Evolving civilizations simulated

What I think could be good, and, if you ask me, essential, to the next Civilization, is the simulation of countries.

Like, countries change, appear, disappear.

For example, there's in the real world a range of examples of empires who barely never survived. Nearly every time, wide empires just collapsed. Roman Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Alexander the Great empire, Ottoman Empire, Mongol Empire, Arab Empire, French empire; Persian Empire etc...

One shared thing one can see is that those empires were made by conquest. So, the empire hard to maintain in a game of Civ should be those made by conquest.

Another thing is the China case. China unification have been done by conquest, but it survived. What we can see there is the strong cultural cohesion of the different parts of this empire. So, we need a cultural mixing that would influence empires.

• Disappearance: one of the the factors of disappearance would be the military conquest. Nothing changes compared to the other Civilizations, except that the behavior of the countries directed by the computer is much more agressive, and the presence of barbarian hordes (sedentary or nomad) comparable to Civ5 city states that have a unique goal: do the war with the classical countries. A reason of disappearance could also be a mutation. (changing governement and civ name)

• Appearance: After a split, a part of a country can rename, creating a new country. Also, it is not rare to see on the map appear a new civilization, like barbarian cities did in Civ4. those cities can create settlers, and have all the technologies of all the countries already present, + some bonuses for them to develop more rapidly (cheap settlers, greater permeability to techs, etc...)

• Mutating: a country can lost a part of its cities in a rebellion or split, etc... It can also earn some by influence/agreements. For example, the cities next to the same river next of one of your cities will be more prompt to join you. (irrigation project) Not to mention the more easy communications between those two cities.

What do we need:

1. A much more aggressive AI. Wars happen more often but more importantly they have more decisive outcomes: a civilization conquering another is common.

2. More civilizations at the start of the game: if we want to see more conquests, we need more civilizations on the map, even on small maps.

3. New type of faction: nomadic and sedentary barbarian civilizations that can occupy a great space and be powerfull, much more than a simple nuisance, being at war most of the time. They can, though, make peace occasionnally.

4. Split system that can have several causes.

• Volunteer split: the corruption is greatly reduced, or there are a range of big advantages, at the cost of puppeting some cities. In Civ5, splitting voluntarily a civ can allow the player to puppet the cities he created (for culture win) Danger: the different rulers of splitted countries can become more and more independent and break arrangements.

• Spontaneous split: when the enemy takes a capital, the country can face a split. After a rebellion, the country can spontaneously split into two entities.

5. Rebellion system: The foreign cities taken by force are subject to rebellion, except if the culture is close to our country. On the same note, if the culture of one of our selucar city becomes too apart from our initial culture, then this city can rebel.

6. Culture spreading system: culture can travel and mark cities around and foreign cities. Grassland and plains have a good cultural permeability. Water without sea travel and moutains are a strong wall to culture spreading. Roads, rivers, railroads are culture highways. The strenght of a culture is determined by cultural buildings, but most importantly by the number of citizens who share this culture. For example, a country with 6 cities of an average population of 6 citizens (36 population) will absorb a 5 size city state culturally. The city state will not spontaneously convert to our civilization though. Most of the time, a conquest would be needed, unless of a special event that triggers the union of this city state to our civilization.

Any thought, remark, does this system seems clear, what are his weaknesses or inconsistencies?

Thx

Honestly, this is crappy realism that is impractical to gameplay. What you are saying is random rebellions, random AI changes towards being AGGRESSIVE, and wars for all or nothing. Civ is about whittling down opponents you learn to know. You take some cities when you can, and move on. This crappy idea is saying that the AI you know suddenly DoWs you for no reason, and the ally you are fighting a war with suddenly loses half of his kingdom to rebellion. You are describing the opposite of civ, and a way to ruin it.

Moderator Action: No need to be quite so rude (but the apology below is appreciated).
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Scios said:

Honestly, this is crappy realism that is impractical to gameplay. What you are saying is random rebellions, random AI changes towards being AGGRESSIVE, and wars for all or nothing. Civ is about whittling down opponents you learn to know. You take some cities when you can, and move on. This crappy idea is saying that the AI you know suddenly DoWs you for no reason, and the ally you are fighting a war with suddenly loses half of his kingdom to rebellion. You are describing the opposite of civ, and a way to ruin it.

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A bit harsh, but otherwise I agree.

Save_Ferris said:

A bit harsh, but otherwise I agree.

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Sorry. Loud music out my window puts me in a bad mood. Also, I need more city challenge Ferris. Fix it. Now.

What in all the world?!

Why would these ideas not make for a ten times more fun game?

Rhyes and fall of civilizations and Legends of Revolutions are awesome civ4 mods!

Scios said:

Honestly, this is crappy realism that is impractical to gameplay. What you are saying is random rebellions, random AI changes towards being AGGRESSIVE, and wars for all or nothing. Civ is about whittling down opponents you learn to know. You take some cities when you can, and move on. This crappy idea is saying that the AI you know suddenly DoWs you for no reason, and the ally you are fighting a war with suddenly loses half of his kingdom to rebellion. You are describing the opposite of civ, and a way to ruin it.

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It's not random changes. All changes are well thought out and are a cascade from the main idea: make the countries change over time. Honestly, Civ 5 and Civ4 are not good single player games, and I need such a change to be interested again to the Civ series in single player.

I think you don't understand it well. Why you say war for all or nothing? At start, sure there would be a lot of war, but that's purely realistic. One would be mad to reject a system that can allow such realism. If you don't like wars, you shouldn't play video games. By the way, are you playing Civ5? Wars are not avoidable in this game, so i don't see what it would change really.

Although, I admit there would be needed some regulation of war in such a game. Countries just can fight over all the time, it makes no sense.

As to losing half of one kingdom from rebellions, it's possible only if this is a vast conquered empire, or a tiny city state. By the wayn it would not be half, probably few by few.

This seems a reasonable idea, but I'm not sure how it would work in Civilization. The name of the game indicates where the focus is, but this idea is to zoom in to more specific entities as the centrepieces of the game. That's not half bad for a game idea, but it is undermining the general idea of the game as a whole.

And I don't think it would really be a good thing to make warfare more prominent in the game. It's a big enough feature as it is. It's not meant to be a war game.

Camikaze said:

This seems a reasonable idea, but I'm not sure how it would work in Civilization. The name of the game indicates where the focus is, but this idea is to zoom in to more specific entities as the centrepieces of the game. That's not half bad for a game idea, but it is undermining the general idea of the game as a whole.

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Well it would work as i described it... I think. (probably too evasive about it though, please underline the holes of my description)

And I don't think it would really be a good thing to make warfare more prominent in the game. It's a big enough feature as it is. It's not meant to be a war game.

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Well I don't mean to make the game harder via warfare, it would on contrary be easier. I don't really feel concerned by challenge in a Civ game, for me those games are experimental ones which are there for just having fun.

As in reality most of the countries would be conservative and not trigger a war on their own. But of course, there would be those troublemakers who want more territory, more luxuries, more glory, which were by the way not seen as a bad thing back in early times. (see the Bible) So maybe not aggressive civs as i said in the OP, but at least barbarians and aggressive factions.

Warfare would not be as much an element of gameplay as a element of change, that's how I see it. Of course this means that the player can make bad encounters, and be annoyed by that, but we should find a way to continue the game even if the player has been conquered. (the player's civilization can rebirth later) Additionnally, I don't mean to make the battles hard, they even should be easy once the correct tactic guessed. For example, aggressive wars should be more efficient than defensive ones, so the brewing would be higher. Knowing that, the player would start to do aggressive wars to survive, like he always did in previous Civs.

All of these ideas are great, and many of them are found in Rhye's mod. Some of the ideas were found in earlier civ games but the company did research and found that most players don't like them. Most players are basically idiots and don't appreciate real challenge. Thus they will never be in a civ game again. Expect Rhye's mod to come out again and cover a lot of this, and always be on the lookout for other mods.

I would really like to see a Rhye's mod in Civ5 as i don't like at all how culture is managed in 4. (conquered cities surrounded by foreign culture, cities starving etc.) Plus it would need a serious tweak in gameplay, like more well dispatched ressources (in my current game i'm stuck with few ressources, Siameses locking the land with their huge army, my science is poor, maybe change the science system), no more denouncing/delaration of war vicious circle.

This is better made as a spin-off series.

Naokaukodem said:

Well it would work as i described it... I think. (probably too evasive about it though, please underline the holes of my description)

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I think it would probably work, and I'm not really saying there are holes in your description, I'm saying that it moves away from the central focus of Civilization, so would probably be unsuitable for the game. My objection is based on how this fits into the focus of the series, not how it would actually work as a game.

Camikaze said:

I think it would probably work, and I'm not really saying there are holes in your description, I'm saying that it moves away from the central focus of Civilization, so would probably be unsuitable for the game. My objection is based on how this fits into the focus of the series, not how it would actually work as a game.

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Well seeing the changes made in Civ5 and the many complaints there have been about them, i don't think one can say there is any particular focus in the series. After all, if we consider the title of the series alone, "Civilization", I find my ideas particularly suited to it. Not to forget that this is by playing the games (since Civ1, then Civ2, Civ3, Civ4 and now Civ5) I ended up to have those wishes for the series. So in a sense that would be the (one of the) legitimate sequel of the series.

Camikaze, what do you think the central focus of Civilization is, if not the rise and fall of civilizations themselves? Allowing for civilizations to emerge, rise, fracture, decline, and collapse seems like it would actually be a refocusing on the core theme. Right now the game really has no right to be called Civilization. Right now a better name would be Collection of Cities and their Technological progress.

I definitely do think that the game is about the rise and fall of civilizations. This idea seems to take that focus from the civilization level to the country level. Making the central entity smaller. The focus of the game is big and powerful empires, whilst the focus of this idea seems to be much smaller and more dynamic (in terms of changeability) states.

But you can obtain that with civilizations too, for example the Arab civilization conquered a lot of land and then had been reduced, same for mongol civ, roman civ, etc...

Additionnally I would say that the way how the games of the series work, with economy, armies, cities and the like, not to mention civilizations names (that are most of the time confined to countries names: England, France, USA, etc.), is largely about countries and not just civilizations, or we would have had only 5 civilizations to play, like Western civilization, Eastern Civilization, etc...

If Civ series were barely about civs, then one's civ would see a lot of internal conflicts, like "internal wars" between different factions of a given civilization (countries), etc...

So the sense of "civilization" given by the series is more than anything else confined to countries anyway.

And, note that the game title is not Civilizations, but Civilization , so that the title of the series is anyway not usurpated.

Civilizations probably would need to become more fluent:
Citizens leave to settle new independent cities. Can happen randomly, but would be accelerated by unhappiness, unsafe feeling, food shortage etc.
These cities can stay independent cities, turn rogue, become city-states or take control of others and become an own empire.
Taking over cities could be achieved in a few ways: war, cultural assimilation, diplomatic arrangements (getting it from someone or making them a vassal). If your military, cultural or diplomatic force is no longer strong enough and hasn't been replaced by another, cities can secede. (For example, you conquer a city and move on with your army without leaving troops to enforce your rule.)
Cities could also wither, for example if a much bigger/richer/cultured city is nearby, it attracts all citizens. The minimum of 4 tiles between cities would have to be undone then though.

It might also require some UI changes to make cities less obtrusive on the map. For example smaller cities could have their banner decreased in size.

Iceco said:

Civilizations probably would need to become more fluent:
Citizens leave to settle new independent cities. Can happen randomly, but would be accelerated by unhappiness, unsafe feeling, food shortage etc.
These cities can stay independent cities, turn rogue, become city-states or take control of others and become an own empire.
Taking over cities could be achieved in a few ways: war, cultural assimilation, diplomatic arrangements (getting it from someone or making them a vassal). If your military, cultural or diplomatic force is no longer strong enough and hasn't been replaced by another, cities can secede. (For example, you conquer a city and move on with your army without leaving troops to enforce your rule.)

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That's exactly what i envision.

I wonder if the emigrants settling cities would act by themselves or be triggered by a cheap settler by the player. In that case, the city wouldn't be controlled by him, but the culture would be the same than his civilization, so it would be easier for the future for assimilation purposes. Although, such cities could break away culturally speaking if there is no right of passage/roads/commerce with the player's civilization.

Also, some sort of cultural differenciation system would be cool: if the communications speed is lower than the progress speed, that would mean more cultural differenciation, if the communications speed is higher than the progress speed, it would mean more uniform countries. Ideally, it should be like in History: in very early times everything should be uniformized: communications were slow, but the progress was slower yet more. In Antiquity to the modern world, civilization should be more differenciated: the communications were still slow, but the progress a lot more high. Finally, in future era, the communications, with railroads, airplanes, telephones, television and internet have been higher than the progress since the modern era, to a more uniformized world in the future.
Basically, the time span covered by Civ would mean more differenciation, so why simulate it? For local particularities such as the China example.

I remember reading that when the original Civilization were developed they at first had a system similar to the general idea you are suggesting; where civilizations rise, peak and decline. The developers believed this would make for a great experience as the player expands, is pushed back, and then makes a comeback. But what they found out during play testing was that players never played long enough to make the comeback. The players would see their work (expansion) be reversed and then start a new game.

I'm not sure if you intend for the player's civilization to rise, split and decline similar to what the AI civilizations would. I'm talking about what would actually happen in practice, not what could theoretically happen. For example, in Civilization it is theoretically possible for me to loose a few of cities in a war, but in practice I never really do. It would be strange if civilizations rise and fall all around the player while the player steadily builds his 6000 year empire.

The hard difficult part in my mind is making it required in practice for the player's civilization to experience decline a few times during a game while still keeping the game fun.

An idea I have toyed with is for the player to cash in points for the game end scoring by going into decline. Basically the player would expand his empire as far as possible and when the player feels he cannot expand much further the player would choose to cash in the scoring value of the current expansion, pushing the civilization into decline. The empire would split when in decline if certain conditions are met. The player would then pick one of the successor states to continue playing as. After the decline is over, a new expansion phase starts. The same general concept is implemented in the board game Small World. I would though rather not drag in end game scoring to motivate the player since I myself have never cared about the final score I get in a Civilization game.

pileofnuts, that's why i always said i'm not for split/decline according to a stability factor due to happiness for example. People usually think that the better we play, the less it should be likely for our civ to decline. But, as i said, it would simply nullify the whole feature: players would do their possible to not decline/see their empire break away. In my idea, instability should be a factor you can act on, but it should still be kept above 0. And the default unstability would be high.
For example, I planned first to make your second city rebel naturally, IF you don't have the proper civic/social policy. But i think a system of migration, automatic or through the player by cheap settlers, would be more interesting. Also, we have to find a way in order to make big empire decline, but with respect to the China/USA example.

The idea of hitting points during the game is one that came to me also. But, it would not be score points, but rather victory points. The player could hit victory points during his game. The victory would be more progressive rather than brutal. The mean to hit victory points would be having a great empire for example, so the player would still want a big empire even if he is nearly certain that it will fall. No mean the consequences, the player would still always want a bigger empire in order to hit victory points. At the end of the game, a panel would be displayed listing the greatest civs of the all times: the first is the winner.