A while back I wrote a mini treatise on immigration. It is, to be, the biggest thing lacking in civilization so far.
A simple version could be done. If a city has an unhappy citizen, there is a chance on every turn that he emigrates. If he does, the game pops up an AI-controlled "Immigrant unit" which makes for greener pastures. If the problem in the home city is overcrowding, the Immigrant goes to a smaller city. If it's war weariness, he goes to another civ.
My version is incredibly more detailed and adds what I feel is unprecedented depth to the game. Here it goes:
For the purposes of this discussion, I will refer to those little guys in every city that represent 1 unit of population (x-thousand people) that we've come to know and love over the years, as "Citizens" (capital C, as opposed to the actual "small-c" citizens that these guys represent). In various forms, in past games each of these Citizens has had a nationality, and recently this concept became a little more developed. The population of a conquered city would maintain it's old nationality for a period of time and be more likely to revolt, but that was pretty much it.
I am proposing that in the next iteration of the game, each citizen not start with a nationality but rather an "ethnicity" that corresponds to the Civilization to which they belong. As we know, as cities grow, it's Citizens become more likely to be unhappy, due to overcrowding or other factors. It is my suggestion that when a Citizen has been unhappy for a given period of time (the precise period I can't say for sure, but maybe a couple turns, perhaps more), there arises a chance (also unknown at the point, to be tested for best balance of course) that this Citizen will decide to leave the city and emigrate to another. If successful, an "Immigrant" unit controlled by AI will appear in the city. It has the same characteristics of a settler but is more likely to simply move to a city whose conditions are more favorable for that particular group of people. For example, if the Citizen left due to unhappiness caused by overcrowding, it will move to a city of lower population. Similarly, pollution/unhealthiness or other matters can be the effect at play here.
Those are the basics of "immigration" though for now we have only discussed intra-civilization migration of population which might not technically be called "immigration" but.. that's what I'm calling it. J It never made much sense to me that a city would have an unhappy populace that would just sit there. Unhappy Citizens will not automatically pack up and move to another city (this would defeat the purpose of creating habitable cities)
Now for another new element that will soon relate to all this, the "Civilization Propaganda/Attitude" meters.
In past games we know that AI civs have certain attitudes toward each other and to human-controlled civilizations. These effect how diplomacy, trade, etc goes between civilizations. But never did we need to know how the human civ felt about the AI civs. After all, we are the ones playing the game, we know how we feel about them!
But now I am proposing the inclusion of two related "meters" that would affect these new aspects of gameplay (and some already existing ones). First is the "propaganda slider." This would be a sliding scale that a Civilization's leader sets for each civilization it comes in contact with. It represents a government's ability to shape public opinion about the rest of the world's civilizations. We know how it works in the modern world and I certainly don't doubt that it was used to great effect to sway a nation's populace in favor of a friend or against an enemy in the ancient world. The slider could be set similar to the existing naming methods of AI attitude, ranging from "furious" to "annoyed", "cautious", "pleased" and "friendly." In correspondence with this meter is another meter which measures the citizenry's *actual* opinion of the opposing civilization. At first contact, the populace of a civ will react largely in tune with the "official" position of the government. After all, what do the people really have to go by (especially in ancient times) other than what the government says? The opinion of the population changes both as events occur and the government changes its stance. For example if trade routes are established with the other civ or if that civ has a strong culture, popular opinion will edge slightly upward. If opposing military units enter the borders, opinion may go down. A declaration of war by a foreign power, or worse, a sneak attack, generates real dislike among the homeland population. Early in the game, propaganda will have a larger effect, as the government is the main source of information. If an enemy power declares war, and the weakened civilization sues for peace., the citizens will still think negatively about the aggressor for a while, even if the fearful government wants to establish friendly relations. Conversely, actions that may seem egregious to the people can be mitigated by positive propaganda by the government. Ultimately this allows a civ to lessen the ill-effects of war with an opposing civilization if the population has developed a strong dislike/mistrust of said nation. The other side of this is, of course, that if the citizens like another civilization due to it's culture and trade establishments, there will be a heavy price to pay in unhappiness if a war-mongering ruler decides to start a war with them. Of course you can try to play a neutral role as well.
The dynamics of this system could become even more
err.. dynamic
as you come in contact with more civilizations. If your people are neutral to the Aztecs but like the Romans, and the Aztecs then declare war on the Romans, your people will then start to dislike the Aztecs. The populace will also begin to dislike a civilization in response to reports of bad behavior such as attacking peaceful units, razing cities, etc. The dynamics also change as your civilization advances and more people-friendly civics come into play. The combination of advances such as Education, Printing Press, etc, (and the improvements that go with them) and a freer nation will mean that your government's propaganda tactics will have a somewhat lesser effect on popular opinion. However if you employ more totalitarian civics (with ostensibly state-controlled media, etc,) your control over opinion will be much greater.
With the development of a particular advance (right now I'm guessing Monarchy due to "loyalty to the king" factors), each Citizen of that civ will be assigned his Nationality as an "official" Citizen of that particular civ. Now let's shift back to immigration.
Civilizations with more people-friendly civics and higher ratings of culture, particularly as the game progresses, will become more attractive to unhappy Citizens. If another civ offers a better culture and more freedom than a Citizen's current nation, he may decide to emigrate to that civilization. If technology allows, an AI-controlled "boat" unit might appear automatically near the city to transport the new "Immigrant" unit to the city of his choice if that would be faster. This unit would not be a military craft and simply represents any old collection of civilian craft that could transport a bunch of immigrants. Perhaps, for the sake of realism, immigration by boat would not take place until later in the game to more accurately reflect history.
Now let's suppose you are the English. You have a wonderful civilization with a great culture, and suddenly, a French Immigrant unit appears next to your city. At this point you'll get a message, "Sir, French immigrants have arrived near Nottingham. They seek [insert reason for emigration]. Shall we accept them?" And in typical Civ fashion the possible responses will be something like,
"Yes! Give us your tired, your poor
."
"Their stench would foul up the Nottingham air. Send them away!"
Then, more dynamics. I'm all about dynamics. Whether you accept them or not, the Immigrant Citizen's ethnicity remains French. If you accept them, their ethnicity stays French, but over time they may change and become English by Nationality. If you accept an ethnically French Citizen into your city, the ethnically English Citizens of Nottingham will suffer a minor loss of happiness, reflecting the worlds history of negative reaction to outsiders. The unhappiness effect will be greater if the populaces Attitude toward the French is more neutral than positive, and much greater if the Attitude is negative, for obvious reasons. Over several turns this effect will wear off as the immigrants get assimilated and/or if they switch to English citizens.
A final note on in-depth immigration: A civilization with totalitarian civics will have controls over its emigration. If you have set up a Communist-type regime (or other strong-armed civics types), not only will the game calculate whether or not an unhappy Citizen wants to immigrate on a given turn, but also calculate, based on the level of control your government has in place, whether or not the Citizen is successful. Instead of "immigrants" the game might call them "Defectors" for added flavor You'll get messages saying "Our police caught some citizens in [City] trying to defect to India." Perhaps in cases of severe state rule, the defectors may even be killed by your state police!
And finally, on ethnicity. Ethnicity will come into play in times of war. If you have a high population of a certain ethnic group in your civilization, you will need to be wary of them because they may become unhappy if you engage in war with that civilization. The United States entry into WWI was not a unanimous decision on the part of Congress, and many of the dissenting votes came from heavily German districts. (A possible exception to this is if the immigrants left their homeland due to war weariness.) They might defect back to that country or worse, spread unrest and revolt in their new cities. They will also contribute to the national Attitude of your civ once they become citizens. Therefore if you have 20% of people of American heritage in your civilization and the American civilization is attacked by another civ, they may become very negative to that civ despite the fact that you may be friendly with them.
I would also suggest that during warfare and an attack on a city, an equivalent to the "immigrant" unit called the "Refugee" be established. During bombardment or siege of a city, there is always a chance that the population goes down to represent collateral damage. I suggest that we now do three queries with each attack: 1.) Does this attack threaten the lives of civilians? (yes/no) 2.) Determine at quasi-random one of three outcomes: a.) citizens stay and survive; b.) citizens are killed c.) citizens flee the city and become refugees. The refugee unit would behave similarly to the immigrant unit, except it's pathing would be simply to find the nearest safe city in any civ that their home country is not at war with. Enemy units could kill the refugee unit but at great expense to their reputation.
Well, there it is. There is, I feel, a lot of depth here. Never before has Civ given any sort of depth to its Citizens before. They have always been just icons and I found it hard to relate to them. This is an empire game and by no means am I trying to micro it down to something like The Sims. But controlling the masses and their attitudes is a huge part of managing an empire and with these ideas I am providing a model for this aspect of empire building that I think makes the game a lot more interesting, especially in the later stages which people have had problems with. Now, can it be done? It requires quite a commitment on the part of the makers of the game - to be able to accurately model events and how each Citizen should react to them. In many ways I have only scratched the surface of ways Citizens can behave and respond to world events, but I'm also willing to hear arguments that maybe I've gone overboard and this kind of depth is unnecessary or just not feasible. I certainly hope not because I'd love to see it make an appearance. Certainly a lot of testing would need to be done to ensure that we have balance, and that the effects of immigration are present but not overwhelming. I don't know that I want hordes of nationless immigration units going from city to city, civ to civ all the time. At the same time it shouldn't just be some afterthought where you automatically take in any immigrants you can since they're basically free pop increases and there are so few of them that the negatives to it never really add up to even a remote threat.
?
