Features

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
 
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