How to make more realistic wars in civ

Hi,
I ve got some thougts about making realistic wars & battles. Almost evrything in civ is very improved with evry new game(like sience, economy, and so on)
BUT war and the tactics are really unimproved. U know you just go to the cities
and fight there, thats thats the only how really play any role. No grand Battle outside the cities am I right. And how has ever heard about a big navy battle in civ? not me for sure. I ve got two parts of suggestions.

1, land and air battle.


2, navy battle.


So.... What do U guys think about it.

you can already blockade cities

naval combat will always remain the same because the AI knows it can hide it's ships in a city and attack your incoming ships and retreat back into the city where it is unattackable. a few mods add the ability to attack ships in port and sink them but strangely they don't allow ships to do the same, at least give that ability to subs as well as aircraft. the second reason why you will never see a large scale naval battle is because there are no resources out in the open ocean, and there's no interest by the AI to send ships out there. your best hope for a naval battle is when the AI sends escorts with transports to invade you.
naval combat is the worst aspect of civ, next to air combat. the addition of a missile cruiser in BTS is laughable at best. yeah you can fill it with cruise missiles which initially sounds cool but then you realize that the majority of your production cities can build any unit in 1 turn, so why would you bother building a cruise missile when you can build another..... missile cruiser?
if you want to play a strategy game for combat, play galactic civilizations, a FAR superior game when it comes to war and unit creation/customization.

-- I think your ideas are pretty good. I, for one, would like to be able to do more with forts and fortifications. I think that forts should extend a range of military influence over a number of tiles, which could diminish in effectiveness as a function of distance. They should cost gold and a settler unit and military unit to establish and require gold & food resources to maintain. Settlers and other non-combatant units who are in range of a fort when attacked would get increased defensive capabilities, and if close enough-- say within two tiles range-- would automatically retreat to the fort itself. The fort would get additional bonuses based on the terrain tiles it was built on and around, though those bonuses would not extend out to non-combatants caught outside the fort. Ideally a fort should give a non-combatant a chance to withstand an attack by an assailant w/o dying-- as a function of distance from the fort. Also, possibly additional forts within a certain distance could "link" and give additional protections. Combatants belonging to the same (or friendly) civilizations as the fort's owner would also get additional defensive capabilities as well as a small tiny boost to offensive capabilities. Also, after XX number of turns the fort starts having a tiny chance of becoming a city at no extra cost to the civilization. As turns progress that chance should increase but in all cases should remain relatively tiny so you can't just plop down forts and wait until they become cities. Forts should also impact cultural influence and border calculations. This factor should be additionally influenced by proximity to cities owned by the civilization, by other forts in the proximity (i.e. "linked"), as well as by a continuing military presence at or near the fort. In other words, the fort must be more-or-less continually manned, with some absence tolerated, by military units from the parent civilization, in order to get the cultural bonuses.


-- I also agree with you about naval battles. Ships in Civ just seem to be mostly for troop carrying and harassment rather than dominating sea routes and trade. I agree with your suggestion that it should be possible to blockade-- with the possibility of INTERCEPTION-- any goods, cargo, people, troops, or currency passing through a blockaded route. So not only is it important to make sure you control the waters near your country, its also important to protect your trade routes, and you can use that as leverage or harassment against another civilization, and there is the possibility of booty to boot. Additionally it should be possible to CAPTURE ships (as opposed to just sinking them), at least up until the modern age, which would provide additional incentive to keep up with technologies and deploy shipping resources wisely.


-- I think should go BACK on the MM chart is "Happiness" and the various specialists. I do agree that the older civs this was a bit of a hassle so it needs to be tweaked up and tuned a bit, but it was a good feature and should be brought back to the management forefront so it doesn't just become a big battle-fest all the time.


-- I think that non-combatants WITHIN one-square of their home city should get a tiny amount of attack points and a bit of a defensive bonus for defending their homes and families. If you're coming after my wife and kids you can bet my farm I'll throw everything I can find to toss at you first. Obviously as time progresses and technology improves, this becomes less effective though there should always be a small chance that the non-combatant could prevail (though not to the point of being able to sink a battleship


-- I think the ability to utilize (some) technologies and (some) knowledge should be based on the availability of resources which support its use or exploitation. Its fine to know about gunpowder, for instance, but unless you have the resources to make it or buy it from another civ, you shouldn't automatically be able to use it. That would add an additional degree of urgency and necessity for controlling key resources. However, in most cases, particularly with the low to mid-range technologies and knowledge trees, the required resources should be fairly easy to obtain. Advanced resources could be more scare though which would require more sophisticated strategies to utilize.


-- I think that military units should be able to be upgraded over time alone (as an alternative to money) provided the civilization controls and actively harvests (mines / whatever) the requisite resources. As with the naval blockade discussed above, access to resources and the production of resources, should be an area of contention requiring a civilization to not only guard against pillaging, but also against resource blockades, pilfering, and other unfriendly acts. Personally I think it should be MUCH HARDER to pillage resources and improvements-- perhaps facilities could be assigned health points and production (or the capacity for production) could be degraded over several turns before it is destroyed. I think the game is very unbalanced in this respect. However, pilfering of resources should require more than just stationing enemy units on or near the resource or its harvest route, it should require the coordinated efforts of several types of units and an unencumbered path back to a city, fort, or ship owned by the enemy civ. Otherwise production should simply be reduced or halted due to enemy activity.



-- Railroads could and should play a bigger part in trade, shipping of goods, etc in addition to just being aids to troop movements. It should also be expensive to build up a large area with roads or tracks. The first roads/tracks to go in would be cheaper-- so its not as expensive to build a (rail)road to connect a city, or to access a resource or whatnot, but it should then get expensive to start linking in all the surrounding tiles, and the cost should go up dramatically as the density goes up. This would encourage civs to invest in roads and railroad infrastructure but would go to great lengths to discourage adding them to every single tile in the civ and instead would encourage the growth of transportation corridors, more like real cities do. Roads though should get a little cheaper as turns move forward but never "cheap".



-- There should be a lot more in the way of "policies" that can be deployed that influence, encourage, discourage, guide or influence various elements and aspects of the game. And there could also be regional and local (city only) as well. It would be up to the ruler to determine what policies would be in effect where, and also to determine the number and area of the various regions- though they should be contiguous. Perhaps some policies would be "inheritable" and new cities built in a region with a particular policy would automatically get that policy. The current civ does touch on that a little, but it should be expanded so there are too many policies (and conflicting policies) to enact them all-- there should be some careful consideration given to the specific policies selected and put in force.



-- When a city "rebels" (due to unrest or unhappiness) or "flips" due to cultural influences, there should be an opportunity by the various influential civs (previous parent, potential suitors, etc) to submit a "bid" for the city-- in which various elements of that civ are available as bribes / dowries / offers / reward / whatever to the rebellious city, which would then weigh the offers and either select one (and affiliation with a new civ) or else reject them all and operate as an independent city. Independent cities would then have a small chance each turn of either returning to the previous parent civ, selecting a new civ from the available proximate civs, or forming a new civ on its own. The offers by the various potential civs would reflect the relative value for that city by the respective civ. It could even be possible that a city would rebel and not receive any offers-- for instance the city has little military, resource, economic, scientific or other strategic value and thus is worth little or nothing to any civ, including its former parent.


-- I think that as turns progress, technology improves, knowledge advances and so on, that cities that are fully-expanded and proximate to each other should have a small and increasing chance of becoming super-cities which provide additional abilties, produce even more (of everything) and become nearly indestructible beacons of the parent civ's culture. Real world cities such as Paris, London, New York or LA would be examples of super-cities. Super cities should probably also be limited to NN per civ per continent and per XX tiles in proximity. It should be easier to conduct non-military operations in super-cities though-- spying should be easier, missionaries and corporations should be better able to ply their trades, it should be easier to seduce the citizens with media and propaganda, and while generally more stable with respect to happiness, more susceptible to the various triggers that can cause unrest. So that super cities require less work to keep happy, but when unhappy, they are much unhappier than a smaller city would be. It should be easier to defend a super city, and in order for a super-city to be taken, all of its member cities must be taken as well. Once bestowed a city would retain its super-city status until it was completely taken. The remaining member cities would continue to act as a super city in proportion to their available resources. Super cities get an expanded border and zone of influence. An enemy cannot pass between cities linked together as a super city even if there is technically a path that is not controlled by one of the member cities. The overall boundary of the super city connects around all of the members.

Good points both off you....

They should cost gold and a settler unit and military unit

Click to expand...

but.. Then a fort should be even more expensive than a city so if a fort after a long time would be turned into a city why not build a city at the start?

Again,
The naval battles are a really difficult problem...
No civ game has any good idea about it & as long it would be possible to hide in the cities it would be really hard. maybe the ships should rust if they dont move. another thing, what about all archer and warrior in modern cities. after a 100 turn (less or more) or some important new techs after that the unit is build, it would pop up a widow and ask to upgraded(the odernary cost), refresh(betwen 50 & 200g) or kill the unit.

MehmedII said:

Good points both off you.... but.. Then a fort should be even more expensive than a city so if a fort after a long time would be turned into a city why not build a city at the start?

Click to expand...

True, but two things: First, the forts would give you defensive capabilities over a wide-spread area that cities don't, and secondly, I think cities-- after the first several and/or perhaps a few technologies-- should be more expensive anyway. Civ should be a slow, progressive development rather than a settler-goldrush-landgrab like it is now. Alternately I suppose military conquest is also a possibility-- but that's harder to do in the beginning turns anyway. As the civ develops and can afford to look outward, it will (presumably) have more gold and resources anyway to assist in the development of new cities and the overall outward expansion of the civ/empire. I think it would be a lot more interesting, and probably even more historically accurate, to do more with forts either in lieu of cities or as a forerunner/precursor to cities.

jwhitten said:

-- I also agree with you about naval battles. Ships in Civ just seem to be mostly for troop carrying and harassment rather than dominating sea routes and trade.

Click to expand...

I think this is a reaction to the (wrong) notion that battleships in Civ 1 and particularly Civ 2, which were immensely powerful, were unbalancing. Battleships should be able to attack units on land, to attack cities, and to attack ships in port, and they should have a massive attack value; just make them very expensive.

-- I think the ability to utilize (some) technologies and (some) knowledge should be based on the availability of resources which support its use or exploitation. Its fine to know about gunpowder, for instance, but unless you have the resources to make it or buy it from another civ, you shouldn't automatically be able to use it.

Click to expand...

Agreed entirely; Civ 3 got this right IMO.

It would be up to the ruler to determine what policies would be in effect where, and also to determine the number and area of the various regions- though they should be contiguous.

Click to expand...

I entirely disagree on this notion, though. It really seems to me to add nothing to manging city-by-city; an extra layer of overhead which gives you reduced flexibility.

-- When a city "rebels" (due to unrest or unhappiness) or "flips" due to cultural influences, there should be an opportunity by the various influential civs (previous parent, potential suitors, etc) to submit a "bid" for the city-- in which various elements of that civ are available as bribes / dowries / offers / reward / whatever to the rebellious city, which would then weigh the offers and either select one (and affiliation with a new civ) or else reject them all and operate as an independent city.

Click to expand...

That's an interesting thought. I like it for rebelling far more than I do for flips, because it undermines the point of being able to use culture offensively in the first place.

-- I think that as turns progress, technology improves, knowledge advances and so on, that cities that are fully-expanded and proximate to each other should have a small and increasing chance of becoming super-cities which provide additional abilties, produce even more (of everything) and become nearly indestructible beacons of the parent civ's culture. Real world cities such as Paris, London, New York or LA would be examples of super-cities. Super cities should probably also be limited to NN per civ per continent and per XX tiles in proximity. It should be easier to conduct non-military operations in super-cities though-- spying should be easier, missionaries and corporations should be better able to ply their trades, it should be easier to seduce the citizens with media and propaganda, and while generally more stable with respect to happiness, more susceptible to the various triggers that can cause unrest. So that super cities require less work to keep happy, but when unhappy, they are much unhappier than a smaller city would be. It should be easier to defend a super city, and in order for a super-city to be taken, all of its member cities must be taken as well. Once bestowed a city would retain its super-city status until it was completely taken. The remaining member cities would continue to act as a super city in proportion to their available resources. Super cities get an expanded border and zone of influence. An enemy cannot pass between cities linked together as a super city even if there is technically a path that is not controlled by one of the member cities. The overall boundary of the super city connects around all of the members.

Click to expand...

While this is a nice idea, I have yet to see a mechanism advanced for it that feels workable. Closest I've seen is the notion that for every 20 population points a city should expand to cover another city square, and the fat cross should expand so it can work all the tiles a one-square city on any of the city squares could work.

jwhitten said:

Civ should be a slow, progressive development rather than a settler-goldrush-landgrab like it is now.

Click to expand...

You want to weaken that aspect of the game more ? I disagree profoundly. The ideal for that, in my mind, is somewhere between Civ 2 and Civ 3. I want to be able to build and manage hundreds of cities.

rysmiel said:

I think this is a reaction to the (wrong) notion that battleships in Civ 1 and particularly Civ 2, which were immensely powerful, were unbalancing. Battleships should be able to attack units on land, to attack cities, and to attack ships in port, and they should have a massive attack value; just make them very expensive.






Quote:
Originally Posted by jwhitten View Post
-- I also agree with you about naval battles. Ships in Civ just seem to be mostly for troop carrying and harassment rather than dominating sea routes and trade.
I think this is a reaction to the (wrong) notion that battleships in Civ 1 and particularly Civ 2, which were immensely powerful, were unbalancing. Battleships should be able to attack units on land, to attack cities, and to attack ships in port, and they should have a massive attack value; just make them very expensive.

Quote:
-- I think the ability to utilize (some) technologies and (some) knowledge should be based on the availability of resources which support its use or exploitation. Its fine to know about gunpowder, for instance, but unless you have the resources to make it or buy it from another civ, you shouldn't automatically be able to use it.
Agreed entirely; Civ 3 got this right IMO.

Quote:
It would be up to the ruler to determine what policies would be in effect where, and also to determine the number and area of the various regions- though they should be contiguous.
I entirely disagree on this notion, though. It really seems to me to add nothing to manging city-by-city; an extra layer of overhead which gives you reduced flexibility.

Quote:
-- When a city "rebels" (due to unrest or unhappiness) or "flips" due to cultural influences, there should be an opportunity by the various influential civs (previous parent, potential suitors, etc) to submit a "bid" for the city-- in which various elements of that civ are available as bribes / dowries / offers / reward / whatever to the rebellious city, which would then weigh the offers and either select one (and affiliation with a new civ) or else reject them all and operate as an independent city.
That's an interesting thought. I like it for rebelling far more than I do for flips, because it undermines the point of being able to use culture offensively in the first place.

Quote:
-- I think that as turns progress, technology improves, knowledge advances and so on, that cities that are fully-expanded and proximate to each other should have a small and increasing chance of becoming super-cities which provide additional abilties, produce even more (of everything) and become nearly indestructible beacons of the parent civ's culture. Real world cities such as Paris, London, New York or LA would be examples of super-cities. Super cities should probably also be limited to NN per civ per continent and per XX tiles in proximity. It should be easier to conduct non-military operations in super-cities though-- spying should be easier, missionaries and corporations should be better able to ply their trades, it should be easier to seduce the citizens with media and propaganda, and while generally more stable with respect to happiness, more susceptible to the various triggers that can cause unrest. So that super cities require less work to keep happy, but when unhappy, they are much unhappier than a smaller city would be. It should be easier to defend a super city, and in order for a super-city to be taken, all of its member cities must be taken as well. Once bestowed a city would retain its super-city status until it was completely taken. The remaining member cities would continue to act as a super city in proportion to their available resources. Super cities get an expanded border and zone of influence. An enemy cannot pass between cities linked together as a super city even if there is technically a path that is not controlled by one of the member cities. The overall boundary of the super city connects around all of the members.
While this is a nice idea, I have yet to see a mechanism advanced for it that feels workable. Closest I've seen is the notion that for every 20 population points a city should expand to cover another city square, and the fat cross should expand so it can work all the tiles a one-square city on any of the city squares could work.

Click to expand...

(How do I grab all of the various quotes blocks I want to cite in this thing???)


Quoted: Naval Battles:

I don't see that we are disagreeing here-- I think that ships should have an expanded role both tactically and strategically in civ. While there are a number of ship types that can be built which could (and should) ostensibly be arranged into battlegroups, civ doesn't offer much to facilitate that style of play nor provide adequate control mechanisms for its control. Battlegroups, in real life, permit a "combined arms" approach to naval warfare- the idea of overlapping strengths and weakness to create a larger, stronger super-entity capable of coordinate attack and defense. That super entity should be controllable as a single entity. Likewise for armies and airplane squadrons. Civ has some support for land-based armies but almost none for ships or planes. On the other hand, I think that if super-entities (combined-arms, etc) are introduced into the game, then so too should their supply and maintenance requirements be introduced as well. This could (and should) be simplified and automated so its not particularly tedious for the player, but attacking and defending supply lines has long been a issue for the management of war, even in times of peace.

With respect to the battleship-- I agree with you there too, real battleships have a range measured in miles. It seems silly that they are reduced to only being able to attack one tile in from the coast.



Quoted: Extended Policies & policy management:

I entirely disagree on this notion, though. It really seems to me to add nothing to manging city-by-city; an extra layer of overhead which gives you reduced flexibility.


I don't think this has to be a difficult thing. I think this was done in SimCity with pretty good effect. Ideas (in simcity) such as "Promote No-Smoking Campaign", while not strictly relevant for civ, are generically indicative of the types of policy-making I am thinking of. But if added, there should be a very large number of available policies including contradicting and otherwise intertwined policies so that considered selection is important-- ie. select only policies that you feel will advance your goals and your vision of the civ/empire. And the whole idea of making it with national, regional and local-level inheritance is precisely to _avoid_ tedious MM of policies. My thought is for "set-and-forget" policy mgmt for the most part, but to revisit (or be able to revisit) them from time-to-time to ensure they are still promoting (or discouraging) civ growth in the manner you expect and desire.



Quoted: Bidding for Rebellious/Flipped cities:


That's an interesting thought. I like it for rebelling far more than I do for flips, because it undermines the point of being able to use culture offensively in the first place.


I would add that I think independent cities should offer up a "sales pitch" of their own to join a civ-- we're so-and-so city, these are our advantages: coastline, sea-access, good forests and mineral availability, generally-happy, etc-- so that a potential civ could be swayed by their various assets. Also they could "agree" to certain types of time-based policies that would add incentives to the potential owner-- produce more and suck-it-up and be less unhappy about it for awhile-- that type of thing-- that would expire in-time, but might improve the appeal of otherwise mediocre cities. The ruler of the civ would grant/deny citizenship to an independent city.

And to your point-- I think it falls right in line with using culture as a weapon-- if a city is so culturally-influenced that its willing to switch civs, its going to have a fair amount in-common with the potential new owner anyway, so that owner's bid will get a fair amount of additional consideration (and it could be coded that way too).



Quoted: Super-cities


While this is a nice idea, I have yet to see a mechanism advanced for it that feels workable. Closest I've seen is the notion that for every 20 population points a city should expand to cover another city square, and the fat cross should expand so it can work all the tiles a one-square city on any of the city squares could work.


What do you think is wrong with the approach I outlined?

rysmiel said:

You want to weaken that aspect of the game more ? I disagree profoundly. The ideal for that, in my mind, is somewhere between Civ 2 and Civ 3. I want to be able to build and manage hundreds of cities.

Click to expand...

No, I agree in general that I like managing hundreds of cities. What I dislike is that the early game tends to be pump-settlers, pump phalanx (or whatever), send off into the wild blue yonder. While there should of course be some of that, in *my* opinion, the early game should be weighted so as to encourage more basic development than expansion.

jwhitten said:

(How do I grab all of the various quotes blocks I want to cite in this thing???)

Click to expand...

Don't ask me; I handcraft all my html, uphill both ways in a blizzard.

(Naval War)

I don't see that we are disagreeing here--

Click to expand...

I don't think so either.

(regional management)

I don't think this has to be a difficult thing. I think this was done in SimCity with pretty good effect. Ideas (in simcity) such as "Promote No-Smoking Campaign", while not strictly relevant for civ, are generically indicative of the types of policy-making I am thinking of.

Click to expand...

Yes, but Civ is a game, where Sim City is a toy.

And the whole idea of making it with national, regional and local-level inheritance is precisely to _avoid_ tedious MM of policies. My thought is for "set-and-forget" policy mgmt for the most part, but to revisit (or be able to revisit) them from time-to-time to ensure they are still promoting (or discouraging) civ growth in the manner you expect and desire.

Click to expand...

I think the thing that keeps me playing Civ over any other empire management game is empire-wide states arising as emergent properties of city management decisions, though, and I love micromanagement, so we may be doomed to disagree on this.

What I don't like about your notion is kind of summed up by set-and-forget. Unless you are checking every city in each region each turn, you can't be sure that region's priorities are optimal for that city; and if you have to make that check anyway (because if you don't, Bismarck will, and so his tanks will roll over you while you're still building pikemen - or at least, that's the quality the AI should be at) then what's the point of having them ?


(Super-cities)

What do you think is wrong with the approach I outlined?

Click to expand...

With the basic notion and the consequences, nothing; though I'll probably think of details to quibble with in a bit.

The stumbling block is how exactly you get there in the first place. How close and how large do cities have to be; how does the map change to reflect cities merging; and perhaps most significantly, how is that going to affect the decision of where you put your cities in the first place, which is probably the most important in the game. It would seem meaningless to me, for example, to say that "city A here and city B six squares away are now one city really" (how should the city interface handle that ?) , but on the other hand, if you merge them to one city falling halfway between, the immediate environment of the city becomes quite different from what either one started off with and has presumably been built to best handle.

I also think that a city-merging option is going to get more difficult to implement in ways that will make people happy the more strongly city specialisation is part of the game, and Civ 4 does lean rather heavily on that; if a city surrounded by cottages merges with a city optimised to generate specialists, does one end up with a super-city that either has to be awkwardly half-way between or has to be retuned and redeveloped to be explicitly either one or the other ?

To make civ a truly militaristic games - two things have to be implemented

1. Logistics- a must though i am lost as how to develop such a system

2.Quantitative resources - Check out a thread by Gaius Octavius - a must ( google gaius octavius quantitative resources).. very hard to xplain in a short post- me too lazy

I remember back in Civilization III gold specials were called "Tax Collecters" instead of "Merchants". Personally, when it comes to specialists, I prefer the merchants, but I would like to see taxes make a comeback. There should be an adjustable tax rate. The higher the tax rate, the more money you make, but the more unhappy your citizens get.

jwhitten said:

-- When a city "rebels" (due to unrest or unhappiness) or "flips" due to cultural influences, there should be an opportunity by the various influential civs (previous parent, potential suitors, etc) to submit a "bid" for the city-- in which various elements of that civ are available as bribes / dowries / offers / reward / whatever to the rebellious city, which would then weigh the offers and either select one (and affiliation with a new civ) or else reject them all and operate as an independent city. Independent cities would then have a small chance each turn of either returning to the previous parent civ, selecting a new civ from the available proximate civs, or forming a new civ on its own. The offers by the various potential civs would reflect the relative value for that city by the respective civ. It could even be possible that a city would rebel and not receive any offers-- for instance the city has little military, resource, economic, scientific or other strategic value and thus is worth little or nothing to any civ, including its former parent.

Click to expand...

To add to this, I think that cities should revolt based more on just unhappiness or culture. For example, is one(or more) of the following situations arise, the "unrest" level will increase:

1) The city has a major religion different from the State Religion. To make this work, there should be a religion bar, similar to the nationality bar. For example, like we currently have 88% German and 12% French, the religion bar would have something like 56% Islamic, 24% Jewish, 15% Buddhist and 5% (none). If the State Religion is Buddhist, that city will generate religious unrest at 65% per turn.

2) High tax rates. The higher the tax rates, the more economic unrest a city generates. This economic unrest can be lowered by providing benefits like welfare and national healthcare.

3) Location unrest. City located a long distance away from a center of government, like the Palace or Forbidden Palace, will generate additional unrest in addition to additional maintenance.

4) War unrest. If you participate in a lot of wars(or one really long one) your civilians disagree with, war unrest will accumulate.

If a city revolts enough, it can convert to another civilization, or if there are no nearby civilizations, it will form it's own civilization.

Naval Combats.

Yeah, ships should be able to attack land units, but some units Gunpowder and Siege weapons should be able to attack ships. this would make it more tactical to dont just follow the shore line (as the ai do) but sail on the open ocean.

rysmiel said:

Don't ask me; I handcraft all my html, uphill both ways in a blizzard.

(Naval War)


I don't think so either.

(regional management)


Yes, but Civ is a game, where Sim City is a toy.



I think the thing that keeps me playing Civ over any other empire management game is empire-wide states arising as emergent properties of city management decisions, though, and I love micromanagement, so we may be doomed to disagree on this.

What I don't like about your notion is kind of summed up by set-and-forget. Unless you are checking every city in each region each turn, you can't be sure that region's priorities are optimal for that city; and if you have to make that check anyway (because if you don't, Bismarck will, and so his tanks will roll over you while you're still building pikemen - or at least, that's the quality the AI should be at) then what's the point of having them ?


(Super-cities)



With the basic notion and the consequences, nothing; though I'll probably think of details to quibble with in a bit.

The stumbling block is how exactly you get there in the first place. How close and how large do cities have to be; how does the map change to reflect cities merging; and perhaps most significantly, how is that going to affect the decision of where you put your cities in the first place, which is probably the most important in the game. It would seem meaningless to me, for example, to say that "city A here and city B six squares away are now one city really" (how should the city interface handle that ?) , but on the other hand, if you merge them to one city falling halfway between, the immediate environment of the city becomes quite different from what either one started off with and has presumably been built to best handle.

I also think that a city-merging option is going to get more difficult to implement in ways that will make people happy the more strongly city specialisation is part of the game, and Civ 4 does lean rather heavily on that; if a city surrounded by cottages merges with a city optimised to generate specialists, does one end up with a super-city that either has to be awkwardly half-way between or has to be retuned and redeveloped to be explicitly either one or the other ?

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My thought is that super-city status would be an extra layer on top of the existing cities. All of the cities I pointed out (LA, London, New York, etc) are comprised of various boroughs, townships, cities, etc but are (usually) collectively referred to by the dominant entity name of the metroplex. In the case of civ, it would be simple enough to select the largest city from the group of cities that form the super-city at the time of forming, so that if you have cities A, B and C, and B is the largest, then the super-city would be known as B. The individual cities would continue to operate as usual, but would also be subordinate to the over-arching policies and actions of the super-city. But they would also share the benefits as well, such as perhaps (probably) much increased agriculture, transportation within the metroplex (i.e. no cost to go from one of the cities to another) shared benefit from military units stationed in any of the cities, etc. The happiness/health benefits (detriments) would be modified as well, and perhaps from a production, resource and economic viewpoint, the individual cities would have some trickle-down linkage so that they all benefit from the relationship.

If the super-city is attacked, it defends as a unit but damage is meted out per-city. So that units stationed in one city or another can die as a result of an attack, buildings can be damaged or destroyed, city defensed can be weakened or destroyed and the overall super-city will be weakened as well. A member city can be taken, and that city will lose its super-city status (and be owned of course by the victor civ), the remaining cities will continue to have their super-city status until the last city is taken. On the other hand, the super-city will continue to pump out enormous quantities of culture so the victor better be equipped to counteract that huge influence or deal with the consequences and likely insurgent reactions.,,

Onionsoilder said:

I remember back in Civilization III gold specials were called "Tax Collecters" instead of "Merchants". Personally, when it comes to specialists, I prefer the merchants, but I would like to see taxes make a comeback. There should be an adjustable tax rate. The higher the tax rate, the more money you make, but the more unhappy your citizens get.



To add to this, I think that cities should revolt based more on just unhappiness or culture. For example, is one(or more) of the following situations arise, the "unrest" level will increase:

1) The city has a major religion different from the State Religion. To make this work, there should be a religion bar, similar to the nationality bar. For example, like we currently have 88% German and 12% French, the religion bar would have something like 56% Islamic, 24% Jewish, 15% Buddhist and 5% (none). If the State Religion is Buddhist, that city will generate religious unrest at 65% per turn.

2) High tax rates. The higher the tax rates, the more economic unrest a city generates. This economic unrest can be lowered by providing benefits like welfare and national healthcare.

3) Location unrest. City located a long distance away from a center of government, like the Palace or Forbidden Palace, will generate additional unrest in addition to additional maintenance.

4) War unrest. If you participate in a lot of wars(or one really long one) your civilians disagree with, war unrest will accumulate.

If a city revolts enough, it can convert to another civilization, or if there are no nearby civilizations, it will form it's own civilization.

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Yes, I agree with these suggestions. I wasn't getting into the various subtleties for how various things could or should happen, only outlining my ideas and getting them out there to be discussed. Your thoughts are nice improvements.

Komunyst_Indian said:

To make civ a truly militaristic games - two things have to be implemented

1. Logistics- a must though i am lost as how to develop such a system

2.Quantitative resources - Check out a thread by Gaius Octavius - a must ( google gaius octavius quantitative resources).. very hard to xplain in a short post- me too lazy

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Yes, I agree. If its not possible to "run out" of something, then it will not garner much attention or concern. OTOH, if what you've got is ALL you've got-- or anybody's got-- then you'll be much more highly motivated to use it, guard it, exploit it, and to go after (harass, pilfer or steal) those resources from your enemies. Or even to dole it out at high cost to your friends and trading partners. Nobody said alliances couldn't be renumerative.

I think the foundations for logistical gameplay is somewhat already in-place (latently) in the game, but there are no controls to facilitate its play and interaction between the civs. As you mentioned you have to have quantifiable resources, establish trade routes, and assign specific (or at least pooled) transport resources to get it from where it is to where you want it to be-- and to arrange for the escort and welfare of those transport units).

jwhitten said:

Yes, I agree with these suggestions. I wasn't getting into the various subtleties for how various things could or should happen, only outlining my ideas and getting them out there to be discussed. Your thoughts are nice improvements.

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I am inclined to agree with pretty much all these suggestions too, though I remain unconvinced that high taxation causing unhappiness needs to be implemented at any level beyond having to choose between tax revenue or money going into luxuries, which latter generate happiness.

Civ 3 did location-based problems and war weariness in ways I was entirely happy with, that are really quite like the suggestions in this post. Not religious stuff, obviously, and I think religious unrest could do with being a bit more complicated than that - if the Civ 5 designers have the sense to scrap civics and go back to fixed government types, a theocratic government would gain happiness from having religiously homogenous cities and lose it for having citizens of other religions, but I can also see that there could be government types where an admixture of different religions in a city should give bonuses, if it's a sort of government that is tolerant and enlightened on the matter.

Komunyst_Indian said:

To make civ a truly militaristic games - two things have to be implemented

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There are some of us who wnat Civ 5 to be a lot less militaristic, though.

rysmiel said:

There are some of us who wnat Civ 5 to be a lot less militaristic, though.

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I don't particularly want it to be all about the military and war. But, IMO, a lot of the games problems and weaknesses come from not having good military, tactical and strategic facilities and abilities. And as I mentioned there should be some additional attention paid to transportation, trade routes (guarding, using, etc), and additional MM options, particularly with respect to policy mgmt and happiness.

I personally thing the diplomatic stuff in the game sucks-- its not that I don't like or wouldn't want those features, I just don't think they're implemented very well (although civ4 did a better job than previous versions). And I apologize for complaining w/o having a suggestion for improvement. I'm not sure how they could be improved, I just know I don't really like it the way they are now. One specific thing I don't like is that the AI is too back-stabbing and willing to declare war on you when you've tried to assist and be friendly in the past. Its not that civs can't turn on you or anything, but I think it happens way too often-- so, as you said, you end up having to fight it out all the time. Another thing is that it should be possible to have a minor skirmish, particularly out in the field, or over an unclaimed city, resource or something like that, w/o necessarily meaning you go directly to war. THAT is the kind of thing you're SUPPOSED to negotiate. Oops, I just took your Uranium mine- my bad Also sometimes when an aggressor nation "takes something" that a lessor nation has/wants, the lessor nation just has to "suck it up". It doesn't mean the aggressor nation necessarily wants to go to war with the lessor nation, it just means they don't care and they take it.

Personally, I liked the amount of MM in the older games-- I just didn't like it when I wanted to turn my attention to another facet, such as managing a war, the space race, or whatever-- it would be nice to have the detailed MM but to also have managers who will adhere to your policies and build-lists and take care of things in your absence. I think there has been some attempt to do this in the past but it hasn't worked out really well. So in the end they just dummied it way down to the point that the MM is virtually out of the gameplay altogether.

Another thing I would like to see improved is spycraft-- for example, it would be interesting / useful if spies would occasionally report "intercepted" communications between other civs-- such as overhearing peace talks or a potential alliance negotiation.

Something I think would be an interesting game feature-- the ability to damn rivers to turn them into lakes for irrigation / water / navigation. There would be pros and cons to this of course, but the ability to alter & manipulate the terrain is only partially explored in any of the games.


I've been thinking about roads some more-- perhaps the first roads ought to be implemented "for free" by the game itself-- as you move units between cities, the game could "wear in" the paths most used by the pieces (along the most direct movement-cost-based route). Additional roads or improvements to roads could also be made by the workers of course for access to resources or cities less well-travelled. This seems to me like it would simulate more accurately how roads and transportation routes actually develop in the real world. Also there could be some occasional animal trails that develop into roads as well. That would be an interesting feature.


If you want to get away from war (military) then you need more stuff to spend money on, and ways to manage it. BTW-- in the real world, the military-industrial complex _is_ big business-- that's where a lot of money / productivity goes for many if not most nations.


Question for you-- what else would / could YOU think of to add that would NOT be strictly military, or else if it is, would lead to more subtle / balanced game-play in not-strictly militaristic terms?