How to make groundbreaking sequels : one vision

The resource system in civ as mentioned here is quite arbitrary and has always been this way.

Some resources like coal, oil and uranium feel pretty close to reality but some resources like coal can cover a whole region (essentially several tiles clumped together). I know this because in Australia we have entire areas that are almost being turned into a lunar landscape from our coal mining!
I think the same goes for these shale oil deposits the Americans are starting to extract.

Iron is as mentioned here the most abundant metal on the earth's crust but it is also worth considering that most ancient societies could only really access deposits that were close to the surface and ores of high purity. By the middle-ages most of these early resources were depleted and miners would have to dig deeper and innovate new techniques to better extract lower-purity ores...

So iron sort of works for civ 5. It should be useful early but it could also have some later bonuses maybe a steel works or something to increase tank and ship production.

Other resources though; for instance livestock and plantations are entirely arbitrary and really can be moved around or planted where ever conditions are appropriate. And it's not really game balancing if a worker can build a cattle pasture or banana plantation on every tile of their terrain - in the end you have to see the resources in the context of the average fertility of the area the city is using for food.

On a side note- A lot of ecologists will tell us that growing vegetables has 10X the efficiency compared to growing animals for meat but its really a simplistic example that doesn't take into account every variable for producing food.
In Australia for instance most of our land is too marginal in rainfall, fertility and soil structure to be able to handle large-scale cropping or intensive grazing. So instead farmers have adapted by running herds of cattle over enormous stretches of land that they fluctuate depending on what the weather is like.
But it really comes to this - horses and cattle exist on the map purely to make the terrain and environment more interesting. Otherwise it will just be quite bare and boring.

Boris Gudenuf said:

Right now, the Civ victory conditions are all Absolutes. You have to come in First at something, everyone else has to lose. I would like to see an option for a 'self-defined' Victory Condition, or a 'non-zero sum' victory, in which your victory does NOT imply that anyone else 'lost'. For instance, I've played a game (as America) in which my sole personal 'victory condition' was to build a railroad from one shore of a Pangaea continent to the other. Official? No, but satisfying to me (I'd just finished reading Ambrose's book on the building of the transcontinental railroad!). Another, more easily defined victory might be to maintain your population's Average Total Happiness (Avg Happy value x turns) above all others. A laudable goal in a ruler, and one that does not require you to build 'Tall' or 'Wide' or in fact, necessarily conflict with anyone else in the game. In a game spanning 6000 years, it always has seemed peculiar that the victory conditions do not allow and reward more different styles of game.

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It's not particularly a wish from my part to have other victory conditions, it's just that it's something that results from a wish to have a LOT of rise and fall in game. Because there would be a lot rise & fall, YOUR civ should be a candidate for falling. And because of that, you would have to adapt the victory conditions, that couldn't be like the old Civs, otherwise it would be frustrating beyond believe.

Boris Gudenuf said:

Ah, but then where do you stop? I live a few miles from an old gravel quarry, of which there are several in the Puget Sound area. Gravel? It's just crushed rock, right? Well, it has to be the right type of rock, and crushed uniformly, and in fact it is not easily come by and is a vital component for concrete and roadbeds and all kinds of modern engineering necessities. And in parts of the world, potable water is in desperately short supply. The Roman world's access to volcanic ash from areas of the Mediterranean like Vesuvius, Etna and Santorini gave them access to cement, a waterproof building material they used to great effect in their (for the time) innovative engineering. Molybdenum, Nickel and Chromium are necessary component alloy materials to turn steel into armor plate: do we require at least one of them to build any modern tanks or battleships?
Unfortunately, you have to make a decision to limit yourself, or you end up playing something that more resembles the Strategic Bombing Survey of WWII (which identified, I believe, about 55 'strategic' materials to be attacked to cripple Germany's industry) than a playable game.

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You could indeed put a lot more resources that there are tiles in the game, and you have to select some. But you can put some resources of some type as to emphasis some flavor. Example : put some herb as a resource to emphasis the early game. Sand could serve to show the human impact on nature, like global warming did on previous Civs. There have been documentaries on it, if the devs watched them they could decide to include it, just because they thought it would be cool.

Additionally, you can treat resources slightly differently. Like Porcelain in Civ5, or other various resources in Civ2. (displayed in the city screen, so you know what type of resource a caravan will trade to another city that may demand that particular resource) This way, you could implement a lot more types of resources in the game. The more the merrier.

Boris Gudenuf said:

Excellent point: the game has and does artificially designate resources as Strategic, Luxury or Bonus, when in fact they may be several at once or change from one usage to another in the course of the game. Copper is a good point: a vital component to Bronze, the first 'strategic' metal in history and the game, but also a component of jewelry (but not the most important, and certainly not a necessity), and much later, a necessary requirement to get any use out of the discovery of electricity and the applications (electric-motored mass transit, telegraph, telephone, radio, lighting, television and all the Mass Culture that follow) that follow from it.
I could argue that Cattle are a Strategic Resource, in that they provided leather for light armor and sinews and bone and horn for Composite Bows! We've already covered the variable uses of horses, but you could do the same for almost every Resource currently in the game.
I would love to see the game both simplified and made more dynamic by simply having Resources whose application and use changes as your technology (and possibly Social Policy or Religious Practices) change. Cattle provide Bonuses for Food, Production (leather belting for drive trains was a major requirement in the late Industrial period: one steam engine driving power through the belts to dozens of machine tools!), and military units (Horse Archers, Composite Bows) BUT Bison and Deer can also provide the same bonuses (Bison leather was actually preferred for the big industrial drive belts). Copper, as mentioned, is all at once Luxury, Production Bonus, Military, and later Technological Requirement - but can be substituted by numerous other Resources as a Luxury good, and even as a Military - Obsidian (from Volcanoes) can provide equally sharp, though short, blades and cutting edges, and quilted leather or canvas/cloth armor is almost as effective protection as bronze (contrary to popular belief, the Greek Hoplite rarely wore metal body armor by the Classical Period, but relied on his big wooden shield and cloth or canvas cuirass - Alexander's phalanx didn't start wearing metal body armor until after his Indian Campaign!).
Let's open up the Resources - it will also open up trade as you will have to dicker with others to find or substitute resources for all kinds of reasons...

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"and certainly not a necessity" : this is a good definition of luxury.

As to open up trade, I see it as capital, because in Civ5 and in other Civs, trade is very binary (they like you they will trade fairly, otherwise they insult you, they emphasis trades between AIs resulting them having ridiculously nothing anymore for you even if they have 6 copies of the same resource...) Trade is way too much closed in Civ5, it should not be tied to victory concept.

Redaxe said:

Other resources though; for instance livestock and plantations are entirely arbitrary and really can be moved around or planted where ever conditions are appropriate. And it's not really game balancing if a worker can build a cattle pasture or banana plantation on every tile of their terrain - in the end you have to see the resources in the context of the average fertility of the area the city is using for food.

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You can make it so that it becomes balanced. You can implement grain/animals, so that you need some in order to feed your pop. There would be much more resources on the map, and they would be multiplicative. We may have to revise however the dogma 1 tile = 1 resource (?), or revise the fact that an "abundance" of it (what represents any resource in Civ since the start) has truly any advantage on the long run.

Redaxe said:

But it really comes to this - horses and cattle exist on the map purely to make the terrain and environment more interesting. Otherwise it will just be quite bare and boring.

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Yeah, horses particularly as a strategic resource is yet more abundant than iron, because it's reproducible. The ONLY justification for horses being there, is that America didn't have them until its conquest, or that Asia preferred Elephants. And if they finally had them, it's because it's a reproducible resource, therefore this aspect should be there if we are to keep them.

Reading your posts(Naokaukodem), I admit I might have been wrong, you did bring up some interesting ideas.
As did Gatsby and Redaxe.

Naokaukodem said:

It's not particularly a wish from my part to have other victory conditions, it's just that it's something that results from a wish to have a LOT of rise and fall in game. Because there would be a lot rise & fall, YOUR civ should be a candidate for falling. And because of that, you would have to adapt the victory conditions, that couldn't be like the old Civs, otherwise it would be frustrating beyond believe.

Click to expand...

Are you arguing for a system where you can change Victory Conditions during the game? That would be interesting - I start out with the goal of Conquering the World, later adapt to conditions with a new Victory of Dominating My Continent, and finally settle for Survive...

Or, perhaps, each type of Victory could have several Levels:
Cultural Grand Victory: My Culture Dominates the World
Cultural Victory: My Culture Dominates the Majority of the World's Cities
Cultural Marginal Victory: All My Own Cities Share My Culture.

Naokaukodem said:

You could indeed put a lot more resources that there are tiles in the game, and you have to select some. But you can put some resources of some type as to emphasis some flavor. Example : put some herb as a resource to emphasis the early game. Sand could serve to show the human impact on nature, like global warming did on previous Civs. There have been documentaries on it, if the devs watched them they could decide to include it, just because they thought it would be cool.

Additionally, you can treat resources slightly differently. Like Porcelain in Civ5, or other various resources in Civ2. (displayed in the city screen, so you know what type of resource a caravan will trade to another city that may demand that particular resource) This way, you could implement a lot more types of resources in the game. The more the merrier.

Click to expand...

Well, for starters, what constitutes "Luxury Resources" needs a complete revamp in Civ VI, because the majority of such Happiness Goods in the modern world are manufactured, not 'natural'. Of the greatest Trade Items today in bulk and/or cash volume, only Food and Petroleum Products are represented in the game. The other two 'natural' products are Tobacco and Coffee, two addictive but legal (mostly) substances that, along with Tea, should be represented for both game play and historical purposes.

Modern Luxuries that are extensively traded, though, include Automobiles, Consumer Electronics, Mass Entertainment, and Clothing. They could all be represented in Civ VI, and would allow the game to show the massive shift in Trade that took place as parts of the world industrialized: the great trading empires of Holland and England were fueled in part by sales of cheap factory-produced cloth and clothing, and modern trade in Consumer Electronics and Automobiles fuel demands for Oil and Mass Entertainment, respectively. Adding 'manufactured' Luxury Goods would also allow the game to more dramatically show the depletion of other natural Luxury resources (Whales!) and conversion of still others to other uses (Gold from money/direct Luxury to component of Consumer Electronics' microchips)

Naokaukodem said:

You can make it so that it becomes balanced. You can implement grain/animals, so that you need some in order to feed your pop. There would be much more resources on the map, and they would be multiplicative. We may have to revise however the dogma 1 tile = 1 resource (?), or revise the fact that an "abundance" of it (what represents any resource in Civ since the start) has truly any advantage on the long run.

Click to expand...

I've already made the argument that almost all of the plant/animal 'resources in the game are Mobile: they can be planted or introduced in many, many other areas than where they started, with the proper 'technologies' (some of them pretty early) and expertise and terrain/climate conditions. With Plant and Animal Genetic technologies, you can even introduce some of the resources to terrain and climate different from where they start, but that would take your Civ longer to research in most cases.

This would allow some Civs to start with 'monopolies' - for instance, Silk, Cotton, Tea, Coffee and Elephants were all pretty restricted in their range when first exploited, and that resulted in some Major Trade as the countries with access traded those goods to others. That trade was not only in luxuries: the Indian rulers traded elephants to Alexander's Successors, the Seleucids, so they could form Elephant units for their army - essentially giving them the 'resource' they needed for a Unit rather than a Luxury.

And, of course, Monopolies can be lost, as when Tea was exported from China and planted (and thrived) elsewhere, and Cotton, an Indian exclusive in the Asia/European world, was exported to almost every semi-tropical climate in the world - and changed from a 'Luxury' good to a component of Smokeless Powder and became a 'Strategic' resource at the end of the 19th century!

If the starting 'resources' on the map only represent what you've found with Scouts, Prospectors, and such, and can be supplemented by later technological prospecting advances, then part of that would be finding new amounts of resource in the same and other places. Your starting Copper resource could turn out later to be several tiles connected into the Mesabi copper fields of North America, or the bubbling black stuff out in the swamp could be the top layer of enough oil to fuel half the planet.

All of this replanting and re-prospecting would mean that the 'starting' resources would literally only be 'the tip of the iceberg' in the game ...

Naokaukodem said:

Yeah, horses particularly as a strategic resource is yet more abundant than iron, because it's reproducible. The ONLY justification for horses being there, is that America didn't have them until its conquest, or that Asia preferred Elephants. And if they finally had them, it's because it's a reproducible resource, therefore this aspect should be there if we are to keep them.

Click to expand...

Horses once domesticated can be 'grown' or pastured in a large part of the world, but there is a 'strategic' element to horses, and that is breeding, through the right expertise and technology, the right kind of horses. Two quick examples would be the medieval knight, who required a massive 'destrier' horse that had to be selectively bred and was very expensive to raise and feed, and later, there was a distinct limitation on how many Cuirassier (armored cavalry) Regiments that Napoleon I could raise, because they also required heavier horses that were in short supply in Europe - he wound up with 3 - 4 times more Dragoon and light cavalry regiments than Cuirassier, even though the Cuirassiers were the premier Battle Cavalry, because the horses just were not available. On the other hand, steppe nomads' (Huns and Mongols for two examples) huge numbers of horses available for their own light cavalry, meant that each rider could change horses several times a day and gave them mobility no 'civilized' mounted force could begin to match.

In game terms, then, there should be limits on how many horse 'pastures' you can maintain, but for cultures that start with Animal Domestication and stay pastoral, those limits are less and their application (their own mounted units) can use them to better effect: they get, say, a +1 Movement to all Mounted Units over the 'agricultural' civilizations.

And again, (he crowed) by applying the History to the Game, we can produce a more varied and dynamic game with a Unique Ability that is Cultural rather than specific to a single Civilization. Also, we can reproduce in the game both the lack of horses in one continent and the spread of horses (and cattle and sheep, in the North American model) to that continent, and possibly even the transformation of the cultural and military characteristics of the Civilizations on that continent.

Boris Gudenuf said:

Are you arguing for a system where you can change Victory Conditions during the game? That would be interesting - I start out with the goal of Conquering the World, later adapt to conditions with a new Victory of Dominating My Continent, and finally settle for Survive...

Or, perhaps, each type of Victory could have several Levels:
Cultural Grand Victory: My Culture Dominates the World
Cultural Victory: My Culture Dominates the Majority of the World's Cities
Cultural Marginal Victory: All My Own Cities Share My Culture.

Click to expand...

No, I didn't really implied that victory conditions would change during a game, but more flatly that we should adapt them to the new condition of the player in the game, as this player would be a major candidate, ideally, for stopping to play (losing) what would be a game of Civ1-5. (but not 6)

You can simulate with a computer the evolution of the civilizations, by implementing different factors, but now if you put a player in the middle of all this, what will his game look like ? Shouldn't he vanish at the first occasion ? I mean, I envision a Civ game where the player's civilization would re-size constantly, if not vanishing completely. Therefore, we should "adapt" victory conditions to this new state of player.

Hence the "victory bubbles" I mentioned somewhere. For example, we could have achievements during a whole game, and the one having the most of them when the game ends wins, or a more elaborated design. One victory condition could be "having the largest empire of all times", and at the end of the game, whether all original players are still in game or not, Rome, Persia, Greece or Mongols may compete. Of course, there might be other victory conditions/achievements, so that there would be other kinds of ways for different kinds of players.

Note that it wouldn't be to make the game more interesting by itself, just to make possible a more accurate simulation of civilizations. Also, it would liberate the game from the 'gamey' straight-jacket : a civilization doesn't have the need to totally obliterate the others in order to win, but can cohabit with others even at the end, which makes for more realistic AI behaviors.

Boris Gudenuf said:

Well, for starters, what constitutes "Luxury Resources" needs a complete revamp in Civ VI, because the majority of such Happiness Goods in the modern world are manufactured, not 'natural'. Of the greatest Trade Items today in bulk and/or cash volume, only Food and Petroleum Products are represented in the game. The other two 'natural' products are Tobacco and Coffee, two addictive but legal (mostly) substances that, along with Tea, should be represented for both game play and historical purposes.

Modern Luxuries that are extensively traded, though, include Automobiles, Consumer Electronics, Mass Entertainment, and Clothing. They could all be represented in Civ VI, and would allow the game to show the massive shift in Trade that took place as parts of the world industrialized: the great trading empires of Holland and England were fueled in part by sales of cheap factory-produced cloth and clothing, and modern trade in Consumer Electronics and Automobiles fuel demands for Oil and Mass Entertainment, respectively. Adding 'manufactured' Luxury Goods would also allow the game to more dramatically show the depletion of other natural Luxury resources (Whales!) and conversion of still others to other uses (Gold from money/direct Luxury to component of Consumer Electronics' microchips)

Click to expand...

How do you consider to represent manufactured goods in Civ6 ?

Boris Gudenuf said:

I've already made the argument that almost all of the plant/animal 'resources in the game are Mobile: they can be planted or introduced in many, many other areas than where they started, with the proper 'technologies' (some of them pretty early) and expertise and terrain/climate conditions. With Plant and Animal Genetic technologies, you can even introduce some of the resources to terrain and climate different from where they start, but that would take your Civ longer to research in most cases.

This would allow some Civs to start with 'monopolies' - for instance, Silk, Cotton, Tea, Coffee and Elephants were all pretty restricted in their range when first exploited, and that resulted in some Major Trade as the countries with access traded those goods to others. That trade was not only in luxuries: the Indian rulers traded elephants to Alexander's Successors, the Seleucids, so they could form Elephant units for their army - essentially giving them the 'resource' they needed for a Unit rather than a Luxury.

And, of course, Monopolies can be lost, as when Tea was exported from China and planted (and thrived) elsewhere, and Cotton, an Indian exclusive in the Asia/European world, was exported to almost every semi-tropical climate in the world - and changed from a 'Luxury' good to a component of Smokeless Powder and became a 'Strategic' resource at the end of the 19th century!

If the starting 'resources' on the map only represent what you've found with Scouts, Prospectors, and such, and can be supplemented by later technological prospecting advances, then part of that would be finding new amounts of resource in the same and other places. Your starting Copper resource could turn out later to be several tiles connected into the Mesabi copper fields of North America, or the bubbling black stuff out in the swamp could be the top layer of enough oil to fuel half the planet.

All of this replanting and re-prospecting would mean that the 'starting' resources would literally only be 'the tip of the iceberg' in the game ...

Click to expand...

I just answered to Redaxe who objected that from what we know about the series now, it may not be balanced to be able to reproduce resources at will like that. In Civ5, this would translate in virtually infinite number of resources that you could trade in and out or, imagining that mounted units are that useful in game, use for infinite number of military units.

Boris Gudenuf said:

Horses once domesticated can be 'grown' or pastured in a large part of the world, but there is a 'strategic' element to horses, and that is breeding, through the right expertise and technology, the right kind of horses. Two quick examples would be the medieval knight, who required a massive 'destrier' horse that had to be selectively bred and was very expensive to raise and feed, and later, there was a distinct limitation on how many Cuirassier (armored cavalry) Regiments that Napoleon I could raise, because they also required heavier horses that were in short supply in Europe - he wound up with 3 - 4 times more Dragoon and light cavalry regiments than Cuirassier, even though the Cuirassiers were the premier Battle Cavalry, because the horses just were not available. On the other hand, steppe nomads' (Huns and Mongols for two examples) huge numbers of horses available for their own light cavalry, meant that each rider could change horses several times a day and gave them mobility no 'civilized' mounted force could begin to match.

In game terms, then, there should be limits on how many horse 'pastures' you can maintain, but for cultures that start with Animal Domestication and stay pastoral, those limits are less and their application (their own mounted units) can use them to better effect: they get, say, a +1 Movement to all Mounted Units over the 'agricultural' civilizations.

And again, (he crowed) by applying the History to the Game, we can produce a more varied and dynamic game with a Unique Ability that is Cultural rather than specific to a single Civilization. Also, we can reproduce in the game both the lack of horses in one continent and the spread of horses (and cattle and sheep, in the North American model) to that continent, and possibly even the transformation of the cultural and military characteristics of the Civilizations on that continent.

Click to expand...

I believe that those limitations are circumstantial, not truly "realistic". In the same way, a player could decide to spam horses in order to use them in Armies, and could miscalculate and feel a lack of product or gold.

Naokaukodem said:

No, I didn't really implied that victory conditions would change during a game, but more flatly that we should adapt them to the new condition of the player in the game, as this player would be a major candidate, ideally, for stopping to play (losing) what would be a game of Civ1-5. (but not 6)

I mean, I envision a Civ game where the player's civilization would re-size constantly, if not vanishing completely. Therefore, we should "adapt" victory conditions to this new state of player.

Hence the "victory bubbles" I mentioned somewhere. For example, we could have achievements during a whole game, and the one having the most of them when the game ends wins, or a more elaborated design. One victory condition could be "having the largest empire of all times", and at the end of the game, whether all original players are still in game or not, Rome, Persia, Greece or Mongols may compete. Of course, there might be other victory conditions/achievements, so that there would be other kinds of ways for different kinds of players.

Note that it wouldn't be to make the game more interesting by itself, just to make possible a more accurate simulation of civilizations. Also, it would liberate the game from the 'gamey' straight-jacket : a civilization doesn't have the need to totally obliterate the others in order to win, but can cohabit with others even at the end, which makes for more realistic AI behaviors.

Click to expand...

I think I understand, a combination of individual 'achievements' throughout the game that may add up to Victory at the end, and don't require a continuous 'rise to victory'. Some might be 'totaled up' at the end, but others would be 'episodic' so the player would always have a 'something to try next' to turn his situation around during the game.

Naokaukodem said:

How do you consider to represent manufactured goods in Civ6 ?

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Example: For every resource of Cotton or Sheep you have access to (trade or your own) you may dedicate one Specialist in a Factory (I envision buildings 'growing' to have more than one Specialist Slot) that will produce the 'Luxury' good of 'Cheap Clothing'.

Once you have Internal Combustion AND access to Oil and Iron OR Aluminum, you can dedicate Specialists in Factories to produce Automobiles.

In both cases, you can theoretically have as many 'points' of the manufactured good as you have Factory Slots and Raw Materials to put into them, so your potential Trade Income from flogging them around the world has a much more flexible upper limit than with simple 'natural' luxuries. Note also that there is a limitation, however: how much of your land and people and resources can you afford to dedicate to this manufacturing?

Naokaukodem said:

I believe that those limitations are circumstantial, not truly "realistic". In the same way, a player could decide to spam horses in order to use them in Armies, and could miscalculate and feel a lack of product or gold.

Click to expand...

The limitations are circumstantial, but the circumstances are inherent in the nature of the Horse and its use. To get big horses required for certain specialized military and civilian uses (knights, heavy cavalry, heavy draft animals) requires that the horse be fed on grain rather than simple pasturage. Thus, the horse becomes more expensive and the requirements in land and agricultural resources to support the horse become greater. The limitations were very real for as long as people tried to use horses in quantity. The last and worst example was actually World War Two, when the German Army went into Russia with 600,000 large horses requiring grain feed and found out that not only could they not feed them, but after losing a large percentage of them they couldn't be replaced easily because all of western Europe didn't raise that many large horses at once: the land was in use for people food, not horse feed.

The great nomadic/pastoral cultures and their armies got around this by utilizing smaller, hardy horses frequently referred to in the sources as 'ponies', and avoiding the requirement for a big, expensive (in resources) horse carrying a big, armored rider.

Rather than subdividing 'horse resource' in the game into Heavy and Pony, it would be easier to simply rule that Horse Pastures cannot be next to each other and must have 2 tiles of Unimproved Grass or Plains next to each Pasture. That would reflect the resource requirement to use lots of horses, without making the Hun or Mongol on a great plain too restricted in their militaries.

Boris Gudenuf said:

I think I understand, a combination of individual 'achievements' throughout the game that may add up to Victory at the end, and don't require a continuous 'rise to victory'. Some might be 'totaled up' at the end, but others would be 'episodic' so the player would always have a 'something to try next' to turn his situation around during the game.

Click to expand...

I don't think achievements with a starting turn and a end turn would be ok : players would learn how to achieve a victory in the shortest way possible, probably "cheesy", making the later eras useless. It's a matter of making the things possible, or not. If they are possible, they are definitely cheesy, if they are impossible, well. You could make them hard. But that would just truly make segregation. Last possibility : you could make some things totally random (RNG), but any game may transform then into a huge roulette. No, I really intend to make the game "episodic" in its mechanics. For example, you could settle plenty cities, but most of them would differ culturally from you at a point or the other. You could conquer a lot, but at a point your conquests would rebel. So why expand ? Why conquer ? For the episodic boost it would give to your civ. Not only this would be a general boost, but also a way to direct victory.

Boris Gudenuf said:

Example: For every resource of Cotton or Sheep you have access to (trade or your own) you may dedicate one Specialist in a Factory (I envision buildings 'growing' to have more than one Specialist Slot) that will produce the 'Luxury' good of 'Cheap Clothing'.

Once you have Internal Combustion AND access to Oil and Iron OR Aluminum, you can dedicate Specialists in Factories to produce Automobiles.

In both cases, you can theoretically have as many 'points' of the manufactured good as you have Factory Slots and Raw Materials to put into them, so your potential Trade Income from flogging them around the world has a much more flexible upper limit than with simple 'natural' luxuries. Note also that there is a limitation, however: how much of your land and people and resources can you afford to dedicate to this manufacturing?

Click to expand...

The problem is that in terms of Civ5, this sounds like overpowered. That's why we should try it with something new.

Boris Gudenuf said:

The limitations are circumstantial, but the circumstances are inherent in the nature of the Horse and its use. To get big horses required for certain specialized military and civilian uses (knights, heavy cavalry, heavy draft animals) requires that the horse be fed on grain rather than simple pasturage. Thus, the horse becomes more expensive and the requirements in land and agricultural resources to support the horse become greater. The limitations were very real for as long as people tried to use horses in quantity. The last and worst example was actually World War Two, when the German Army went into Russia with 600,000 large horses requiring grain feed and found out that not only could they not feed them, but after losing a large percentage of them they couldn't be replaced easily because all of western Europe didn't raise that many large horses at once: the land was in use for people food, not horse feed.

The great nomadic/pastoral cultures and their armies got around this by utilizing smaller, hardy horses frequently referred to in the sources as 'ponies', and avoiding the requirement for a big, expensive (in resources) horse carrying a big, armored rider.

Rather than subdividing 'horse resource' in the game into Heavy and Pony, it would be easier to simply rule that Horse Pastures cannot be next to each other and must have 2 tiles of Unimproved Grass or Plains next to each Pasture. That would reflect the resource requirement to use lots of horses, without making the Hun or Mongol on a great plain too restricted in their militaries.

Click to expand...

That's a good point, however I think that it would worth to throw an eye at the lands used in those respective times to feed people. I guess a large part of land was still what would be considered nowadays as "reserves", or "national parks", with forests, or even plains and grasslands. Before the industrial revolution, I don't see it as possible /useful to cultivate as many lands as there are nowadays. After the industrial revolution and during the WWII , there was still a lot more food potential than population. I still consider that having not enough large horses for huge armies was a miscalculation. Or, as breeding probably needs more time than a regime needs to fall/rise, at least would be a miscalculation of a player of Civ.

In the same time, one can't know the future, so supposing that a 'millenary' king would exist, he may not see himself his next move in front of all realities. So, gameplay-wise, a player could anticipate this need of heavy horses whereas one couldn't have in reality, or more precisely, couldn't in History. Therefore the game becomes more or less unrealistic, hence something needed in order to "represent" this fact of History in game.

Therefore, your solution would be adequate, or at least "historical", failing "realistic".

Naokaukodem said:

I don't think achievements with a starting turn and a end turn would be ok : players would learn how to achieve a victory in the shortest way possible, probably "cheesy", making the later eras useless. It's a matter of making the things possible, or not. If they are possible, they are definitely cheesy, if they are impossible, well. You could make them hard. But that would just truly make segregation. Last possibility : you could make some things totally random (RNG), but any game may transform then into a huge roulette. No, I really intend to make the game "episodic" in its mechanics. For example, you could settle plenty cities, but most of them would differ culturally from you at a point or the other. You could conquer a lot, but at a point your conquests would rebel. So why expand ? Why conquer ? For the episodic boost it would give to your civ. Not only this would be a general boost, but also a way to direct victory.

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Perhaps, an episodic Victory Condition could be something like the very artificial "Golden Ages" in Civ V, but with a purpose behind them: A Golden Age might start when you settled X number of cities within Y number of turns, or conquered Z number of cities or an entire civilization, and instead of ending at a set number of turns, the length of the Golden Age could depend on how long you kept your settlements/conquests or how long before your people got unhappy with you. Using multiple 'episodic' ways to achieve Golden Age Status, and varying lengths of Golden Ages that end when things stop being Golden (and making that virtually inevitable in the game), the amount of time the civilization spends in Golden Ages could be a measure of victory not requiring an 'end point' victory - and in between 'Golden Ages' you could still survive 'Dark Ages' or boom-and-bust cycles.

Naokaukodem said:

The problem is that in terms of Civ5, this sounds like overpowered. That's why we should try it with something new.

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Sorry, I thought this entire discussion was related to Civ VI: The Sequel. I gave up on reforming Civ V a long time ago ...

Naokaukodem said:

That's a good point, however I think that it would worth to throw an eye at the lands used in those respective times to feed people. I guess a large part of land was still what would be considered nowadays as "reserves", or "national parks", with forests, or even plains and grasslands. Before the industrial revolution, I don't see it as possible /useful to cultivate as many lands as there are nowadays. After the industrial revolution and during the WWII , there was still a lot more food potential than population. I still consider that having not enough large horses for huge armies was a miscalculation. Or, as breeding probably needs more time than a regime needs to fall/rise, at least would be a miscalculation of a player of Civ.

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Not True. I just finished reading parts of the 'official' German history of WWII: "Germany in the Second World War", and it goes into considerable detail on the very real limitations of the German economy (in fact, the book is mostly a social and economic history rather than a 'pure' military history) and the only potential for more food in central and western Europe was new technology, more workers, or more land. That, in a nutshell, is why Hitler attacked Soviet Russia: it was his potential source for more land and more (slave) workers. They had already exploited what they could in new technology by the introduction of artificial fertilizers by the German chemical industry earlier in the century. To have allocated more land and resources to producing more heavy horses would have, literally, starved people - not a valid choice even in a police state, since you need those people as skilled workers in the factories.

Sorry to devolve into 'pure' history, but this is one of the valid choices' that is hidden in most histories, but should need to be made by the Omniscient Overlord that the Gamer is playing in Civ: everything you try to do Should Have A Price.

Naokaukodem said:

In the same time, one can't know the future, so supposing that a 'millenary' king would exist, he may not see himself his next move in front of all realities. So, gameplay-wise, a player could anticipate this need of heavy horses whereas one couldn't have in reality, or more precisely, couldn't in History. Therefore the game becomes more or less unrealistic, hence something needed in order to "represent" this fact of History in game.

Therefore, your solution would be adequate, or at least "historical", failing "realistic".

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See above. In fact, Hitler anticipated needing more resources, but hugely underestimated the resources required to get the new land and resources he desired, and ended up losing everything. I would like to see a game with elements that allowed the Gamer to make the same mistakes, and Civ V and the previous Civ-iterations don't even come close.

Boris Gudenuf said:

Sorry, I thought this entire discussion was related to Civ VI: The Sequel. I gave up on reforming Civ V a long time ago ...

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But isn't your suggestion based on Civ5 ? I imagined a game of Civ5 when reading your suggestion at least... to say that the notion of luxuries itself should be revised and defined again.

Boris Gudenuf said:

Not True. I just finished reading parts of the 'official' German history of WWII: "Germany in the Second World War", and it goes into considerable detail on the very real limitations of the German economy (in fact, the book is mostly a social and economic history rather than a 'pure' military history) and the only potential for more food in central and western Europe was new technology, more workers, or more land. That, in a nutshell, is why Hitler attacked Soviet Russia: it was his potential source for more land and more (slave) workers. They had already exploited what they could in new technology by the introduction of artificial fertilizers by the German chemical industry earlier in the century. To have allocated more land and resources to producing more heavy horses would have, literally, starved people - not a valid choice even in a police state, since you need those people as skilled workers in the factories.

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Sorry to insist, but we can nowadays feed a lot more people that there is on the planet. Basically we are prepared for the next decades pop rising. (at least in developed countries) During the XXth century, population also was growing regularly. Apart from food shortages that happened during the major wars (and because of them), I don't remember to have seen such starvation in developed countries directly due to food production lacks. Therefore, because pop constantly grows, and that there were no such food shortage, there must be means to develop agriculture other than mere artificial fertilizers. Plus, I can't believe we are/have been in such a hunger of food. It would be like we would be on the verge to lack air or the sun right next to "explode" !

Naokaukodem said:

But isn't your suggestion based on Civ5 ? I imagined a game of Civ5 when reading your suggestion at least... to say that the notion of luxuries itself should be revised and defined again.

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Of course my suggestions are based on Civ 5, it's the basis of comparison for the discussion. As for the 'notion of luxuries', I want all the resources to be redefined as to their use and effects, and the definitions to potentially change throughout the game based on Technology, Social Policy, and even possibly Religious Policy. I want 'Happiness' or whatever measure is used, to be based on much more than 'access to luxuries' and the consequences of not meeting your people's perceived needs to be much, much more decisive than they are in Civ V. I'd keep the 'Civ' in 'Civ V', but I'd change almost everything else...

Naokaukodem said:

Sorry to insist, but we can nowadays feed a lot more people that there is on the planet. Basically we are prepared for the next decades pop rising. (at least in developed countries) During the XXth century, population also was growing regularly. Apart from food shortages that happened during the major wars (and because of them), I don't remember to have seen such starvation in developed countries directly due to food production lacks. Therefore, because pop constantly grows, and that there were no such food shortage, there must be means to develop agriculture other than mere artificial fertilizers. Plus, I can't believe we are/have been in such a hunger of food. It would be like we would be on the verge to lack air or the sun right next to "explode" !

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Having the food is not the same as getting the food to the people who need it, and the ability to adequately nourish all the people is very, very new: in the 1960s one nutritional scientist put it very accurately when he said that if all the food were equally distributed, everyone would be malnourished: by his count, at that time only about 10% of the planet's population was getting access to adequate nutrition.

The so-called 'Green Revolution' right after that changed the numbers dramatically, but it was a product of a bunch of modern Genetic and Biological advances and does not reflect the reality of most of human history, and especially not western Europe during the first half of the 20th century. It is no accident that Germany, Britain and the USSR all instituted Food Rationing as soon as they went to war, or that Germany in 1942 intended to use some of the millions of Soviet prisoners they had taken in 1941 as farm workers, only to discover that 2,000,000 of them had already starved to death! Getting enough food in the first place, through farming or pasturage or fishing, and distributing that food to those who need it most are two sides of the same problem, and it has been one of the major problems in human history. If you think it has been solved now, you are, I fear, an optimist.

Boris Gudenuf said:

Of course my suggestions are based on Civ 5, it's the basis of comparison for the discussion. As for the 'notion of luxuries', I want all the resources to be redefined as to their use and effects, and the definitions to potentially change throughout the game based on Technology, Social Policy, and even possibly Religious Policy. I want 'Happiness' or whatever measure is used, to be based on much more than 'access to luxuries' and the consequences of not meeting your people's perceived needs to be much, much more decisive than they are in Civ V. I'd keep the 'Civ' in 'Civ V', but I'd change almost everything else...

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I mean, if you base your suggestions on Civ5, then +4 happiness at the cost of some surplus natural resource and one specialist only is kinda overpowered. Maybe not that much, because I personally get a lack of happiness in pretty much all my games, especially when AIs trade between themselves during the turn where your trades expire and you are left with nothing. If any, change this mechanic.

But what I want to say, is that luxuries give happiness, and the developers are not willing to give us more if they keep it global, or for a too direct/easy way to repel major growth limits. Happiness serves to give limits to overcome, as to give goals / interests to the player and as a ruler. This is definitely a good intention as to reproduce states interests and to make an echo in the head of the player as playing a game of civilizations as well to give the players goals all simply.

However, I would say that in Civ5 those limits are way too impeding : designed to be overcome originally, they find themselves not to be overcome some times. They are not a problem you can solve, totally or partially, with a tech for example, you have to free a way of playing that is problematic because it doesn't fit with your possibilities. In Civ1-3, you could create cities. So you created them. They don't grow anymore ? Fine, let's build aqueducts ! They are too corrupted ? Fine, let's build courthouses ! Etc. In Civ4-5, you CAN create cities, the main thing being that it's often a bad idea. You can expand, you can grow your pop, you can conquer. But those three are to be controlled in a way to not lost track of global happiness. This is, really difficult, to me at least. The best way to free is playing like with Gandhi with every civ : major cities, slowly built/grew/conquered, more seen like "regions" than mere cities. But I don't really like to play like this, because I like sharp actions that I control. Cherry on the cake, playing with few cities is boring, just because you have little actions to do. And not only domestic, but foreign too (war, and what war is good for ? Conquests, and that point : really only because it's fun, not particularly having to serve any gameplay mechanic).

That's why I wouldn't spit on more happiness in Civ5 for sure, just to let you know that it would ruin the developers' plans (if they have any), and, incidentally, unease the fans who pushed Firaxis to reduce happiness in Civ5. (they didn't like how in vanilla it was always the same 'dumb' way to win : ICS, ICS, ICS... (Infinite City Sprawl) but what they don't seem to face is that now it's Gandhi, Gandhi, Gandhi, and that the game is now slack, not to speak that ICS is not particularly better than having bigger cities that can build things and wonders faster, not that it doesn't need experimentations to be "unprooved", so much for the 'dumb' way.)

Boris Gudenuf said:

Having the food is not the same as getting the food to the people who need it, and the ability to adequately nourish all the people is very, very new: in the 1960s one nutritional scientist put it very accurately when he said that if all the food were equally distributed, everyone would be malnourished: by his count, at that time only about 10% of the planet's population was getting access to adequate nutrition.

The so-called 'Green Revolution' right after that changed the numbers dramatically, but it was a product of a bunch of modern Genetic and Biological advances and does not reflect the reality of most of human history, and especially not western Europe during the first half of the 20th century. It is no accident that Germany, Britain and the USSR all instituted Food Rationing as soon as they went to war, or that Germany in 1942 intended to use some of the millions of Soviet prisoners they had taken in 1941 as farm workers, only to discover that 2,000,000 of them had already starved to death! Getting enough food in the first place, through farming or pasturage or fishing, and distributing that food to those who need it most are two sides of the same problem, and it has been one of the major problems in human history. If you think it has been solved now, you are, I fear, an optimist.

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I assume that the 90% left were mostly undeveloped countries. It's not new that the areas with most of the Earth population are underdeveloped. Because I assume that in the 60s countries like USA or France didn't have food problems, minus the very poor classes. Even if you take things globally, considering how population explodes, you can't really say that food is a major problem. Major starvations are caused by problems like speculation, not direct food shortage.

If Germany, Britain and USSR instituted food rationing as soon as they went to war, it's obviously linked to war.

Naokaukodem said:

But what I want to say, is that luxuries give happiness, and the developers are not willing to give us more if they keep it global, or for a too direct/easy way to repel major growth limits. Happiness serves to give limits to overcome, as to give goals / interests to the player and as a ruler. This is definitely a good intention as to reproduce states interests and to make an echo in the head of the player as playing a game of civilizations as well to give the players goals all simply.

Click to expand...

One major problem, as I see it, with luxuries is that Not All Luxuries Are Created Equal, and some of the 'Luxuries' in the game are simply not that important to a population later in the game.
For instance, Gold had immense value as a prestige item for most of history: in the Bronze Age, Egypt's access to Gold Mines gave it tremendous diplomatic 'clout' as other staters practically begged the Pharaohs for Gold in exchange for pretty much whatever they wanted. Gold is still valuable, but nowhere near as much - and has virtually no diplomatic impact as a Trade good as it once had. Furs, once the symbol of wealth in clothing and a requirement to exist in high latitudes (in Game Terms, to work any tile in Tundra or to move through Tundra or Snow tiles) is now passed' in fashion and replaced by artificial fibers for practical use.
On the other hand, some 'manufactured luxuries' are almost a requirement which no other luxury can replace: automobiles, which every population who could afford them has virtually demanded, consumer electronics, and, in the last century, Mass Entertainment (radio, TV, movies) has virtually replaced most other forms of entertainment as 'happiness' producers. In game terms, your traditional Venues (Amphitheaters, Coliseums) for entertainment have to be replaced by Broadcast Towers or Satellites, not augmented.
And, most importantly, it does no good to have lots of Luxuries or Entertainment if you don't have enough to eat, adequate housing, a job, education for your children, and basic physical security. There should be basic requirements in game terms to keep a population 'content' before your Luxuries will 'kick in' to make them Happy. Lose or slack on the Basics, and no amount of luxuries will keep the mobs from forming and revolt from rising.

Naokaukodem said:

I assume that the 90% left were mostly undeveloped countries. It's not new that the areas with most of the Earth population are underdeveloped. Because I assume that in the 60s countries like USA or France didn't have food problems, minus the very poor classes. Even if you take things globally, considering how population explodes, you can't really say that food is a major problem. Major starvations are caused by problems like speculation, not direct food shortage.

If Germany, Britain and USSR instituted food rationing as soon as they went to war, it's obviously linked to war.

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Specifically, it was linked to Manpower: when large numbers of men were mobilized into the Mass Military forces of the twentieth century, the labor-intensive agriculture/food supply suffered immediately in most countries.Those countries that could (USSR, USA) got around the problem somewhat by mobilizing large numbers of women to replace the men in farming and industry, but no one who mobilized a large percentage of the men between the ages of 18 and 35 into a 'non-productive work force' (the military) was immune from problems that resulted.
This is not a new phenomena: Sweden mobilized so many men into the army in the late 17th and early 18th centuries that some villages had no men left in them younger than 50 or older than 15 - which affected the population growth for a generation. Right now, Civ V sort of indicates the problem by having a 'unit limit' beyond which growth and production suffer, but there is no mechanism for trading, say, Happiness or long-term growth for short-term production and mobilization (units), as happened in the 'Great Wars' of the twentieth century...

As to the "Victory Achievements" idea.

I had an idea that was similar, essentially, every stage of the game your goal would be to dominate the map you were in (things "off the map" would be abstracted)

The scale would change a little bit as well

So
CS->local empire (ie take over your river valley/peninsula)..Victory achieved, can retire or continue on

local empire->continental power (dominate multiple river valley/peninsulas..ie become the Roman/Han empires)...Victory achieved, can retire or continue on

continental power/barbarian invader->major nation (continental power must survive barb invasions, barbs must conquer continental power)...option to start at this point, to play Mongols/Germans..once Victory achieved, can retire or continue on

major nation->world empire (become Britain/France)...option to start as rebels midway through, if you want to play America/Russia...once Victory achieved, can retire or continue on

World empire->Global Superpower (become US/USSR)...once Victory achieved, can retire or continue on

Global Superpower->Hegemon (totally dominate Earth or leave it entirely)..once Victory achieved you are done

Diplomatic and Cultural victory would be folded into Conquest, Diplomacy + Culture would be Means of 'peaceful conquest'.

All levels should allow you to start there and also to start at a particular power level yourself (so if you want to play Singapore, starting as a CS in the Global Super power era..go ahead..more victory points for you if you defeat the world)

It doesn't work as well for a MP model of multiple stages, but if
MP games were all one stage (ie we all play as CS in the same River valley.)
OR
MP games had an option to be joined from SP games (at Victory option: retire/continue on to the next level alone/join someone else's game for the next level)

My idea was that if you are a dominant power in some resources you should get bonuses. Like being a dominant power in Iron gives your units 15% attack,wheat makes great people cost less,banana gives more food,wine gives 10% culuture etc. Being a dominant power in some resources is even today realy important. And i would to add that by conquering an capital you get the abilities of that nation. Also someone who fights a war should and gets a even or looses,should pay reperation costs for the other player. Also,units that leave your borders cost much more to provide for them. Hammers and gold,i read that somewhere,it´s not my idea but it´s good. Sending an army far from your borders is expensive.

Boris Gudenuf > resources certainly seem "frozen" and pretty much static during the whole game and unadaptative. For exemple, there could be several resources types for the same use ("final product"), dyes for example not only came from a plant, but also from a brazilian tree (wood) that got massively pillaged after the discovering of Americas. Also, one copy of any resource for your whole country : I think it would be better to have a sense of quantities here also. (no idea how it would work in Civ5, maybe more local happiness, maybe reintroduce social rank) Finally, certainly resource could adapt more, but I'm not convinced by your examples : furs (real, not imitation) is certainly a luxury nowadays, and gold, well, i'm not an economy specialist but i believe that it has a large part in maintaining moneys values. One thing we could set up is controlled / free market. In controlled market you decide who sells to who, and in free market enterprises trade for their own (at the risk of lacking some goods for your own people), but i guess it would be pretty much complicated.

Krikkitwo > this reminds me of difficulty levels. Other than that, I don't really well see what are the benefits to retreat when you achieved one victory. In my idea, it would just be less opportunities to mark more points towards final victory.

Naokaukodem said:

Boris Gudenuf > resources certainly seem "frozen" and pretty much static during the whole game and unadaptative. For exemple, there could be several resources types for the same use ("final product"), dyes for example not only came from a plant, but also from a brazilian tree (wood) that got massively pillaged after the discovering of Americas.

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Dyes are a good example of how a 'luxury' resource can change dramatically. First, the original 'natural' sources of dyes included plants, sea snails, beetles, and tree bark, which potentially gives you 'resource locations' ranging from Forests to Jungles to Coastal Seas. BUT with the discovery of Artificial dyes in the 1850s, most of the 'natural' dyes became strictly 'handicraft' items - industrial dying and coloring was all done by the products of the Chemical Industry.

In addition, Dyes are a perfect example of a 'value-added' resource: cheap industrial Cloth from Factories and Wool, Cotton or even Silk resources increased in value enormously if it were colored before selling. So, resource Cotton or Wool + Factory = Cheap Cloth (Trade or Happiness) Resource, + Dyes = (relatively) expensive Cloth Resource.

Naokaukodem said:

Also, one copy of any resource for your whole country : I think it would be better to have a sense of quantities here also. (no idea how it would work in Civ5, maybe more local happiness, maybe reintroduce social rank)

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I agree. It makes no sense for 1 item to supply 'happiness' for a country with a population between 1 population point (city size) and 100! Strategic Resources should be depleted as they are 'used up' to build units, Oil or Coal should be required in continuous quantities to make certain Units work (or railroads, for that matter), and the amount of Happiness generated by Luxury Resources should very much change depending on how much 'Luxury' your population has to share. This goes back to what I said earlier about some Luxuries being more valuable than others: Gold or Spices or Jewelry may be only 'required' to keep your Aristocracy happy, but Salt, Cotton, or Wool may be required by almost the entire population, and the quantities of real scarce Luxuries will change dramatically once the availability is not limited by Birth, Position or Title, but open to anyone with the required Cash. In other words, as your Social Policies, Government type and/or Technologies change, so should the relative importance of Luxuries in type and amount.

All of this would also make the 'dynamic' resource system more applicable: as resources deplete or your population outgrows them, you'd be in constant search for new sources or alternatives: through Trade, Exploration, Technology, or Conquest...

Naokaukodem said:

Finally, certainly resource could adapt more, but I'm not convinced by your examples : furs (real, not imitation) is certainly a luxury nowadays, and gold, well, i'm not an economy specialist but i believe that it has a large part in maintaining moneys values. One thing we could set up is controlled / free market. In controlled market you decide who sells to who, and in free market enterprises trade for their own (at the risk of lacking some goods for your own people), but i guess it would be pretty much complicated.

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Since the leading economies all left the Gold Standard early in the twentieth century, Gold has had no influence on the value of currency - before that, it was a HUGE factor, but a limiting one: if you printed more money than you had gold to 'back it', you risked changing the real value of your currency in ways that would hurt your entire economy.

Once real metal was not required to back a currency, the amount of trade and cash changing hands became almost unlimited - and became completely unlimited when the actual transfer was done electronically, as today, and so the government didn't even have to print the money! These two events, possibly represented by a Social Policy (Trade-Backed Currency?) or Technology (Electronic Banking/Credit Cards?) should be included in the game, because they radically change the Gold income available to the player - and the potential fluctuation in that availability due to international Markets, Trade Deficits/Surpluses, Depressions and Panics, etc. - a whole new aspect of the game which I think would add some needed excitement to the Late Game, which is now almost unplayably dull...