburgers' list of offensive units. (Although someone will have to explain to me what a Katyusha is! lol)

We should also use ianinsane's ideas for operations. Different units will have to have different missions to some degree. Obviously a hijacked plane has a pretty low chance of assassinating someone (unless the guy's on the plane I guess).

Also ianinsane is right about the effects. Loosing population never made much sense, unless we get into biological attacks, which I vote on leaving out since they have never happened on a big scale (from a terrorist).

Keep the ideas coming guys. :goodjob:

I'm pretty sure smitty and the Blood & Iron guys already have something like this.


Sweet, I'll check it out.

Thanks Damburger and ianinsane, great ideas. Let's use exactly what you talked about as a guideline for our final terrorist feature. So, we'll start by renaming it:

Asymmetric warfare

The terrorist leader is a great idea, and if we can do it, lets. Maybe he has to recruit from cities, including foreign cities, and the resulting units are more likely to be successful if they are drawn from the civ you are attacking. But it would be much harder/more expensive to recruit compared to doing it in your cities.

Whether we can do it this way or not, we have to include Damburgers' list of offensive units. (Although someone will have to explain to me what a Katyusha is! lol)

We should also use ianinsane's ideas for operations. Different units will have to have different missions to some degree. Obviously a hijacked plane has a pretty low chance of assassinating someone (unless the guy's on the plane I guess).

Also ianinsane is right about the effects. Loosing population never made much sense, unless we get into biological attacks, which I vote on leaving out since they have never happened on a big scale (from a terrorist).

Keep the ideas coming guys. :goodjob:

We can make the Terrorist leader GG, that is able to spawn recruitment units. These recruitment units can function like spies and go into cities and do a "recruiting" mission. Depending on how many military units and espionage points you have in the city will affect the chance of success and the chance of being caught. OF course, the more units and espionage points you have, the less likely the terrorist group will be able to recruit in that city.

Another thought on terrorism/asymmetric warfare.

If we let terrorist attacks cost espionage points we should add a bonus like this: Whenever one civ is furious at another terrorist missions in that other civ would only cost 50%. I'd suggest that this 50% bonus makes terrorist missions affordable for developing countries in the first place. This would add some realism since states are only attacked by terrorists originating from states that really dislike the other.

Another horrible but realistic feature I'd like to see included:

Ethnic cleansing

I don't know how you have finally decided on the religions issue. If you use the "cultural ideologies" feature then this would work like this:
If a certain civic like "Ethnic nationalism" or similar is active, military units that are stationed in a city with a cultural ideology that is not state cultural ideology can conduct the action "ethnic cleansing".
Basically it works like the Inquisition (or was it called counter-reformation?) in Total Realism (...i think): The non-state cultural ideology disappears from that city.
If we include the immigration mod this could spawn an immigrant representing the fugitives.
Of course this affects relations with other civs, especially with those who have the expelled cultural ideology as state cultural ideology. It would become even worse if this immigration unit is killed afterwards. Then that civ would be accused of genocide which is a casus belli for other civs. There might be even the option of a UN resolution to declare war...

Concerning Terrorist leaders: AFAIK that Afterworld mod has units that spawn other units...

Yes I like both of those ideas. Although Joecoolyo, I'm not sure about adding another step (GG>recruiter,>unit). Wouldn't it be preferable to just make the GG do the recruiting, even if it is slightly less realistic perhaps?

Another thing; unlike with spies, being caught using terrorist units should give you negative relations with every country that isn't at least cautions towards the victim civ. We will have to make the AI much less likely to use these units, unless they can't produce regular military units and are under attack or embargo.

As long as we get our military licensing (name?) feature included, which I assume we will, civs under embargo by the major weapons producers (USA, China, Russia, EU, NATO), or those who can not afford licenses, will only be able to build very basic units.

Yes, the GG by itself works, but when he does the recruiting for units within the cities, how many units will he be able to get? Or are we going to do it like espionage missions, in which you can choose how many units you want to recruit, with the higher the amount you want, the bigger the chance of being caught?

An expansion to the ethnic cleansing feature:

International Criminal Court screen

A screen that lists countries that have committed genocide and launched nuclear first strike attacks.

Certainly trading with any of these countries should cost you diplomacy points with all other law abiding civs.

An expansion to the ethnic cleansing feature:

International Criminal Court screen

A screen that lists countries that have committed genocide and launched nuclear first strike attacks.

Certainly trading with any of these countries should cost you diplomacy points with all other law abiding civs.

We could put this as a tab in the Military Adviser screen. We can also put a warning somewhere on the diplomacy screen, just to warn you that you will get diplo penalties for trading with the civ.

Yes, the GG by itself works, but when he does the recruiting for units within the cities, how many units will he be able to get? Or are we going to do it like espionage missions, in which you can choose how many units you want to recruit, with the higher the amount you want, the bigger the chance of being caught?


good question!

Probably one at a time I'd say, at least for now. That's kind of how it works right? Give give the GG one option, unit type.


Asymmetric warfare cont.

The chances of GG being caught and/or failing at recruiting units will depend on:

-type of unit he's recruiting.
-mood of the city
-the regular espionage point system

If you are recruiting inside your own cities or friendly cities, there should be no chance of being caught on this stage, but some chance of failing. But home grown units will be much worse than foreign recruited units (maybe as simple as giving a lot of bonuses to units recruited in enemy cities?)


The chances of being caught using one of these trained units to commit an act of asymmetrical Warfare will depend on:


-experience of the unit obviously, if some are not suicided.
-where the unit was recruited from (your cities or the enemy's) Probably reflected through experience bonuses.
-again the regular espionage point system
-city defenses (depends on unit type, ie: hijacked plane may be shot down by jet fighters or s.a.m. sites. this may be getting too in depth, we'll see.)



Guys please add to the above.

We could put this as a tab in the Military Adviser screen. We can also put a warning somewhere on the diplomacy screen, just to warn you that you will get diplo penalties for trading with the civ.

Good ideas. I think we're going to have to figure out how many new screens we have, and then figure out the best way to organize them all. Off the top of my head I come up with 6 that we want to include almost for certain.

Note: I have updated the first post in this thread to try to reflect the decisions we are making. Let me know if I'm missing something I should include, or including something I shouldn't.

I agree on including deficit spending, its an important part of how the real world works.
Likewise getting the AI to lend eachother money would be nice...

These are good ideas...

The only thing I can say/suggest is that...you have to realize that the game is made to function in certain ways, and getting TOO over the top in changes to the dynamics of gameplay from Civ4's engine is risky in making the mod un-playable for the simple fact that the AI really has to be able to implement these on the same level (or higher, ideally) than a human player or else it will just be a race of the human player taking advantage of the AI, and ensure a victory for the human player.

The goal (only my opinion, and I know it doesn't have much weight) is to have the mod:

-mimic today's world
-have the alliances of today's world
-have the technologies/units/buildings allowed for certain civilizations be specific to them (or to the alliance, in general)
-*personal opinion* - Every country should have access to oil because even if it was embargoed from one country, another country would gladly corner the market and sell it to the embargoed country at a premium (or gift it to them to aid a war effort), so without adding more complexities to the game-code we should simply have every country always have access to oil (please read on for the idea about oil embargos, though!):
<---AND WITH THAT: -*Idea* - Since I think every civ should have access to oil for game coding and AI usage simplicity...since the goal is to make the AI able to actually PLAY the game well against us (and not thru trades, etc. - we don't need to actually "enforce" a trade with the AI...just give each country oil as it is "implied" that each country WOULD obtain oil in a war in today's world) - and with that knowledge, we should create a new unit/unit option: As a naval ship can "blockade" enemy tiles from obtain resources and trade routes, we should have a land unit that can "blockade" land area/land trade routes in the same fashion - this unit/unit option would streamline a lot of things into a simplified choice for the AI and negate programming that the AI may never even use. We know this should work, because the AI consistently uses naval blockades very well. Obviously while the land is being blockaded, the affected cities will not be able to produce oil units until the blockading vehicle(s) is destroyed, allowing oil to once again be available to the city.

-Have civilizations "biased" to using a certain type of ideology. For example: The USA uses socialism (lets face it, the USA is hardly a free market, haha), Canada is socialist, with countries like Singapore are capitalist/free market, and China is communist, and Russia can be socialist but with the possibility of going back to communism, and the middle eastern countries as religious fundamentalists. And clearly socialism/free market would be friendly, with a couple negative points for communists, and a lot of negative points for religious fundamentalists (or whatever ideologies you plan on using in the end) - just whichever, the countries should USE what the are, and not switch to what is the "best" because thats just not going to happen in real life.

-Saudi Arabia (or at least whoever controls Mecca) should ALSO have permanent open borders with all Islamic nations (representing the pilgrimage to Mecca for Muslims), and should have friendly relations with Islamic nations and maybe an extra trade route with them.

-*Very Important* (again, my opinion): Nuclear war should be programmed to be a LAST RESORT. I find it ridiculous whenever the AI has an ICBM and it declares war on a country and immediately uses their ICBMS. Very ridiculous. Very. Doesn't happen, and won't happen because it is mutual destruction and the people in charge know the fastest way to lose power is to launch an ICBM. IF you launch an ICBM, EVERY country should declare war on the launching country and have permanent poor relations (maybe to negate this, we should LIMIT the ICBMS by a LOT [like Russia and USA 3, China 2, anyone else that has them 1 or 0] and make the cost to build them enourmously ridiculous.

Bottom line...build the mod as realistic as possible WITHIN the framework of a working game, and implement things that WILL work first, while also modding things like ideologies, etc. The land trade-embargo unit/unit option would represent an oil embargo on a country at war, but it would give them the opportunity to destroy the unit and immediately have access to oil, again, which is more realistic than attempting to make the AI "think, and possess the knowledge to trade for oil during a war." That, in a nutshell, would be the most successful mod. Implementing the units, specific units/buildings/etc., implementing the relations, the ideologies, etc.

***A good twist, obviously, would be to have the Islamic nations be programmed to attempt to control Jerusalem if it is controlled by a non-Islamic country, and have Christian/Jewish nations programmed to control Jerusalem if it is controlled by a non Christian/Jewish nation...this would ensure that there would be constant war between the Islamic and Christian/Jewish nations over the holy land and would keep in touch with history, the present, and the future struggles between these countries and would be a simple way to represent the never-ending struggle between christianity and muslim nations and their ideologies (even if we aren't using religions, we can make the religious fundamentalist countries vie to control Jerusalem vs. the non religious fundamentalist countries and ensures a constant middle east in turmoil.)

Whether we can do it this way or not, we have to include Damburgers' list of offensive units. (Although someone will have to explain to me what a Katyusha is! lol)

Its a type of rocket artillery developed by the Russians in WW2 and used recently by Hezbollah, to significant effect, in their war with Israel.

Its basically a block of tubes, sometimes mounted on the back of a vehicle, containing a whole bunch of rockets. You can launch them off in a big barrage, then hide before the people you are fighting can locate you and blow you up.

As I said, these are basically WW2 vintage hardware but Hezbollah were able to batter Israel with them and not lose many; on the last day of the war they fired off more rockets than they had on any previous day.

Its not that launching a nuke is the fastes way to lose power (look at Truman) its that it would lead to the end of life on earth as we know it.
Also with regards to Nukes, the big boys will need far more than that to reflect the modern world. If the USA or Russia launched oly there own missiles it would be the end of civilization as we know it, therefore they should have many of them to reflect MAD ingame. But the AI should use them as a last resort I agree, say if one of there core cities get captured


With regards to Jerusalem, that would start a Nuclear war, Israel has at least 75 nuclear war heads and the capability to deliver by air, land and sea. No Arab country would attack Israel for fear of the consequences if Israel lost, the ME becoming a glass car park for one.

Here another feature idea. Maybe DVS was aiming for that, too, when he said that the AIAutoPlay-mod might be part of the final mod:

THE TERM OF OFFICE

If the player chooses a democratic civic, like representation there has to be a way of simulating the term of office. Every 4 years, or 48 turns there should be an election. If a lot of citizens are unhappy a fictional opponent will be elected as leader of your civilization. Then you'd have to turn over control to the AI for a couple of turns. Next time you'd win the election automatically and are in charge again...
The same system should work for AI leaders. If one AI leader loses the election, the leader name could change (maybe use great people names?) and there could be random but slight effects on the relationship to other leaders. Maybe even one leader trait changes...
For the human player this should simulate the pressure on a leader to neglect important issues for the sake of winning an election. But also the AI should try to make its people happy before an election for the sake of winning.

When at war you should get a bonus with your people making it easier to win. So you might think about starting a war with a tiny civ before an election. (Remember that move "Wag the dog"?)

That's an awesome idea. That'd be great if we can get it to work properly. :goodjob:

Of course there should always be polls or election forecasts available in the advisors or statistics menu. that way you'd know if youre in danger of losing.

Sheep21:

Launching a nuke from Truman was a no-brainer because no one else had any to retaliate with. In today's world...it is the fastest way to lose power.

Country X launches a nuclear missile at Country Y. Whether country Y has them or not...Countries A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J immediately invade Country X and remove the leader from power with force (and if country X has many nuclear weapons - they are countered by another country having many that would be against them, assuring that Country X doesn't strike with them again on large scale). You have to remember...someone is always there wanting to take power. Country X launches nuke - all countries invade country X, and 3rd in command in Country X senses the ability to take power, and helps remove the leader before he assures destruction of everything.
There is no benefit to those in charge to launch nuclear weapons. The leaders have a lot of money, and a lot of power, and a lifestyle off the charts compared to those they are ruling over - there is no benefit to launching a nuclear weapon. The only good reason to have them is to A) assure that you do have the capability to counter-strike, and B ) to propogandize your power as a country and effectiveness as a leader to the citizens you rule over.

There will, probably, never be a multitude of nuclear strikes on earth. There is no reason for someone in power to launch them (even handing it off to someone with the amount of intelligence today would lead back to who handed it off to who) and it would result in someone having a lot of power being forcefully removed from office.

Truman had the only bombs on the planet at the time - so there was no reason for him NOT to drop them because there was A) no knowledge of them existing or what their capabilities were, and B ) no way through a counter-strike to stop him at the time.

World is much different today.

And Israel would never launch because their launch codes are thru the United States, and the United States would never actually give them to Israel unless Israel were nuclear struck first - which won't happen because it guarantees that the Islamic leader would lose power via death/removal from office via a war with Israel which would also be a war with the United States & Co.

The BEST thing in the world is for EVERYONE to have a nuclear weapon because it would ensure that no one was too crazy for fear of mutual destruction & the BEST way to make that realisitic in Civ4 is to give everyone a VERY low amount, or zero nuclear weapons, representing the fact that they'll never really get launched (at least on a large scale) and while humans can do/know this, the Civ4 AI cannot, which will cause every war to be a nuclear war.

The FIRST thing the AI does when it has nuclear weapons is launch them at the outset of a war. Not very realistic, so not even having them...or having a VERY, VERY small amounts of them, actually, makes the game more realistic. Realism of the mod is key, but you have to work within the framework of the AI system of Civ4, realizing it is not a human player, but a computer.

For the Term of Office feature, I think it would be problematic (read: unfun for the player) if they lost control of their civ to the AI for any number of turns. But I like the idea of having a 'price' for having an elective government as opposed to the price of having authoritarianism (e.g., unhappy people, military unkeep, etc). An alternative would be, to semi-randomly modify the civics based on the opposition-party's preferences. Simplistically, it could just change civics randomly and they remain that way until the next election, during which time you can do things for your party to win the election (but hmm it would be unrealistic to still have control of your military in the meanwhile...). More-complexly, depending upon how politics/religion/ethnicity is handled in the game, if the opposition wins then more-radical civic choices are made.

The trouble here is, 'who' is the player representing? Is the player the one individual leader? Or does the player represent a political party/ideology? Or nationalism/ethnicity? And what is the timeframe? In vanilla civ, you don't play a specific real person as the leader of the civilization, since obviously no one lives for 6000+ years. It would be trickier here, if the timeframe reduces to months/weeks in which case the player CAN represent a particular individual leader -- losing an election in that case might mean you lose the game! Unfun. But if you represent a party/ideology, then losing an election should create a serious setback but not the end of the game.

Dunno how you could code politics into the game, but here's a brainstorm. Assume you have two potential leaders for a civ using representative government, such as Obama and McCain. Each leader has a set of civics-choices which they advocate, and which differ (at least slightly) from each other. The civ population, based upon recent game events as well as long-standing national identity, has its own civics preferences. THe population somehow votes based upon their civics preferences for one of the two candidates. Whichever one wins is then charged with implementing the civics choices which they advocated. Note that these promised-civics may not necessarily match the civics which the populace likes overall, or necessarily match the current civics choices in-game. Meanwhile however, "the government" of the civilization, which includes the military, the economy, etc, operates in an ongoing manner no matter which leader is in charge. It is this "government" which YOU as the player represent. Now, no matter which leader the population chooses in their election, it is the government which carries out the civics on a day-to-day basis. OK, so I am saying that the leader is essentially a figurehead; I don't necessarily believe that, but maybe that works best in game terms here. Now, in game terms, the population expects the leader to implement the civics which they promised during the election. Simple: however far they deviate from the civics they promised, the people become increasingly unhappy with that leader. Including even deviating to civics which the people actually prefer more -- this effect would be cancelled out by the fact that the people like the preferred civic more (e.g. +2 happy) than they dislike the broken promise (-1 happy). For this to work, each civic likely needs to be on a continuum, so that distance from preferred/promised civic could be easily calculated. This political unhappiness is in addition to the usual unhappiness of wars, lack of luxuries, etc. As mentioned above, there should be an incumbent effect, as well as something connected with war weariness -- if the war is going well, the incumbent gets a boost in the polls; if the war isn't going well, they get hurt in the polls. Also, the incumbent, for expedience, either gets to set their platform first and/or gets some boost for choosing civics already enacted (i.e., taking credit for them) -- this allows a player to delay civics changes with an election upcoming, then enacting those changes when they win the election, thus setting them up with a big boost for winning future elections. Basically, in general the player would still get to choose their civics but would have to deal with public opinion when they do so, which sounds fairly realistic.

Here another feature idea. Maybe DVS was aiming for that, too, when he said that the AIAutoPlay-mod might be part of the final mod:

THE TERM OF OFFICE

If the player chooses a democratic civic, like representation there has to be a way of simulating the term of office. Every 4 years, or 48 turns there should be an election. If a lot of citizens are unhappy a fictional opponent will be elected as leader of your civilization. Then you'd have to turn over control to the AI for a couple of turns. Next time you'd win the election automatically and are in charge again...
The same system should work for AI leaders. If one AI leader loses the election, the leader name could change (maybe use great people names?) and there could be random but slight effects on the relationship to other leaders. Maybe even one leader trait changes...
For the human player this should simulate the pressure on a leader to neglect important issues for the sake of winning an election. But also the AI should try to make its people happy before an election for the sake of winning.

When at war you should get a bonus with your people making it easier to win. So you might think about starting a war with a tiny civ before an election. (Remember that move "Wag the dog"?)

Once again, we can mod the revolution mod a little because there is already a system like this in the mod. If people are angry in your civ (in the revolution mod) and you are running universal suffrage, they can demand an election, and if you lose the empire goes under A.I. control for a certain amount of turns. We can try to mod this system to make it happen every 48 turns.

For the Term of Office feature, I think it would be problematic (read: unfun for the player) if they lost control of their civ to the AI for any number of turns.

I agree that there are some players who would consider this no fun. But there's a fairly simple solution for that: Why not make it possible to activate or deactivate that feature at the beginning in the Custom Scenario screen? Just like you can do with permanent alliances...
So hardcore realistic gamers who like the occasional spoke in the wheel like me can run for office. And after all: The goal is to win the election so the AI doesn't come to power in the first place.

Once again, we can mod the revolution mod a little because there is already a system like this in the mod. If people are angry in your civ (in the revolution mod) and you are running universal suffrage, they can demand an election, and if you lose the empire goes under A.I. control for a certain amount of turns. We can try to mod this system to make it happen every 48 turns.

This is fantastic!

Ok guys I updated post #1 again, I'm trying to get the definitive list of the changes we are going to have to make for V1.0. Elections are covered by revolutions so I left that out.

Please take a look and tell me if I am forgetting any. Once we get the list finalized, we can work each one out in detail, and the programmers can start working on them.

Progress is moving fast so we have to get out of the ideas stage and fully in to working on making the modifications.

RE: Improved Stats
The WoC has a cool Unit Statistics mod, which is slightly irrelevant, but none-the-less cool, which keeps a track of kills, battles, most advanced unit killed etc. For other stats, the BUG Mod has graphs and tables galore, so I'm not sure I totally understand which stats you're looking for.

As for everything else, can I just suggest putting a link to each post on each one to make things easy for casual readers? Otherwise, great list. :goodjob:

The main thing I want is the full lists for each of the demographic that is shown on the f9 screen. If we can't do it no biggie, it's just something I've always though would be nice (and available in real life).

I'll update the post with links tonight. :-)

Has anyone come up with an idea how to properly simulate crime? I think that is an important problem in today's world. I'll just post my thoughts on that subject here...far away from a masterplan, but I guess you guys have thougts on this too.

Three important keywords come to my mind:
- drug trade
- trafficking in human beings
- organised crime

Drug Trade
We might have drugs as an illegal ressource. This would mean that you cannot officially trade that resource but it spreads like religions do. There should be ways to promote drug spreading to other civs (earning a little extra money and destabilizing your opponents) or to fight drug trade. Maybe you could also distinguish between drug cultivation and drug trade. Cultivation would be having the drug resource in your territory and cultivate it, trade would mean the smuggling of drugs into your or your opponents territory.
A city that has access to drugs should earn some happy faces and additional culture but also reduced health, commerce and production.

Trafficking in human beings
This would mean the trade of slaves/forced laborers and prositutes into other countries. I'm not sure how to do this:
- Either similarly to drug trade as (illegal/self-spreading) resources
- Or similarly to Great Specialists. Whenever a forced laborer or prostitute has been smuggled to a city the slave or prostitute appears like a Great Specialist in the city window producing bonuses and maluses. Unlike ordinary specialists it cannot be removed or added by purpose.
Prostitutes should produce additional happy faces but reduce commerce. Forced laborers should produce some hammers and reduce commerce.
Just like drugs you should be able to promote or to fight trafficking in human beings.
Maybe this could be connected with the immigration feature...the more immigrant units are near your borders the higher the chance of prostitutes or forced laborers appearing in your cities. This chance might also rise with the number of wars near your borders or the number of neighboring poorer civs.

Organised crime
I'm not sure whether it would make sense to establish crime organisations (Cosa Nostra, Triades, Yakuza etc.) in a corporations-like way. These could be linked somehow to the first two aspects but also work like corporations with a little difference. They don't give you any money, they don't have a immediate positive effect. They just drain money. You have no possibility to spread it yourself like you do with corporations. They spread themselves. So the only benefit you can get is if you keep them out of your country while your neighbours can't and are destabilised.


So how to fight crime?
I had the idea of a new concept that works like the science/culture/espionage rate.
The Homeland Security rate
The higher it is the lower the chances of:
- crime in your cities
- drugs appearing in your cities
- prostitutes or forced laborers in your cities
- successful terrorist attacks against you
- maybe also espionage against you

Buildings add bonuses to this Homeland Security rate. e.g. courthouses, jails, police stations, cctvs. And so do certain civics like police state.

But be careful! Having your Homeland Security rate positioned too high causes unhappiness. People don't like being watched by Big Brother...

Ok, first post updated with links to individual ideas. I think this list of features is both doable and includes enough changes to make this mod a fantastic gameplay improvement.

We'll post updates as features are coded to let you guys know how they are working.

As it stands now, I think we could afford to find one or two more programmers who can do the GDP related features. Contact myself or NikNaks if you can help with this.

ianinsane, great ideas. The reason I didn't add that to the front page is that, we probably will not have enough programmers to get that included in version 1.0 without leaving out something else.

IMO the crime feature merits it's own thread and discussion, but let's put that on hold until we have the first version working. There is just so much we could do with it, it will become a project of it's own. Cool?

ianinsane, great ideas. The reason I didn't add that to the front page is that, we probably will not have enough programmers to get that included in version 1.0 without leaving out something else.

IMO the crime feature merits it's own thread and discussion, but let's put that on hold until we have the first version working. There is just so much we could do with it, it will become a project of it's own. Cool?

I agree. I just wanted to have it written down so the idea won't get lost. ;)

This is sorta like the weapons one but different: I don't know where to start... You know how some corporation produce a resource like the ethanol company. Well I had an idea for that like buildings. Have buildings that produce resources, but the resources expire after one use. The resources would be thing like guns or armor and each would have it's own building, but you can build as many as you want in the city. Military units use that resource when the build and it goes away. Now some units can use more than one resources. If I need to say anything else about please tell.

There are so many fantastic features coming into fruition here, I'm really excited!

But no one seems to have mentioned an absolute glaringly obvious one. If it has and is going to be implemented then I apologise. If it has and is not going to be implemented then it needs to be!

Global Warming

Rather than the ridiculous idea of one Nuclear Warhead inducing the planet into an unstoppable Global Warming we should really do something realistic and workable for ours.

Could we possibly count up the Polution caused by Buildings for each and every city and create some sort of effects from that?

Ideas for Global Warming Punishments (if possible (not a programmer)):
- Land turning to Desert
- Land turning to Coast
- Food Prod reduced on Farms

Also, UN resolutions for Climate Change? Such as 'Removal of Coal Plants' etc. The resolutions may be unattainable because of the impact of some countries defying them, reflecting the current trend of not everyone helping eachother.

As well as this, the fact that some countries may refuse and spell doom for everyone, it may be that the players declare war on them to reduce their emissions. It sounds ridiculous at the moment, but I can see this being a real option if diplomacy fails. How about reduction in relationships if the country is the biggest polluter and things begin to get serious?

Hmmm...this one is so obvious I assumed that it was already taken care of. But you're right, I can't find it in any thread...
Of course vanilla civ does have a pollution/global warming feature but frankly I don't like it. However, I'd be surprised if there wasn't already any mod that tackled that subject.

It would also be cool if we had a feature for emissions trading in a later version.

Here is the full list and the things that they do. Let's start narrowing them out. The one at the end is an addition by me.

EDIT: Later I'll make sure we can tell when one begins and ends.


Global Warming

Rather than the ridiculous idea of one Nuclear Warhead inducing the planet into an unstoppable Global Warming we should really do something realistic and workable for ours.

Could we possibly count up the Polution caused by Buildings for each and every city and create some sort of effects from that?

Ideas for Global Warming Punishments (if possible (not a programmer)):
- Land turning to Desert
- Land turning to Coast
- Food Prod reduced on Farms

Also, UN resolutions for Climate Change? Such as 'Removal of Coal Plants' etc. The resolutions may be unattainable because of the impact of some countries defying them, reflecting the current trend of not everyone helping eachother.

As well as this, the fact that some countries may refuse and spell doom for everyone, it may be that the players declare war on them to reduce their emissions. It sounds ridiculous at the moment, but I can see this being a real option if diplomacy fails. How about reduction in relationships if the country is the biggest polluter and things begin to get serious?

No Name:
This is sorta like the weapons one but different: I don't know where to start... You know how some corporation produce a resource like the ethanol company. Well I had an idea for that like buildings. Have buildings that produce resources, but the resources expire after one use. The resources would be thing like guns or armor and each would have it's own building, but you can build as many as you want in the city. Military units use that resource when the build and it goes away. Now some units can use more than one resource. If I need to say anything else about please tell.
Drug Trade
We might have drugs as an illegal ressource. This would mean that you cannot officially trade that resource but it spreads like religions do. There should be ways to promote drug spreading to other civs (earning a little extra money and destabilizing your opponents) or to fight drug trade. Maybe you could also distinguish between drug cultivation and drug trade. Cultivation would be having the drug resource in your territory and cultivate it, trade would mean the smuggling of drugs into your or your opponents territory.
A city that has access to drugs should earn some happy faces and additional culture but also reduced health, commerce and production.

Trafficking in human beings
This would mean the trade of slaves/forced laborers and prositutes into other countries. I'm not sure how to do this:
- Either similarly to drug trade as (illegal/self-spreading) resources
- Or similarly to Great Specialists. Whenever a forced laborer or prostitute has been smuggled to a city the slave or prostitute appears like a Great Specialist in the city window producing bonuses and maluses. Unlike ordinary specialists it cannot be removed or added by purpose.
Prostitutes should produce additional happy faces but reduce commerce. Forced laborers should produce some hammers and reduce commerce.
Just like drugs you should be able to promote or to fight trafficking in human beings.
Maybe this could be connected with the immigration feature...the more immigrant units are near your borders the higher the chance of prostitutes or forced laborers appearing in your cities. This chance might also rise with the number of wars near your borders or the number of neighboring poorer civs.

Organized crime
I'm not sure whether it would make sense to establish crime organisations (Cosa Nostra, Triades, Yakuza etc.) in a corporations-like way. These could be linked somehow to the first two aspects but also work like corporations with a little difference. They don't give you any money, they don't have a immediate positive effect. They just drain money. You have no possibility to spread it yourself like you do with corporations. They spread themselves. So the only benefit you can get is if you keep them out of your country while your neighbours can't and are destabilised.


So how to fight crime?
I had the idea of a new concept that works like the science/culture/espionage rate.
The Homeland Security rate
The higher it is the lower the chances of:
- crime in your cities
- drugs appearing in your cities
- prostitutes or forced laborers in your cities
- successful terrorist attacks against you
- maybe also espionage against you

Buildings add bonuses to this Homeland Security rate. e.g. courthouses, jails, police stations, cctvs. And so do certain civics like police state.

But be careful! Having your Homeland Security rate positioned too high causes unhappiness. People don't like being watched by Big Brother...
RE: Improved Stats
The WoC has a cool Unit Statistics mod, which is slightly irrelevant, but none-the-less cool, which keeps a track of kills, battles, most advanced unit killed etc. For other stats, the BUG Mod has graphs and tables galore, so I'm not sure I totally understand which stats you're looking for.
THE TERM OF OFFICE

If the player chooses a democratic civic, like representation there has to be a way of simulating the term of office. Every 4 years, or 48 turns there should be an election. If a lot of citizens are unhappy a fictional opponent will be elected as leader of your civilization. Then you'd have to turn over control to the AI for a couple of turns. Next time you'd win the election automatically and are in charge again...
The same system should work for AI leaders. If one AI leader loses the election, the leader name could change (maybe use great people names?) and there could be random but slight effects on the relationship to other leaders. Maybe even one leader trait changes...
For the human player this should simulate the pressure on a leader to neglect important issues for the sake of winning an election. But also the AI should try to make its people happy before an election for the sake of winning.

When at war you should get a bonus with your people making it easier to win. So you might think about starting a war with a tiny civ before an election. (Remember that move "Wag the dog"?)
Immigration
Natural disasters (this could be pretty cool, ie: hurricanes only affect US and Pacific where they occur naturally, or it could just be plain annoying for the player.)
ARMS TRADE

The major producers could sell units to smaller, rich nations. If we have to, we can make it as simple as allowing units parked in the city with the building that allows this to be sold as you'd sell a tech.

I think it's such an important part of how the world works, it certainly merits it's own section on the diplomacy screen.

You'd be required to have a military, air force, or naval academy somewhere to be able to purchase related units (to train the crew).

The only problem with this, is having the AI actually use it properly. It seems like something we should obviously have, because it's what happens in the world, but if the AI won't buy or sell on it's own, or if they use it in stupid ways, we'll have to make due without it.
Asymmetric warfare

The terrorist leader is a great idea, and if we can do it, lets. Maybe he has to recruit from cities, including foreign cities, and the resulting units are more likely to be successful if they are drawn from the civ you are attacking. But it would be much harder/more expensive to recruit compared to doing it in your cities.

Whether we can do it this way or not, we have to include Damburgers' list of offensive units. (Although someone will have to explain to me what a Katyusha is! lol)

We should also use ianinsane's ideas for operations. Different units will have to have different missions to some degree. Obviously a hijacked plane has a pretty low chance of assassinating someone (unless the guy's on the plane I guess).

Also ianinsane is right about the effects. Loosing population never made much sense, unless we get into biological attacks, which I vote on leaving out since they have never happened on a big scale (from a terrorist).
Ethnic cleansing

I don't know how you have finally decided on the religions issue. If you use the "cultural ideologies" feature then this would work like this:
If a certain civic like "Ethnic nationalism" or similar is active, military units that are stationed in a city with a cultural ideology that is not state cultural ideology can conduct the action "ethnic cleansing".
Basically it works like the Inquisition (or was it called counter-reformation?) in Total Realism (...i think): The non-state cultural ideology disappears from that city.
If we include the immigration mod this could spawn an immigrant representing the fugitives.
Of course this affects relations with other civs, especially with those who have the expelled cultural ideology as state cultural ideology. It would become even worse if this immigration unit is killed afterwards. Then that civ would be accused of genocide which is a casus belli for other civs. There might be even the option of a UN resolution to declare war...
International Criminal Court screen

A screen that lists countries that have committed genocide and launched nuclear first strike attacks.

Certainly trading with any of these countries should cost you diplomacy points with all other law abiding civs.
Asymmetric warfare cont.

The chances of GG being caught and/or failing at recruiting units will depend on:

-type of unit he's recruiting.
-mood of the city
-the regular espionage point system

If you are recruiting inside your own cities or friendly cities, there should be no chance of being caught on this stage, but some chance of failing. But home grown units will be much worse than foreign recruited units (maybe as simple as giving a lot of bonuses to units recruited in enemy cities?)


The chances of being caught using one of these trained units to commit an act of asymmetrical Warfare will depend on:


-experience of the unit obviously, if some are not suicided.
-where the unit was recruited from (your cities or the enemy's) Probably reflected through experience bonuses.
-again the regular espionage point system
-city defenses (depends on unit type, ie: hijacked plane may be shot down by jet fighters or s.a.m. sites. this may be getting too in depth, we'll see.)
Local War
For example, this might be war where US and China fight over Taiwan, NATO and Soviets for Cold War Berlin, or from history, alternative version of beginning of WW2.
• Can be declared over only 1 city, which must have less than 60% culture of enemy civ or must be in riot
• AI (original civs and all their allies/vassals) will attack/defend only this city (though may attack enemy units nearby)
• After 5 turns will either come to Cease Fire or Total War (given choice to both sides; if pre-war relations were at least 'cautious', high chance that both AIs will choose peace, not depending who owns targeted city)
• No nuclear weapons
• Fairly insignificant negative diplomacy changes for aggressor
Total War
More or less standart war from CIV4, but:
• Around 2-5 civs involved
• Cease Fire can't be declared for the first 10 turns, because if civs wanted peace, they had a chance during Local War
• AI tends not to use ICBM unless they lose more than 50% of original army or 50% of original territory
• If any ICBM is used, switched to Nuclear War (player is warned)
• Serious negative diplomacy changes for aggressor
World War
Larger scale version of total war
• 7+ Civs involved
• All UN Resolutions become null and void, UN Wonder ceases to work
• Activates all offensive\defensive treaties
• War cannot end till one side or the other has vassalized the enemy or destroyed their Civ
• If any ICBM is used, switched to Nuclear War (player is warned)
• Very serious negative diplomacy changes for aggressor
Nuclear War
(Using both the M.A.D. Nukes mod and the Nuclear Arsenal mod)
• Every civ involved in Total War launch their ICBM on enemy cities, targeting cities with ICBMs at first
• Some devastating and/or end-of-the-world (but not game) events occur
Proxy War
The armament supply among civs should become more important. I'm not sure how to make it work but it should be custom that Civs supply wartime enemies of their enemy with units. That way they can weaken their enemy without having to go to war themselves.
I can think of several ways to do this:
• If a Civ gives a unit to another Civ the usual way (moving into the others therritory and donate it) it should have effects on diplomatic relations...like +1 for every few modern units
• If a Civ asks you to join its war against another there should be a third option to answer like "No, but I will [secretly] supply you with weapons." Then a new diplomacy screen pops on and you can choose which of your units to transfer to the other Civ. But you can't just put a warrior on the table to buy your way out of it. The other civ has to accept it like any other trade. If you put too little on the table the "you refused to help us during war time" malus will appear. If your offer is accepted then there is no effect on relations. To gain a positive effect you additionally have to donate units the way I described before.
Deficit Spending

This and other modifications that we want to make to the GDP function should be figured out once and for all. Personally I think we should try to make the trade system better, and increase the use of lending.

Right now, when you're trading you are limited to spending your surplus gold. But if a country has a large treasury, shouldn't they be allowed to increase their deficit by spending money beyond their surplus to buy resources? It is stupid that AI civs that are spending to the max on research/espionage won't go farther into the red to buy oil they need when they are under invasion.

Hopefully we will be able to make this work, and we can get a little fancy with it. We can prevent small AI civs from being totally irresponsible by cutting them off when they start screwing themselves over. Even give civs a rating, lowering it if their economy begins to struggle, and that's when restrictions kick in. Human players could see the ratings on the "International Monetary Fund (IMF)" screen. IMF rating is also hurt by certain economic civics. Being in a trade org should probably give you a bump.

We could also try to make the AI handle this better by only letting it increase the deficit to buy things it really needs. Extra oil only when they are at war, happiness resources only when their happiness rating is low, etc etc. Again varying degrees of restrictions based on their IMF rating.

I also think it would be nice if we could increase the frequency of money lending. Poor nations should more often borrow money from rich ones and use it to hurry production. Interest rates/availability dependent on the attitudes of rich nations towards you of course. The US and EU should be making big loans to some of our micro states and weaker unions. Ideally.

The amount of loans you have and have had would also tie in to the IMF screen.

As always all of these changes are dependent on how the AI will react to them. If the limitations are there to prevent the AI from extreme stupid spending then we will have to forget about this.

If anyone has seen a mod that modifies the GDP in any way, please share.


Also, on a side note, I think we should remove all references to "gold" and replace them with "dollars"; including the icon. (as long as the USD remains the world's reserve currency... who knows, we may have to change it back!). Please don't anybody mention exchange rates etc until well after V1.0 comes out!

Religious War:
Muslims can be had towards Christians or Jew so I thought maybe we could have war declared by religion. Have different religions have enemies (e.g. Islam vs. Jew, Christians). And the people could get angry and declare war of them and you can’t do anything about it. You still have to fight the war though.

I very much like some of these, my top ones:
- Global Warming: It has to be included because it represents one of the biggest struggles the 21st century will face.
- Term in Office: Keeps players on their toes and would really make the Mod stand out.
- War Types: Really interesting and bound to create some amazing results.

See the mods to be merged thread- our global warming system is going to be the one in WoC. We don't have the programmers to do all these custom modifications ourselves, we have to prioritize.

Terms of office- the revolutions mod is going to be the basis of our stability. Again not something we have the resources to play around with for months to perfect.

war types: see NikNaks' war escalation post on page 1. This is a critical feature for us that is going to be included.

How do you think the religious war idea? I have a suggestion for the office term feature. Have the republic and democracy have the most bonuses, but have the problem of losing elections. If you lose the election the AI takes your civ for 4 years until re-election. And every turn starting so many turns before the election you state your philosophy so to speak and different choices can get people votes and reject some votes.

Earlier in this thread we decided not to give control of a player's civ to the idea. Let's try to keep on track boys, we have to get this thing playable! The more we keep adding new features and ideas, the less likely we will ever finish.

We also decided to keep religions out of the game and replace them with ideologies, since the overwhelming majority of modern states are not guided by religion.

We could declare the list of features to be closed for V1.0, open another thread for future features and move the new suggestions there...

No we can keep adding features for future updates in here, that's ok. I just don't want to see anyone spend too much time planning out features that have already been ruled out for various reasons.

OK, I had another idea. That is crazy stuff, I know, and I don't assume anyone is crazy enough to try to build this idea in our mod let alone in the first version. But I'll post it anyway. Just toying with ideas...

I had that idea of legislative initiatives represented by events that i posted into the events thread. This lead me to the question: How to simulate a (parliamentary) democratic system with a legislative and elections without taking away control of the player:


Parliamentary Simulation

Assuming I play the German leader (we don't have Germany in our mod but it is ok as an example). There is a parliament I have to work with. This parliament would function exactly like UN or Apostolic Palace. I am permanently holding the secretary chair meaning I can propose laws (like UN resolutions).
There are different factions (i.e. parties) in this parliament who can each vote on a law (like Civs do with UN resolutions). Each faction would hold a number of seats (1 seat = 1 vote) which are determined by elections (see below). Whenever one bill gains the majority of votes it comes into effect. You can also ignore the vote of the parliament (like defying resolutions) but this will have bad effects.
For example in German parliament would be 5 factions: CDU/CSU (conservatives, 223 seats/votes), SPD (social-democrats, 222), FDP (liberals, 61), Linke (lefts, 53), Grüne (greens 51). I'd propose a law and get the votes of SPD, Linke and Grüne, then this bill would succeed.

How to determine what the parties will vote like?
It should not be random otherwise it would be not realistic. Since we have to invent any possible bill beforehand we can calculate how each party would be likely to vote. For example green parties are likely to vote for stronger environment laws. Liberal parties are likely to vote against laws that are against personal freedom. But this should only be a 75% chance so you can never be completely sure how the factions will vote.

What kind of legislative initiatives are possible?
I guess that depends on the chosen civic. There might be 3 democratic civics that differ in the amount of power given to the parliament. The lowest could be that you have only less important laws (like smoking restrictions that affect health) to be voted on. The highest could be that you have to propose declaring wars or changing civics to the parliament.

How can the seats and factions in the parliament change during the game?
This would happen by elections. These elections are held every 48 turns. Depending on the happiness of the people small or big changes can happen. This should be a random calculations with the old percentage as initial point. The more unhappiness, the higher the the single parties' chances of big wins or big losses. Otherwise only small random changes happen. But even these can turn over the power structure to your favour.

How can the parliaments be different in different civs?
Of course the US can't have a 5 factions parliament. A unique parliament with unique parties must be composed for each civ. For the US there would be a parliament with two factions (Rep&Dem) at game start and other factions and other parties in other civs. Of course this needs a lot of research.

Of course this can't be totally realistic due to totally different democratic structures around the world. But it would be one step towards more realism...

That's the ideas I had this afternoon, basically. I hope you guys don't get mad at me for always churning out new ideas instead on working to make the existent ones come true... :blush:

Hello everybody!!!!

Since we are trying to make this mod as realistic as possible, but still a great fun to play, I think we have to pay some attention to the economic differences between the major areas of the world. I know that was already discussed in conjunction with the whole corporations-topic. I strongly support the idea that the rich (western) countries have influence via their big corporations in poorer countries all over the world. But I think everybody agrees on this point.
The important question I'm asking is this one: Via the corporations the richer or more developed countries get much money from all over the world. In real world that is likewise, so where is the problem? For me the problem is, that in Civilization IV money is not as important as in the real world! In the real world the great powers can buy nearly all what they want, regardless of where these things are built. It's not important where the factory is situated in the first place, but where the owner of the factory sits and whereto the money flows respectively. In Civ the GDP is very important for research and if you have very much you can also hurry the porduction sometimes, but the most important factor is the industrial production and since you can build all things with hammers in your cities, it includes (in my opinion) also a little bit of the role of real-world money and the real financial system. After this (I hope not too long and boring) explanations I would like to present my ideas:

Given that (in my opinion) the economic differences of our real world cannot be entirely presented via the GDP in civ, we should provide the more developed regions and areas with some sort of modernizations which significantly boost their industrial production. I deliberately wrote "modernizations" because I think the easiest way to accomplish that would be modernizations. The reason why countries and areas like the USA or Europe or Japan are much richer and much more productive than great portions of the rest of the world lies, among other things, in the good and advanced infrastructure. Furthermore in the high level of education and naturally also in other fields which we cannot insert in the game. But the bottom line is that a good infrastructure and a hig educational level strongly contributes to the productivity and economic power of the rich countries. We could represent both things with a new sort of modernization (for example: "internet cables" or "highways") which strongly increases the productivity on these land tiles. The modding shouldn't be that difficult if we declare it the next grade of street/railway-modernization, with no effects on travelling units but with very big effects for the producing cities. It should take a very, very, very long time to build these modernizations so that between the developed countries and the poorer ones should be a quite big gap at the beginning of the game. But if the richer countries concentrate their resources too much on wars and other stuff or pollute the environment too much (so that they must constantly clean their land tiles, if such a feature will be included) the poorer countries can close the gap. In this way the tensions and differences between richer and poorer countries are warranted and represented in the game, but can also change ove the course of years and and decades very flexible.

I hope very much that my explanations were comprehensible and quite interesting (I apologize for some errors in my english!). Maybe we could include something like that in the game, if not it doesn't matter either. But I think it would be a great feature which, if it works, can make the game much more interesting!

Either way you guys are going to make a very great mod and I thank you all very much doing that!

greetings
Ben

PS: Your idea is absolutely great ianinsane!!!!!!!! If that worked it would be utterly great!!!!! Congratulations!

Hello everybody!!!!

Since we are trying to make this mod as realistic as possible, but still a great fun to play, I think we have to pay some attention to the economic differences between the major areas of the world. I know that was already discussed in conjunction with the whole corporations-topic. I strongly support the idea that the rich (western) countries have influence via their big corporations in poorer countries all over the world. But I think everybody agrees on this point.
The important question I'm asking is this one: Via the corporations the richer or more developed countries get much money from all over the world. In real world that is likewise, so where is the problem? For me the problem is, that in Civilization IV money is not as important as in the real world! In the real world the great powers can buy nearly all what they want, regardless of where these things are built. It's not important where the factory is situated in the first place, but where the owner of the factory sits and whereto the money flows respectively. In Civ the GDP is very important for research and if you have very much you can also hurry the porduction sometimes, but the most important factor is the industrial production and since you can build all things with hammers in your cities, it includes (in my opinion) also a little bit of the role of real-world money and the real financial system. After this (I hope not too long and boring) explanations I would like to present my ideas:

Given that (in my opinion) the economic differences of our real world cannot be entirely presented via the GDP in civ, we should provide the more developed regions and areas with some sort of modernizations which significantly boost their industrial production. I deliberately wrote "modernizations" because I think the easiest way to accomplish that would be modernizations. The reason why countries and areas like the USA or Europe or Japan are much richer and much more productive than great portions of the rest of the world lies, among other things, in the good and advanced infrastructure. Furthermore in the high level of education and naturally also in other fields which we cannot insert in the game. But the bottom line is that a good infrastructure and a hig educational level strongly contributes to the productivity and economic power of the rich countries. We could represent both things with a new sort of modernization (for example: "internet cables" or "highways") which strongly increases the productivity on these land tiles. The modding shouldn't be that difficult if we declare it the next grade of street/railway-modernization, with no effects on travelling units but with very big effects for the producing cities. It should take a very, very, very long time to build these modernizations so that between the developed countries and the poorer ones should be a quite big gap at the beginning of the game. But if the richer countries concentrate their resources too much on wars and other stuff or pollute the environment too much (so that they must constantly clean their land tiles, if such a feature will be included) the poorer countries can close the gap. In this way the tensions and differences between richer and poorer countries are warranted and represented in the game, but can also change ove the course of years and and decades very flexible.

I hope very much that my explanations were comprehensible and quite interesting (I apologize for some errors in my english!). Maybe we could include something like that in the game, if not it doesn't matter either. But I think it would be a great feature which, if it works, can make the game much more interesting!

Either way you guys are going to make a very great mod and I thank you all very much doing that!

greetings
Ben

PS: Your idea is absolutely great ianinsane!!!!!!!! If that worked it would be utterly great!!!!! Congratulations!


Welcome aboard Lord Wolf :beer:

I think the best way to implement you ideas of modernization is to put those ideas (i.e. highways, internet cables) into either projects, or national wonders (that of course will give production bonuses to all cities). And we can give some of the more modernized nations the national wonders to begin with, to simulate the larger production capabilities of these countries.

Lord Wolf: Very good idea...and JoeCoolyo: good way of making the idea feasible and simple to mod.

Very good thoughts, in my opinion.

There is no doubt that the 'advanced' nations are vastly superior in education level, cultural level, research level, and production level - which all leads to being vastly superior in terms of wealth.

I think all of these "wonders" that provide these research, production, culture levels should all bring ++ $$ as well, since, in the real world these things generally go hand-in-hand with becoming more economically viable.

There is one even simpler solution for this: Just give the more developed nations a bunch of Great Specialists in each city at game start. So you wouldn't need to make new wonders or improvements.

The only issue I can see with simply adding specialists...and this is the only one:

Is that, no matter what, less-developed countries will NEVER catch the more developed. More specialists just lead to more and more and more and more. So, it'll be a never-ending play to catch those countries. Adding wonders, and providing more wonders in the future will give less developed countries the chance to create these wonders...and then if they so desire they can attempt to continue building more of these wonders to catch other countries while the more developed countries may try to build up more of a military or research military wonders to stay on top of their super-power status...

The only issue I can see with simply adding specialists...and this is the only one:

Is that, no matter what, less-developed countries will NEVER catch the more developed. More specialists just lead to more and more and more and more. So, it'll be a never-ending play to catch those countries. Adding wonders, and providing more wonders in the future will give less developed countries the chance to create these wonders...and then if they so desire they can attempt to continue building more of these wonders to catch other countries while the more developed countries may try to build up more of a military or research military wonders to stay on top of their super-power status...

Maybe I want to create the African Union into a super-power? And the only way I will be able to catch up, is as Mattygerst has explained is to make National Wonders, to every civ has the chance to build them, and has a chance to become a World Super Power.

Maybe I want to create the African Union into a super-power? And the only way I will be able to catch up, is as Mattygerst has explained is to make National Wonders, to every civ has the chance to build them, and has a chance to become a World Super Power.

That's what I meant! Surely the more developed countries can also have more Great Specialists, but there should also be other possibilities to strengthen (or maybe weaken) industrial production. If you think it's easier to get this whole thing working by implementing national wonders or projects I go along with that. Although I think also using new modernizations wouldn't be that difficult (since I've seen many new types of modernizations in other mods) and would work quite well. But I'm also very happy with this solution! My only request is that the wonders really imply a significant difference and can boost greatly the industrial production of a city/country. If we are going to do this I will be very happy and content ;).

Many people don't know but America is in huge debt so I though about negative money and a loan system. And in the real world countries get their money by trade and by making it. And how about each civ has a different currency and there would be changing exchange rates.

Maybe I want to create the African Union into a super-power? And the only way I will be able to catch up, is as Mattygerst has explained is to make National Wonders, to every civ has the chance to build them, and has a chance to become a World Super Power.

You're right. National wonders surely are the more elaborate solution for this. I guess there should be 3-4 of this kind. Developed countries should have 2 at game start, emerging nations 1 and developing countries none. So there would still be room for the developed countries to assert their position as the game progresses.
But if these wonders won't make it into V1.0 we could use the Great Specialists as a rough but simple interim solution.

No problem adding the wonders, as long as you guys give us specific ideas. Use they way Joecoolyo gave his ideas for unique buildings as model (ie include name, bonuses, building replaced, etc).

There is a lot more we could do with buildings and national/world wonders as far as I'm concerned, but honestly I'm just spending all my time trying to get the ideas we already have into the mod, and I don't have time/energy to sit down and come up with the ideas, or to take other people's rough/general ideas and turn them into functioning buildings.

As long as you guys give good, detailed, simple enough ideas (like several of you did in the UB thread), it's easy enough for me or one of the other guys doing XML to add them. We don't have to have unique art for everything right away; once the buildings are in the game, people will do graphics for them over time.

@remake20- we can't do exchange rates/different currencies.

We are experimenting with what we can do to improve the financial system in the game, including deficit spending and increased lending between civs. It all depends really on how the AI will function with the changes we make. (and how much the programmers who are looking at it want to/are able to help)

Click the links in the first post of this thread for details on what we are considering, and feel free to continue suggesting improvements.

I'm just throwing out ideas.

The only problem I see with national wonders is that you build them only once. Wouldn't it be a bit easy for poorer countries to catch up with the richer countries only by building one wonder in one city??? I'm not saying this solution is not good or satisfying! Everything which contributes to making the mod more realistic and is quite simple to code is very welcome! But I'm asking how it would be possible to display that it is not sooo easy to make up weak economic structures, although possble if you are really willing to tread the right way. Has anybody got some good ideas???

Concerning the concrete boni and effects the wonders should have I could make some suggestions. But first I would like to know what you would answer to my question above. For my next post I will contemplate how the wonders could work :)

greetings

to be fair, i see no way in reality how, say ethiopia or nigeria are going to catch up to the developed world within the next 25 years,(or even 100) yet alone in the ingame world. So if its insanely difficult for the player to do it then its accuarate and reflecting reality.

that is true

to be fair, i see no way in reality how, say ethiopia or nigeria are going to catch up to the developed world within the next 25 years,(or even 100) yet alone in the ingame world. So if its insanely difficult for the player to do it then its accuarate and reflecting reality.

I think that's not entirely true. Naturally ehtiopia or nigeria are really bad examples and you are right that it will need much time for them to catch up to the developed world. But there are other countries like the emerging powers, who have much stronger economies and grow very fast. For example the 4 asian tigers or also India and China. But although these countries are growing very fast, they still are far behind the most western countries both in productivity and in general wealth. And there are other areas like latin-america or the balkans which have a great potential but cannot really bring it into action because of a wide range of reasons. Political, cultural, historical, whatever....
What I want to point out is, that it is important to display the enormous big range between wealth and productivity of the more and the less developed countries of the world. And in my opinion we should do that not only with big corporations and money, but also with a significant increase of industrial production in the richer countries. I can go along with both a new type of modernization and national wonders, but since most people here prefer the second solution I think it would be the easier one to do.
My last question was about that it would be too easy in fact for the poor countries to catch up to the developed world when they only have to build some few national wonders. So I wondered how we could make it quite hard and difficult to boost your economy (f.e. with national wonder) but still achievable for both human players and AI.

So the bottom line is that we all (myself included) agree with you and now try to work out how we could make this whole thing work in an easy but still realistic and funny way.

greetings

Maybe instead of choosing to use GP for GA we have it come randomly.

May I ask what you mean with GP and GA :confused: ???

Thanks!

those may not be correct acronyms, but GP= Great People/GA= Golden Age.

The only problem I see with national wonders is that you build them only once. Wouldn't it be a bit easy for poorer countries to catch up with the richer countries only by building one wonder in one city??? I'm not saying this solution is not good or satisfying! Everything which contributes to making the mod more realistic and is quite simple to code is very welcome! But I'm asking how it would be possible to display that it is not sooo easy to make up weak economic structures, although possble if you are really willing to tread the right way. Has anybody got some good ideas???

Concerning the concrete boni and effects the wonders should have I could make some suggestions. But first I would like to know what you would answer to my question above. For my next post I will contemplate how the wonders could work :)

greetings



We simply make the national wonders very expensive, which would make poorer, undeveloped countries actually have to work to bring their economy and production level up to actually build the wonder in a feasible amount of time. Here's some ideas of the couple of production national wonders:

National Highway System (U.S. could start out with this)
+50% Production in the city in which it is built
+25% Production in every city connected to that city by either road or rail
+1 Trade route in every city connected
+3 Unhealthiness in the city in which it was built, and +2 unhealthiness in every city connected

Maglev Train Rails (Japan could start with this)
+1 Movement on Rails
+25% Production in every city (including the city in which it was built) connected to the city in which it was built (by rails of course!)
+25% Gold in every city (including the city in which it was built) connected to the city in which it was built (by rails of course!)
-2 Unhealthiness in every city (including the city in which it was built) connected to the city in which it was built (by rails of course!)

Sounds all good. Although I see no realism in having the Highway System boosting one city's production more than the other city's. A Highway System has no "center". I'd suggest it would add the same production and unhealthiness to every city of that civ, regardless where it's built.

Sounds all good. Although I see no realism in having the Highway System boosting one city's production more than the other city's. A Highway System has no "center". I'd suggest it would add the same production and unhealthiness to every city of that civ, regardless where it's built.

That is true... how about this?

National Highway System (U.S. could start out with this)
+25% Production in every city connected to that city (the city it was built in) by either road or rail
+1 Trade route in every city connected
+2 unhealthiness in every city connected

Great ideas Joecoolyo!!!!!!!!!! That's exactly what I thought of (concerning boni and effects) and I'm quite sure it will work well with national wonders. Do we still want 4 national wonders or haven't we decided that yet? Anyway I here are a couple of my ideas:

Nationwide Broadband Internet access (for every city with energy supply)
+25% Research in every city
+10% Gold in every city
+10% Production in every city
+1 Trade route in every city

Currency is the reserve currency No. 1 (Dollar -> USA)
+25% Gold in each city
+1 Trade Route in each city with a bank
+2 relationship with civs with free market or a similiar civic
-2 relationship with civs with communistic/state property civics

Currency is the reserve currency No. 2 (Euro -> EU)
+15 % Gold in each city
+1 Trade Route in eacht city with a bank
+1 relationship with civs with free market or a similiar civic
-1 relationship with civs with communistic/state property civics

Information society (for each city with a radio tower)
+20 Culture in each city each turn
+10 % Culture in each city
-3 unhappiness (unhappy people are added) in each city
+2 happiness for 10% Culture in your budget

Knowledge society/Basic and Universitary Education system (applies to all cities with universities)
+15% Culture in each city
+20% Production in each city
+10% Gold in each city
+4 war weariness in each city
+1 healthiness in each city

Universal Health Care System (EU could start with this; for all cities with hospitals)
+5 healthiness in each city
+4 happiness in each city
+5% Production in each city
+5% Research in each city
-10% Gold in each city


Well, that's what came in my mind yet. Naturally we can change the boni and effects of the wonders and also the names! But for the moment, how do you like them :)??????

greetings Ben

The reserve currencies sound more like national wonders, and I'm not sure totally what you are trying to represent with the Information society one. But I really like them! Yours too Joecoolyo. I say include them all, we can have more than five if we want.

May I suggest changing Nationwide Broadband to National Wi-Fi, so that we can start with no one having it?

shouldnt every western european and USA\Canada have the Highway\Motorway system?

To make things clear...at the moment we all agree that these should be National Wonders, buildable by every civ. Some do have them at game start, some do not. Is this right?

In that case all the suggestions sound wonderful but the reserve currencies. If we have them they should be Great Wonders, since there can't be several no.1 reserve currencies in the world. But I'm not sure if they make sense since these could change in reality. E.g. the Euro wasn't No. 2 currency 10 years ago.

I have two more suggestions: A highway system in reality does start being useful long before every city is connected. So I suggest we could have it work like a mixture of Globe Theatre and Eiffel Tower: You'd have to build a "Highway"-Building in 3 of your cities, providing these cities with the same bonus the "Highway System" wonder would give to all of the cities. Then you'd be able to build the expensive "Highway System" wonder that would give a free "Highway"-Building in each city.
This way it would be cheaper for smaller civs (1-3 cities) to get the Highway bonus (without building the wonder), just as it is in reality. Also a civ could start building a highway system and would instantly profit a little even before the whole system is finished.

So:
Building "Highway"
+25% Production
+1 Trade route
+2 unhealthiness

National Wonder "National Highway System"
requires 3 Highways
free Highway in every city on the continent

We could make the other infrastucture wonders suggested by Lord Wolf to work alike.

shouldnt every western european and USA\Canada have the Highway\Motorway system?

yes. and so should at least have japan, canada, us, eu and nato. i don't know what they have in australia. china should be building one.

To make things clear...at the moment we all agree that these should be National Wonders, buildable by every civ. Some do have them at game start, some do not. Is this right?

Yes, at least I agree. We need world wonders as well so let's get them settled too, reserve currency is a great one.

Let's move the discussion about these in to a new thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7649874), to get things finalized and to keep this thread about features.

yes. and so should at least have japan, canada, us, eu and nato. i don't know what they have in australia. china should be building one.

australia has a motorway system where needed and China is in the process of building a large motorway network.

How about national holidays increased happiness for 1 turn.

How about national holidays increased happiness for 1 turn.

If we make national holidays, besides the extra happiness, we should make it so all production stops (as it does in anarchy). Cause I don't think many people work on National Holidays ;)

Interesting idea about holidays, that is a feature to consider for the future.

Although, I suspect arms production wouldn't stop during war time. We will have to develop this feature in detail once we have the time and resources to work on it.

I don't know if it's already been considered or added, but how about the fossil fuel and non-renewable resources gradually disappear after use? Since Oil is going to run out completely by about 2050, coal and natural gas some time after that, we do need to consider a world in which it simply isn't present.

Civilisations will have to advance sufficiently to exploit crops and land to make replacement resources (perhaps the resource becomes available after the technology is researched) before their economy and military simply die out..

Good idea.

I mean I don't know if it can be done, but it suddenly occured to me it might be a good idea and one we hadn't thought of. :)

I suspect it can be done. Once oil runs out, civs will have to get some sort of sustainable energy tech/national wonder/building before they can produce units that used to require oil. Easy enough, we just have to get the oil resources to disappear over time.

Something to remember for 2.0 for sure.

Nothing new is going to make it in to 1.0, I suspect. But don't stop posting good ideas. :goodjob:

master of domain, i love it. Definitely something for v.2!

I have another one. The different civs in areas have different languages and they would work like religions. The can spread and you can choose what your language is. Anyway there is a national wonder called "(Insert Language here) Language School" and it would improve you relations with civs with that language or something like that.

Something for V.2:

UN Security Council

We should change the way the UN works. In reality not the UN General Assembly passes UN resolution. The UN Security Council does that. This means not every civ can vote on them, only those present in the Security Council.
The UN Security Council has 5 permanent members:
- USA
- China
- Russia
- France (here: EU)
- UK (here: NATO)
and 10 non-permanent members (elected by the General Assembly for 2 years)
If one of the 5 permanent members votes "no" on a resolution this counts as a veto.

So I think we should make the UN work like this:

Additionally to the Secretary General every civ can vote every 12 turns to appoint half of the non-permanent members of the Security Council. Every civ has one vote. The 5 civs that get the most votes will be holding a Security Council Chair for 24 turns.

Only the Security Council can vote on UN resolutions. Every civ has one vote but permanent members have veto right.

Actually it would be cool if it wasn't the UN Secretary General who can propose resolutions but every member of the Security Council. But for this IMO it would be necessary to get rid of that automatic resolution proposing every few turns. You'd have to have a button in the diplomacy menu like "appeal to the Security Council" that would allow you and the AI to propose resolutions whenever you want to.

This would add some realism not only concerning how the real UN works but also in the diplomatic weight of the 5 permanent members.

I have another one. The different civs in areas have different languages and they would work like religions. The can spread and you can choose what your language is. Anyway there is a national wonder called "(Insert Language here) Language School" and it would improve you relations with civs with that language or something like that.

sounds nice. this could be connected with the education system that seems to be floating around somewhere...

yeah were planing a rough Education, Health and Social Care patch as part of V.2

I don't know if it's already been considered or added, but how about the fossil fuel and non-renewable resources gradually disappear after use? Since Oil is going to run out completely by about 2050, coal and natural gas some time after that, we do need to consider a world in which it simply isn't present.

Civilisations will have to advance sufficiently to exploit crops and land to make replacement resources (perhaps the resource becomes available after the technology is researched) before their economy and military simply die out..



What if we make it so that once you build an improvement on top of a certain non-renewable resource, it will have a time-limit before it disappears. For example, if you build an oil-well, you will have an X amount of years before it dries up, this counter can be displayed in the information bubble that pops up when you hover your mouse over the improvement.

How are we gonna predict what resources to use when in game all the oil is gone. Are we gonna make things up?

EDIT: Is V.2 only going to be the update for the new year, unique graphics for everything and new features?

EDIT2: For my language thing: You gain language points through experience and from the language school. If your language points are low with a language and you trade with them you might get the trade messed up (e.g. You offer to pay 200 gold for rice sense you don't understand their language very well they think you said 200 gold for cows and give you cows).

I was thinking that with the right technologies researched, units can become dependant on crops such as corn and wheat, or perhaps the tech simply creates another resource or eliminates the need for a resource.

Joecoolyo, a really simple and excellent method, it can be done I now assume.

Cold Fusion is already in our game as one of the most futuristic techs, we could set it so once you get that, you don't need any resource to power vehicles. I don't like the idea of having a new resource appear, so much as using technology to get rid of the dependence on resources, which is what is most likely going to happen in reality (in a long, long time).

Cold Fusion is already in our game as one of the most futuristic techs, we could set it so once you get that, you don't need any resource to power vehicles. I don't like the idea of having a new resource appear, so much as using technology to get rid of the dependence on resources, which is what is most likely going to happen in reality (in a long, long time).

I think instead of having a new resource appear, lets just make it so the new technology researched will come with a building that will supply the resource, kind like the way some corporations do. For example, we can have a cold fusion building, which will give that city the resource needed to build and power certain resources and buildings.

What if you need population of food to build military units to be more realistic.

EDIT: See two posts down.

population of food? do you mean stockpiles?

sounds rather AofE to me here...

population of food? do you mean stockpiles?

sounds rather AofE to me here...

Yeah! you have to dress corn up in armor and machine guns! :lol:

Population or food*

By the way I have another little question: which are the possible victories? I mean will you change anything or will it all remain the same?? If this was already answered I apologize and beg for the right link! If not or anything will be different at all, I would be very interested in the answer. :)

greetings Ben

This mod isn't built yet. All that kind of info will be available when it is.

I know that very well and beg your pardon!
It's only that I read kuff-dam's comment about the "world war" and hope very much, that there also will be other possibilities to win the game!!! But that's all in your hand and I'm sure you will do very well!

All the best!
Ben

Hmmm... that's actually a great question Lord Wolf. Do you think we should "modernize" the victories (domination dosen't really seem all that realistic anymore...), or should we keep them the same just for the sake of getting this game out on time? If we can't change 'em now, then its defiantly a version 2 consideration.

I'd be fine with keeping them as they are for now. I'll probably play it anyway without the goal of achieving one of the standard victories. Simulating the real world is fun enough for me, I don't need to "win" it. :) Will be impossible anyway when playing with Israel or Palestine...
If we are realistic...there probably won't be a "winner" of the world in 50 years anyway. ;)

I'd be fine with keeping them as they are for now. I'll probably play it anyway without the goal of achieving one of the standard victories. Simulating the real world is fun enough for me, I don't need to "win" it. :) Will be impossible anyway when playing with Israel or Palestine...
If we are realistic...there probably won't be a "winner" of the world in 50 years anyway. ;)


I'm with you, just about playing. Once we see what our scenario turns out like, we can tweak domination and culture victory conditions if needed. Or remove them. Space race is gone, for those who may be wondering.

I guess we have to include diplomatic victories, or we won't have the U.N working. I'm sure we can increase the difficulty or remove this vote completely if we decided we want to.

What about time? Since we're using weeks, if we set it to end in 2050, that's 2132 turns, give or take a few dozen depending on when the mod comes out. (since the mod starts on our release date). Will anyone ever play that far? Not for years if ever. On a side note I guess we should shrink the timeline we're trying to cover since we've decided to go with weeks. Now that I think about it, maybe we should go with bi-weekly turns. Anyway, not really important right now.

World Peace maybe.

The player has to be secretary general of the UN aswell as reigning over 10 years of conflict free international relations. This will be insanely hard (in my mind) but would be a fun challenge.

Nice idea buddy, I like it.

I'd say keep it at weeks, I don't mind waiting 2000 turns for a generic win, plus its more true to reality, (since when does a leader make a decision then leave for a couple weeks?). Plus, like most of you, I just want to play to play, not to win (this is how I usually play regular civ anyway ;) ).

The world peace idea is a great one :goodjob:

since when does a leader make a decision then leave for a couple weeks?

since when? ummm...between 2001 and 2009. with a clear emphasize on 2005. oh well, wait...there was no decision making before leaving for a couple of weeks. lol
:crazyeye:

since when? ummm...between 2001 and 2009. with a clear emphasize on 2005. oh well, wait...there was no decision making before leaving for a couple of weeks. lol
:crazyeye:

I'm talking about most normal leaders, he's an exception :lol:

tonyblair went on holiday for 2 weeks he left his deputy PM in charge

cant remember the exact year.

Did he do that regularly? I didn't think so :lol:

he did it a couple of times.

Bump!

Languages as religions:
Well, countries with same languages of course are closer to each other..
English: UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Africa etc
Russian: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan and some east EU cities
Romanic (French, Spanish, Italian etc): EU, South America, Africa etc
Chinese/Japanese: China, Japan, Koreas etc
Arabian: Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iran, Pakistan etc
Minor? could be also no-state language
German?
etc

Now before you argue about putting Chinese and Japanese and Romanic langs together, it really is better to the gameplay. Then there's problem with languages like Finnish, could be included to many. Well this is just a throw up idea, needs much processing :p.

Elections:
After 6 years of playing, a country would have elections for leader, and if the player is liked, (s)he will continue, and if not, then the game ends. Of course you can kill your opponents change the results, but it costs you money. If you won't put enough money to the game, you'll get revealed and that make your people very happy ;). Of course even with much money the game is never sure. Don't even ask how to include this to the game, but it would be just great and if it would affect AI too. Also you'd need to do extra leaderhead for every country (how sad it would be see McCain winning Obama in elections :sad:). This would show up a whole new dimension to the game, making it even better. Well of course one could choose dictaturism or some other civic but then it affects relationships and happiness muchly. This is also just a throw up idea, hopefully this would be included to World 2015 Mod when it comes to that.

Bump!

Languages as religions:
Well, countries with same languages of course are closer to each other..
English: UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Africa etc
Russian: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan and some east EU cities
Romanic (French, Spanish, Italian etc): EU, South America, Africa etc
Chinese/Japanese: China, Japan, Koreas etc
Arabian: Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iran, Pakistan etc
Minor? could be also no-state language
German?
etc

Now before you argue about putting Chinese and Japanese and Romanic langs together, it really is better to the gameplay. Then there's problem with languages like Finnish, could be included to many. Well this is just a throw up idea, needs much processing :p.

Elections:
After 6 years of playing, a country would have elections for leader, and if the player is liked, (s)he will continue, and if not, then the game ends. Of course you can kill your opponents change the results, but it costs you money. If you won't put enough money to the game, you'll get revealed and that make your people very happy ;). Of course even with much money the game is never sure. Don't even ask how to include this to the game, but it would be just great and if it would affect AI too. Also you'd need to do extra leaderhead for every country (how sad it would be see McCain winning Obama in elections :sad:). This would show up a whole new dimension to the game, making it even better. Well of course one could choose dictaturism or some other civic but then it affects relationships and happiness muchly. This is also just a throw up idea, hopefully this would be included to World 2015 Mod when it comes to that.


Welcome to the Forums Quklis :beer:


We're already changing the religions to ideologies, so i don't know if we can fit languages into 1.0, though I think we were thinking of a feature something like this for ver 2, to go along with our education and healthcare.

Oh and the revolutions mod already covers the elections, so your not going to be president for 20 years :D.

I think elections would be better suited for changing leaders than ending the game. Every X number of turns under Republic you get a chance to choose a different leader. It's the kind of thing that would get tiresome though, imo.

Hello! What about improvements? I wasn't sure where to put this, but I thought I'd tell everyone about Solar Roadways! Roads... that are made of glass... and have solar panels under them! http://www.solarroadways.com/The%20Numbers.htm They seem solid enough to be implemented in the near future so I thought I'd put them up for discussion.

Just asking a little question.. Does this mod still have the negative happiness if there's no unit in a city? There's not really own military bases in every town :mischief:.

every oil resource could supply a finite amount of resources, when it runs out, the source runs out (It would switch to a depleted oil patch not disappear, some techs boost the amount of oil, so your depleted patch may produce oil again after a tech discovery), have it supply an amount like Alberta could have 1.6 trillion barrels but you need to up your techs to access all of it, you need oil for all of your motorized vehicles to move, your cities also consume oil, you run out of oil your production suffers vastly, when you trade oil you don't trade the resource but an amount, like 5 million barrels per month, anyone understand?

Yes and i think its a great idea
And solar roadways cost extra but generate some electricity for you

I completely agree with civ_king, it is a great idea! Although the problem is how you gonna make this work in the game. If I'm right, this idea (or something similiar) was already brought up by some guys a lots of month ago. It IS actually a really great and wonderful idea which would bring much more realism to the game, but I have no clue how this could possibly work with the civ-mechanics :confused: ?!
So if anybody knows how we could implant this feature, please answer! Otherwise I fear we should let this idea down for the moment and be content with the "normal" civ resources. Maybe we'll see such "new" kind of resources in Civ 5......

I think we'd have to go into python and sdk which i know almost nothing of

A mod called fury road had something similar, checking it out