Suggestion: Revamp the industrialisation

[Lazy Knight]

Hi all,

It is no secret that the industrialisation is portrayed very poorly in CiV and I must admit I do not know how much this has changed in VEM. From my perspective, the so called "industrial era" of CiV should receive a major revamp. I think this era was a turning point in history (just look at this graph)

Spoiler :

and gave rise to new powers in the world (e.g. US, UK (not new, I admit), Germany) while other nations stayed behind.

A lot could be done by rearranging technologies to emphasize this era (Steel(!), metallurgy, chemistry, railroads, elicitricity, there is just so much wrong here)

But the main idea which should also shake existing power-distributions in this era is tying strategic ressources into the building part of the game. Notably existence of coal and iron would allow a civ to excel in this era.

This makes the game more interesting because:

• There would always be a kind of tradeoff wether you want to spend your ressource on improving the economy or improving your military.
• It would also change the choice of building based on your ressource situation and thus make the building side of games more varied
• It would increase the value of strategic ressources
• It could make early game ressources relevant in the late game

There are some difficulties though, two spring to my mind immediatly

• Investments in buildings are long-term, units obsolete after a time. There needs to be some kind of balancing.
• Can the AI deal with it?

Here are some building suggestions which could replace buildings or be added, which would cost a strategic ressource. All of these are of course just suggestion but I would like to not focus any discussion on the specifics of the buildings for now, but rather the concept in general. The buildings are just for illustration purposes.

Horses
Trading post
+1, +1, +1c5gold
requires 1 Horse

Stable (changed)
+ 15% production
requires 1 Horse

Iron
Forge (changed)
+15%
requires 1 Iron



Coal

Coal Plant
provides 1 unit of Elicitricity
costs 1 Coal

Textile Mill
+, +, +
costs 1 coal

Train Station
+, +
costs 1 coal and 1 iron


Steel
Steelworks
provides 2 units of steel
requires 1 unit of coal and 1 unit of iron

Factory
+, +
requires 1 unit of steel



Oil
Refinery

Chemical Plant


Aluminium

Elictricity
Power Plants (Hydro, Solar, Coal Plant, Nuclear Plant) provide elictricity

Late game buildings (Labs, Broadcast Tower) could require elictricity


Uranium
Nuclear Plant (Unchanged)



I am fairly certain more creative people than me could think of tons of more buildings to add to the zoo. The idea could also be expanded somewhat to other ressources, notably stone, textiles come to mind, but it'd then compete with the system which requires local ressources, which may or not may be a good thing.

 

[mystikx21]

We've been having this debate in some form or another over adding new buildings to the mod.

Couple thoughts that have come out of that and in response to the specifics herein.

1) I don't think it is necessary to have resource requiring buildings for horses or iron other than any local improvement requirement. Neither is a strategic resource for the duration of human history. It would be appealing to a have use for these later in the game, but it shouldn't be seen as a necessity. Particularly in relation to the concept of industrialising nation-states where neither has much to do with it. In addition, I would be far less likely to build a forge or stable if they took away the ability to build a mounted or swords unit to do so. Both buildings I am already generally unlikely to build except in special circumstances. The bonuses they provided would have to be far more substantial to create interest (XP, considerable speed, free upkeep, extra production all over the place rather than on special resources.) None of which would be realistic or easily balanced.

1a) The game does not model industrialised growth especially well, but the tech and production rates both can accelerate rapidly beginning at that era for established powers in the game. It would probably be less fun for game play to make this breakaway growth more rapid AND more resource dependent than it already is by creating larger modifiers or a more extensive trade system. I (and others) do have some interest in the concept of a "skyscraper" reflecting rapid urbanisation and growth of population and population density, and it's possible this could require a resource.

2) Steel is not a modern strategic resource in real life. Only extremely large projects or very large global wars and resulting massive trade disruptions have ever limited any industrial country's ability to use steel. This cuts against a need for adding it as a requirement for anything late in the game that coal would not suffice for just as well, such as for factories. Oil is limited and strategically important as a fuel. Aluminum was temporarily limited when airplanes first began using it in large quantities for jets, but is not today. It is at best a proxy for a much less known set of "rare earth metals".

3) It could be interesting and fun to have either an aluminum or oil late game building, or both, in the way that uranium can provide domestic benefits instead of missiles, or coal can provide military units instead of factories. Airports and superhighways are both appealing in that vein. However. It would be best to proceed from the idea of a building providing a new or special effect that is lacking from the base game rather than looking for methods of introducing new buildings and then looking for their possible effects. We haven't been able as yet to decide on the essential functions of either building. Which does not bode well for more extensive modifications. A new concept of a building should fit an existing need first before requiring a larger modification. That would be in the spirit of a modmod and is fine to undertake. I enjoy playing more complex economic strategy games too, so I would have interest in that, if the AI can figure out extensive systems of resource dependent paths for new resources. I'm dubious of this as it's essentially adding a new feature to the game.

4) Electricity is abstractly represented as additional production. It is not a significant modern strategic resource in and of itself. If a country has the capacity socially to develop "research labs" or "broadcast towers", it's not a country that lacks electrical grid capacity. In addition, the game already models this by requiring coal indirectly for a number of late game production buildings (factories, power plants and spaceship factory)

5) Why would factories add science by default? Large institutional investment in lines of production are just as likely to calcify development and inhibit new ideas than spur competition over them. The main economic advantage of mass production lines is efficiency, which is what factories do already in the game. You should have to select a social policy to demonstrate the reorganisation of society against vertical firms of this type and thus foster scientific growth from competition.

 

[Ahriman]

I agree in general with mystixk. Yes, industrialization was a huge deal in real history, but that kind of difference can be bad for gameplay if it means that whoever hits the industrial era first can snowball that into a hug power boost. We need players slightly behind in tech to still be competitive.

 

[Calavente]

technically US did not become an power due to industrialisation per-se.
IIRC it was mostly due to
-forced industrialisation to prepare to war.
-WW1 that mainly destroyed europe's active population and many of its productivity and commerce means.
thus US filled the gap... and never gave back the place.
(it would be like china filling the gap left by USSR...)

However I think that there could be ressource dependant building in late era.... but depending on having the ressource in the city tiles... not in the trade network.

might be nice.
horse-track : +2 happy, +5gold, buildable if horse in the city tiles.
for iron I've no idea but it might still be nice.

 

[mystikx21]

Unless you mean the Civil War for forced industrialisation, I'm not sure what you mean there. US GDP passed the British Empire's by the Ben Harrison administration and was already pretty close when Grant was in office. US was already a global power as well prior to WW1 from victories against Mexico and Spain, and the Panama Canal "influence" throughout Latin America.

 

[Calavente]

well I disagree.
by forced industrialisation I meant WW1
WW1 (and later WW2) and not industrialisation by itself was the main cause of US becoming a 1st-classe power and then a superpower.
without any of those WW, US wouldn't have had the same increase in weight on the international place.

further, as a counter exemple, Japan catchup of the industrialisation era made is a big power in no time.

 

[mystikx21]

I think you are overlooking the gilded age economically and the Mahan+Roosevelt era internationally. If you mean hegemonic power sure, WW1-2 played a heavy role. But I take the meaning as a major power, eg Japan, to suggest the US already had that role well before the war eras just as Prussia-Germany did. Hegemony is rarer than the multi-polar world (like that of USSR and America or the UK and Germany in Europe). Major power is enough to buy a seat at the table without owning the table.

Catch-up growth like that of Japan or China or even Brazil suggests that the Industrial Revolution shouldn't play much of a powerful role for the initial powers that get it. It should be significant in the form of railroads, factories, steam to oil shipping. But it need not be suggestive of massive hegemonic power on its own as the initial post would suggest. I think we would agree on that.

 

[mystikx21]

So far as horses go, I think the circus does already what would be wanted. If, and I stress if, it were necessary to improve horses during industrialisation, we could just add a tech based function to the existing building. I don't at all think that's necessary for game play or realism.

For iron, I think there is a very weak case as steel in modern times. But it seems enough to extend the life span of swords from gunpowder to rifling. Thal also seems intent on using iron for ironclads, and possibly for skyscrapers. If they are added. I don't think this is necessary either, but I am more willing to look at the idea of adding some modern buildings (airport, highways, skyscraper) and make them resource dependent somehow than to worry about the late game utility of horses.

 

[Calavente]

well I disagree, obviously.

for japan, they went from medieval to industrialisation without renaissance ; their neighbourgh didn't go the industrialisation route. that's why they got power in early XX ; they became a major power for all asia.

US wasn't a power in early XX, before WW1.
It was industrialised but had a small political power.
UK, France, Germany, Austria, Poland, Russia and Ottoman were the political powers

after WW1 it became a major power. Russia was not as it was in revolution. US, France, UK, Italia, japan were the powers.
after WW2 a dominant power with USSR; UK, China, France stayed "major" of sort but without the same importance. (Japan and Germany rose back to major power of sort : economically but not politically).
after USSR collapse an hegemonic power.
now back again to dominant power. (china rose, EU started, India rose, Japan stayed very big in economical power, brasil is starting)

well that's the way I see it.

 

[mystikx21]

US had considerable political power and diplomatic influence prior to WW1. What do you think TR got a Peace Prize for? Why do you think the Entente powers tried to lobby us into WW1? What was going on in the entire western hemisphere? Other than the UK and a couple random colonies from the Dutch or French, it was more or less the US running central America and the Caribbean (including at times Mexico) and who kept Europe more or less out of South America.

US had colonies in the Pacific and more won in a war against Spain. Bought Alaska off the Russians, beat Mexico and vastly expanded land in that war in the 19th century. I'd say after that point, or certainly after the Civil War, the US was already a major power both economically and internationally.

I don't think military buildups are the most central factors in how that growth is used or developed either. Diplomatic power doesn't require it and the US did have a very large navy at a time when naval power was supreme. Maybe we disagree about how much power this is but it sounds sufficient for major influential player on the great powers model to me, certainly prior to WW1. I don't know why it doesn't to you. Nor have you explained. Nor do you need to. It's not that important an argument.

Incidentally, Chinese and Indian growth now could be considered in the same manner as Japan's or much of SE Asia. Effectively skipping the renaissance with rapid technological and industrial growth instead. Perhaps that bodes poorly for a euro-centric tech tree path. But that has little to do with whether civilisations should be skipping huge sections of human history and institutional developments in a game by its design rather than by player's choice.

Suffices, I think this is an amusing side argument at best. It's more pressing to the thread whether or not industrial growth is or should be modeled more accurately in the game. And I'd still say no both for game play and for catchup-growth realism reasons.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

edit: WRONG THREAD

 

[Ahriman]

I think dead-end techs are out given our limited AI access. AIs won't be able to choose when to get them and when to ignore them.

I think major events should also be beyond the scope of a balance mod.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

what the....

wrong thread!

 

[Thalassicus]

I've considered adding horse/iron requirements to things like the Circus/Stable in the past. It would provide an economic vs military tradeoff. I like the concept, but it typically receives lukewarm support, so I focused on other priorities.

My usual point about lategame iron/steel is aluminum is not a realistic strategic resource either. The game is abstract, and I'm okay with that. The important thing is combining fun gameplay with a reasonable amount of realism.