Fixed Borders & Civics

Starting a discussion thread since the topic has been fairly heavily discussed in the bug threads, which is not really the appropriate place for it.

Basically government types and fixed borders don't mix. I think we could spend the next month debating which governments can and can't have fixed borders, when really the issue is that fixed borders have no real relationship to government ideologies.

My suggestion is that we remove fixed borders from the Government civic category entirely. Then we create a new civic category that reflects the types of government choices that result in culture vs fixed borders. This civic category could be called "Society".

But wait, you say! There already is a category named "Society". Yes, indeed, astute reader, there is. But the existing society category makes little sense, as governments rarely choose to top-down enforce "Bourgeois" or "Bureaucratic" societies. Those sorts of things happen naturally, not as a result of government policy. Government does, however, have policies on the freedoms of civil society (or the lack thereof). Whether your country has "Free Speech" and liberal ideas about discourse, or criticism of the state is outlawed. These things could be modeled in civic choices.

Civil Society:

• Communal
  
• Tutelage
  
• Nationalism
  
• Liberal
  
• Propaganda

Other civics? Disagree?

Won't we have the same problem? People arguing if a liberal society needs to have fixed borders or not?

I would vote for totally removing fixed borders

Since I started this fixed boarders and govermentstyle debat...

I have to disagree about need of new or entirely reworked civic gategory.
Goverment category is correct enough but I think the original idea of fixed boarders was better.

All "modern" goverment civics that indicates organized central goverment should enable fixed boarders. I Remember that first versions enabled FB starting monarchy to all the way to President or what ever the "top" civic was those days. Only 2-3 first ancient goverment civs (before cartography, writing etc) did not enabled FB.

If realism is a goal then whole world should be using FB about year 1800-1900 / "modern era". But thats only my opinion and I hate "cultural conquest in modern times"- consept

And @Combat Wombat

Fixed boarders is optional so why suggest total removing? I know there are lots of players who really like this option.

Combat Wombat said:

I would vote for totally removing fixed borders

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Since there's already an option for that, it's definitely not necessary.

Other than you have an awkward combinations of adjectives and nouns in your list, Afforess, I think that the idea sounds pretty interesting. Again, I have very little idea about what constitutes 'balance', however.

You mean because culture spreading represents spreading ideas, opinions, whatever? Then maybe civil society can apply. It all depends what culture really represents in Civilization IV.

Honestly, culture altering borders in game always struck me as amusing.

45°38'N-13°47'E;13416497 said:

Since there's already an option for that, it's definitely not necessary.

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Would save having to re-balance it at all and end this conversation. I think its a legitimate point.

Afforess said:

(...)
But wait, you say! There already is a category named "Society". Yes, indeed, astute reader, there is. But the existing society category makes little sense, as governments rarely choose to top-down enforce "Bourgeois" or "Bureaucratic" societies. Those sorts of things happen naturally, not as a result of government policy. Government does, however, have policies on the freedoms of civil society (or the lack thereof). Whether your country has "Free Speech" and liberal ideas about discourse, or criticism of the state is outlawed. These things could be modeled in civic choices.

Civil Society:

• Communal
  
• Tutelage
  
• Nationalism
  
• Liberal
  
• Propaganda

Other civics? Disagree?

Click to expand...

Honestly I don't see much sense in it. IMO it's almost the same society category with almost the same problems

What is the main goal of this thread? If it is to fix fixed borders lol than I would think C2C's "Boarders" civic category or at least something very similar.

Aside from changing civics or not, Fixed Borders is a way of cheating the game now and nothing more.

You may agree a fort may remove maintenance costs for troops far off, even if it's not connected to your empire. It's a place where people may sleep, eat and live. If you are in the middle of the enemy land you just use a unit to get a tile and then suddenly all the maintenance cost from your SoD vanishes. This isn't only unrealistic, but it's cheating IMO.

Again IMO Fixed Borders should just work if there is an adjacent border of yours. If not you can't get that tile. Forts may keep being like they are because of what I said above.

If this can't be done, I would play without Fixed Borders because Forts already do almost the same as Fixed Borders, but at least they take several turns to build.

I agree Spirictum and these days I lean towards just disabling Fixed Borders. I just don't know how many fans I would upset.

Afforess said:

I agree Spirictum and these days I lean towards just disabling Fixed Borders. I just don't know how many fans I would upset.

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To tell the truth, I use FB option but I seldom use civics that enforce FB. And anyway FB aren't really "fixed". Even when fixed borders are in force, if you have twice the culture on that tile, it becomes yours (at least I recall it was like that months ago, I don't think we've changed anything there). Whatever, it doesn't make much difference to me but I would like to hear people who like FB and understand why they like it.

I for one didn't realize I can claim deep in enemy territory until it's described here. Thanks for alerting me. Add me in as a fan who don't care if FB go away or not. I'll stop using that option.

As I said before, I prefer options to stay in if they're supported for balancing purposes. However if they stop being supported for balancing reasons, I will like it if there's an official list of options that are balance breakers. That way, as 45* said before! they're available for multiplayer use but recommended left off if playing in single player.

Afforess said:

I agree Spirictum and these days I lean towards just disabling Fixed Borders. I just don't know how many fans I would upset.

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Please dont keep it optional for us FB fans..

I use FB,especially in the early-mid game, to give a city access to a tile/resource it would otherwise have to wait a very long time to get via culture (I'm also using Realistic Culture Spread).
Need those Gems on that forested hill? Park an archer on the tile, instead of waiting a hundred turns for a border pop that may not get that tile anyway.

However, I do agree that suddendly having troop maintenance costs disappear in the middle of enemy territory is not good for gameplay, so I'm for either enforcing "can claim tiles only if adiacent to owned tiles" or removing the "claim tile" command but leaving forts in.

I've long been a fan of cultural expansion, so you can also put me down as someone who probably wouldn't notice if the option disappeared.

For me it's 20% not fully understanding FB and 80% don't care
I always thought FB is in the mod because it is something good that I don't undarstand but should use it.
So I don't care if it is removed or not

Arakhor said:

I've long been a fan of cultural expansion, so you can also put me down as someone who probably wouldn't notice if the option disappeared.

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+1

JosEPh

Only few times I've used FB's "Claim Tile" feature was to temporarily heal up in enemy lands while cutting the cost down (!?), and one time in the last Testing Game where I had a military unit parked at a chokehold point to keep Shaka from settling a city by this copper resource he always insisted on getting. Normally he could have just walked that Settler right through my Archer, but because there was now a piece of my borders there, all he could do was glare and think angry thoughts.


I don't have any real preference here, largely because I haven't used it often. If the Claim Plot feature could only be used nearby your own borders and not on the other side of the world, would that work for keeping it?

Rezca said:

I don't have any real preference here, largely because I haven't used it often. If the Claim Plot feature could only be used nearby your own borders and not on the other side of the world, would that work for keeping it?

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I suppose it would be better, but I'd wait for Afforess opinion. Maybe a claim territory command that can be used only on your borders and if you use it on another civ's tile, it means war. Something like that could work maybe but I'm not sure it's worth teaching AI something like that.