The Industrial Revolution?

[bene_legionary]

The industrial revolution was a major event for world history, even if it was centred in Europe. At that point Western Europe pulled ahead of other major civilizations like China, Japan, Russia and Turkey, and had a large increase in population size as the inventions put out in this period caused farming to be able to be done by fewer people and be able to feed more at the same time, leaving many people to do other things, for example, go to university and discover more things. As people became educated they demanded more things like running water and human rights, as well as amenities that were originally only for the upper class.

This isn't represented at all in Civ 6, and the process of industrialisation is a simple technology in the tech tree. Are there any ideas on some sort of a possible industrial revolution in a future Civ game, or should it stay as abstract as it is?

Personally I think this event is too big to ignore. At this point, the consequences of industrialising could be your population demanding much more amenities, while they become more productive and scientific. At the same time you will have a lot more people, so providing jobs and making them specialists will be very useful. Knowing when to industrialise will help your civilization a lot.

Historically, countries that initially failed at industrialisation, like China in the 1860s onwards and the Russians before 1900s, resulted in them having protracted civil wars. Broadly speaking, China was in constant civil war between 1912 to 1949. Therefore the consequences of not industrialising at the best time are very rough. But countries that can industrialise well (Japan, America) will see themselves farther ahead than others.

Industrialisation in this way is a very meaningful decision which throws up the tempo of the game. Of course more work needs to be done to make it hard to predict when it's best to industrialise, but I think that it's a good base to start on.

 

[BuchiTaton]

had a large increase in population size as the inventions put out in this period caused farming to be able to be done by fewer people and be able to feed more at the same time, leaving many people to do other things, for example, go to university and discover more things. As people became educated they demanded more things like running water and human rights, as well as amenities that were originally only for the upper class.

Sorry if I am being too fussy, but I think is better to say that once applied the new technologies the demand for industrial workers absorbed most of the population growth, included rural immigrants. Urban services, administrative and commercial jobs prospered accordingly to meet and exploit the massified necessities.

Now in terms of gameplay I have some points:
1- Population units should have the identity values as Heritage (=culture/ethnicity), Belief (=religion*) and Profession (=social class). This last is the more relevant for Industrial Revolution since would immigrate based on their need for amenities and a place to work. The different Professions include Farmers, Laborers, Traders, Artisans, Clerics, Scholars and Warriors, each could find job in the appropriate districts and tile improvements. Also different Goverment types are preferred by different professions.
2- Technologies like Synthetic Fertilizers, Mechanized Agriculture, Canning and Cooling, Vaccines, Antibiotics, etc. Would increase food production that mean population growth. Of course urban service improvements like Reservoir, Sewer and Hospital do their own part.
3- Industrial Zone district and its Factories must be avaible just until Industrial Era, before that the Workshops building could be part of the Neighborhood district. Workshops could produce goods like Ceramics, Textiles, Jewelry, etc. But Factories could produce a higher amount of those plus Electronics, Vehicles, Pharmaceutics, and also the synthetic form of resources like Nitrate, Rubber, etc. (these help to simulate the decline of "wide" colonial extractive empires and the rise of powerfull "tall" industrialized nations).
The Neighborhood's workshops would be less productive but still have the adventage of less environmental damage, dont need power and even turistic appeal from some late game civic.
4- Technology research could also feel very different. Scientific knowledge has growth like a snow ball as it advance, on early eras it could come in small amount from Palaces, Temples, Monasteries and Hospital for a small amount of techs. But then come the University that add jobs for many scholars and the Scientific Method that increase the science production, these for a bigger number of techs for the late eras.

In this model would be evident how some cities growth to Metropolis just until Industrail Era, and later to real Megalopolis in the final era, all from both more population but also new distritcs like Industrial Zones and Airfields.

 

[dagriggstar]

All I want out of the industrial revolution is
a) Cities to get grouped together into regions for the purposes of production. For example Washington, New York and Philadelphia are all connected by railway AND each have a factory. This means that those three cities can pool their production together.
b) Any post-industrial military unit or buildings cost absolutely skyrockets, to the point where for any practical purpose you have to industrialise if you want to build that destroyer.

I think that is simple enough to understand, places enough importance on the tech and from a gameplay perspective is a nice spot to go from "build as many units as you can" to "build only a few units but make them really strong".

 

[Hellenism Salesman]

Any post-industrial military unit or buildings cost absolutely skyrockets, to the point where for any practical purpose you have to industrialise if you want to build that destroyer.

This is such a perfect, simple way of portraying the need for industrialization in even just a partly industrialized world. Apply this to districts like Spaceports, too.

On this note, I feel like purchasing vehicle units (tanks, planes, boats, etc.) should be a viable way of acquiring them for unindustrialized civs.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Civilization's gameplay is based on a strong inertia. It takes time to build yourself ahead of the others and it's difficult to catch back after a poor start. In the real world, History has been a lot more versatile, with multiple relatively short-term events reshuffling entirely world powers before others would later catch back. Agricultural revolution, the following demographic booming and industrial revolution is one of those events, but there are others (age of bronze, age of iron, control of the silk road, age of discovery, more negatively black death and more recently globalization, etc.).

The main issue I believe is about gameplay balance. How to do all this in the game while avoiding the human player to take advantage of it to definitely destroy his opponents, therefore making the game too easy? How a total domination at a specific period of time could be later challenged by an AI (or Human) successfully catching back? I think it would be a great thing if the game would be less linear, with periods of time when the player would struggle, or even gets nearly eradicated, but with the possibility to still be coming back later and beat them all. In theory at least that would be awesome, but it could be really hard to find the good balance without discourageing the player facing tough times and still making a successful catchback felt as an earned reward.

Without taking all this in consideration, the risk would be for the player doing the industrial revolution first to ensure victory, basically ruining the interest in the later eras of the game.

 

[AntSou]

Population units should have the identity values as Heritage (=culture/ethnicity), Belief (=religion*) and Profession (=social class).

Social Class might perhaps be a bit too much for a game like Civ.

Anyway, what I really want and need RIGHT NOW is Victoria 3

 

[Naokaukodem]

Civilization's gameplay is based on a strong inertia. It takes time to build yourself ahead of the others and it's difficult to catch back after a poor start. In the real world, History has been a lot more versatile, with multiple relatively short-term events reshuffling entirely world powers before others would later catch back. Agricultural revolution, the following demographic booming and industrial revolution is one of those events, but there are others (age of bronze, age of iron, control of the silk road, age of discovery, more negatively black death and more recently globalization, etc.).

The main issue I believe is about gameplay balance. How to do all this in the game while avoiding the human player to take advantage of it to definitely destroy his opponents, therefore making the game too easy? How a total domination at a specific period of time could be later challenged by an AI (or Human) successfully catching back? I think it would be a great thing if the game would be less linear, with periods of time when the player would struggle, or even gets nearly eradicated, but with the possibility to still be coming back later and beat them all. In theory at least that would be awesome, but it could be really hard to find the good balance without discourageing the player facing tough times and still making a successful catchback felt as an earned reward.

Without taking all this in consideration, the risk would be for the player doing the industrial revolution first to ensure victory, basically ruining the interest in the later eras of the game.

I think it's what Humankind (the game) tried to do with "fame". I don't know how it works though, all I know is that it doesn't seem to change much to the player all-power.

Considering the game time span, I considered once to make cities growth instant instead of linear, still depending on food, plus on immigrations of all sorts, health, diseases, amenities, technologies, etc. Not only that would make for a more realistic picture (with relative mega cities in Antiquity), but it would also make "era" shifts possible.

I don't know if that would make "first to industrialization wins", but with a system of collapse (see my signature) it could be possible.

 

[BuchiTaton]

Social Class might perhaps be a bit too much for a game like Civ.

Anyway, what I really want and need RIGHT NOW is Victoria 3

We already have Specialists, pretty much the only new parts is their interaction with the kind of government and civics you select and the immigration mechanic.

 

[luca 83]

the industrial revolution should mark 3 phases the first from the end of the 700 development of textile systems, steam, and coal, mills and industrial chains, tanneries, clothing and the first steam trains second half of the 800, iron, steel, electricity, railways, mass transportation systems enormous growth of cities such as chigago, mnchester, then we consider the political part, laws, labor, hours, juvenile, unions, strikes, revolutions, from 1821, to 1917, the revolutions of 1848. the spring of the peoples, the commune of pais 1871, the unification of germany and italy, secret societies, napoleon iii's second empire, the race for africa, a consequence of the hunt for raw materials, etc.

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

Industrialization is an interesting concept in exploring the potential of Civilization as well as the deliberate choices made in its design. For example, just because Britain led the way in embracing imperialism and industrialization, does that mean in any version of the world the first power to industrialize would also subjugate vast fractions of the world's land and population? Likewise, are coal and textiles the bread and butter of any Industrial Revolution or more so the factors that contributed to our own?

I certainly agree that the game could model the social aspects of industrialization (and BuchiTaton rightly links back to population dynamics), but 19th-century industrial powers also faced numerous burdens from such leaps. In a way, Civ VI already models one, which is the burden of innovating where merely discovering Industrialization does not guarantee access to coal. In particular, if the nearest reserves are so far as to preclude military acquisition, one's factories may go unpowered until another civilization "catches up." Another factor would be how industrialization was followed by patterns of investment that themselves restructured industry while often also influencing global conflict and colonialism.

I do like dag's idea of pooling regional production for industrial units. It could be a compromise on Humankind's wonder-building mechanism that unlocks with industrialization, factories, and a rail link as mentioned.

 

[Krajzen]

What am I going to say now will sound really surreal, but I genuinely think this game should combine racing games design approaches with historical processes such as industrialization in order to better deal with this issue.

What am i trying to say, is that breakthroughs such as industrialization are a good candidates to act as natural rubberbands, making some dynamic smaller civilizations rise faster than certain cumbersome larger civilizations. Look at the world map in the year 1570 and try to guess that by the year 1914 England, English spinoff, Brandenburg, France, Muscovy, Japan, Austria, "Italy" (?) and Netherlands are going to be world's major empires, while Spain, Ottomans, Persia and China are going to be in a miserable shape of decay, with India controlled by England of all civs. Industrialization preceded by scientific resolution was the main reason for the world order being turned on its head during this timeframe. Sometimes history jumps exponentially instead of following linear predictable patterns.

How to make such 'rubberband' events feel good to the player and game flow I dont know, but racing games have dealt with this issue for a long time, where you as a dev always want player controlled car to not be too far from rivals, and you always want some opportunity for losers to comeback.

I think it's what Humankind (the game) tried to do with "fame". I don't know how it works though

Horribly. Even worse than civ approach. In civ5 at least in theory you can mostly suck in comparision to AI players for most of the game session and yet still win in the very end by properly setting up space race/UN votes/culture through your game. It is quite normal to win culture victories in civ5 while not being the most powerful political entity on the map.

Meanwhile in HK it is not just possible but frequent that runaway civs get so much fame halfway through the game, or 2/3 through the game (hell it is possible to do that 1/3 through the game!) that is becomes seemingly mathematically impossible for other civs to catch up to their expotential fame growth. If I recall correctly - dead civs can win the game this way. Generally it's as if our real life "game" of civilization ended in the year 2022 with the clear victory of Roman Empire, as British or Americans failed to get enough fame points. Also, fame in HK is perpetuum mobile where all types of fame make getting more fame even faster, being big means being great. Who on Earth thought this was a solution instead of worsening of 4x runaway problem - I have no idea. Combine this with incredibly insane exponential economic growth of HK, where you start with 50 production and may accidentally end up with your 20,000 production being 10 times more that all other players combined (I genuinely did that on my second play through while having no idea what am I doing) and you end up with truly enthraling curb - stomp simulator.

 

[luca 83]

It would be necessary to put back the population percentages as in iv to create a simulation of immigration, and remove the cultural bombs, and buy land to build or irrigate, only economic percentages: The population emigrates only where there is more wealth or more food, you could integrate a settler who increases the popolazzione as in the one, strikes as in iv but not for reasons of lack of money but for social claims, economic, as regards the population I think that as management people cal to power was very ambitious you could give or take away food to a category, how much to work, and aumantare or decrease the various social classe

 

[rocksinmypath]

All I want out of the industrial revolution is
a) Cities to get grouped together into regions for the purposes of production. For example Washington, New York and Philadelphia are all connected by railway AND each have a factory. This means that those three cities can pool their production together.
b) Any post-industrial military unit or buildings cost absolutely skyrockets, to the point where for any practical purpose you have to industrialise if you want to build that destroyer.

I think that is simple enough to understand, places enough importance on the tech and from a gameplay perspective is a nice spot to go from "build as many units as you can" to "build only a few units but make them really strong".

It'd be interesting to make inter-city collaborations inherently inefficient, and through technological advancements and infrastructure development, they become increasingly efficient.

For example, don't require factories and railways between cities for collaboration. Instead, allow any groups of cities with at least basic roads between them to collaborate, but plain roads incur 10% per tile penalty to production from another city. For cities A & B that are the closest the game will allow them to be (4 tiles between), when B collaborates on A's projects, there's a 40% penalty to B's contribution. (If these cities were 10 ore more tiles apart, a 100% penalty is applied, making collaboration useless without boosts). Once trains are researched and the road between the city are upgraded to railway (this upgrade requires production), the penalty is improved by 2% per tile (down to 32%). Another 2% per tile reduction with invention of cars (24%). Another 1% if A & B have harbours if there's a short enough sea route between them, say 10 tiles. Another 2% when flight is researched and airports are built in both cities (16%). Finally, with the invention of telecommunication and the internet, a distance-agnostic bonus of 10% can be applied, for a final penalty of only 6%.