Since its leading the other poll with the most votes I feel that its time to start a new thread where people post their different views on how dynamic civs would be implemented. I'll try to use the second post for a list of different ideas and then will try and group them together into different categories so that eventually a poll can be created that will probably end up being multiple choice so that people can combine several dynamic civ mechanisms together that make up their view.

Heres dh_epic's post from the other thread to begin with:

I think before there can be a poll there needs to be a roadmap of many of the suggestions. Most are compatible, some are not.

I've heard nation splitting used in the same discussions as:

- dark ages (the value of which is both supported and questioned, but intimately tied to the idea of an empire split / civil war)

- culture (people are enslaved or assimilated, but then emerge later as a nation once again, in another age ... depends on how culture might be calculated differently)

- trade (as it ties to culture, in particular what happens when an empire starts importing all kinds of outside influences, and its culture begins to become more scattered)

- domestic economics (as it ties to how you treat certain ethnic or worker groups. e.g.: all greeks under romans rebel, all farmers and workers under russia rebel)

- government (likelihood of big changes durring anarchy and government change)

- imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, commonwealths (rather than fighting a war through every one of a nation's cities, you basically make a deal with a civ-leader to "surrender" and you get some or all control over his wealth and resources... and colonies will not remain passive forever, they will eventually fight for independance. this encompasses combining as well as splitting)

- ages (you have to meet certain requirements to make it to the next age, e.g.: buildings. if those buildings are lost, then you might end up in a dark age ... and potentially a civil war / empire split, a la ancient rome)

- great leaders (stimulating a civil war in a rival nation, or to a colonial ruler if your nation has turned into a colony)

- domination victory (how do you dominate if civil war is a probable effect of trying to control too many geographic regions?)

You can see how everything's very interconnected... and I don't think I addressed all of the basic ideas / tie-ins. I'm not sure a poll is practical at this point.

..................List to start here...............

(Just some thoughts to start off with)


Civil war - A return to Civ2's version of a large empire splitting in two if the capital is taken.
Civil war - Loss of capital leads to anarchy and possibly to a split
Civil war - More potential triggers (eg war weariness)
Dark Age - Reduction in tech level?
Plague - Reduction in population?
Barbarian civs - eg the Mongol civ may appear with a large stack of current units and techs and be able to carve out an empire.
Barbarian civs - Huts could turn into a group of cities so the barbarians start with some cities to begin with
Vassalisation - The ability to diplomatically invite another nation with great relations to become under the protection of another nation whilst providing a percentage of their income.
Force Vassalisation - If a civ is nearly destroyed then a peace option would be to force the remaining cities to agree to become a vassal (Relations would still be poor)
Vassals split if treated poorly
Surrendering - If war weariness is too high and/or too many cities lost then a civ may surrender and give up it's cities
Annexing - The ability to annex vassals so that they merge with the main nation (Peaceful version of conquest)
Vassalisation and Annexation easier for civs in the same cultural group
The ability to use an annexed civ's UU in their former cities
Rebellions - A group of cities in a distinct area may rebel causing civil disorder which may lead to further consequences if the causes are not removed
Gaining independence - New civs can break away from the home civ if they have been rebellious for long enough
Cultural points used to decide how long a civ's population remains in existance after all their cities have been captured.
Colonisation of new lands in later periods more likely to lead to an eventual rebellion especially if it is overseas.
The ability to allow a colony independence, perhaps by giving it commonwealth status to avoid a revolt
Commonwealth - the ability to reduce corruption in outlying cities but with reduced control
More Forbidden Palaces - A corruption wonder can be built to reduce corruption but the likelyhood of a rebellion is increased
faster and easier domination, permitting victory through annexing, puppets, colonialism
more difficult domination game, with corruption growing in large empires, with more empire splitting
Have any of these ideas be optional
Dislike all the above options
Like the idea of dynamic civs but not really sure which options I would prefer


The side issue:

Negative dynamic civilization events should randomly occur and the human player should have very limited control
Negative dynamic civilization events should randomly occur but the human player has some control over limiting the effects once they occur
Negative dynamic civilization events should be largely preventable by the human player
Negative dynamic civilization events should never occur in a well run empire

There are countless threads about this.
Like mine.
I'm all for it. :goodjob:

Wow, Dell19, I can't concentrate on this topic looking at your new avatar :crazyeye:

Wow, Dell19, I can't concentrate on this topic looking at your new avatar :crazyeye:

Veering offf topic [offtopic]
But I think the other was better :p :drool:

OK, back on topic ;)! I pretty much agree with ALL of the ideas that have been put forward by Dell19 at this thread! I've long been a supporter of expanded diplomatic options, in the form of vassalage, annexation and Commonwealth Arrangements. I feel that a commonwealth agreements should be a multilateral pact that gives all civs within it a bonus to existing and future trade and alliance agreements with other members-just as a thought.
I also feel that loss of your capital should not AUTOMATICALLY lead to civil war, but should be one of many potential 'TRIGGER' events-just like Dark Ages. i.e. Certain events will cause the computer to 'check' for the occurance of a 'Civil War', 'Dark Age' or 'Plague' and, if its RNG is equal to or less than the current 'Chance' for the event occuring, then it will occur.
Trigger events might be: losing your capital, war weariness, unhappiness and/or corruption passing a certain threshold, Your culture being behind by a certain ratio etc. In the case of civil war, the computer will check for breakaway on a city-by-city basis-from the farthest flung to the nearest. If a city passes the neccessary 'threshold', then it breaks away. The same would occur for plagues, wheras dark ages would look at a WHOLE CIV level. All of these checks would occur BETWEEN one turn and the next!
Anyway, just some random thoughts ;)!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Order in the forum!!:gripe: Order!!!:hammer:
Veering offf topic [offtopic]
But I think the other was better :p :drool:
What would :jesus: do?

I remember I wrote about almost exactly the same commonwealth idea way back before PTW was even announced.

I don't think there should be "chance" events. Things don't happen by accident. Civil war, plague, famine, revolution, and ruin happen for a reason. Either your own inability to rule well, or specific actions against you by other civs.

One Fun Factor for the game would be when my civ splits into factions as a result of revolution or civil war or other events, I would have to make a choice which faction I will rule. One principality as King A, or another republic as Prince B, etc.

I couldn't agree more, Beloyar. I have been a VERY strong advocate of what I call 'SEMI-RANDOM' events. That is to say that-whilst a certain element of randomness will always exist in if, or how often, events occur-the player/AI will be able to take actions which can minimize/maximise the chance of an event occuring.
To take civil wars as a case in point: If one of the 'trigger events' I mentioned occurs, then the computer will look for several 'elements' in each city-such as distance from capital, # of foreign nationals, current culture value, current war weariness/corruption/unhappiness, ongoing rebellion, # of troops stationed in the city and proximity to another 'break-away' city. If the sum of these different factors brings the city over the 'threshold', then that city will break away. All cities which break away in the same turn will belong to the same, new civ-preferably one belonging to the same culture group as the parent civ. The same methodology would also be used in plague and dark ages determination. This creates a neccessary balance between the need for randomness, whilst still leaving enough player control to ensure that such events are not simply UNFAIR!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

In addition to the fine ideas of rebellion (your own people or conquered people) and vassal states idea, I would also like to propose the Barbarian->Civ concept.

In real history, "barbarians" would carve out territory from existing Civ(s) and then would become its own Civ. This happened many times. So I suggest that a couple/few times a game, "barbarian" stacks of death should be created using units of an actual Civ that did not start from 4000BC (Ex Mongol horde would appear although it did not start out in 4000BC)

These "barbarian" conquerors would also need to have or gain contemporary techs so are competitive (can't just have Mongol hordes conquer lands but have 4000BC tech which wasn't the case IRL either).

Beloyar, I think the previous one was better. But that is off topic.

Hmm...dynamic civs. Civil War when the capital is taken sounds good. I'm in agreement with all ideas you posted Dell19, but one question on rebellions. How do we define a "distinct area". Will these definitions randomnly come about? Or perhaps an area of much higher cultural value than those around it sees itself as better than its fellow cities and is more likely to rebel? Perhaps just having regions or areas come about randomnly will be best. For annexation, annexing civs of the same cultural group should be easier (Romans and Greeks, Chinese and Koreans, etc.). Furthermore, you should get to build their UU (but only in that Civ's former cities) after annexing them. However, their rebellion potential will be high but so will their cultural value, making them important but perhaps more susceptible to unhappiness and such than your empire's own originally settled cities.

On gaining independence, rebellious tendencies translating into independence wars sounds good. But what about civs that were conquered? To do this, there should also be a way to model distinct ethnic groups that correspond to Civs, both existant and conquered. These groups should persist through the ages if their Civ was culturally significant or if it had great enough accomplisments. Ethnic groups would give the game a new aspect to consider when conquering areas. "Do I really want to conquer city X with all those luxuries if I have to put up with rebellions and such from a population that is not in the same culture group as me and hates my civ with a passion?" Things like this will come into play (unless of course you are one for razing cities regularly).

Vassalation should have unintended benefits going both ways such as technology transfer also. However, the vassal should find their resources used by their patron often more than they would like. Vassalage would also give a civ an option between the current "make peace on these terms or we destroy your entire Civ and wipe out all trace of its existence". Interesting ideas.

How do we define a "distinct area".

an area that may have a diffrent ethnicity or not as developed as the inner empire

Good idea there one_man_assult. But then we have to account for ethnicity and some kind of development index. If you have a set of 5 cities on the edge of hte empire with little or no development that you use for producing workers or wealth or little stuff like that, they may decide to rebel. Similarily, a conquered area with population of different ethnicity may also rebel. Sounds good.

I think there should be other triggers to a civil war besides the capture of the capital. Besides, no one said the civ had to be divided perfectly in two to have a civil war. Perhaps far-flung, corruption hit areas could revolt. Or if you've been pop-rushing too much, you'll find most of the empire coming for your head.

The other ideas are great. I think we should have the ability to turn them off, however, because I know many players may not feel like playing a game where you have to tread carefully at times. So, put a check box next to them or something.

I have a vision. I posted it as its own thread, but I hope you guys check it out too. I'm sorry that it's long and dense.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=90610

Added some extra points to the list, not all may be included in a poll...

Negative dynamic civilization events should be largely preventable by the human player
Negative dynamic civilization events should never occur in a well run empire

IMHO and IIRC the ability of preventing those events will gradually-if not immediately-reduce their impact to an equivalent of civil disorder.
And we all know how to avoid that.
Events in order to be dynamic, should be unavoidable, or , so hard to prevent, that a preventive strategy would heavily bear on all other aspects of empire-building and/or consolidation....

Added another option to that section to include an option where rebellions may occur but it would be possible for the human player to put down the rebellion if they have the spare units so they have some control rather tahn immediately losing cities for example.

:goodjob: perfect now...my lecturer in demographics would be proud of you... :D

Yeah, of course military might could keep a vassal (as they're being called) under the thumb significantly longer.

I think that my rickety bridge is a solid analogy, if you check out my post.

Here are the variables, in my mind:

The larger the empire, the more likely of a split.
Beyond a certain size, (e.g.: multiple continents) a split is inevitable.
The more diverse the empire, the more likely of a split.
Beyond a certain number of vassals (2?), a split is inevitable.
The better a vassal is treated, the longer it will take to split.
The better a vassal is held in check by military, the longer it will take to split.
The more culture a vassal has, the less likely it will be assimilated, and the more likelihood it will split. (Becomes almost a given once the printing press is invented.) Does not apply if the vassal is your culture (e.g.: you retook them after a civil war)
The more another nation interferes, the more likely a split.

But by getting a few vassals and covering a certain area of the globe, you could win the game right there in 200 AD, or 1700 AD! Even though the split WILL happen. ... you will be remembered as the greatest Empire, no matter what happens from then on.


Oh, and I need help describing neo-colonialism (for lack of a more common word) where you can turn a nation into a puppet without anyone actually knowing (unless they use their intelligence agency). I seriously think that makes the modern game ten times more interesting than it is currently. Imagine a cold war with the US and Russia playing with puppets, and they're even swaying a nation back and forth between empires.

E.g.: secretly sponsoring a military coup: "i trade you 16 marrines and 200 gold for a military coup, and subservience for years to come. ps: don't tell anybody"

Regarding civil wars caused by loss of your capitol: this makes no sense to me. Why would your country split in two just because the capitol was captured by a forieign power? I realize it was in Civ 2, and I understand the desire to have a negative consequence for losing your capitol, but I think splitting of your empire in two is the wrong way to go.

My suggestion: anarchy. The same kind as when you switch governments, i.e., several turns of no income or production. At the end of those turns, a message would pop up saying "We've established a new capitol in (city)." If you have a Forbidden Palace, it could avert the period of anarchy by instantly becoming your new capitol.

Now, naturally, if civil wars and/or rebellions are in the game (triggered by other things besides capitol loss) then presumably, losing your capitol will make you more vulnerable to such occurrences, since once you're in anarchy, its harder to keep people happy, wealthy, etc. So in some instances, loss of the capitol would result in civil war, but indirectly.

So in some instances, loss of the capitol would result in civil war, but indirectly.

Good policy. I agree. If you lose your capitol, but your empire is very very stable, then there's no reason it should go into a civil war. But the probabiliy would increase if it happens just as you're trying to quell a resistance in one of your vassals, or your new continent is plagued with corruption. It's not a certainty, but based on calculations of what's going on.

Looking down Dell19's list, here are my opinions:


Civil war- Shouldn't be directly triggered by capitol loss (see my previous post). Massive civil wars should only occur if smaller rebellions grow out of control.
Dark Age - Don't see the need or benefit to the game.
Plague - Sure its realistic, but does it make the game more fun? If it somehow did, then I'm all for it.
Barbarian civs - I'd rather they just include more regular civs.
Vassalisation/Surrendering/Annexing - Sure, more diplomatic options is always good.
Rebellions/Gaining independence - Yes, definately, but it shouldn't be too random.
Cultural points used to decide how long a civ's population remains... - sure.
Colonisation of new lands in later periods more likely to lead to an eventual rebellion especially if it is overseas - it seems like this would foolw naturally from the previous item, since in later periods more culture has accumulated.
The ability to allow a colony independence, perhaps by giving it commonwealth status to avoid a revolt - Interesting. I wonder if anyone would choose this as an alternative to fighting against the rebels?
More Forbidden Palaces - don't see why more palaces should increase chances of rebellion. Since they'll hopefully revamp corruption anyway, perhaps extra palaces won't be needed to deal with corruption, so instead, their purpose could simply be to reduce chances of rebellions (by extending the "presence" of the government throughout the land).
Have any of these ideas be optional- Whatever. If they're done well, these ideas shouldn't need to be optional, and if they're not done well, they shouldn't be done at all. Sure, it probably doesn't hurt anything to make a particular game mechanism optional, but it just seems like a cop out to me. Whenever we disagree about whether something should be in civ 4 or not, someone always says "make it optional" like that fixes everything. The more things are optional, the harder it will be to playtest the game since they'll have to playtest each combination of optional rules.


And on the side issue, I'd pick

Negative dynamic civilization events should be largely preventable by the human player

I think it should be possible to completely avoid such events, but this would not necessarily be the optimum strategy.

The risks of such events and the things players can do to prevent them should be simple and easily understood even by a novice player. Culture flipping in Civ 3 is a reasonably good example of this: its not hard to understand that you need to build up the culture in your border cities (or station a lot of troops there) or they might flip away. A civ 3 player familiar with the specifics of what causes culture flipping can usually completely avoid it.

The consequences of such events also need to be relatively minor unless you don't get them under control in time. Culture flipping in Civ 3 is a terrible example of this, since you can instantly lose a city and an entire stack of troops if you underestimate the chances of a flip occuring. It would be much better if the city went into resistance first (giving you some warning that a flip was immanent) and only actually flipped if you didn't quell the resistors soon enough. If you moved in a bunch of troops and the number of resistors started decreasing, you'd know you were handling things well and had enough troops to prevent the flip, while if the number of resistors kept increasing, you'd have a chance to (a) bring reinforcements, or (b) retreat, giving up on the city but at least saving your troops.

As the preceding paragraphs illustrate, I think Civ 3's culture flipping concept is a good thing to study to understand the potential good and bad aspects of random, negative, "dynamic civ" type events. Hopefully, rebellions in Civ 4 will be an extension of the concept that reduces or eliminates the bad while keeping and expanding the good.

For the thing about colonies splitting off from the mother land - you should be able to build an improvment that makes a city into a colony - This gives it a chance of eventualy rebelling against you. However you would have to get some bonuses for it - ie communal corruption (though higher than that experienced by Communist nations) in colonies and slightly increased trade output (since they are colonies you often don't let the people living in them get their hands on much of the money).

...
... More Forbidden Palaces - don't see why more palaces should increase chances of rebellion. Since they'll hopefully revamp corruption anyway, perhaps extra palaces won't be needed to deal with corruption, so instead, their purpose could simply be to reduce chances of rebellions (by extending the "presence" of the government throughout the land).
...

Have you ever tried to convert the useless Shakespear's Theater into another 'forbidden palace' ? It works just fine. Don't know if AI uses it, but I don't think AI ever builds Forbidden Palace anyway.

I think this name sounds really stupid in a republic/democracy gov't.

When I wrote forbidden palace I meant any kind of corruption lessening building which would fill the same role.

Dell19, thanx for starting a comprehensive thread on this topic. I agree with just about all of the ideas put forth here. I would really like to see civil wars, rebellions, colonies, etc. brought back into the game- it would significantly improve gameplay & fun. I just hope that someone at Firaxis can encode these ideas.

The consequences of such events also need to be relatively minor unless you don't get them under control in time.
I think that both triggers and consequences should be adjustable and editable, to correspond to different skill levels...

I think that, on the whole, the consequences of risings that start to happen should be relatively minor until things get out of control. The idea would be to give the player just enough of a response time that they can do something, but little enough time that if they're busy managing all kinds of other stuff they might be in deep trouble.

To me that's the hallmark of balance -- a narrow window of opportunity.

Seems that most of the areas have been covered, any final suggestions on the poll options and should I just include every option from the list?

Wait and see if anybody posts anymore thoughts. It looks like things have basically stalled because people have put in their two cents.

I just wanna emphasize how I see this tying into a faster / easier conquest game... where you don't have to take out every city. But the flip side, of course, is a greater chance of empire splitting and thus larger consequences from corruption and uprisings.

I don't know if that would be one or two bullets:

1. faster and easier domination, permitting victory through annexing, puppets, colonialism
2. more difficult domination game, with corruption growing in large empires, with more empire splitting

OR

1. domination victory through annexing, puppets, colonialism, to offset the new difficulty of maintaining a large empire

Whatever you think.

Oh, and I guess as a flip side to that bullet, it would be:

- domination victory is still conquest city by city, and empire splitting is very unlikely

The first two options added, also I think I will add two more options stating that you dislike all the ideas and another that you like the idea but are not sure how it should be implemented. Also it might be a good idea to limit people to voting for 5 to 10 things so that people people vote for the points they most agree with rather than potentially all the points.

When I wrote forbidden palace I meant any kind of corruption lessening building which would fill the same role.
:confused: That's what I meant too.

Give any wonder the same characteristics as the forbidden palace: small wonder, reduces corruption; and you'll have a third capital w/ no corruption in it and very little around it.

I just posted a new thread: Choose our own advisors. So I thought, when you control a commonwealth of states or various semi-dependent colonies or vassals, their rulers could become your advisors and would appear in your advisor screens ( F1, F4, etc...). I don't know what good it would bring, but just a thought.:undecide:

My ideas on this are in this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=89344&page=1&pp=20

See especially the following posts (warning this is a long, long description): 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 41, 43, 46, 58, 59, 62, and 64.

Much of the criticisms in the thread :cry: are very poignant and applicable. I still happen to like this particular system since the negative feedback loop is actually in the control of the player (he chooses if, when and how to break up and can avoid it completely by either remaining small until his 'final' government, or not changing governments). :rolleyes:

BTW, this is the thread that got the idea of the Civ4 Consolidation Project born.