Multiply to dominate

Hi,
« Multiply to dominate » is the only way to win in civilization. You multiply your cities in order to multiply your units, your production, your money, your technologies and your power. But there are many very small countries which are powerful.

Several ideas to change that :

1. Governments which favour the small civilizations.
2. In diplomacy options: Many ways to sell services (banking etc…).
3. The possibility to subcontract production. You can pay other countries to establish factories (and consequently pollution) in their cities.

Hey!
This issue has been discussed already.
But ur ideas are nice. Hope we can mod them in.
(cuz I am not expecting any ground breaking imrpovement in AI, the graphix is probably all they are delivering new in this edition)

Welcome to CFC
First, I'd say your ideas are quite good. Especially the factory thing. Good!

Nyx_ said:

2. In diplomacy options: Many ways to sell services (banking etc…).
3. The possibility to subcontract production. You can pay other countries to establish factories (and consequently pollution) in their cities.

Click to expand...

I am in favor of these types of ideas, although not these ideas as presented.

#2- An extension of #3. Good idea but i'd like to see something more concrete as far as service ideas go.

#3- This is similar in principle, but not in practice, to an idea many people like: Unit trading. With that, it doesn't matter whether they have a factory to build tanks or not. All that matter to you is that they are In fact built. Of course, they would likely incurr pollution in the production of these units. ... Well, unless they bought the units from someone, in which case the pollution would go there.

With trade able units, a nation could become an arms broker.

The player could pick a destination city where the units would be taken to.

There should also be three types of unit trading:
A. Immediate- The two sides transfer the units. However, the units would be shipped immediately after the trading deal is made. To prevent exploits, a movement costs would be taken into consideration.

B. Production Order-After the deal, the other civ has to give x number of units within Y turns of deal being concluded. X and Y would be negiatable, unlike in Civ 3.

C. Per Turn Order- A certain number of units (x) would be traded every turn (y).

If any of these agreements are broken, the offending party should have the option to make reparations. I was think the standard reparations rate should be 125-150% of the value of the delievered goods. If the offending party does not do it on its own, the victim should have the right to demand it. If that doesnt happen, the victim should have the right to declare war on it to pick up the damages.

If arms trading were allowed, you would be able to have a small army to prevent loss of money on it and build up your money. When war came, they would be able to buy units from others, possibly more advanced then what they can build. The risk would be that you would have to rely on others for your military.

If you wanted to have a large military to trade, the danger would that you could through away a lot of money and could face your advanced units in battle.

The trade units idea is interesting, but there is one flaw in there: The population factor.

Simply building/buying/selling of arms is a cool concept, especially for say the industrial or modern age onward. But, for example, say I enter 1900 exiting the Industrial Age with 6 cities. I'm very well advanced, but have a very small army. Say 40 units total. None of my cities are over 12 population (we have crappy food producing land but great luxuries, resources, etc) but we have saved/sold/traded our way to a huge surplus of say 15,000 gold. Our big bad neighbor declares war on us. They have 200 units+ at best guess. Our little army of 40 has no chance. Country 'A' has offered us say 40 tanks, 20 arty and 50 infantry for 12,000 gold. IF we buy all of this, we suddenly have a good chance in a defensive war, and maybe can exploit a city capture or two with well timed and directed counter-attacks.

Now. Where do we get the population to fill out these 90 divisions plus arty? Say each one represents 1 population point? If we have no more than 72 total population points in our empire, how do we man these units?

I would assume that the process for unit trading would be very complicated. One price in gold/shields to build it, PLUS a gold/shield/pop hit to 'man' them. If you built for sale but then nationalized the units for yourself, you would have to contribute extra resources to 'activate' the units. A buyer would also have to incur some penalty other than just gold to activate purchased units. You would be better off 'hiring' mercanaries from other countries. They loan you units for a price for your wars. The unit is destroyed, it's gone. As long as it lives, you pay upkeep plus fees to the mother country.

As much as I like the aspect, it sounds like more MM and a big big headache for the AI and CPU to crunch. I could see the one time buy of existing units, but not the prepay-build-deliver system. Maybe someday.

I really like the idea as a way for smaller, trade-oriented civs to defend themselves. The aquired units would be like mercinaries, perhaps they would somehow have their efficiency somewhat reduced, or have a certain additional cost per turn. If this could be implemented properly, it seems like it would be a great way to concentrate on alternate means to victory (than domination), while still maintaining a way to prevent aggressive civs from bullying your civ with impunity.

I specify my ideas about services :

A# Lending with interest.
B# Taxing each exchange which goes through your territory.
C# Investing in foreign cities : You give money to a city in order to build something and this city brings you a percent of its profits.