Levgre's Civilization "X" thread

[Levgre]

Well, I plan on making a very complete and coherent description of a whole game, so I have decided to make my own thread to best present and organize it. It is named Civilization "X" because I could easily imagine it not being 5, but some future game, perhaps a separate series.

I am doing this mainly for:
Fun
Experience
Hope that some of my views will someday emerge in a game
Input is definitely appreciated but I wouldn't mind if few if no people responded to this thread it's something I enjoy doing.

Currently it is more or less in "rough draft" form and just getting the ideas out, so I have not re-read and re-written sections that probably need to be.
Once i get most of the concepts needed for a game out there, I will re-organize it in a much more polished fashion. So if you don't want to suffer from some possible confusion, but are still interested, you could wait until then.



Right now post 2 (the next one) is a description of early game(this needs heavy revising atm, will be coming soon), along with early culture.

Right now post 3 includes a more in-depth look at technologies, and how they evolve, with a sample partial tech tree for the early game (it still doesn't have religious and cultural techs, only developmental and government techs).

Right now post 4 includes a more in-depth look at economy, approval, taxation, dissent, and Egalitarianism, and some on Exchange rates, Trade pacts, and Recessions/Booms. (real economics is one of the areas where my understanding is more rudimentary, so others would be likely be able to deal with the specifics better, but I introduce the idea simply, after also reading the wikipedia entry in instances )
It also has an explanation of controlled economy versus free market, along with communitarian versus libertarian sentiment.

Post 5 currently includes Modern Politics, including propaganda, the evolution from individualism - egalitarianism to libertarianism - socialism, and ideological wars/conflicts.

Post 6 includes IN-DEPTH LOOK AT CULTURE, MECHANICS INCLUDED

post 7 includes COMPONENTS of UNIT PRODUCTION, CITY EXCHANGE of COMPONENTS, RESERVES vs. STANDING ARMY, and UNIT TRAINING

Right now post 10 is my initial post I made explaining some of my ideas, although it is less refined and gradually being incorporated in greater detail.

 

[Levgre]

This is still in progress, I will be adding pictures also.

EARLY GAME

You start with a small tribe, still mobile (settler unit).
You do not have starting technologies such as "farming, mining" etc, although these are discovered.

All civilizations have equal ability to draw resources from the land, wood harvesting, foraging/gardening, or hunting, gathering stone. (don't worry, differences do emerge, certain civilizations would be better able to improve at hunting, versus farming, etc.)

All forests have deer, or "game". Sheep, pig, cow, horses, etc. (animals able to be domesticated) would be special resources, as would buffalo.

If you settle on top of a herd, it is shifted to an adjacent tile. It is not a static resource.

Domesticated animals, with further technology, could be bred and placed in further tiles. Further technology would also increase tile capacity, for example, being able to hold 4 pig instead of 2 in one tile. Pastures would, however, have a cost to build, and be destroyed if the town expanded into that tile. (city pastures could also be a possible building construction).

A city has a pool of resources that it can draw from, the pool is from all adjacent tiles. You don't make a citizen "work" one tile.

Example:

A city is surrounded by 4 forests, 2 hills, 2 grasslands (one with pig).
Each turn the city could potentially produce:

12 game (2 from each forest, 1 from each other tile)
2 pig
10 plants (foraging products...2 from each forest, 1 from each grassland).
18 wood (2 from each forest)
6 stone (2 from each hill, 1 from each grassland)

The amount of products a city can produce depends on the population. So initially the city could only produce 10 product, but it would be limited to a max of 6 stone and 2 pig, for example. However the pig is a special resource, of course, it provides more food than equal units of game, along with varied diets improving health and happiness.

Cities do not stay in 1 tile. When a city grows enough, it would expand to a second tile. The player is able to set which tiles it wants the city to grow to, or disallow it from growing to certain tiles.

Resources are also relatively easily transferred from one city to another if they are nearby, so if desired a city could partake in the "national pool" of resources(perhaps regional), although there would be more costs to that and some waste, so localized production would be superior for a long time. This system of resource exchange would mostly be automated. Basically the city would be given whatever it requested without having to move units or plan routes, although some management by the player may be necessary (investing work in road, not telling a city to partake in a resource which is 500 miles away, due to the high costs of transportation).

Once the city expanded to two tiles, it would then have 10 adjacent tiles it could draw resources from, including 3 new ones.

You could also order the city to just create a settler unit when it grows, which you could direct to a non-connected tile and found a new village.

And here it is after learning how to domesticate animals and going pig crazy(and having ignored farming)

Roads, greater skill in hunting(research, hunting on horseback especially), etc., would also open further tiles to use by that city, expanding the "city radius", in a sense. In the modern era, the refinement of transportation and infrastructure would make so their is no obligation for cities to work the land around them. You would end up with tracts of farmland, and tracts of cities (possibly, would depend on choices), so as to make the services and economy of the city influence more population. Also, at this point, you would have huge, modern farms, which would almost be small 'cities' of themselves, in the limited aspect that they could produce pig, cow, corn, a number of resources/products.

Early Research

For research there are 3 forces that lead to development.
1. Player (government) directed research
2. Individual/spontaneous research of the population
3. Exchange of ideas with other civilizations


Certain technologies would have to be unlocked, via "eureka" moments, research by 2., the population..

Refer to post 2 and 10 in this thread for more info on research. Basically, the
basic techs, such as farming, animal husbandry, mining, hunting, etc., would have to be unlocked via "eureka" moments. Farming would be unlocked after enough foraging/planting. Mining after enough gathering of metals. Animal Husbandry after enough experience with animals able to be domesticated.

Once the population gets a "eureka"(basically inevitable, when you have the people working on hunting, or foraging, or raising animals), the respective technology will be unlocked. Technological progress will automatically made by the people as they continue to harvest or hunt, as they refine abilities and discover new techniques.
However, once the technology has been unlocked, the player can put the government's emphasis on the technology(so 1 and 2 would both work towards them).

Sample tech tree and further explanation of research is in the next post.

EARLY CULTURE

Culture would be made of different distinct values. Some would be sliders, ranging from "very low to very high", for example, religious tolerance. A civilization with low religious tolerance would have a higher aggression towards nations with other religions, especially religions that are very distinct from theirs (shamanism versus monotheism).

An example of how this would apply, extrapolating to civ 4, is a nation with very low nationalist sentiment would not have good drafting ability with the nationalism civic. Not that nationalism would work the same way in this game...

Others would be population break-ups of distinct values, for example, 30% are religion A, 40% are religion B, etc.

Here is a rough visualization
The Red bar is the current value, with very high being on the right, very low being on the left. The small blue bar is the mid-point.

Cultural tolerance is more like "general tolerance", how a nation generally takes other nations in. With a high tolerance they will be friendly (assuming there are not other conflicts), with a low tolerance they will be hostile of those who are different.

"Competitiveness" determines how much the nation cares about another nation being powerful next to it, or taking nearby land. If another civilization of equal or greater size expands and takes land near a very competitive nation, there will be much hostility.

"Aggression" is how much military violence appeals to the population. War-like societies that thrive on war would be very aggressive, and follow their leaders into war happily. A low aggression society would not happily go to war, or they would even refuse to be enlisted.

"Curiosity" is how much a population reaches out to other cultures, and how much they are influenced by other cultures. A civilization with very high tolerance could still not care about other nations, and not be influenced. However, a highly tolerant, highly curious nation would take in as much as it could from neighboring nations.

"Affinity for nature" determines how much a civilization desires to live in non-urban settings, and also how much they object to abuses against nature, for example burning down forests, polluting lakes, making sprawling cities. Almost all civilizations would start out with a very high affinity, meaning if you stuck them in crowded cities very quickly your approval could go down(although there are ways to make people happy). However, they would gradually adapt to the urban lifestyles, and the slider would move towards the low end.


"Animism"(or Shamanism) would be the earliest religions, and what all the population would start at. "Polytheism A" is a generic name for a certain polytheistic religion which has influence in the country. Since the majority still follow Shamanism, if you were to adopt "Polytheism A" as the state religion, it would not go well with the population. However, there would be ways to help promote the religion you want as a state religion, for example by building temples and monasteries. Religions would likely be generic, or given random names, instead of Christianity, Buddhism, etc. Religions would have large effects on cultural values, and make the society less prone to change their culture. Although, religions could change too..

At the very beginning of the game there would only be "animism", the other religions would only come after a bit of time.

New cultural sliders and charts emerge, as new cultural phenomenons emerge and society advances, through government, technology, etc. For example, an "Emancipation" chart, when people start desiring an end to slavery, "Communism, Capitalism"(maybe a neutral demographic, also), or possibly "Libertarian versus Socialism" when people start getting into conflicts of ideas over how the economy should be run.
At the end of the game there could be 8 or more graphs of different cultural values(if enough relevant ones are thought of, national politics could be a possibility).


So the player would have ways to influence most, if not all, of the cultural values. But sometimes regardless of efforts, the player could not get the cultural values they desired.

Different civilizations would also start with different values and be attracted to certain values. The Greeks would start out highly competitive and aggressive, for example.

 

[Levgre]

Here's a possible early tech tree

The blue dotted lines indicate techs that need to be unlocked by the people with eureka moments, by investing time into the respective activities. Once they are discovered they can be researched. Different civilizations are more prone to unlocking certain techs, or types of techs, like the Egyptians would be better at unlocking farming, Germany better at unlocking hunting, certain civs would be better at unlocking religious techs.

The red lines indicate technologies that do not need to be "discovered", you can just choose to research them after getting the pre-req. The reasoning typically is, it takes no special imagination to think of the red-line tech, for example "we can ride cows and mules, so we could ride horses also".

The Hunting, Foraging, etc., are not actually technologies, so they could be omitted as to not make a bigger mess... but techs like farming would need an explanation as to where they come from(for example, farming is primarily discovered from citizens foraging).

Many of the techs are simple in effect, but potentially important
tracking - better food production from hunting game
trapping - more production from hunting beaver and other resources
archery - better food production again, and leads to military techs

Farming: Allows farms of crops to be made, increasing yield... would be a strict pre-requisite to the rise of very large cities and civilizations. You could not have a densely populated civ without farms. It's impossible to feed masses of people just with meat, so even if you spread pig everywhere it wouldn't be nearly enough.

irrigation: self-explanatory

Wheel: Self-explanatory, required for chariots (along with animal domestication and horse). Required for transporting large amounts of goods, caravans (requires animal domestication, cow/horse)

Construction: Required for simple buildings, granaries with farming, improved housing for higher population density.

Architecture: Needed for larger, more complex buildings, would further improve possible population density.

Boating: Needed for river travel, increases fishing yield.

Sailing: Needed for larger boats such as triremes.

Domestication: Needed for caravans (with wheel), needed for pastures, needed for breeding (spreading pigs to other tiles, for example)

Horseback riding: Would unlock faster moving scouts, improve hunting of certain animals.

Despotism: One ruler, centralized authority. The "eureka" for this would be encouraged by larger cities. You will NEVER get despotism if you didn't grow large cities, for example. And the larger the cities grow the faster it will be unlocked for research.

Monarchy: Evolution of Despotism, encouraged by even larger cities, along with perhaps religion.

Tribalism: System of decentralized tribes, inspired by more, smaller cities, and specially suited towards the functioning of those (less waste and dissent from distance)

Confederation: A system of organization for many tribes(or loosely associated towns), which are split into sub-groups. For example, the Iroquois. Just tribalism basically, but capable of handling the organization of a larger empire.


The centralized governments lean towards inspiring more centralized power of government, for example, taxation, conscription, etc.

Tribalism would be more able to encourage exploration, encourage value-based living, and it would be easier to promote healthiness and happiness while still creating a burgeoning empire.


Note that the player does not really have to control the development of all the technologies. Blue ones just unlock automatically, and will be researched automatically if given enough time. What the player 'does' have to moderate more so, is how their civilization lives. If they are a hunting society, hunting technology will be refined.

If they neglect hunting and only work farms and forage, they will only know how to farm. There will therefore be a certain level of automation, you work towards advancement simply by building/growing.

There is special emphasis put in hunting, because the goal is to make civilization able to be fully self-sufficient through hunting for a very large amount of time. Some Native American civilizations almost completely relied on hunting for sustenance.

If hunting was completely sufficient, a civilization could remain "nomads", because they would get ample food with little permanent infrastructure, no need for farms, or storage, or large cities. A game of civilization with this mechanism could potentially be played even to the medieval age with no large cities or farms, and they could pick up their cities at any time (since they wouldn't have infrastructure they are leaving behind, and could feed their people while they travel) and move to another area. So there is a reason that the hunting technology is made especially complex.


"eureka points" are what determines if a technology is discovered by the populace. Eureka points come from a variety of sources...

1. From citizens carrying out tasks, like farming, hunting, building.
2. From buildings, temples (the eureka points tend to go towards religious techs), libraries (more general eureka points), courthouses tend to create eureka points for government, cultural buildings create eureka points which tend to go towards cultural techs.



Now, what would the mechanics be exactly? Here's a possible example: The goal is unpredictability with figures hidden from the players, so they can't count on techs being available, but being able to make trends towards that tech. There are likely a variety of ways to do this, and better than the one I am supplying, but I am giving a possible algorithm.



A civilization makes 20 eureka points per turn, and has 14 citizens.

A civilization has the pre-requisites for irrigation, monarchy, tribalism, and architecture.
5/14 of the citizens' effort is applied to working farms, so 5 points are weighted towards going in irrigation.

There are 2 courthouses, which make 3 eureka points each... which are weighted towards monarchy (government tech)

9 citizens are working on construction related tasks, either building, or collecting building resources, so 9 are weighted towards architecture.

So the Eureka points breakdown is such:
45% architecture
25% irrigation
30% monarchy (the civilization has just 2 large cities, so the government points are very greatly weighted towards monarchy)
0% tribalism

However, it is random and is weighted.

Every 5 turns or so, random integers determine how much of a penalty or bonus each tech gets when getting a share of eureka points. So for a random length of turns (say 3-6), archiecture could be at -10%, or 35% instead of 45%, while irrigation is at +10%, or 35% in also. It shouldn't be every turn because then things would just even out in the end. But it needs to be unpredictable, so players cannot manipulate the points to get a certain tech when they want. (like, if they know the period where points reset was every 5 turns, they could wait for the end of the 5 turns and try to go all out on a certain type of points for the next 5 turns).

Techs with lots of Eureka points already tend to get a bigger share, so they aren't "slowed down" too much from other available techs, like they don't get to 90% then stall. Once the ideas start rolling, they are more likely to keep rolling and the citizens will discover the tech.



Note that Eureka points are much more predictable earlier on in the game. Later in the game, there can be many more techs available at one time and more branches rather than straight liens, so essentially you may never know what technologies are being worked towards. Like, for example, lightbulb and flight might both be available at once, and both share the same Eureka points. The player would have no idea which one is closer to being finished or what would come first, although the player will know that one will be pulling ahead of the other and picking up steam, because of the weighting towards more finished technologies.

 

[Levgre]

EARLY ECONOMY AND POLITICS

APPROVAL

Early on in the game there is effectively little to no economy. The society is egalitarian, meaning you ask the population to do things for the good of the nation, and they do it. You can tell them to build things, you can tell them to research, you can tell them to enlist, you can tell them to explore and settle. The people work just to live and be happy.
If you tell them to do enough things they do not want to do, your approval will drop. So, essentially, your “approval” as a leader is your currency when you do not yet have a strong economy you can tax.

The level of Egalitarianism in your society greatly determines to what extent you can tell people what to do, and they will comply for the good of the nation(approval playing the 2nd largest role, you could have an non-egalitarian society with huge approval). Tribalism and Confederation have much higher levels of Egalitarianism than other forms of society/economies. This makes them remain competitive in pursuing goals, regardless of not having large cities with robust economies. Later on, nationalism can also be leveraged in this way (although strong nationalism has a variety of effects, some possibly negative).

Throughout the game approval remains a form of currency, with the player being able to leverage it to make citizens do what the player wants, although taxation and payment for services will become more powerful later (you take money from the economy, and pay people money so they do not cause dissent when you direct them).

Dissent is distinctly different from approval, and the difference will be explained farther down.


Conscripting people past a certain % of the population (also dependent on aggression level and current conflicts, potential or actual) lowers approval.
Taxing people too much lowers approval(once you have a currency).

When you have a very small civilization you can basically tell them what you want to do, and they will do it. This would partly be due to the much smaller amount of possible orders. As your population grows more and more, you will find yourself not being able to direct people so well, without ample compensation, and/or strong nationalist sentiments.

Another way to go around the dissent issue is segregation of society. A section of the population can be segregated as being in a lower class, and then that portion of the population (say 10%), can be made to do a ton of work with only very minor disapproval (since the other 90% don't care). Prisoners from other countries could also be marked as being in this lower caste, resulting in lower tolerance, but a larger pool of an exploitable caste.

ECONOMY AND GENERATION OF WEALTH

Economy is not generated by some sort of "commerce", or by "villages". Economy is automatically generated mainly by:

1. Higher population
2. A higher variety of goods and services (services are more common later, early on goods are the dominant form of exchange).

EXAMPLE(with rough figures):

You have 1 town. When it is population 1, it generates 1 wealth per turn. When it is population 2, 2 wealth. When it starts trading with another town nearby of size 2, wealth increases to 4, but also there is salt in one town, and pepper in the other town. There is now more supply and demand and exchange of goods, so wealth is amplified to 6. The economy would would also be stimulated in many other ways, as the game goes on.

With domestic trade, obviously you do not benefit less or more when one of your own town imports uneven amounts of goods. "however", when you get into international trade, a civilization with unique resources may benefit greatly, because they receive more wealth from the other population than they give.

So Town A of CIV A, and Town B of CIV B, trade. B has many spices, which are scarce in A, so CIV B's economy generates 10 more wealth per turn(while civ A may only generate 2 more wealth per turn, it does benefit from receiving spices as they are then traded domestically).

There are many, many ways to stimulate the economy, including attractions like theaters and bathhouses, which add services which contribute to the exchange of wealth, and in the case of the theater, also develop culture(larger impact on culture than economy).


Now, Civ A with 10 total population, 3 cities, and foreign trade with one city is generating a total wealth of 20. The player does NOT automatically get all that wealth. All the wealth initially belongs to the people, and the stronger your economy is, the higher happiness and rate of growth is (and perhaps other things). The player then must set a tax rate, so if they set a tax rate of 40%, they get 8 of the 20 national wealth generated. Although, this has repercussions, the government gets more money to use, but less total national wealth will be generated by some degree because high taxes de-stimulate the economy, and people will disapprove of the leader/government more.

Now, the player can then use that wealth they tax to order citizens around without causing any disapproval (pay a fee, uplifting a large town would not cause disapproval, so on). So, while taxing does cause disapproval, it is necessary for redistributing wealth to placate the people when you direct them, causing less overall disapproval.

Taxing is relatively inefficient until you develop currency, as initially you are taking barter goods (pots, foodstuff, trinkets, etc.) into government control. So you will get a smaller % of wealth for higher dissent. However, once you develop currency, you will be able to tax much more efficiently, causing lower dissent and having less waste when you tax.

Note that it is inevitable that different wealth classes emerge in the society, so if you make a typical robust, city based civilization, you will have wealth aggregate with a smaller amount of people. This also means that a robust economy will have a gradually decreasing effect on happiness/approval, as the benefits of the economy will not be spread as evenly, to promote happiness.

Tax levels can be adjusted to effect the wealthy or poor more, which then may balance the distribution of wealth somewhat.

Now we get to how science is generated by the government. The government hires citizens to work as researchers. Early on in the game, or in a society that stays egalitarian, people will join the "council" with little/no protest. Later on when you have a less egalitarian society, you must pay citizens to be researchers, or suffer disapproval if you conscript them for research. So in a way it is like you are only using specialists.


DISSENT VERSUS APPROVAL

Approval is, basically, how popular you are in a society. How you direct your civ/population can bring it up or down... if you make them take actions that conflict with their culture, enlist them, don't pay them for their work, tax them too much, etc., it goes down.

Dissent, on the other hand, is the amount of influence in your civilization that is directed against you. The wealthy have more clout and influence in your society. So while taxing the rich more may make you quite popular (as compared to putting the burden on the poor), it could potentially cause a higher jump in dissent than taxing the poor would.

Controlling dissent can also be a powerful tool of the player. The player could be VERY unpopular, but take measures to make dissent very low, despite the bad sentiments. Some of the many ways to do this are:

Stricter police force, instilling fear
Feudalism: This is a method of society where the wealthy become your serfs, and help tax the poor, bringing more wealth to you(and them) while keeping dissent low. It also would cause somewhat of a smaller drop in approval, as the people take out their anger on the serfs.

Feudalism would often be the midpoint of the most natural evolution of a standard economy with a government with strict aims. It makes it possible to squeeze great amounts of wealth and production out of the vast majority of the population, while not causing dissent and eventual rebellion. If you run the correct system, you can have miserable people yet still prosper as a nation, but you will need ways to placate them.



SOME INFO ON LATER ECONOMICS

Later on in the game, economics would become much more vibrant.

One aspect, would be EXCHANGE RATES.
It emerges in international trade that the value of countries' currencies differs. Having a better exchange rate leads to more benefit from international trade to your economy. Low exchange rate means less benefit from Int. Trade. The value of a countries' currencies would change in the following ways:

1. Level of dissent, if it gets too high, the currency of a country becomes suspect.

2. Strong fluctuations in the economy: If an economy keeps getting reducing then growing again, trust in the countries currency goes down and exchange rate goes up.
Many things could cause this, for example, disruption of the production of trade resources, erratic taxation changes by the player, war, disasters, so on.

3. Amount of international trade a country has done, both in length and bulk.

4. Leaders could have economic traits on a sliding scale. Either one slider, ranging from "Domestic economy", to "International economy", or two sliders, indicating a leaders prowess in the Domestic realm, and in the international realm.

Prowess in international trade increases the profit of international trade routes, as well as making the exchange rate of the currency more stable and more beneficial.

Domestic prowess increases the raw output of the nation's economy by reducing costs of transportation, taxation, etc.. It would be most similar to civ 4s "financial" trait.

So the domestic expert would do better for a contained nation, and also likely do better in the early game, when a larger portion of profits comes from domestic trade.

The international trader would be able to overcome the benefits of the domestic expert, if it traded with enough countries, especially later in the game, where international trade could account for 3/5th or more of more of a nation's economy.



Trade Deals: Two countries could make special trade pacts between each other. This would simply cause those two nations to prioritize trading between each other, regardless of other countries offering more profit. This could simply be done on a scale(chosen mutually), "slightly prefer" to "highly prefer", with the calculations basically being done automatically, shifting more trading to the two countries. The technical info would be available, although the player would be able to clearly see how much it effected the two countries GDPs, very shortly (established trade routes could give more profit, so it could take 10, 15 turns or whatever to fully realize the effects, and then perhaps gradual increases thereafter.).


Recessions could also be caused if an economy changes too drastically, for too long. The recession would reduce the amount of wealth output, make citizens less productive. If an economy stays stable and strong for a very long time, it could get a temporary boom.
A boom could also occur if the nation suddenly became super productive, for example, a modern nation very hyped about a war could become so approving of the leadership that wealth and production jump greatly(i.e. WWII).
However, the pre-existing mechanics may be enough to deal with a war boom. A jump in approval rating will always mean that the economy runs more smoothly and is more productive, as there is less waste/dissent. But an additional boom for an additional benefit, an "after-effect", could be a good mechanic.

Both of these mechanisms would typically favor the peaceful, diplomatic player, who sustains a stable empire and strong economy. However, there'd have to be a pretty subtle strategy towards getting them, as they don't become simply the "Icing on the cake" for strong economies. Right now I'm not sure what the strategy should be, it may just be a matter of game balancing.

CONTROLLED ECONOMY VERSUS FREE ECONOMY

A dynamic that would be important throughout the game, and emerge more later in the game, is the extent to which the player directs the activities and production of the people. The basic assumptions that would line the gameplay would be:

1. People are most productive when they are left to decide on their own
2. Higher levels of control incurs costs in production and money, although greater technology, organization, and leadership can reduce this.
3. Directing the economy is generally the quickest method of leveraging resources and population towards specific goals, but will not create as much economic growth as a free economy.

So, in essence, there would be no "state property"(controlled economy) and "free market" civic. Your civilization would be any degree between the former and the latter. Having a controlled economy is easy in the beginning of the game, and could even be easy in the modern age, if you have a small nation. The larger a nation gets, the larger the repercussions are, for not leaving the market to its own devices.

This would have a gameplay balancing effect of causing huge economies to not be able to easily maximize force against other nations, or towards research. Unlike In Civ4, where you can easily put 100% of your production towards missiles, or 100% of your economy towards rocketry, with no penalty, regardless of the size of your nation.

However, due to the rate of growth, Free Markets would typically end up much stronger than a constantly controlled economy. They could therefore be capable of more directed production and research than a controlled economy, even if a smaller % of the total output is directed. And, when the citizens feel threatened, like in times of war, the military production could become monstrously high compared to the controlled economies (although, the controlled economy may have ended up in a better initial military position).

There would also be controlled versus free mechanisms for social programs. Social assistance would generally increase a population's education, health, happiness, etc., wherever you put the money into.

However, if you have an inefficient/corrupt government, this could incur a high cost to relegate the welfare of the people to the government. If you don't take measures to improve the economy so people can obtain resources on their own, you will end up with a "welfare state", of sorts. So government social programs would be a temporary fix most of the time, although a certain level of them could always be beneficial in certain economies. Further technologies, (refinement of government, computers, etc.) could assist in making social programs more efficient also.

The balance between controlled and free economies would have to be subtle, as to make both have advantages and disadvantages, but neither overpowering. Left and Right politics should generally be left aside, and both systems should be made feasible and strategically beneficial, regardless of opinions on the matter in real life.


Civ politics, however could play a role in your ability to choose your economy. Nations, due to their history, cultural values, etc., would end up more communitarian or libertarian. Some people clamor for the government to step in, some clamor for the government to stay away. This is true to life, as there have even been democratically elected dictators.

So there would be a slider indicating the degree of Libertarianism ------- Socialism, and you would suffer disapproval if you ran your economy in a way that opposed the peoples' values. This would have the effect of making so you cannot switch from one economy to another very quickly, and also make so you have to monitor how you manage your civ not only economic-wise, but overall.

Things that lead to Libertarian sentiments:

1. Abuse by government, a long history of disapproval of the government
2. High disparity of wealth
3. High cultural strife.... Meaning, heterogeneous culture, combined with low tolerance (people want to keep to themselves)
4. Low Egalitarianism
5. Geographical distance, especially with low transportation availabilty
6. Dense population centers

Things that can lead to Socialism sentiments:
1. A history of high Egalitarianism (think, a tribal nation which recently modernized)
2. More equal distribution of wealth
3. Homogeneous culture, or, heterogeneous, with high levels of tolerance and curiosity. For example, a nation that is 99% one religion will be more tolerant of government social programs, because everyone is their "brother", even if they think they are the cause of their own problems.
4. Less dense population centers
4. Less Geographic distance (less important than density, so a nation with low density, but high distance, would lean towards communitarian. Medium density and high distance could break even).

 

[Levgre]

MODERN POLITICS(PROPAGANDA), ALSO THE EVOLUTION FROM INDIVIDUALISM - EGALITARIANISM TO LIBERTARIANISM - SOCIALISM

Early on in the game, the extent to which you can order people depends on the level of their egalitarianism, and your level of approval.
Throughout the game, nationalist sentiment can also play a large role.

However, libertarianism - socialism differ greatly from these(what influences the balance of this dynamic is explained in post 4). They are economic/political ideals, not moral/social ideals, or national ideals.

So a nation 'could' be moderately or strongly egalitarian, yet strongly libertarian, meaning they approve of helping others but don't like the government interfering either (resulting in a relatively small amount of possible control without disapproval) .

When modern economic theory is discovered, the libertarianism - socialism dynamic would be created. You could potentially be the only nation with this cultural dynamic for the entire game (every other nation stops short of modern economic theory, despite its importance). The slider level would be immediately set based on previous government benevolence (or lack thereof), level of egalitarianism, etc., and also player choice could play a role, by endorsing one or the other (or neither) when the ideal is still new.


Now, will libertarian and socialist nations eventually clash, like the cold war? Will thes two values necessarily be the most prominent competing ideas? No, but they could be. Here is a list of what makes a country more hostile to the opposite spectrum( number 1. has the most impact, 5. has less):

1. Wars or competitiveness(especially military competitiveness, large standing armies with poor relations) between countries with opposing ideals.
2. Being extremely on one side or the other end of the scale.
3. POLITICAL INFLUENCE (aka, often propaganda)
4. Low cultural tolerance (less impact here, but still some. Low tolerance has a larger impact just through generally increasing competitiveness and aggression).
5. High levels of disparity between the countries, in regards to egalitarianism versus individualism.

Now, more on political influence, or propaganda.
The player has the active choice of trying to push a certain idealogical difference into being a major rift. Possibilities are:
Forms of government, cultural values, specific cultures/nations, religious value, RELIGION versus Secularism (war against religion, later on in game), technology, war versus peace (could carry out propaganda against aggressive nations with large militaries).

However, the player cannot create the rifts on his own. The player has to exploit current existing conflicts, and push them over the edge, to create entrenched ideological conflicts. Almost any strong difference could potentially be exploited.

So for example, with the US and USSR, they both commit propaganda against the others' ideas. They carry out propaganda, give material assistance, etc., towards friendly and receptive nations, to gain their allegiance. This method of peer pressure can lead to large blocs that end up going to war based on values...

For example, European countries building up support for crusades against Islamic countries, due to competitiveness for land, and religious differences with existing intolerance.

A bloc of Monarch countries using political influence against tribal/confederate nations.

A bloc of low-tech countries against high level of technology, mass media, etc., or vice-versa, more modern countries creating hostility/intolerance towards "primitive" countries, and hence making them ripe for the taking.

Greater technology, mass media, etc. would lead to greater ability to exert political influence. A closed society which maintains low tolerance could also easily egg on the populace towards wars of ideas.

 

[Levgre]

IN-DEPTH LOOK AT CULTURE, MECHANICS INCLUDED

Culture would be much more dynamic than in Civ4, but similar in certain ways. I have already explained some about how nations would have "cultural values", but now how you determine the level of strength of influence a nation has towards other ones.

Your cities generate culture through art/literature, etc. Generating culture has the following effects:

1. Increases nationalism, national pride. This will make your people more happy and let you direct them more without great disapproval.
2. Causes other nations to shift towards your values more. Although it takes a lot of influence at times, because if you have different values their tolerance could be lower. Or even if they are tolerant, their lifestyles can take large precedence over your influence.
3. Fosters "eureka" points, generating more points towards unlocking new technologies, with most emphasis being with the cultural technologies (music, literature, etc.).
4. Culture makes other nations respect your nation more, in essence, makes you more "popular". If you influence another civilization heavily, they will care about your nation and people. If the leader of that nation declares war against you, they will have disapproval penalties(possibly very stiff). Cities you have influenced greatly may completely protest the war, either not producing, protesting enlistment, or violently rebelling. Culture therefore has defensive advantages, discouraging actions against you. While more difficult, Culture can be an offensive asset. If you can influence another country enough, they will more willingly accept the takeover, or even readily surrender.

5. Taking in other nations culture makes you "multicultural". Not only does this help with discovering cultural advances(although it has less of an impact than your own culture), it has a multiplier effect on the the culture 'your' nation generates. For example: Nation A has a city creating 150 culture points a turn. Nation B creates 150 culture points a turn, but also interacts freely with 3 nations and has 3 other cultures in it (with varying percentages). The output of that nation's culture becomes 170, as it immerses in multiculturalism and creates new culture of it's own, inspired by the foreign ideas. ALL output of a nation is considered THEIR culture, even if it has foreign influences. It is only INFLOW culture from other nations that is represented as foreign culture.

6. It makes your cities more desirable, encouraging larger city sizes, and immigration also, from countries which like your culture.

Here is a sample "culture" sheet, for a nation.

So, essentially, Rome's culture is a mixture of Roman, Greek, Carthage, and a little bit of Zulu culture.

Cities also have their own individual culture breakdowns, the above chart is the conglomeration of all the nations' cities.

The display also keeps track of the amount of influence ROME has had, on other countries. Rome has had a 30% of an influence on Greece, even though Greece has only had 22% of an influence on Rome. This is because the balance of culture exchange is in Rome's favor and Rome influences Greece more than Greece influences Rome. But, both nations have overall greater culture output because of this exchange, meaning both nations could influence a third nation more than they would have otherwise, if they had not been multi-cultural.

A cultural victory would mean that not only do you have a very strong culture, you would also have to have a large influence on the culture of other nations. You cannot build 3 legendary cities on an isolated island, you have to immerse yourself with other nations.

In the above display The Zulus are a closed nation, mostly hostile to Rome. So Rome has not been able to influence Zulu's culture much. A small nation could be surrounded by the most cultural nation in the world, but if they had extremely low levels of curiosity and/or tolerance, they would not be influenced much. This means that nations can essentially make an effort to retain their own culture, by deciding to shun other cultures, either to retain their cultural identity, or to make so their people do not become sympathetic to the other nation.

Furthermore, culture does not only effect close cities in your "radius", like in civ 4. It effectively works like trade-routes, with a variety of modifiers. Your mega-culture capital can influence cities on another continent, IF there is travel between the two, and valid methods of transportation or exchange. Earlier on in the game, your capital will likely only have a strong influence on regional nations, although literature, art, and other transportable/tradable forms of culture increase long-distance influence also. Your ship traveling to the other side of the world to trade could have some influence, if it had relics of your culture. Later on you will have airplanes for visitors, and mass media which allows all nations with the technology to easily partake in your culture.

 

[Levgre]

COMPONENTS of UNIT PRODUCTION, CITY EXCHANGE of COMPONENTS, RESERVES vs. STANDING ARMY, and UNIT TRAINING

I would like to preface by saying this is generally the area that is most fun to think about, so my attention is less needed because people have already thought about lots of great ideas. Regardless, I will put forth a system that meshes well with my overall themes.


Units require two components to be built, Equipment(guns, swords and armor, etc.), and manpower(people drawn from your population).

Some units are more manpower intensive than equipment intensive, like archers, and modern infantry.
Some units need more manufactured equipment and less manpower, like Tanks, heavy cavalry, and most naval ships.

Furthermore, units require different resources for equipment. Like for example tanks require modern products such as steel and rubber, while spearmen require simple metals. And since resources are not just a matter of "have" or "have not", like in civ4, this is another cost, since producing the different products costs more. Some of the more advanced weapons also require different facilities, tanks and other war machines would require modern assembly plants(although an assembly plant wouldn't ONLY allow tanks, like a forge is required to build the colossus, but the forge has other benefits)

Both parts do not have to be built simultaneously. You don't need troops for building swords. You can train troops without a full complement of weapons.
Although the unit will not be generated until both parts are finished.

BUT, you can exchange manpower and equipment components with other units. Example shown below.

So here are some sample production displays:

Note that MANPOWER is an "upfront" cost, not a gradual one. You pay the full manpower cost right when you start training. However, the "manpower" component is not actually ready for fighting, until training is done. If you temporarily pause the training, the manpower will no longer be "occupied", and return to work in that city. Then, if you want to start training again, the population will again be taken.
Better military facilities or instructors can speed up training (although they would not make you build the equipment for tanks faster, better factories do that).

Also, note that St. Petersburg's infantry is fully trained, but the equipment isn't finished, and vice versa for Moscow, finished equipment but unfinished training.
For a small cost of travel, Moscows equipment component could be switched with the St. P unit, so the unit in St. P would be finished that turn, or St. Ps manpower could be sent to Moscow. However, ships cannot be exchanged in this way. They have to stay in their shipyard.

There would be a window display, like in the "military advisor", where you could easily see all your units and easily drag components to exchange them. However, if the cities were not connected, you could not exchange, or it may take multiple turns if they are too far away. Possibly even equipment could be traded between different countries.

If you wanted, you could have a city which started units but ONLY built equipment components, then shipped them off to other cities. Or you could have a city which is a training center.


RESERVES VERSUS STANDING ARMY

In civ4, 100% of your units are ALWAYS on standby, ready to attack or defend at the smallest notice. Here is how units in reserve could be distinguished from units on standby:

Once you complete a unit, it enters your standing army, so it acts just like a normal unit in civ4. However, you can order the unit to enter the reserves. In that case, the unit would stay in the city where you placed the order. It would add to the population, therefore contributing to production/economy like normal citizens. Once it is put into reserves you cannot re-activate it until the next turn.

However, while it can defend against attacks against that city, it cannot move at all, to attack nearby tiles, or defend other cities. You must re-activate it, and then it cannot move for a turn (like when you upgrade a unit, they are done for that turn).

Therefore, a city on your frontlines with 20 infantry on reserve, would still take 2 turns to attack the nearest enemy city. You have to activate them on turn 1, then you have to attack on turn 2.
Other nations can see how many units you have in your standing army where they have visibility (as well as see your overall power in demographics). Reserves and standby units are distinguishable. So like in WWI, it does not go unnoticed when you activate the majority of your reserves and put them near your borders. You are paying a lot to have that standing army, so it suggests possible incoming action. This alone could threaten the AI.


A disadvantage of having a standing army, in addition to not having them work in cities, is you have to pay those units every turn(beyond certain thresholds of units, depending on nationalism, aggressiveness, current wars, government type, etc.). Reserves have lower cost So typically if you are not going to be attacking anytime soon, it is best to have most units on reserve.

HOWEVER, standing armies get an additional benefit. All units in the standing army earn experience every single turn(not by integer values, for example they may gain .1 or .2 per turn), because while active they are not just twiddling their thumbs, they are training. Units in reserve do not train and gain exp. There is no such thing as "barracks" which give a ton of free exp upon completion of a unit. Barracks would just speed up completion time, with perhaps a very small bonus to exp.

So having an army which is constantly standing could make the difference between, in civ4 terms, a bunch of 1 xp units(you build them then immediately stick them on reserve), or a bunch of 10 xp units (you never put them on reserve, they are career soldiers). However, there would be a limit to how much exp they could gain in such a way, or it would at least be much slower than fighting actual combat.

 

[Levgre]

number 7.... 3 more to go

 

[Levgre]

Here is number eight

 

[Levgre]

number nine.........

 

[Levgre]

for reference here is what I posted in one of the Civ 5 threads, so most of this will eventually be incorporated in my game layout.



"
My overall motivation in my design for civ 5 is the following. It is still to be a strategy game, not a reality simulator. 'However', many of the most influential factors in the history of civilization should be incorporated, in a way that is relatively true to how they behaved in actuality.

For example, culture is very dynamic, as we all know. Yet in civ 4 it is just a matter of land control.

Resources, and the abundance with which they are owned, has been a dominant force in history. Civ 4 makes resources relatively important, but trade does not explode when, for example, a civilization has 8 tiles of spice, and other civilizations have none. A civilization with an abundance of oil cannot make more tanks and planes than a smaller civilization, which would run out of oil and need to rely more on manpower.

And so on...both game play and entertainment value are important, but so is keeping to the spirit of true history. And in doing so, I believe the game would have a natural cohesiveness and playability that would be hard to match. Not to mention the players' intuitions would then serve them very well, since they have an awareness of the real world and how things work.



Here are some preliminary ideas. I will likely add more in future edits, especially if people are interests. For now I will avoid combat, as there is much to it, but good combat would depend on the rest of the gameplay, and has to accommodate the non-combat game.



CULTURE: Culture needs to be more dynamic and more faceted. A nation's culture effects how productive it is, how willing it is to expand, so on. For example, Manifest Destiny was a cultural phenomenon which greatly assisted in the expansion of the American empire... as did many other religious movements which motivated people to spread.


An easy way to envision the "cultural system" would be like the current civic system. There would be different attitudes that could be adopted by a nation. For example, "views of the afterlife". Ascension to another plane, wandering the earth as spirits, reincarnation, so on, all could have practical effects on a civilization. With spirits, people are more likely to stay in their homelands, as to not leave their relatives behind. With ascension to a another plane, the development of Gods and modern religions could be hurried, leading to more "advanced" or organized religious societies. You could see some civilizations go far into the modern age with keeping their views of spirits and reincarnation, while other civilizations "advanced". Reincarnation could make people more respectful of nature, resulting in lesser ability to exploit it for resources, but more happiness and richness of life (culture points or some such).


Only the more major cultural values throughout history would likely be included in the cultural system, as to not make it too complex, but still make it rich. Much of it would also be automated (although determined often by how the player acts) so much of it could just be ignored at times. But it would always effect things. Sometimes it could make a forward swing and help the goals of the human player. Sometimes there could be a cultural backlash and a changing of values, which impedes the player from his current decisions. Throughout history culture and values have ebbed and flowed, it would be no different here. Unless you truly made it your aim to make it static (low education, closed society, police state, so on).

At the very least, sharing views on the afterlife, etc., would make a civilization more friendly to other people who share their views.

There could also be "degrees" of attitudes. A simple example, would be "tolerance of outsiders". This would go from very low to very high.

With high tolerance, trade and sharing of ideas is higher, leading to more research, more money, but also, more impact on the nation's culture. You, the player, would have less control on your nation's values, if you led a high tolerance nation.

With very low tolerance, a nation would have low levels of trade and cultural influence, yet this would make the civilization able to be more stable and controlled, as it's "cultural system" would not be altered.


War effects tolerance greatly. The impressions other cultures make effects tolerance (a nation which has only met other nations it dislikes will be less tolerant). Education and the advancement of ideas effects tolerance... so on.

Some cultural aspects would make relatively minor effects on the game. Some could be very major, and determine a turning point in history. For example, the "nationalism" tech in Civ 4 is a cultural movement. "crusades" could be another development, which is a cultural movement.

You could choose historic civs with pre-determined starting cultural values. You could also create your own custom civ with cultural values, although some combinations would not be possible because you'd have to "purchase" the advances to make those values available at the beginning, or allocate points to set a slider for a certain value at very high or very low, increasingly so as you get to the extreme ends.


RESOURCES:

It is paramount that abundance of resources matters, instead of just "having" or "not having". A civilization with 3 coppers could leverage it to become a dominating force in the ancient period, even over those with 1 copper. Of course there would be things to balance this out, but the 3 coppers would be a matter of great importance.

Copper = weapons. Now, having more copper doesn't mean you necessarily make "better" weapons, but you can make more. So what would seem a natural possibility, is, the more copper you have, the faster you can build units.
However, an army isn't just a bunch of copper. You need soldiers, too. So there would some way to incorporate a "human" and "equipment" component to each unit, perhaps each consisting of 50% of the cost, although this would vary with units (the limiting factor for riflemen was usually manpower, so that may be a 70-30 cost).

So the player with 5 coppers would get, say, a 50% production bonus to metal equipment, making them able to quickly produce heavily armored infantry(heavy infantry would require more copper, as opposed to manpower), or quickly produce the equipment requirement for lighter infantry. While, perhaps, being light on the manpower aspect for the infantry. This could make interesting alliances where one nation with abundant hills and copper supplies a large farming nation with copper for weapons.


The ability to produce and maintain the "human" component would depend on many things. How many people the nation has in total, it's cultural values and willingness to fight or be conscripted, how much money you are willing to pay units (if you pay more, more people will be willing to enter your manpower pool).


PRODUCTION:
The system of production, where for normal production only a city can contribute to the projects inside it, should be altered. Workers and resources from all over the empire could be brought to the capital, to produce an immense wonder, for example.

However, it would all come with penalties, as opposed to only relying on local production capability. You would have to pay more money for labor, you would lose some overall production, you would use some more resources. When a player decides to re-route resources they will be notified of estimations for the penalties (could be a small random range). "collection" and distribution of resources (metal, wood, etc.) should not have to be controlled by the player to play well. The system should be user-friendly, yet still realistic. A player could go much of the game with never looking at the national pools, although they will not do as well.

However, there does need to be a variety of resources instead of just "hammers". Wood, stone, metal, so on. Later on in the game some would just be taken out of the pool as they become insignificant. You don't have to keep track of your stone once you reach the industrial and modern age, because you have a basically unlimited supply because you can gather it so easily.

So, all the resources could be collected and put into national pools, which are displayed to the player (100 wood production, for example, 1000 wood in your pool). If you run out of wood supply your production will not "stop", but you will just build more slowly. Just like with the copper for units, it just increases production rate. Wood would, however, naturally accumulate, as you don't have to "tell" your nation to go and collect wood, it just does.

So each city will tend to have wood available. However, you could put special emphasis on it, for example, shifting 70% of a cities laborers to lumber gathering, leaving 30% for stone collecting. If anyone has played sim ant, it could be like the system in that game, where you set your percent of ants to "nursing, gathering, building", simply by sliding a pointer on a circle display... if you slide it all the way to nursing, 100% of the ants would nurse.

But enough with possible details, as those could easily change... it would just be a highly automated resource system, that you could adjust to build up stores of resources, although there could be a limit to how much you could control it, and manipulating it too often or too greatly could bring about waste. As is the problem with a controlled economy, versus a natural one. (another idea for cultural values, libertarianism versus collectivism, could effect the dynamic of this, and other things).


RESEARCH:

Research should NOT be as directed and controlled as it is. Breakthroughs often come through personal efforts of random individuals, depending on the nation's surroundings and interesting. So, if this were applied in Civ 4, if you had 4 cows nearby your civilization wouldn't randomly research fishing. The people would quickly get around to researching the cows, and how to utilize them.

However, the government can also direct resources towards specific discoveries. But they would not be able to mobilize the whole nation's scientific potential for this.

So there would be multiple forces effecting research. Interaction with foreigners would also play a significant role, going back to the "intolerant" versus "tolerant", although only certain techs would be exchanged this way, for example many military technologies would not (nor would those military technologies typically be researched by the people, but only the government).

Also, there should be a degree of randomness in the tech tree. You CANNOT depend on opening up the path to a certain technology. In Civ 4 the tech tree is dynamic in that there are multiple routes to different technologies, but you always know any of those paths will unlock certain technologies.



Pre-requisites would increase the odds of "eureka moments", which would then unlock techs so you could put direct effort into a technology, to advance in a certain direction. But you will have to play to the development of science, you will not determine it yourself. You would not be able to know what technologies you will specifically get, or be able to get. But you can promote scientific endeavor in your nation, so a citizen is more likely to create the first working plane, or invent the light bulb.

There could be games where the telephone comes before flight, and vice-versa, and you could not know when these moments would come, although you can encourage them.

A small island nation could have a breakthrough in flight a significant amount years before all the larger ones, possibly bringing previously unheard of prosperity and foreign interest, or perhaps encouraging espionage.

However, military research would often be more predictable and directed. So players would not really get into situations where they lucked out in regards to a military technology, and were left in the dust. However, an isolated nation may go half a century longer without gunpowder, and have to rely on military prowess in other areas (which they could direct research in, for example, they don't have gunpowder but become very, very refined in archery, horsemanship, or infantry logistics, and can stand up to gunpowder armies).

One thing to note, is what has naturally emerged from my "rules"(ways to implement reality), is that isolated nations can develop very specialized and distinct cultures. They are more likely to master a type of military, out of necessity. They are more likely to develop a culture, which they stick to, and develop strong conviction in. This would also work for groups of nations, which would influence each other's cultures, but not be influenced by ideas of distant nations. You could have large "clashes" of ideas, as worlds meet, perhaps creating geographic wars, or distrust.

Even in multiplayer players could be driven to war in this way. The will of the people, of the culture, would be to go to war against those with very different, or even offensive ideas. The player could 'possibly' receive backlash if they didn't go to war (in a very aggressive society), or they would at least be passing up the opportunity for a relatively 'smooth' war, where the people were very gun-ho about fighting.



POWER

Windmills, watermills, power plants, and so on, should all be part of a national power system. A humongous city may require power siphoned from large tracts of the country (like, power from the area of 3 cities, in civ 4, could be directed to one city). However, the more distance the power is transported, the more waste there is, and the more expensive infrastructure is. So there would be algorithms somewhat similar to distance maintenance, in Civ 4. However, the maintenance would be paid in wasted power also, so if a nation had very short supplies of coal, natural gas, etc., they would have to take care to localize power, and perhaps not be able to sustain extremely large cities, or just have very polluted cities full of coal plants. An industrial era should 'definitely' be in there, during which most power would have to be localized, first in the form water mills and such, later in factories. Later technology would bring ability to transfer the electricity through large power grids.

EXPANSION


Expansion of population should have some automated elements to it. Cities should spring up in desirable places, or wither away if the area is no longer desirable(most of the citizens would return to other cities). A city with many attractions should automatically have people flock towards it. A large city without attractions will likely stagnate, or have people leave to other cities. This would actually make culture partially necessary to have a production or science monster of a city. It will be hard to have a huge workforce if people don't like living there (not that there aren't ways around that, slavery, etc ).

The player would be able to play a large role in expanding, directing people to settle in certain areas, and tell them what to build there(farms, mines, etc.). However, this would have more of a cost than natural expansion(it gets progressively harder to tell a nation of people to move around at your whim), so the best strategy would rely on both to certain extents, perhaps deciding which areas require more directed and aggressive settling (border pushing), while allowing natural expansion in other areas."

 

[Levgre]

okay, added a lot. A lot more to go, though

 

[Tholish]

A lot of that could probably be made into a mod.

 

[RedRalph]

I like this so far

 

[Skallagrimson]

I like most of the concepts here, especially the ability to propagate organic resources, and the notion of a more random process of tech advancement. Most techs, after all, spread in history without a king deciding "we must research THIS." Some fisherman discovers a new way to build ships, and voila, his kingdom has "discovered sailing". And so forth. Obviously you'd have to have fishing activities in order for that to happen.

Some techs should also "bleed" across borders from neighbouring civs. The desire of a nation to keep technology a secret is balanced by the fact that citizens sometimes put on demonstrations of a tech while traveling, and sometimes make their own private deals with other citizens to reveal a tech secret in exchange for money (private level tech brokering). This filters up to the government in the spread-to kingdom eventually, and then the kingdom "has" that tech. This doesn't mean a kingdom didn't commission scientists in actual history, but that research tended to be a very targeted project, which sometimes had no success at all, let alone slow success. Or sometimes very lucky near-instant success, so there too, there should be greater randomness in teching.

Those are the biggies of good ideas that pop out to me, from the post.

 

[Levgre]

Some techs should also "bleed" across borders from neighbouring civs. The desire of a nation to keep technology a secret is balanced by the fact that citizens sometimes put on demonstrations of a tech while traveling, and sometimes make their own private deals with other citizens to reveal a tech secret in exchange for money (private level tech brokering). This filters up to the government in the spread-to kingdom eventually, and then the kingdom "has" that tech.

Yes, I completely agree. As I wrote in my post, it would be one of the 3 main generators of technology. The degree to which it promoted technology would depend on the level of openness with other cultures. Also, it would possibly mainly just help "unlocking" technologies with Eureka points, while the research would still be done by the nations citizens, and/or government. It should probably also boost the rate of research also, but not too much.





I added a section on economy, approval, taxation, dissent, and Egalitarianism, in the 4th post, and also the role Feudalism plays in dissent.

 

[Mango Elephant]

interesting. diddnt read all of it, but i got the jist of it.

 

[Levgre]

Added a bit more to post 4, in the area of economics, including:

Exchange rates
Trade pacts
Recessions/Booms

 

[Levgre]

added CONTROLLED ECONOMY VERSUS FREE ECONOMY, at the end of post 4,

and also, "communitarian versus libertarian" cultural value.

 

[Levgre]

added in post 5 MODERN POLITICS(PROPAGANDA), ALSO THE EVOLUTION FROM INDIVIDUALISM - EGALITARIANISM TO LIBERTARIANISM - SOCIALISM, including wars of ideas.