Summary:
Citizens should have varying degrees of education. More educated citizens produce more shields/hammers and more science (or commerce in general) than less educated ones. However, more educated citizens are also more likely to demand certain social engineering choices, less likely to be influenced by luxuries, and reproduce more slowly. You can increase the level of education of your citizens by building schools, libraries, and universities in your cities. Education is a slow process, however.
Suggested Mechanism:
Each population point has one of these four education levels:
1) Illiterate: can't read, write, or add
2) Literate: basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. Equivalent to completion of elementary school in the USA.
3) Educated: excellent reading, writing, and math skills. Equivalent to completion of (a good) high school in the USA.
4) Erudite: all of the above plus deep knowledge of some specialty. Equivalent to a baccalaureate degree or higher.
Greater levels of education result in the effects described above existing to greater degrees: increased science (or trade in general) and shields/hammers, decreased effectiveness of luxuries, increased preference for some social engineering choices, and reduced population growth.
All citizens start as illiterate. Citizen specialists in a city can only be chosen from the pool of Erudite citizens.
A School is an improvement that only has the effect of increasing education, but only up to the level of Educated. Building a School requires either Mathematics, Writing, or Philosophy. A Library increases education, though less than a School, and also provides culture. I'm flip-flopping as to whether a Library should still provide a research boost; if it does, it should be smaller than its current 50%. A University allows citizens to be educated to the Erudite level and also provides a research boost. All three generate culture as well. A Research Lab has no effect on education, just science.
You also need to be able to sustain your degree of education. If your School, Library, or University is destroyed, you will find your citizens becoming less educated over time. In real world terms, it's because educated people are dying and being replaced by less educated children.
The presence of a School in a city educates some fraction of the city's population each turn. This should be a pretty slow rate, on the order of 1 citizen shifting up a level every 5 turns or so. Libraries accelerate that rate, but only a little bit. Universities only affect education beyond Educated. The education level of new citizens is the average of the previous citizens. A city with 1 Illiterate, 1 Literate, and 1 Educated will grow to have 1 Illiterate, 2 Literate, and 1 Educated.
Settlers and Workers remember their education levels. The citizen of a new city will have the education level of whatever citizens were taken from the original city (either the average or the highest). Workers with a higher level of education will work faster. I have not yet decided if/how the player can choose which citizens go into building a Settler or Worker.
Optional:
Separate University into two improvements: College and University. A College has an educational effect, but no scientific effect. Perhaps a School can only educate citizens to Literate, while a College is required for Educated, and a University is required for Erudite. A College would be a combination of a high school, a community college, and a vocational school. With this system, a School would require Writing, while a College would require Philosophy. They could also be called Academies.
A citizen specialization cannot be reversed once chosen or costs money. The first might be a little too Colonization.
A citizen specialization takes 1 turn to come into effect. Switching specializations takes 2 turns. During either transition, the citizen is not working as an unspecialized or a specialized worker.
Justification:
I want a way to make the advantages of building a solid civilization more permanent over time. I want there to be a benefit to your civ being literate in 2000 BC that persists in 1000 AD. Right now, it's too easy to play catch up; if you neglect early building, you can just buy the techs you need, build the libraries and universities late, and, besides culture, you're up to par. One other way I've suggested for that to work is for improvements to have bonuses that increase over time (at the very bottom of this post).
In addition, numerous people on this board and others have expressed a desire to have different "qualities" of citizens with differing capabilities. Quality is too elitist-sounding and too hard to define; hopefully, the idea of education instead makes better sense to them.
I also wanted a way for cities to establish differences between the various types, and for it to be possible to capture those differences when you capture a city.
Other:
This is intentionally completely separate and independent from ethnicity and religion.
I don't know how specialization of cities will work in Civ4, so I don't know how this will interact with it.
If the game supported inter-civ and intra-civ migration, they would interact in interesting ways with education. But, again, we don't know if that will be in Civ4.
There should be a way to model the anti-intellectualism of Pol Pot, Stalin, Idi Amin, and other dictators. Perhaps some social engineering choices require killing or at least driving out your most educated citizens.
Citizens should have varying degrees of education. More educated citizens produce more shields/hammers and more science (or commerce in general) than less educated ones. However, more educated citizens are also more likely to demand certain social engineering choices, less likely to be influenced by luxuries, and reproduce more slowly. You can increase the level of education of your citizens by building schools, libraries, and universities in your cities. Education is a slow process, however.
Suggested Mechanism:
Each population point has one of these four education levels:
1) Illiterate: can't read, write, or add
2) Literate: basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. Equivalent to completion of elementary school in the USA.
3) Educated: excellent reading, writing, and math skills. Equivalent to completion of (a good) high school in the USA.
4) Erudite: all of the above plus deep knowledge of some specialty. Equivalent to a baccalaureate degree or higher.
Greater levels of education result in the effects described above existing to greater degrees: increased science (or trade in general) and shields/hammers, decreased effectiveness of luxuries, increased preference for some social engineering choices, and reduced population growth.
All citizens start as illiterate. Citizen specialists in a city can only be chosen from the pool of Erudite citizens.
A School is an improvement that only has the effect of increasing education, but only up to the level of Educated. Building a School requires either Mathematics, Writing, or Philosophy. A Library increases education, though less than a School, and also provides culture. I'm flip-flopping as to whether a Library should still provide a research boost; if it does, it should be smaller than its current 50%. A University allows citizens to be educated to the Erudite level and also provides a research boost. All three generate culture as well. A Research Lab has no effect on education, just science.
You also need to be able to sustain your degree of education. If your School, Library, or University is destroyed, you will find your citizens becoming less educated over time. In real world terms, it's because educated people are dying and being replaced by less educated children.
The presence of a School in a city educates some fraction of the city's population each turn. This should be a pretty slow rate, on the order of 1 citizen shifting up a level every 5 turns or so. Libraries accelerate that rate, but only a little bit. Universities only affect education beyond Educated. The education level of new citizens is the average of the previous citizens. A city with 1 Illiterate, 1 Literate, and 1 Educated will grow to have 1 Illiterate, 2 Literate, and 1 Educated.
Settlers and Workers remember their education levels. The citizen of a new city will have the education level of whatever citizens were taken from the original city (either the average or the highest). Workers with a higher level of education will work faster. I have not yet decided if/how the player can choose which citizens go into building a Settler or Worker.
Optional:
Separate University into two improvements: College and University. A College has an educational effect, but no scientific effect. Perhaps a School can only educate citizens to Literate, while a College is required for Educated, and a University is required for Erudite. A College would be a combination of a high school, a community college, and a vocational school. With this system, a School would require Writing, while a College would require Philosophy. They could also be called Academies.
A citizen specialization cannot be reversed once chosen or costs money. The first might be a little too Colonization.
A citizen specialization takes 1 turn to come into effect. Switching specializations takes 2 turns. During either transition, the citizen is not working as an unspecialized or a specialized worker.
Justification:
I want a way to make the advantages of building a solid civilization more permanent over time. I want there to be a benefit to your civ being literate in 2000 BC that persists in 1000 AD. Right now, it's too easy to play catch up; if you neglect early building, you can just buy the techs you need, build the libraries and universities late, and, besides culture, you're up to par. One other way I've suggested for that to work is for improvements to have bonuses that increase over time (at the very bottom of this post).
In addition, numerous people on this board and others have expressed a desire to have different "qualities" of citizens with differing capabilities. Quality is too elitist-sounding and too hard to define; hopefully, the idea of education instead makes better sense to them.
I also wanted a way for cities to establish differences between the various types, and for it to be possible to capture those differences when you capture a city.
Other:
This is intentionally completely separate and independent from ethnicity and religion.
I don't know how specialization of cities will work in Civ4, so I don't know how this will interact with it.
If the game supported inter-civ and intra-civ migration, they would interact in interesting ways with education. But, again, we don't know if that will be in Civ4.
There should be a way to model the anti-intellectualism of Pol Pot, Stalin, Idi Amin, and other dictators. Perhaps some social engineering choices require killing or at least driving out your most educated citizens.
-have come up with. I also don't feel that they would prove very hard to implement in Civ4. Some additional thoughts though:
