Civ 4.5

Hello! I'm new to this forum, so I don't know if what i'll say has already benn said.

I play to civ 4 and civ 5 and somethings appears obvious to me: the ultimate civ game is a crossing between these two.

So why not doing a mod that puts some civ 4 features in civ 5, obviously adapted?

As examples:

-Boosting spies (that has been hugely discussed there i think)
-Allowing tiles to switch owner because of culture (maybe cities as well)
-Allowing congress to give a city to a player or another (maybe)
-maybe changing policy system
-some diplomatic features (already in progress as far as i know)
-changing the system that gives voices at the congress (by population maybe in renaissance)
-Changing the aspect of rivers for example
-Events (tornados,...) as in beyond the sword

And many other things i don't think of yet.

Is it possible, is it a good idea? Thanks

Well many of these things are already being discussed in various threads either here or in the general BnW forum. City flipping is already back in BnW. Spies is being discussed in two threads here, and while espionage could need an overhaul, Civ4 is definitely NOT the model to go by imo. Random events is something that some players are very much for (I am) while others are very much against, I don't think we'll see those return, as they said that they discussed it for BnW but ended up only using it in a scenario I think.

The goal imo is to find a compromise and to keep only the good parts

marc06 said:

The goal imo is to find a compromise and to keep only the good parts

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There's not necessarily such a compromise. What makes "the good parts" is extremely subjective.

Of course but what i mean is to keep the game balanced and fun to play (by not having the ai spam the 'poisoning water' button e.g.)

Don't you think that's what the developers have wanted to do?

Yes but I think it coud be better in a different way... However i understand i'll get no support for that so better forget these ideas

I disliked Civ IV specifically for some reasons you listed. For example culture-based tile flipping is ridiculous and boring, and random events I kept turned off after the first few games after confirming that they are most of all annoying.

Random events threw in a little more unpredictability, without making game changing situations arise - good thing imho.

I wouldn't mind you elaborating on exactly why "culture-based tile flipping is ridiculous and boring". Unrealistic? Probably. But I suspect that you made the mistake of not prioritising culture by the sound of it lol..

Imo. culture based tile flipping was good on paper, but in reality it could create some really annoying situations. I've had more than a few wars start with neighbours with whom I wanted to keep friendly relationships because my cities would start stealing away all their cities' tiles, so that they would go into starvation - and my cities couldn't use those tiles because they were to far away, and there also was no way for me to say "no thanx, I actually don't *want* this tile, you can have it back".

The real question is to know how frontiers were defined 2000 years ago...

kaspergm said:

Imo. culture based tile flipping was good on paper, but in reality it could create some really annoying situations. I've had more than a few wars start with neighbours with whom I wanted to keep friendly relationships because my cities would start stealing away all their cities' tiles, so that they would go into starvation - and my cities couldn't use those tiles because they were to far away, and there also was no way for me to say "no thanx, I actually don't *want* this tile, you can have it back".

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's a fair criticism. I got by without it being too big a problem, but there were times that I wanted to keep a better balance with a neighbor I wanted to work with. An option to not expand when the city was due to, would've been a handy addition.

marc06 said:

The real question is to know how frontiers were defined 2000 years ago...

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That's a real good question. We tend to assume that it was largely through force; but I bet there was years to decades in some places where they would see no change in ownership of their lands. Even for those on the border between two great nations, as the lines shifted on maps around them.

I still think that CIV does it better than CIII; and especially CII where a rival would make a real annoyance of themselves, just by parking units in the most frustrating positions in what was clearly you're territory. And if you didn't want to be at war all the time, there wasn't much you could do about it!
I'm still new to the way CV handles it, but I'm liking it so far. You don't have to be a cultural civ to get a fair shake with the land you've worked hard to accumulate!

As i said in my first post, the goal i think is to keep good ideas from previous game while making them funnier and more adapted. I would add

-Happiness per city (as in civ iv) and not global (both?)
-Resources only available in cities linked with the city that 'own' the resource

marc06 said:

As i said in my first post, the goal i think is to keep good ideas from previous game while making them funnier and more adapted. I would add

-Happiness per city (as in civ iv) and not global (both?)
-Resources only available in cities linked with the city that 'own' the resource

Click to expand...

Ship's already sailed on Civ4 ; BTS is closest to Civ4.5 you will get.

I'd be looking more towards Civ5.5/6 and seeing what mechanic from both Civ4/5 will carry over without feeling like the franchise is going backwards.

The linked resource bit feels a bit like going backwards. Ever since Civ3; the game has been moving towards a national level. Unit support was nationalized into a central treasury, resources was shared. Civ5 added the pop-cap resource model.

The logical progression for civ6 is actual resource units and the idea of strategic reserves. So storing oil in peacetime then using it for war would make Oil a very different kind of resource than it is now and in previous Civ games.

The major problem in BTS is that the grid isn't hexagonal, the unit stacking, the UI, and many other things that are better in civ v... Besides, I think at least in the beginning of the game linking resources semms to be far more realistic.

That's why I talk about making a mod.

I would add that city states are one of the best ideas of civ v (even if they could have been managed in another way)

dexters said:

The linked resource bit feels a bit like going backwards. Ever since Civ3; the game has been moving towards a national level. Unit support was nationalized into a central treasury, resources was shared. Civ5 added the pop-cap resource model.

The logical progression for civ6 is actual resource units and the idea of strategic reserves. So storing oil in peacetime then using it for war would make Oil a very different kind of resource than it is now and in previous Civ games.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I do hate the pop-cap resource mechanism with a vengeance. I really hope they will go on to a collect-and-consume model in Civ 6 (whenever that happens), because this is one of the areas where Civ 5 is seriously lacking.

marc06 said:

-Allowing tiles to switch owner because of culture (maybe cities as well)

Click to expand...

Certainly not. The reason why it was removed was that conquering old enemy cities was making them useless since you could not exploit the land around, invaded that it was by this same enemy culture. To profit from it, you had to take every of surrounding cities and even raze them, because if you simply took them the problem was repeting exponentially. This was a heck of a major frustration and added to war weariness something really funny sometimes. Without war weariness it would be less a pain but it's far better as it is in Civ5. I didn't know city flipping was back with Brave New World, it could be interesting or at least give something really usefull to simulate with culture, which is more an annoyance than anything else actually. Definitely territory acquisition should be totally rethought, I don't mind Civ2 one where the first working a tile own it (on frontiers with another civ) and a fix big fat cross, except that indeed that those big fat cross could be crossed by any enemy military unit without a ROP, for surprise attacks included what sounds very funny nowadays. The fact is that big fat crosses were lightly recognized as our non violable territory by those days. In fact, culture limits don't add anything to how big fat cross should have been managed, we could perfectly make them non violable except with a ROP, not only to say that the problem of seeing enemy units in odd non big fat crosses of our own places is actually the very same in Civ5. Not only culture doesn't change that, but it doesn't answer no more to how tiles should be acquired.

As I said multiple times already in those very forums, territory acquisition makes senses in a game named Civilization, but actually what we rule are more nations in their concept as the name of the different civilization let us know (France, USA, Germany, England, Spain, Italy etc... instead of Occidental Civilization for example) : except from culture, we are controlling wars, treasury, science (even if its concern as a nation concern is overly disproportionnaly emphasised, which make it more a 'civ' concept, but science do not depend on gold nor population, but it's the developers job to find something convincing - good luck if you don't want to go away from the accessible and mainstream 'pushing unit' concept !), territory for the most part (planting cities, heh true) etc...

A real civilization should acquire territory organically and have overlapping territories influencing each others. Wars should be designed within this system, as long as we consider them as a manifestation of culture. You shouldn't be able to control every aspect of citizens life as a King player, but play with a range of factors influencing your world a la Sim Earth as a God player. Granted, it would be a totally different game, you could even make it real time instead of turn based a la Sim City, but for a time it would changing and a real evolution of the series that has known very basic AND maintream beginnings. (not to mention followings, endings included) I think keeping the series as basic is an error, as a player we shouldn't be able to control it totally as to know exactly what formula does what like in Pokemon For Hardcore Gamers games (silly you, silly ; stuffy, mind influencing, heady, stultifying and insulating, peace to your souls "gamers"), but only influence it with an idea of causes and consequences that should be kept as realistic as possible to be playable without reading a 400 page handbook. Still to have more than a mere degree in History that only count facts without trying to explain them. That's it, Civilization developers should convert into a new type of scientists ! :crazy:

As to how real frontiers were designed 2000 years ago, I think it's mainly by occupation. First here is the owner. I would add there's a projection into future, as to if one settlement begins to be overpopulated, there's a concern in where a new settlement could place itself. So it's mainly circumtancial. But I think it would concern an era 6000 years ago.

2000 years ago, cities could grow very big without a problem, and war was a great factor into determining frontiers. Legit frontiers were just IMO determined by the land which were worked by who.

In those times, additionnally, really big cities were spaced around, there were room between them. Still to be determined how the smallest villages between them worked in that regard. I think determining the minor cannot be separated from determining the major here.

Developers should concentrate on the minor in next iteration, and create smallest villages between big cities. The problem is that the frontier between small villages and big cities is only a question of size. The player, at first, rule a small city, or a small village. How (with what system) to make the difference in a satisfying way (without creating self-limited entities like Civ5 city-states) from a small village and big cities ?

Firstly, was Agriculture appearing enough complicated to not be able to be achieved solely with an oral description ? Were there scepticism about it ? How did it spread ? Were speads uniform from a point to the periphery or did it jumped to some points to others, so that we could already see who would be a big city, and who'd remain a small village ? Were there limited secrecy about it ? With all that, let's admit that agriculture spreading were globally uniform, but not as much as that locally. (there's also the need of fresh water)

So we would have small villages that start to use agriculture, and small villages that do not, or less successfully, due to lack of fresh water. Hence the difference of potential, which will translate later into one being "a big city", and the other "a small village".

Later, systems of allegence could be established between those two entities. For example, the big cities protect the smallest and teach it some secrets (agriculture), while the smallest give it its territory and units vision.

So, those small villages territory would be determined by the land needed by their respetive affairs between them. If they are hunters-gatherers they need some space around. If they are nomads more yet. You can still allow them to pass through your territory if you plant a city in the middle of their migration path, unless they go it round. They can go to war between each others if they are overlaping. And, most commonly, they DO overlap.

Wars may be a population regulation factor for such entities, where there's no more space around. But is there really no more space around ? Isn't population reguled more trivially by desease, high mortality and "wrong evolution paths" ? I would say better fight for food than dying of starve alone. So wars may be important.

In Nature, lions for example have a high mortality, especially when young. Either they are killed by a new male, either they die of starve. But it's not about a lack of prey, this last is abundant, it's about the capacity of the adults to catch it. Because prey adapt in the same time as lions. They became faster, warner, etc... but I don't think it's the same with humans. Humans have intelligence, by it they are far superior to their prey. They can easily exterminate it if they are too numerous. Did Indians learned to preserve bisons and incidentally control natality, or were they just rising when europeans met them (not very probable), or were they suffering another kind of mortality than babies being killed by males and starve ? I think that most probably, their population regulation was made through wars, territory violations and such. Territory must have been taken very seriously.

So, I think territory 6000 to 2000 years ago have been conditionned by the resources around, the way those resources were renewing and the number of people into one given territory, triggering wars sometimes. No doubt that agriculture changed greatly the way of it, with abundant food for increasing populations, priviliged persons with their new type of revendications (glory).