Features

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:
 
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.)
 
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