Occupying a Civilization

Throughout history, larger nations have exercised their military to occupy a smaller nation to bend them to their will:
USSR -> Eastern Europe
Syria -> Lebanon
Israel -> Golan Heights
China -> Tibet
etc.

Why not extend that idea to Civ?

It would require scrapping the idea of Open Borders as we know it. Instead, freedom of movement exists, but at significant diplomatic costs; if I sent a Battleship into Korean waters, I would receive some demerits for political posturing/infringment on national sovereignty. However, the Open Borders agreement would eliminate any such demerits. On the flip side, if you sent in Great Merchants, Workers, Missionaries, or other non-military units, you could get diplomatic bonuses.

That leads to the idea of occupation. Say I'm playing India, and an extremely weak Inca is right next to my borders. I like their cities, but don't want to deal with war weariness and other issues that come with warring. So, I just send in troops to 'occupy' their cities.

Two Infantry squat on a Coal Mine. After a -2 demerit and twenty turns, Huayna Capac quickly offers up the Coal to 'preserve the peace'; slowly, I can enter cities, blockade his ports, etc, until he begins to turn over cities. However, those cities would have immense unhappiness, would revolt every so often, and nations that like the Inca would get pissed with me.

Finally, the Inca would either capitulate (thus, gaining their cities back but remaining beholden to me), or declare war. In the latter case, the population of their cities would be reduced to one, and Militia Units would appear - these would be weakened version of, say, SAM Infantry, Artillery, Infantry, etc, along with the state army of the Inca. They would then attempt to take back their cities and through out the occupiers.

So, you could occupy a rival Civ in order to force them to capitulate or give you cities and resources (giving your native cities extra happiness), and eventually there might be a massive revolt and you would be caught in some backwoods war. I think it would add some pizazz to diplomacy.

Thoughts?

I like the idea and actually was about to post something like this. The only thought I had was there needs to be a way to have a completely conquered civ to revolt against its conquerer think france in world war 2

'Open borders', 'demerits'.... What you need is the Civ3 idea of 'open' borders all the time, but the roads and rails are only useable when you have an RoP (Right of Passage). If you go into their territory without one, then they will ask you to leave, or (if they hate you, or have asked you more than once to get out) they will give you the choice of automatic removal, or war. You can do the same to them. Sometimes the AIs purposefully go into your territory to get you to declare war. For the occupation idea, you need more diplomatic powers in the game first.

I like the open borders and vassal system roughly as it is. However, I would like the two overhauled a bit. First, to allow you to still enter the borders of a nation which you don't have an open borders agreement with, and second, to somehow incorporate this idea of occupation into the vassal system, so that vassals need to actually be occupied to remain in alliance to you (assuming they capitulated), and so that you can force nations to capitulate without war through the system described above.

Like India? That's a good idea.

It seems a bit over complicated, especially the "city pop reduced to one" part. And I wish not the AI do such things on me.

Firaxis already invented the cultural influence in order to please the players that can't stand the AI to build a city in the middle of their empires. (what I think is a shame, I don't like cultural borders at all) I don't think Firaxis would allow the AIs to spam our civ with military units. That's would be very frustrating.

Cultural borders are not annoying in Civ3.....

Anyway, how else are you going to represent national borders?

Argetnyx said:

Cultural borders are not annoying in Civ3.....

Click to expand...

I never really liked them.

Anyway, how else are you going to represent national borders?

Click to expand...

Like in Civ2.

How was that done?

When you plant a city overlaping its fat cross with another civ city fat cross, the first to work the square get it.

But then you can't expand your borders as easily.

Well it remains to the thing "the first that go here get the place", like in Civ4 with Settlers.

That encourages city spamming. You must have a city per every 18 tiles in order to have a safe set of borders. I personally like it the way it is (with minor alterations), whereby you do not have to city spam in order to gain control of a tile outside of your BFC.

I don't know what you mean by: "Like in civ4 with settlers".

But I have an idea; In the ancient and medieval eras, the borders are determined by the culture of the city. But for the industrial and modern eras, the borders are set, and the only way to change them is to declare war (capture), or aquire (or lose) by diplomatic measures.

double post

I mean that in Civ4, to get a ressource, you have to rely on settlers most of the time. Then you bring your settler to the location of the ressource, and plant a city. Of course, you can't do it if the AI or another player planted a city not far away. The first to get there have the ressource, or the land. That's what i meant.

Settlers represent a pilgrimage (if you like) of citizens to another land. They provide the manpower for any activity far away, so yes, you have to be dependent on them many times.

argetnyx said:

settlers represent a pilgrimage (if you like) of citizens to another land. They provide the manpower for any activity far away, so yes, you have to be dependent on them many times.

Click to expand...

? .

What I meant was that you have to rely on settlers many times to aquire resources anyway, so civ is accurate in that respect.

What *I* was just saying is that the philosophy behind frontiers in Civ2 was not that different from the very philosophy of settlers in the whole series. I was not saying that settlers wasn't realistic or anything.