C2C - Civics Discussion Thread

[Hydromancerx]

All I am saying i that its a bit frustrating when you spent months debating, balancing and then coming to an agreement on a topic only to have it changed because someone new comes and was not aware of the topic before. Which is basically what CIVPlayer8 is doing with this. I can see now why ls612 has been so frustrated with things like this.

 

[Snofru1]

I agree with everything Hydro writes here. I do like the city limits, it is a challenge for the early game which otherwise can become a little bit boring when there are not a lot animals left for hunting. I really like it to make these difficult decisions whether you want to build this one city on the excellent spot or keep your nation happier. Or otherwise just research quicker to get that better civic. And I hate it when 99% of the world (or at least the starting continent) is already settled before Rennaissance starts...

It is also good when this isn´t important anymore in the later game when you have so many other things at hand.

 

[GT Ranma]

- Anarchism
- Chiefdom
- Despotism
- Monarchy
- Republic
- Theocracy
- Democracy
- Confederacy
- Federal
- Totalitarianism
- People's Republic
- Digital Democracy
- Technocracy
- Corporatocracy

Why did you take these out? You had around 8 different choices that had unlimited cities. If Democracy was the unrestricted version of Republic than Totalitarianism was the unrestricted version of Despotism.

... There are so many governments to choose from, I don't see why we are pigeon hole'ing our selves into only have 1 or 2 to choose from at any one point in time. For example this is just option on Democracy it's self:

Direct Democracy:
Representative Democracy:
Deliberative Democracy:
Demarchy:
E-Democracy:
Athenian Democracy:
Liberal Democracy:
Totalitarian Democracy:
ect ect.

Governments are as unique as the back of a person's hand.

The only way to make options like this a reality, is to go in the way Civ is heading and make the specific parts of the government be options in the Civic section.

So to make say, Japan, you would to take Power: Unitary, Executive Branch: Parliament, Power Source: Democracy, Political Power: Constitutional Monarchy.
ect ect.

Having stuff like Digital Democracy in the government section seems redundant when you can make it already through the options in the Civic panel.

I mean seriously, there are only 3 modern political systems, Authoritarianism, Monarchy and Democracy. That is it, every thing else is just a modification of those 3 things. (Now, Anthropological forms, there are more of them, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_system if you are interested)

 

[JosEPh_II]

Moogle and Wimpy have summed up my frustrations over City Limits and what Gov'ts they are attached to and to the Number Limit.

And even though the City Limits have been set, like Hydro states, for sometime now, his reasoning and limits are/is another reason I do Not use City Limits and never will.

It's why I continually say that City Limits is a wasted piece of code to artificially restrict an Expansionist playstyle and hinder (it actually nullifies) the Expansionist leader trait. No Gov't Civic should ever have a City Limit attached to it imho. But if it does, it should be a direct ratio to map size only.

JosEPh

 

[MaXimillionZero]

City limits are pretty much a necessity for limiting expansion at present, since the gold situation just gets out of hand around the time you have Furniture workers, Jewelleries (which should have their tech requirement fixed btw) and Shrines operational. I don't really foresee that being fixed satisfactorally at any point considering the history of the mod so far.

The two main problems I can see with city limits are that the AI deals poorly with them, and that they don't scale. The former should be mostly fixable with forcing the AI to check it's cities' happiness against the future limits before swapping, although I'm not familiar with the AI code so I can't say that for sure.

The problem of scaling, though, should also be fairly easy to fix in my opinion, assuming map sizes and researched techs can (be made to) affect civic properties. Simply assign all the government civics (apart for anarchy and chiefdom, since those really shouldn't be viable later on) a modifier based on how good they should be regarding large amounts of cities, scale that modifier depending on map size, and then increase the cap proportionally to the modifier whenever specific technologies* are available.

This approach would allow different governments even later in the game, but would still retain the fact that different ones are better for different sized empires. And since it would be based on map size as well it would solve problems related to gigantic and tiny maps at the same time.


*Either the various road and logistic techs, or writing, code of laws, civil service etc. would work.

 

[strategyonly]

I think alot of these ideas (and WOW) alot of them, nice debating here buys, plus this also:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=482620

Now if the SDK personnel COULD make it a regular BUG option, i believe everyone would be happy then.

 

[Thunderbrd]

You want City Limits to be something we can change in play? I've got a lot of options I have to go that way with on an upcoming project, I can switch it over then. It can wait a month or so can it not?

 

[GT Ranma]

You want City Limits to be something we can change in play? I've got a lot of options I have to go that way with on an upcoming project, I can switch it over then. It can wait a month or so can it not?

Off the top of my head I think it should be able to wait that long, if we put the limits back to what was agreed upon in previous conversations (for now) people won't be able to complain we changed it first off, and the people who don't use it won't care either way. So that way you could have time to change it from the World Creation menu, to an in game menu. At least I assume that is what you are talking about?

I really feel CivPlayer8 should post the changes here before he posts it to the SVN, so we can have a discourse on proposed changes before they go live, so that there isn't an explosion of angry people that something is different

 

[Hydromancerx]

Moogle and Wimpy have summed up my frustrations over City Limits and what Gov'ts they are attached to and to the Number Limit.

And even though the City Limits have been set, like Hydro states, for sometime now, his reasoning and limits are/is another reason I do Not use City Limits and never will.

It's why I continually say that City Limits is a wasted piece of code to artificially restrict an Expansionist playstyle and hinder (it actually nullifies) the Expansionist leader trait. No Gov't Civic should ever have a City Limit attached to it imho. But if it does, it should be a direct ratio to map size only.

JosEPh

And that's why its an optional setting. However if we are going to have it (which I think we should) it should not be so lax as 25 for Despotism and 30 for Monarchy. They might as well be considered unlimited when you have that many allowed.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Maybe so on the Large map you like (and iirc are forced to play on). But not on a Giant and above map.

JosEPh

 

[Taxman66]

That's why I've been suggesting having the limits (and that includes the %costs) adjustable for map sizes.

 

[ls612]

And that's why its an optional setting. However if we are going to have it (which I think we should) it should not be so lax as 25 for Despotism and 30 for Monarchy. They might as well be considered unlimited when you have that many allowed.

Maybe so on the Large map you like (and iirc are forced to play on). But not on a Giant and above map.

JosEPh

How about instead I make it so that City Limits are tied to Map Size? Would anyone take issue with that, so long as they remained an option?

 

[strategyonly]

How about instead I make it so that City Limits are tied to Map Size? Would anyone take issue with that, so long as they remained an option?

I like it but lets see what everyone else thinks. .

Looking at JosEPh_II

And that's why its an optional setting. However if we are going to have it (which I think we should) it should not be so lax as 25 for Despotism and 30 for Monarchy. They might as well be considered unlimited when you have that many allowed.

You know that really depends, from what i am seeing now from the AI, the expansion is waaaay better than it used to be, infact in my present game i have 4 cities and Germany has 14, and Hiram has about the same, just going all over the globe as much as they can and making a POP 1 size city and going from there, (but of course then you dont have that many defenders per say) but thats alot of cities. And this is just in the very very early part of Ancient Era. By the time i razed 2 of Germany's cities they put back 3.

 

[GT Ranma]

@ls612:
That would make it more... better? Brain fart time.

Also, just an idea, but would anyone think that an 'Infrastructure' type civic be good to have that could further modify said City Limits? In case someone wants to spend more money to allow them to have a few extra cities?

@Strategyonly:
Yeah, I play on Noble or Prince difficulty usually, and without City Limits I get DESTROYED -..- It is crazy. One game I was playing islands, and I had managed to take over an opponent's island. My score was about 1000, compared to the 3 other countries I knew of I was doing good. Till I met Germany and their score was over 3000... I restarted right then -..-

 

[Hydromancerx]

How about instead I make it so that City Limits are tied to Map Size? Would anyone take issue with that, so long as they remained an option?

I think it depends on what the limits are. If say Large/Huge had stuff like I posted but then maps beyond that had the larger scale than I think that would satisfy both. Also for smaller pas would we need less? So something like ...

|Duel|Tiny|Small|Standard|Large|Huge|Giant|Gigantic|Enormous|Immense
Anarchism|1|1|2|2|3|3|4|4|5|5
Chiefdom|2|2|4|4|6|6|8|8|10|10
Despotism|6|6|8|8|10|10|12|12|20|20
Monarchy|8|8|10|10|12|12|20|20|30|30
Republic|10|10|15|15|20|20|30|30|40|40
Theocracy|10|10|15|15|20|20|30|30|40|40

What do you think?

 

[ls612]

@ls612:
That would make it more... better? Brain fart time.

Also, just an idea, but would anyone think that an 'Infrastructure' type civic be good to have that could further modify said City Limits? In case someone wants to spend more money to allow them to have a few extra cities?

It would make it more balanced for smaller maps (and for the new bigger maps too I suppose), and isn't that hard of a change.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I like it but lets see what everyone else thinks. .

Looking at JosEPh_II

<snip>

You know you can put really anything you want in this Mod as long as you Leave it as an Option. (But some of the modders chafe over that because it does require extra work, looking at Koshling)

JosEPh

 

[JosEPh_II]

@ls612:
<snip>

@Strategyonly:
Yeah, I play on Noble or Prince difficulty usually, and without City Limits I get DESTROYED -..- It is crazy. One game I was playing islands, and I had managed to take over an opponent's island. My score was about 1000, compared to the 3 other countries I knew of I was doing good. Till I met Germany and their score was over 3000... I restarted right then -..-

Aww!!! I can't believe you chickened out and didn't fight thru it. It would've been the best game you ever had! Just think if you had won, after a glorious and long hard fought struggle against the oppressor AI Germany, the braggin' rights alone!

JosEPh

 

[GT Ranma]

You know you can put really anything you want in this Mod as long as you Leave it as an Option. (But some of the modders chafe over that because it does require extra work, looking at Koshling)

JosEPh

Well, if you code it so that "Standard" size maps are what the City Size is based off of, then you'd just need a modifier for the smaller and larger ones. This would cut down a little on the code needed to be changed every time the Civics are updated. He would just need to change the base # in Standard entry to modify every size's city limits.

Edit @ Jo Jo:
Man, I wish I could have, but they had better units and a TON more then me (I think the military thingy was at like 0.4, which I believe means they have a buttload more units then me), and even 4-5 times more cities then me. It was impossible. I can't even win on that difficulty if they are double my score, triple it would just be like USA deciding to Annex Canadia

 

[strategyonly]

I think it depends on what the limits are. If say Large/Huge had stuff like I posted but then maps beyond that had the larger scale than I think that would satisfy both. Also for smaller pas would we need less? So something like ...

|Duel|Tiny|Small|Standard|Large|Huge|Giant|Gigantic|Enormous|Immense
Anarchism|1|1|2|2|3|3|4|4|5|5
Chiefdom|2|2|4|4|6|6|8|8|10|10
Despotism|6|6|8|8|10|10|12|12|20|20
Monarchy|8|8|10|10|12|12|20|20|30|30
Republic|10|10|15|15|20|20|30|30|40|40
Theocracy|10|10|15|15|20|20|30|30|40|40

What do you think?

Looks fine and all, but as they say "looks can be deceiving at times."

You know you can put really anything you want in this Mod as long as you Leave it as an Option. (But some of the modders chafe over that because it does require extra work, looking at Koshling)

JosEPh

Exactly my point.

The only thing i am concerned then about is there is (and i might be wrong here) but way too much and in the beginnings of the games, if that was toned down some it would be better, (IMHO)

Aww!!! I can't believe you chickened out and didn't fight thru it. It would've been the best game you ever had! Just think if you had won, after a glorious and long hard fought struggle against the oppressor AI Germany, the braggin' rights alone!

JosEPh

I agree here, thats why its harder than heck playing, but its way more fun that way.