Mechanism for limiting expansion

[Redaxe]

Hence I think Civ 6 should continue social policies but also bring back governments.

Thing is with social policies you only get so many of them and you can't unpick them. Governments can be more flexible in giving you control over what your civ is doing and allow you to make changes more readily.
The other thing is tax rates. Having some sort of a tax tradeoff vs science could be another way to balance a small vs a wide civ. A wider civ would require higher taxes due to corruption and more armies etc so that would balance out a bit better to a small civ that can run more efficiently - at least in theory

 

[daft]

Hence I think Civ 6 should continue social policies but also bring back governments.

Thing is with social policies you only get so many of them and you can't unpick them. Governments can be more flexible in giving you control over what your civ is doing and allow you to make changes more readily.
The other thing is tax rates. Having some sort of a tax tradeoff vs science could be another way to balance a small vs a wide civ. A wider civ would require higher taxes due to corruption and more armies etc so that would balance out a bit better to a small civ that can run more efficiently - at least in theory

Yes, my friend: BRING BACK GOVERNMENTS!
Are you listening, game dev's?
All this SOCIAL POLICY TREE is nice and dandy, is it how it all really went down? Not at all! Governmental types are crucial to the way you run your civilization, it's a political core of what you can, and cannot do, including in military terms.
This was very well applied in CIII and CIIII but the developers chose to conveniently "forget" about it in CIIV and CIV.

And right you are about tax rates! Wars cost money and thus, very often, mean higher taxes.
Great Empires of History faced growing corruption, higher taxes and loss of population due to wars. This(among other aspects) was to blame for population unhappiness (together with living conditions, lack of food, disease)
Expansion, as such, never caused population unhappiness!
The populace was energized and quite devoted to the cause when they felt a part of an "Empire", not just another nation. It's when the higher taxes, growing corruption and population health started dropping that's when the unhappiness arose.

Just think of the Roman triumphs, as long as the army keeps winning (conquering), the borders of the empire expand, and the living conditions are good, taxes are moderate, the populace will love you. When any of this reverses, population starts being less optimistic about their great leader, and his/hers policies.

Together with unique units (built in large numbers) civilizations started aggressively expanding, it caused nothing but optimistic fervor in their countries at first, usually ended badly years later, but hey, often it's the "Empires" they created (during these expansionistically-aggressive times) we often remember the best.

 

[YaroslavTheWise]

“Looking at human history, the development of human society, world economy and the still growing world-population (> 7 billion), one could say that humanity successfully snowballed until every (profitable) plot on earth was settled and now they grow in height (skyscrapers) ...”

“From a gameplay perspective, snowballing is bad for it makes games unfun and predictable. Having the game decided at the middle ages is boring, and being able to keep expanding in the late game keeps it interesting, as the race for land can keep being present.”

Late game routine in Civilization is crap. Say, in Civ5 you would rather populate every tile in Antarctic, because the base city hexagon would provide you with lots of food (from Tradition and allied city states), production (3+ from Commerce), etc. You would build a castle there, because it costs no maintenance, but Neuschwanstein gives you +3 Gold, +2 Culture, +1 Happiness per Castle. Then you would add a soldier there, so you have extra happiness & culture from Honor. And some buildings, like granary, which give extra food without a single farm. Or gold without a single trade route. And you will build and develop this city because it is GOOD (for the subtotals).

It actually has to be bad (for totals and subtotals) to have too many cities, too many soldiers, and too many buildings of all shapes and sizes.

How can this be achieved?
1) Eliminate bonuses to each city around the globe. No wonders like Neuschwanstein or CN Tower, no Cultural Policies like Merchant Navy, no unrealistic +1 per city for all my 165 cities food bonuses from allied city states, no religions with similarly global effects (e.g. +1 production, or happiness, or faith). This will make city spamming not advantageous.
2) Make it nonsensical to build each building in each city. Civ IV strategies had something about building focused cities. But in reality more is needed here. I should not need a uni in each city. Or a stock exchange.
3) Make it costly to keep huge empires due to culture effect – if culture per capita falls beyond certain level, there is observable raise in corruption, decrease in productivity, increased unhappiness or revolt, only some forms of government are permitted, etc. This will require the new cities to be not only productive, but also to contribute to the culture of the empire
4) Make it costly to maintain huge empires due to corruption (or due to increased marginal cost of an army unit, so huge armies are not fielded).
5) Make it risky to keep huge empires via instability (so far best approached in Rhye’s and Falls of Civilization in Civ4): rebellions, secessions, usurper generals, but of better quality than in famous Civ5 scenario, need to keep extra armed forces per capita than for small empires. These would require the player to field a bigger army to deal with those calamities, propping up the cost of the empire.
6) Where to did revolutions disappear in Civ5? Maybe longer revolutions for bigger states. E.g. Chinese revolution against monarchy essentially did not finish until Mao came to power 50 years later.
7) Enable better “balance-of-power” mentality for the AI
8) Eliminate “Conquer all” victory, as it practically was and still is impossible to achieve on Earth.

 

[killmeplease]

i think one of the main problems with wide empires is that it becomes very boring to set production and manage workers for dozens of cities. this is why the tall play and puppeting were introduced in civ5.

i would really like to have all the map settled, to found colonies even in the late game etc.
but the current city model does not scale well enough for this purpose.
maybe, there should be some mechanism to aggregate several cities in provinces to govern them as a whole. this would also allow for a faster production of stuff, but for some cost.

 

[nimling]

There are a few big issues with wide empires...

(1) AI inability to REX efficiently, making it very easy for the human player to overrun AI. AIs need to build lots of units where a human often builds minimal garrisons, that sort of thing.

(2) Lack of building options for empires with fewer cities. One of the most useful things for getting extra cities out is merely being able to produce more than one thing in a single queue (not including things like build swaps, which obviously decay over time).

(3) Wide empires are boring to micromanage, and micromanagement is necessary to optimize play.

(1) is easy enough to resolve, compared to previous civ iterations the AI has a reasonable grasp on expansion. The biggest problem is that the AI needs to spam units, since they can't plan the gambits human players do. This would be resolved by using a coherent combat mechanism (not 1UPT).

(2) I don't see any reason why a single city shouldn't have multiple production lines, say one line for a factory producing munitions, another for consumer goods and luxuries, and another for large-scale construction like buildings. Might be a bit more book-keeping and micromanagement, but I could see many of those production lines being streamlined... for instance, a military production factory just cranks out units when asked to, and orders can be handed out to tell all cities to produce tanks or whatever.

(3) Well, boredom is a matter of perspective. Mostly it's wading through lots of popups, and not wanting to deal with a governor that doesn't know what it's doing. Cutting down on the number of filler buildings would help matters.

Realistically, I don't see a reason why REX needs to be limited, so long as the AI can keep up at a reasonable pace and understands the value of REX. At the core of the matter, the AI needs to operate in a coherent strategic framework, and 1UPT is not coherent at all.

I'd much prefer soft barriers to expansion like native tribes / barbarians, rather than hard caps like happiness in any of its incarnations. The hard cap model has been exploited to the hilt by human players. Health in Civ4 was a reasonable limit on expansion, although it promoted wide play a bit too much and resources were way more valuable than health infrastructure; it should be the case that sanitation facilities come first, and resource bonuses play a role for more developed civilizations.

 

[killmeplease]

health was just a second happiness

 

[YaroslavTheWise]

Realistically, I don't see a reason why REX needs to be limited, so long as the AI can keep up at a reasonable pace and understands the value of REX.

There have been good discussion above regarding why. Some ideas were
1) In Civ5 "Tall" and "Wide" (aka REX) are known strategies of play, while in the real world civilizations do not use such strategies. Thus they are anti-historic.
2) They are the only popular strategies, which is a bit boring. It would be good to have other strategies doing well (e.g. commercial strategy for Netherlands or immigration strategy for the US), but the gameplay design does not permit for such strategies.
3) REX strategy makes late game very routine, if you already are leading by space and size (and REX is the only winning strategy). You play plenty of turns "somehow" to merely win in a position from which the win is clear and obvious.
NOTE: Even if you make late game routine "convenient" (automated, user friendly, etc.) it will still be ROUTINE in REX only world. It will also be routine even if AI understands REX concept, as you have either outplayed the AI already, or the AI have outplayed you ...
4) Human history is much more interesting because the historic REX empires actually generated new civilizations (or at least states, or city states) in real life. Rome gave birth to Byzantium, as well as (indirectly) whole of Western Europe; British gave birth to America, Canada and Australia; Portugal generated Brazil, etc. Many known huge empires eventually became smaller via process different from being absorbed into an even bigger civ: e.g Rome, Omayyad caliphate, Frankish empire, Kievan Rus, Portuguese, French, British, Spanish & Dutch colonial empires, USSR. This process is sadly missing from civilization game.

In Civ BIG empire (either tall or wide) can only lose to another civ through conquest, never through other factors. This is what makes this game boring

Imagine Civilization game, where science is not the function of population size, and you can win by being small (neither tall, nor wide), and still win!

 

[YaroslavTheWise]

I'd much prefer soft barriers to expansion like native tribes / barbarians, rather than hard caps like happiness in any of its incarnations. The hard cap model has been exploited to the hilt by human players. Health in Civ4 was a reasonable limit on expansion, although it promoted wide play a bit too much and resources were way more valuable than health infrastructure; it should be the case that sanitation facilities come first, and resource bonuses play a role for more developed civilizations.

The problem with soft barriers is that they are what they are called - mere barriers. After you have overcome them, there is nothing that would stop you. In real life further development can be hindered by increasing administration costs, increasing military/defense costs, corruption, and secession tendencies. Which all can lead to empire collapse, which in Civ5 is totally impossible.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Hence I think Civ 6 should continue social policies but also bring back governments.

Yes, bring back governments.

The other thing is tax rates. Having some sort of a tax tradeoff vs science could be another way to balance a small vs a wide civ. A wider civ would require higher taxes due to corruption and more armies etc so that would balance out a bit better to a small civ that can run more efficiently - at least in theory

I also want to see tax rates too. My system would involve a tax rate slider which would take a certain % of the gold that your empire generates. Global happiness would be inversely proportional to your tax rate so players could keep a low tax rate to generate more happiness and get to golden ages faster. But then there would be budget sliders underneath the tax rate slider which would allow the player to spend their tax revenue on things like military (increase military strength of units), science, industry, expansion (build settlers faster) etc...

 

[YaroslavTheWise]

Yes, bring back governments.

I also want to see tax rates too.

Fully agree on both. Civ1 was more fun with one having to adjust the tax rate, and, also, taxes are a macroeconomic tool used in practice. And governments are also a real-world concept. And I miss Civ2 fundamentalism with hordes of fanatics.

However, I also think there is a question of weather the header of "Mechanism for limiting expansion" is correct. I think "Mechanism for reversing expansion" is more appropriate. I would like to see real wars of American independence, Kingdom of Brazil and Bolivarian wars in much better format that the one offered in Rhye's and Falls of Civilisation in Civ IV, where collapse happened automatically (like cities flipping to another Civ in Civ III), not through actual war of independence.

 

[Redaxe]

Fully agree on both. Civ1 was more fun with one having to adjust the tax rate, and, also, taxes are a macroeconomic tool used in practice. And governments are also a real-world concept. And I miss Civ2 fundamentalism with hordes of fanatics.

However, I also think there is a question of weather the header of "Mechanism for limiting expansion" is correct. I think "Mechanism for reversing expansion" is more appropriate. I would like to see real wars of American independence, Kingdom of Brazil and Bolivarian wars in much better format that the one offered in Rhye's and Falls of Civilisation in Civ IV, where collapse happened automatically (like cities flipping to another Civ in Civ III), not through actual war of independence.

Taxation in the real world is obviously far more complex than a slider but for a macro-economic game like Civ I think that is about as far as you wan't to go with that concept - it adds enough complexity without making things too tedious.

Any further and it would just get too complex. I agree that a slider would work fine - it's simply a relative tool for the government taking a proportion of its citizens wealth. The higher that tax, the slower culture, tourism, science, happiness and growth is - i.e. the larger the bureaucracy progressively reduces the private economy & leads to stagnation, whereas the lower the tax would presumably have the opposite effect. There also needs to be a padding mechanism built in here to prevent manipulating tax rates on a turn-by-turn basis and it should take several turns for the benefits of lowered tax to be felt. Whereas the downsides of high tax should be felt more quickly.

I tend to think that taxation should only be introduced after you research currency. Technically there was a form of taxation before in terms of raw commodities like grain but I feel like macroeconomic manipulation should be avoided in the early game for game balance.

An example of a game where you can essentially cheat in this regard is Elemental: Legendary Heroes. You can set taxation to 0% at the start and purely live on gold you earn from goody huts, questing etc... for many turns This propels your civic growth & research higher than otherwise would be possible and I don't think the computer AI can recognise that exploit which essentially gives the player an unfair advantage.

The same thing could happen in Civ - you could hit an early goody hut to earn 100 gold and then turn your tax off and get unfair advantages from having no tax - this is silly and completely unrealistic. So I think to avoid that pitfall taxation should be introduced later in the game when things have stabilised a bit and every civ has had the chance to settle cities and get their empires going. Only at that stage can a centralised government start implementing a complex taxation system.

Lastly I wouldn't mind seeing some mechanism to debase the currency as an emergency measure to rapidly raise gold to quickly field an army but at a significant cost to the long-term economy & productivity. Whilst debasing the currency is often seen as a disastrous economic policy it actually saved the Roman Empire against Persia in the early 600s as it gave the State just enough (temporary) wealth to be able to quickly rebuild a new army to recover their position which otherwise by about 615 was pretty much hopeless.

 

[killmeplease]

why to make such a minute thing as coin debasement a special feature, its just a form of tax (well a fraudulent one, maybe should increase unhappiness after X turns when people will start to feel it)
if you need some mechanic to deal with disasters, it can be internal loans

 

[Arishok]

I don't think there should be a mechanism for limiting expansion in a sense that 'You can't build more than X cities or you're screwed'. Building a really sprawling empire should be a viable strategy, but there should be negative consequences to doing this and maybe some bonuses to small but stable civilizations, so they can stay competitive with the larger civs.
Historically large empires suffered from political instability, this could be simulated with riots in your cities where all production shuts down, armies of hostile (they'll probably have to be barbarian) units spawning, your cities splitting off from your empire and becoming city states and maybe a civil war event where half of your empire becomes a multi-city city state at war with you. Maybe this could be tied to happiness, so this could happen in smaller civilizations as well, but it would be much easier to avoid than in large empires.
Also colonial wars of independence and civs you've conquered before rising up again.

 

[criZp]

I have a quite simple idea. All cities grow their polulation equally fast (food kept constant), regardless of population size. That is, it takes just as much food to go from size 1 to 2, as it takes to go from size 50 to 51. Also, making a settler cuts 1 pop from the city.

Also cities don't instantly have defense and city attack when settled, they would be kind of like outposts in BE (just played the demo so don't know exactly how they were, but something like that)

Benefit of expansion: more resources, control over more militarily strategic positions
Cost of expansion: production of settler and buildings, larger area to defend

On second thought this was a really dumb idea in itself, small cities will grow very slowly and large cities will grow superfast.

One thing that must al least be done to make this work is to allow cities to send surplus food to each other, without using any trade units. They should also be able to export production to each other, so that a small city will produce nothing itself, but will boost production in a different city. Or a large city will temporarily produce nothing, but will help build up a smaller city. This sending of food/production can cost a bit of money, proportional to the distance between the cities, proportional to the amount sent, and depending on the method of transport (road, railroad etc)

And it should be possible to create settlers that found cities with more than 1 starting population, like an option for 3 and 5 (these pop will be subtracted from the production city pop)

 

[LordBalkoth]

First of all, people talking about "happiness" as actual happiness are missing the point. Happiness is a holistic combination of a number of things ranging from actual happiness to administrative costs to corruption. That's why every city has a base unhappiness -- simply founding the city requires more management from the empire's side (whether it be from having to deal with taxation to census taking to whatever). People do have a point about it being a bit odd that unhappiness due to a city on the western edge of the empire growing also causes a city on the eastern side of the empire to stop growing, but literally having to check/measure/adjust the unhappiness penalties and such per city would be even worse. Even the global/local happiness can be annoying...but it's necessary so that you can't simply found a new city, buy it a Colosseum/Zoo/etc, and instantly gain happiness overall.

And to those who claim that large empires are inherently unstable, and usually succumb to both internal and external pressures, and that the game should somehow mimic those effects, I say phooey. After all, look at the modern world, where 95% of all settled land is controlled by just 3 world-girdling empires -- Rome, Mongol and Aztec. Can you imagine a world where that is not the case?

As some people missed it, just pointing out that this is brilliant (and subtler) sarcasm.

I'm asking what the feeling of wanting to play tall is. What is the invariant thing that you bring as a playstyle across titles - defined in such a way that it is imaginable someone might not have that playstyle?

US and Russia are an easy example of tall versus wide. The US has about twice the population of Russia but Russia is twice as large in terms of landmass. Also note that the largest city in Russia (Moscow) is about 50% larger than the largest city in the US (New York)...which means the population density of Russia outside Moscow is even lower than you might think at first glance.

In other words, the US generally focuses on developing stuff more to fit in those extra people per square mile while Russia can generally take larger advantage of low hanging fruit (and can be less efficient due to having more raw space). In Civ V terms this would be represented by the US having like 10 cities of 20 population each while Russia has 20 cities of 10 population each. And while those US cities have more production and thus more "free" build time...they're also dependent more on the surrounding terrain because they can't afford many "bad tiles." Whereas the Russian cities could be in the middle of tundra or desert as long as they have 10ish good tiles.

The general point, as mentioned, is that "tall" fits with the idea of infrastructure and making the most out of what you have while "wide" fits with the idea of only worrying about bare essentials and using the raw number of cities (and consequently the increased amount of raw resources) to benefit.

 

[DM4444]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=13875947

wow, awesome discussion.


could echo many of these intelligent and well balanced observations.

my favourite thread on forum here so far.



Here are two highlights for me - extrapolating themes and synthesizing:

Culture derives from place;

Place is people in relationship to land


As far as I'm concerned, a people's culture emerges as a direct result from the place(s) in which they inhabit.

The longer(more) a person is somewhere, the more the person influences the place, and conversely, the more the place influences that person.

Geography encloses china making it homogenous, from a world cultures perspective.

Japan is an island. same thing.

europe is pretty open ended in most directions. super heterogeneous (on a whole).

So, for me, culture is just what happens when people in a place begin influencing other people, echoing the influence that had been passed on to them from someone else, or somewhere else.

The more time in a place, or the more places in a time, or even ancestrally speaking, the more time in a place with people from a common sometimes different place, all add exponentially to the consilient ways of being.

and by ways of being, for civ purposes, i mean culture.



10 000 year NA native style, or 3400 judaic style, or 400 years metis style.

So, ultimately, defining characteristics of "a culture" are always passed down through peoples experience with their surroundings.

It all flows from the land.

On a purely conceptual level,

I love what Ikael is saying.

Love it.


And He's(she's) right, this kind of adjustment would make the game more interesting (depth+fun=interesting)

in my opinion.

Identity radius

gorgeous concept.

i think one of the main problems with wide empires is that it becomes very boring to set production and manage workers for dozens of cities.

I couldn't agree more. so just in terms of fun, this is a great motive.

gatsby takes it an important step further

"cultural identity decay":

Gatsby's concept of "cultural identity decays", and his breakdown thereafter, is a natural adjoining byproduct of this concept, and to boot, it has nice meaningful historic relevance.


In addition,

This specifically provides a meaningful late game entry point to land acquisition that doesn't have to come through war. some times i'm just not in the mood for war. this is a nice cultural equivalent to exploratory-like place acquisition - again, in the late game especially, which we currently only get to experience in the early to early-mid game.


Lastly,

A more historically way to determine distance is to measure the shortest time a person (or a message) needs to travel from the capital to the city .

Right thinking.

for urban planning the fifteen minute rule is a good and natural way to size up where a community is at.

one of the first things i do when i come to a new place and i want to know where the centre is, and I want to know what the place is all about, I begin walking. I walk for fifteen minutes in all direction, repeatedly, until i've got a general centre and a boundary fifteen minutes walking distance from there in all directions.

gives you the best idea where a single mother will travel with a bag of groceries and a kid in one arm.

I can relate to that, and i like it.



If i missed some other important comments specific to this theme, im sorry. Skimmed to this point. Only a few highlights of many.

great other branches of thought to follow up on.

hope firaxis is paying attention

 

[Ikael]

Hello again guys! I am really happy to see the debate that has took place in this topic! Lots of good ideas, good musings and good game design! Thank you all for contributing!

After reading the previous commentary of DM4444, I think that the "cultural identity radious" idea is worth of exploring, but after analyzing it I have encountered some flaws on it, namely, that if it would be matched with a cultural flipping mechanic, it would render the conquest of foreign capitals other than at the early game as near impossible. And as a second problem, we would need for culture to help into the other games aspects too if we would need it to help other areas if we want it to be relevant in the game rather than become its own self-contained part of the game.

So in order to mitigate that problem, expand upon the "culture as a relationship to the land" concept, and muse about what the future Civilization 6 might bring, I present you thee:

CULTURAL TRAITS: Reinforcing "culture as a place" of the identity radious concept as well as having another anti-snowball mechanism

>> Cultural traits mechanics

Rather than outright "flipping" enemy cities, cultural preassure (and trade routes) would make foreign cities acquire the cultural traits of stronger cultural civs, leaving said influence marked in the cities and viewable from the map.

>> >What are these "cultural traits"?

They could be one of these five cathegories, namely:

Language, customs, art, lifestyle and ideals

That is, the building blocks of any culture.

>> And how are they acquired?

By old fashioned cultural preassure (proximity to foreign cultured cities) and by the action of trade routes for a more far-reaching influence. When you couple this system with my previously proposed cultural identity radious mechanic (less culture and science output the further your cities are from your capital) that would mean that the fringes of large empires will almost always be filled with cities with foreign cultural traits present inside of them. It will also mean that old cultures might survive the
empires that spawned them in the first place, and that foreign conquest will make you acquire not only foreign cities, but their foreign culture as well.

Due to game balance reasons, a given city might not have more than 4 foreign cultural traits on it.

>> Ok, so what are the effects of these cultural traits?

The cool thing about cultural traits is that they will benefit both parties involved: Both the reciever and the exporter of culture will recieve a bonus. Which will mean that it will be an two edged sword: Do you want to give that type of advantage to foreign empires over yours or do you think that both will be able to prospere together?

In short, the decision between having a multicultural VS an isolationist empire will be a though one, and its usefulness will be almost entirely circumstantial and dependant of your overall strategy.

>> Seriously, what will be their in-game effects?

Advantages for IMPORTING a foreign cultural trait:

Every foreign cultural trait will add a +25% to the culture output of your city, as it gets enriched trough multiculturality.

Please note that when you couple this with the identity radious mechanism, that will mean that the cities that will benefit the most from adopting foreign cultural traits will be your core cities (aka, where culture is produced) while small, underdeveloped cities or far away colonies won't benefit at all from alll that pesky foreign influence. Which bring us to...

The advantages for EXPORTING successfully your cultural trait into foreign cities are dependant on which trait you export:

- Foreign cities with your religion will have a -40% ranged damage bonus and -40% HP penalty when fighting against your units
- Foreign cities with your language will give a +50% bonus to the yields of your incoming trade routes
- Foreign cities with your art will generate +2 culture in your capital
- Foreign cities with your lifestyle will give +1 food in one city of your choosing (growth due to inmigration)
- Adopting a foreign ideal will give your empire +2 science

>>> And how do I pick which traits do I want in my empire and which do not?

Easy. While cultural traits affects your empire on a per-city basis, you will manage them on an empire-wide basis trought the culture screen. The culture screen will allow you to decide which culture do you want to import, which one do you want to
resist, and which aspects of your culture do you want to export to each civ.

A civilization can have the following attitudes towards the culture of another civ:

Persecuting culture: -30% to the expansion of the rival culture into your civilization. Your cities where said culture is present will slowly purge it (if they have enough cultural output to pull this off). However, your civ will suffer a diplomatic penalty with said civilization, and you will have no choosing into which traits gets passed upon your civ

Resisting culture: +0% to the expansion of the rival culture into your civilization. You will have no saying into picking which traits gets passed upon your civ, this will have no diplomatic effect into the other civ. This is the "default" atitutde towards foreign cultures

Welcoming culture: +50% to the expansion of the rival civ culture into your civilization. However, your civ will be able to pick which aspect of your rival's culture your empire will adopt and you will gain a diplomatic bonus with said civ, which
will be major if you adopt their cultural pet's peeve (say, Arabia will be glad if you adopt their language, but they will love you if you try to adopt their religion)

This dynamic will open a very, very interesting game of risk calculation: Do you think that your culture will be powerful enough in order to resist that pesky foreign influence? Or perhaps it will be wiser to outright adopt another culture so you can pick which foreign cultural traits do you prefer inside your empire? Do you mend up broken relationships with former enemies by adopting their culture, or it is too much of a risk?

For you to have an idea of how that would traduce into the game, here's an example of France´s cultural screen in a random game (caps are for marking which parts you can modify by opening menus):

America is RESISTING French culture. You're trying to export French IDEAS into them
Germany is WELCOMING your French LANGUAGE into their empire. We're glad to enlighten them
Persia is WELCOMING your French ART into their empire. We're glad to enlighten them
Rome is PERSECUTING French culture. Our people will not tolerate this insult! You're trying to export French ART into them.

We have a policy of trying to RESIST American CULTURE. But they are trying to instill their lifestyle into us!
wE have a policy of trying to RESIST German CULTURE. But they are trying to instill their ideas into us!
We have a policy of trying to WELCOME Persian RELIGION. Persia is greatly pleased with our our cultural policy too!
We have installed a policy of trying to PERSECUTE Roman CULTURE. But they hate us for this, and they are trying to instill their LANGUAGE into us!

>> Special perks for cultural aspects

Needless to say, social policies and wonders will have an effect on your culture, too. They will grant unique bonuses for cities with your culture present inside of them, thus, they will make certain traits of your culture more attractive to adopt for foreign civilizations.

For example, building the Statue of Liberty will grant +50% great people to every city with your lifestyle present on it (aka, every city of your empire with no foreign lifestyles on them + foregin cities that have adopted your lifestyle too).

This will mean, however, that you might not be so eager to adopt foreign cultural traits, since they might substitute your more advanced native ones! (say, if you have built the Statue of Liberty and you have a city with a foreign lifestyle on it, it won't be benefitting from that bonus!)

>> Cultural decay, cultural permanence, and the advent of nationalism

And now, for the funny part of it. Every city of yours with a foreign cultural trait will be +50% more vulnerable to the action of enemy spies.

In addition to that, occuppied cities that retain part of their old culture will be extremely troublesome. If your civilization go trought a revolution (changing goverments) or falls into unrest (revolts, unhappiness), occuppied cities with foreign cultural traits present on may break off from your empire if they don't generate enough culture.

Not only that, but with the advent of nationalism, your spies will have a new covert ops weapon: You will be able to incite separatist movements inside foreign cities with cultural traits other than their own, even if they are not occuppied and even if their empire of origin has been wiped out long ago.

In short, foreign cultural aspects will make it far harder for big empires to retain their territories during the end game, unless they have worked extensively into culturally assimilate them, thus, making importing cultural traits a real long term treath for your empire, even if it is not as much as an inmediate obstacle as the city flipping mechanisms of yore.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

The problem with soft barriers is that they are what they are called - mere barriers. After you have overcome them, there is nothing that would stop you. In real life further development can be hindered by increasing administration costs, increasing military/defense costs, corruption, and secession tendencies. Which all can lead to empire collapse, which in Civ5 is totally impossible.

That's a good candidate list for "things that hurt wide styles". We are essentially proposing redoing IV (should be no surprise). City maintenance as a gloss of administrative costs and corruption is brilliance. As for secession, there is the difficult part, as you have to find this difficult line where it makes its impact yet doesn't ruin the player's experience.

I think that middle way can be found by crossbreeding the idea of 'secession' with the components of the "settle the world" toolbox and the cultural identity idea. Propose that currency is the point where taxes are introduced - no, let's do better: Propose that after a certain tech, your state becomes an empire that truly owns itself, whereas the period leading up to that is just a sort of seed time. You gain the privilege to even start exerting centralized control over the couple of settlements your people have, which means a price, but you can also acquire tax. This is how I see the game systems.

However, I also think there is a question of weather the header of "Mechanism for limiting expansion" is correct. I think "Mechanism for reversing expansion" is more appropriate. I would like to see real wars of American independence, Kingdom of Brazil and Bolivarian wars in much better format that the one offered in Rhye's and Falls of Civilisation in Civ IV, where collapse happened automatically (like cities flipping to another Civ in Civ III), not through actual war of independence.

Dynamic city-states. I think there has to be war, but the middleground we are searching for is to rid ourselves of presuming to "own" the civ's achievements, as a player. What I mean is, in Civ V there is a sense that your empire owns its science, and its policies, and if you went to war with one of your cities that is a starkly defined, absolute loss of something you had. Whereas if cities just sort of "hung together", were managed administratively and culturally, and bowed to certain economic or legal policies, then there is more of a sliding scale of loyalty (and control).

i would really like to have all the map settled, to found colonies even in the late game etc.
but the current city model does not scale well enough for this purpose.
maybe, there should be some mechanism to aggregate several cities in provinces to govern them as a whole. this would also allow for a faster production of stuff, but for some cost.

Sounds cool. Though I'm 100% against you on what you call boring (that management is identical with the game in my view), I have an idea for a mechanism that would serve your wish for state aggregation.
This came out of my thinking that limitations on the player's power can add depth; by making a bevy of options possible but not -all- freely in reach the game can further reward prioritization. So I propose something to accommodate this provincialization as well as the wish to reduce micro for taxes. If each action has a capital cost, and your supply of this administrative capital is limited, you would have to rely more on low-resolution mandates than micromanaged orders. So, every time you visit a screen that can redirect something, (change build, taxes, citizen assignments) you drain this capital. Thus a game system could exist that gave a cost/benefit to using the build queue to plan ahead! Grouping cities into provinces would, in this context, be a macro tool that even further saves on this capital.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Dynamic city-states. I think there has to be war, but the middleground we are searching for is to rid ourselves of presuming to "own" the civ's achievements, as a player. What I mean is, in Civ V there is a sense that your empire owns its science, and its policies, and if you went to war with one of your cities that is a starkly defined, absolute loss of something you had. Whereas if cities just sort of "hung together", were managed administratively and culturally, and bowed to certain economic or legal policies, then there is more of a sliding scale of loyalty (and control).

I definitely like the idea of Dynamic city states...., indeed it would probably be best if the world stated out mostly inhabited. (Settlers would be a way to boost the population of cities, rather than start them)
Your goal is to get the City states around to give you more and more of their benefits.

I do think it is important NOT to have "control over what a city is Doing" cost resources. Because that would just get frustrating. If I spend resource X to get resources A+B from a "city" then I should decide which resources I get freely.
Not 'you get B because the city AI decides to give you that, and you can spend More resources to try and get A instead

However you could have 'broad policies' that are better ways to 'extract' from your cities.

 

[Ikael]

You guys are having a quite intersting debate over here too! So let me weight in a bit:

- I don't quite like the whole "indirectly administering an empire" approach. I mean, yes, it is more realistic, but there was another game that followed that route (Master of Orion 3) and the effects were not as great as expected. I think that a middle ground should be founded here: Direct control, but several in-game limitators to stop you doing whatever you want. That is, you can exert total control over your empire (you are playing a videogame afterall) but with a price to your actions, so you are still conditioned like real-life rulers. I think mechanisms like war weariness helps into that: Yes, you can declare the war to whoever you want, but by paying a steep price (unhappiness)

- I am really loving the whole "dynamic city states" + "not as strong control of your empire" type of ideas that you guys are tossing here. I think that the whole process of empire break-up could benefit from it, but also that the player should have the option to avoid t hat outcome if he plays well his cards (for example, by culturizing the newly acquired territories so he avoids future independentist movements).