C2C Ideas Project development thread

[Thunderbrd]

In C2C we have properties. And we have culture from the original CivIV. We also have culture(s) as implemented by Hydro initially.

It has long been a consideration to make cultures compete in similar ways to the way core national culture from vanilla does. Core Culture represents the national identity but the 'cultures' represent the cultural identities of the people. In the US, for example, we have Mexican, Italian, Russian, Polish, (the list could go on forever) people all living here and for the MOST part we all define ourselves as Americans. But what it means to be a part of the US doesn't separate you from what it means to be from another heritage. If you started getting a vast majority of people identifying themselves with being, say, Mexican, and did NOT identify themselves with being American, then you'd start to have some national identity issues that could cause a divisive crisis.

And within the span of a given national border, many sub-cultures can exist that compete with one another.


But it doesn't stop there. We also have religions and languages and opinions on what laws should or shouldn't be. These are all ideas in competition in a given population.

The Ideas project intends to encompass these concept conflicts among the people and show real changes on a grand scale.

Putting cultures into Ideas will help us to craft special element prerequisites. A city can identify with one or more cultures but does it identify with one type of culture enough to build its special building or one of its special units? And I think this is a good place to start.

Cultures would be a 'competitive idea'. This means that any measurement of an idea's influence in this category would be represented as a percentage of the overall total of influences in a city or player. Thus, to put it very simply, if I have 60 influence from Celtic and 40 influence from Neanderthal cultures in a city, the city would show that it is 60% Celtic and 40% Neanderthal. But the same would be true if the Celtic influence was 12 and the Neanderthal influence was 8. No matter how great one influence became, it remains in competition with the other influences it is competing with.

I'm thinking these %s of influence should be trackable and visible to the player in cities (with something similar to the original culture bar) and when units are trained in a city, it inherrits the majority influence culture as its culture combat class. This can help then guide the unit in other ways later like special promos, and perhaps even loyalties.

The nation should total the influences and at the player level you can also show cultural %s. This will lead to what cultures can be adopted (as a very special category of civics.) and if a player allows his adopted culture to differ dramatically from his people's cultural %s, he could be looking at a new type of revolution potentially.

Before we get to these end goal kind of effects, it's going to be important to sort out HOW the math will function to make influences increase, decrease, be shared with other cities, be influenced by units, etc...


And that's what this thread is for.

I've initiated the project by generating 2 new info classes: IdeaClasses and Ideas.

Idea Classes are the categories within which competitive ideas must vie with each other and can also indicate categories that are non-competitive where influences rise and fall independently of the other ideas in the class (spreading stories for example do not compete with each other.) I still need to put a boolean in for competitive vs non-competitive.

Ideas are the items within the classes. We can put tags in here to craft the way ideas compete. The strength of some ideas may be more than others. The speed at which an idea can spread or decline may vary by the idea itself.


I have set the platform up for developing tags and dynamics but those are NOT in place at all at this time. It's going to take a full team effort to develop this out further. We'll need UI, lots of xml work, and lots of brainstorming and discussion to figure out how to best encapsulate the waxing and waning of ideas and then lots of work to adapt the objects that would base themselves on them.

So the door is open for us to talk this out.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Reserved for Updates

 

[Thunderbrd]

Reserved for Noted project list

• Add a bool for IdeaClassInfos to denote Competitive vs Non-Competitive idea category.

 

[Sparth]

Ok I generally like this but I think civ4 system in O-1. You can build something or you cant. There is now situation when you can build only half of something.

 

[MacCoise]

I'm thinking these %s of influence should be trackable and visible to the player in cities (with something similar to the original culture bar) and when units are trained in a city, it inherrits the majority influence culture as its culture combat class. This can help then guide the unit in other ways later like special promos, and perhaps even loyalties.

.

If there is no majority?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Ok I generally like this but I think civ4 system in O-1. You can build something or you cant. There is now situation when you can build only half of something.

Conceptually, what you would be able to do is use a % prerequisite tag for a particular idea. It might look something like:

<IdeaPrerequisite>
	<IdeaType>IDEA_CULTURE_CELTIC</IdeaType>
	<iInfluence>35</iInfluence>
</IdeaPrerequisite>

If there is no majority?

Ah... right... perhaps I should've simply said 'strongest'. Or perhaps even better still would be to make it a random check that rolls a % and picks any of the influences in the city with each having a chance equal to the % of influence. (Special Cultural units would be exempt from the check and gain the culture type of their prerequisite.)

In the larger scale plan, if a nation divides over strong cultural reasons, units with the divisive culture UnitCombat would take the side of the new rebel nation so it could pay to be as pure as possible in your nation's adopted culture in your military production centers (but quite difficult to achieve for many reasons!)

When captives are taken, for example, they would keep their culture UnitCombat. That would then translate into a massive influence boost of their cultural unitcombat into the city in which they are made slaves or added to the population. The % of the population they now represent in the city would be the adjustment to the culture in the city. As another example, when Entertainers add culture to a city, they would also add some influence to the city of their own cultural UnitCombat. Perhaps even missionaries spreading their religions would incidentally add some cultural influence from their own UnitCombat (or maybe keep them out of it and make their influence only be upon the Religious IdeaClass competing views in the city?)


There are some things I'm struggling to model in all this though. Does a culture gain more strength as it obtains more influence or does stronger influence make it softer giving room for other influences to rise? At what point would an influence become unpopular and what would make this so? Are these best to be made random factors or an absolutely predictable process based on a consistent mathematical formula?

 

[Sparth]

Conceptually, what you would be able to do is use a % prerequisite tag for a particular idea.

Ok got it.
One more question: Do AI can be coded to use this mechanism?

 

[MacCoise]

Sounds , from a gameplay point of view, (sorry no idea from a programming point of view) for a Civic with options like Monoculturalism (penalties for other cultures), Multicultarism( the opposite) and everything in between!

 

[pepper2000]

This sounds quite interesting.

From what you describe, I am imagining a hierarchy that looks some thing this.

<IdeaClasses>
	<IdeaClass>
		<Type>IDEACLASS_CULTURES</Type>
		<Description>TXT_KEY_IDEACLASS_CULTURES</Description>
		<bCompetitive>TRUE</bCompetitive>
		<Ideas>
			<Idea>IDEA_CULTURE_ROMAN</Idea>
			<Idea>IDEA_CULTURE_GREEK</Idea>
		</Ideas>
	</IdeaClass>
	<IdeaClass>
		<Type>IDEACLASS_POLITICS</Type>
		<Description>TXT_KEY_IDEACLASS_POLITICS</Description>
		<bCompetitive>TRUE</bCompetitive>
		<Ideas>
			<Idea>IDEA_CULTURE_LIBERALISM</Idea>
			<Idea>IDEA_CULTURE_COMMUNISM</Idea>
			<Idea>IDEA_CULTURE_FASCISM</Idea>
		</Ideas>
	</IdeaClass>
</IdeaClasses>

Is that the basic concept?

Lately I've been thinking about ordinances. I like the concept but not the way it is currently implemented. What if ordinances were auto-buildings that depend on ideas? E.g. Clean Air Act requires that the idea Environmentalism > 50. This would make ordinances local rather than national policies.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Ok got it.
One more question: Do AI can be coded to use this mechanism?

There's a lot of different questions being asked in that one. Some of the items of consideration are already just plugging in to current evaluation methods without need for further work.

However, where it comes to efforts to shape the ideas the people have with propaganda activities, it will take a little extra work. All part of the project though. Can be done without much difficulty I think.

Will have to address individual needs with as generic a method as possible and some tags for idea classes or individual ideas could help to trigger different approaches by the AI. Leaders can be given to respond uniquely or have favorite 'ideas' as well.

Sounds , from a gameplay point of view, (sorry no idea from a programming point of view) for a Civic with options like Monoculturalism (penalties for other cultures), Multicultarism( the opposite) and everything in between!

That's a good accompanying concept, yes. I like it! I'd help to support someone trying to implement it that finds new tag needs. Obviously open or closed borders would have an impact on fluidity of ideas as well.

This sounds quite interesting.

From what you describe, I am imagining a hierarchy that looks some thing this.

<IdeaClasses>
	<IdeaClass>
		<Type>IDEACLASS_CULTURES</Type>
		<Description>TXT_KEY_IDEACLASS_CULTURES</Description>
		<bCompetitive>TRUE</bCompetitive>
		<Ideas>
			<Idea>IDEA_CULTURE_ROMAN</Idea>
			<Idea>IDEA_CULTURE_GREEK</Idea>
		</Ideas>
	</IdeaClass>
	<IdeaClass>
		<Type>IDEACLASS_POLITICS</Type>
		<Description>TXT_KEY_IDEACLASS_POLITICS</Description>
		<bCompetitive>TRUE</bCompetitive>
		<Ideas>
			<Idea>IDEA_CULTURE_LIBERALISM</Idea>
			<Idea>IDEA_CULTURE_COMMUNISM</Idea>
			<Idea>IDEA_CULTURE_FASCISM</Idea>
		</Ideas>
	</IdeaClass>
</IdeaClasses>

Is that the basic concept?

For the most part yes. The Ideas currently list their Ideaclass rather than the Ideaclass listing its ideas but yeah. Furthermore, Liberalism wouldn't be a Culture idea but it could be cool to have Idea classes to help show what the people believe various civics should be. That could have a lot of fun interactions!!!

Lately I've been thinking about ordinances. I like the concept but not the way it is currently implemented. What if ordinances were auto-buildings that depend on ideas? E.g. Clean Air Act requires that the idea Environmentalism > 50. This would make ordinances local rather than national policies.

You could. But I think even better would be that it only makes them automatic if particular government forms were active and otherwise just leads to resent if the people aren't getting it the way they want.

 

[Thunderbrd]

So, to start considering how to get an idea source into the game, let's start with a seed and then try to itemize what else would have an influence and how that influence could be mathematically injected into the system.

Starting simply, let's say a culture has been initiated by the construction of a culture source wonder building... using the same mechanism we have now for that. But rather than giving the culture throughout the nation immediately, the culture source wonder would add, let's say, for the sake of getting started here, 1 point of influence for that culture per round in the city it is in.

As it grows in influence, the influence competes with the cultural influences of any other culture sources so at this point, the amount of rounds the culture source has been in play would be THE count of its cultural influence strength. So if Culture X was founded in a city on round 100, then on round 150, the cultural influence in that city would have accumulated 50 points of influence. Let's say then another culture is founded, Culture Y, in the same city on round 150.

25 rounds later, (round 175), Culture X has 75 influence and Culture Y has 25. This is making Culture X have 75% of the cultural influence in the city while Culture Y has 25%.

This would continue round after round and while, Culture X would lose a lot of % influence over time to Culture Y, it would never lose its majority since it was there first and will always have more influence in the city than Culture Y as a result.

Now then... Let's start proposing what we feel the next influence to consider would be.

Could it be trade between cities causing some of a culture to spread?

Could it be the adopted national culture taking an automatic dominance (or would it potentially backfire and if the people weren't happy with the leader be a reason for the people to gravitate towards a different culture?)

Could other buildings be built to support a given culture?

Should we next consider how units could perform missions or just be in the city to create an influence of their own?

Would this be generic to all units as a passive effect resulting from their cultural base, or only something some units can do as a special capability?

Should an idea have a halflife where its acceptance among those receiving it is strongest while its the 'latest' new idea but it's strength decays over time?

Should some techs cause the decline of a particular idea?

Should an idea gain more force due to its overwhelming acceptance? Should they ALL equally gain force for this reason or should this effect vary based on a tag on a given idea?

There's more reasons ideas can wax and wane in influence and probably a LOT of synergies between them to be established. The acceptance of one idea could be supportive of another...

So to step into this one step at a time, what elements can you think of and which would you prioritize as the first to develop out into the picture? And how should it work?

 

[MacCoise]

So, to start considering how to get an idea source into the game, let's start with a seed and then try to itemize what else would have an influence and how that influence could be mathematically injected into the system.

Starting simply, let's say a culture has been initiated by the construction of a culture source wonder building... using the same mechanism we have now for that. But rather than giving the culture throughout the nation immediately, the culture source wonder would add, let's say, for the sake of getting started here, 1 point of influence for that culture per round in the city it is in.

As it grows in influence, the influence competes with the cultural influences of any other culture sources so at this point, the amount of rounds the culture source has been in play would be THE count of its cultural influence strength. So if Culture X was founded in a city on round 100, then on round 150, the cultural influence in that city would have accumulated 50 points of influence. Let's say then another culture is founded, Culture Y, in the same city on round 150.

25 rounds later, (round 175), Culture X has 75 influence and Culture Y has 25. This is making Culture X have 75% of the cultural influence in the city while Culture Y has 25%.

This would continue round after round and while, Culture X would lose a lot of % influence over time to Culture Y, it would never lose its majority since it was there first and will always have more influence in the city than Culture Y as a result.

Now then... Let's start proposing what we feel the next influence to consider would be.

Could it be trade between cities causing some of a culture to spread?

Could it be the adopted national culture taking an automatic dominance (or would it potentially backfire and if the people weren't happy with the leader be a reason for the people to gravitate towards a different culture?)

Could other buildings be built to support a given culture?

Should we next consider how units could perform missions or just be in the city to create an influence of their own?

Would this be generic to all units as a passive effect resulting from their cultural base, or only something some units can do as a special capability?

Should an idea have a halflife where its acceptance among those receiving it is strongest while its the 'latest' new idea but it's strength decays over time?

Should some techs cause the decline of a particular idea?

Should an idea gain more force due to its overwhelming acceptance? Should they ALL equally gain force for this reason or should this effect vary based on a tag on a given idea?

There's more reasons ideas can wax and wane in influence and probably a LOT of synergies between them to be established. The acceptance of one idea could be supportive of another...

So to step into this one step at a time, what elements can you think of and which would you prioritize as the first to develop out into the picture? And how should it work?

This is fascinating and I really look forward to seeing how it works out.

My thoughts at the moment are about what difference this would make at the moment. What I mean is very few Cultures have many buildings or units..

So you could switch let's say from Celts to Franks to Holy Roman to French but what will have changed beyond the name?

Have you considered attributing Traits or other game bonuses to cultures as a way of encouraing dynamic civ evolution ?

There are so many buildings and units in C2C that it won't be feasible to have a whole set of new ones for each culture to make them out stand as compltetely unique or to give the player afeeling of a big change between cultures.

 

[Thunderbrd]

This is fascinating and I really look forward to seeing how it works out.

My thoughts at the moment are about what difference this would make at the moment. What I mean is very few Cultures have many buildings or units..

So you could switch let's say from Celts to Franks to Holy Roman to French but what will have changed beyond the name?

Have you considered attributing Traits or other game bonuses to cultures as a way of encouraing dynamic civ evolution ?

There are so many buildings and units in C2C that it won't be feasible to have a whole set of new ones for each culture to make them out stand as compltetely unique or to give the player afeeling of a big change between cultures.

Yes.

At the local level, multiple cultures may share qualifying values to produce special units, buildings etc... For example, you may have 35% Celtic and 36% English and who knows what kind of mix of lots of other stuff. The Celtic and English units and buildings would probably both be something that could then be built or trained by the city.

However, at the national level, a player would be challenged to keep some cohesion between all cultures blending in the nation and try to support the adopted culture's expansion so as to achieve that cohesion, while not doing so to the point that the player loses benefits from other key cultures that also exist in the region. They would still have to 'declare' a culture as the national culture, which should dramatically effect the naming of the civilization, the flag, and so on. (Art Style application should be made to then refer to the individual unit's strongest cultural influence.)

By making the act of this declaration a Civic itself, we can place a whole world of potential modifiers on one culture or another and also toss in that more tech advanced cultures could provide better benefits from national adoption, inspiring the player to shift gears and start trying to push the spread of a culture long before they even adopt the new culture, an act which should come along with the potential for splitting up the nation if there is enough weight towards another culture in a segment of the player's cities, particularly of the culture the player is changing away from (those who would resist the new national identity and insist on adherence to the old ways.)

Big project, I know, but it starts with appropriately defining how idea values spread, ebb, and flow. That's the toughest thing to really lock onto. In a lot of ways it shouldn't, imo, be all that different to properties or original civilization culture.

 

[MacCoise]

As for how a certain Culture can be promoted , if I remember correctly, in the first version of C2C I played you could build Culture (European) or Culture (African) or whatever.

Could you simply build enough Culture to change a city's make up or would it need to be done at an Empire level?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Could it be trade between cities causing some of a culture to spread?

Trade between cities should be a factor in the spread of most ideas (and disease).

I have seen a mod or civ like game where you had to set a unit on a constant loop between the source and every city in your nation to get ideas to spread. In this case it was technological advance. This seems a bit over the top for us and we don't control where our trade routes are anyway.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Trade between cities should be a factor in the spread of most ideas (and disease).

I have seen a mod or civ like game where you had to set a unit on a constant loop between the source and every city in your nation to get ideas to spread. In this case it was technological advance. This seems a bit over the top for us and we don't control where our trade routes are anyway.

Agreed. Of course that's on the list to factor in. However, confirmation is appreciated.

Can you think of anything I haven't mentioned up there?

As for the constant loop issue, I was strongly thinking this would be a good function for establishing a unit based trade route - where you could program a merchant unit to pick up one thing in city A and take it to City B where it picks up another thing from City B and returns to City A (or perhaps is set to then take its haul to City C and so on.) Regardless, a player programmable delivery and pickup loop. This would interact with ideas in that the merchants would naturally pick up (by a form of diffusion like we have with properties) some ideas in the cities they visit and can 'drop off' ideas they have with the same form of diffusion to other cities they visit afterwards. Something very similar would be arranged for trade routes themselves. A natural diffusion process - but not one that creates the kind of havoc the original property trade diffusion created

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'm looking into creating a culture system where you need to own three cities (scales with map-size) with a foreign culture before you get the culture proper.

It consist of Native Culture which is explicit to the civ in question. Can't be lost or conquered. requires palace.
Adopted culture which is gained when enough local cultures is owned empire wide. requires any native culture but explicitly not the native culture that is the same as itself. (this is to avoid having the adopted version of your native culture)
Local culture which requires either adopted culture or native culture.
Unique cultures would require the local culture in the city AND ( adopted OR native culture in capital ).

Hypothetical:
For the culture to spread correctly a settler gets a promotion for each local culture in the city it's trained in.
Do you think this will work:

		<BuildingInfo>
			<!-- Local Culture (South American) -->
			<BuildingClass>BUILDINGCLASS_CULTURE_LOCAL_SOUTH_AMERICAN</BuildingClass>
			<Type>BUILDING_CULTURE_LOCAL_SOUTH_AMERICAN</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_BUILDING_CULTURE_LOCAL_SOUTH_AMERICAN</Description>
			<Civilopedia>TXT_KEY_BUILDING_CULTURE_PEDIA</Civilopedia>
			<Strategy>TXT_KEY_BUILDING_CULTURE_LOCAL_STRATEGY</Strategy>
			<ArtDefineTag>ART_DEF_BUILDING_CULTURE_SOUTH_AMERICAN</ArtDefineTag>
			<!-- Prerequisites -->
			<ConstructCondition>
				<Or>
					<Has>
						<GOMType>GOM_BUILDING</GOMType>
						<ID>BUILDING_CULTURE_ADOPTED_SOUTH_AMERICAN</ID>
					</Has>
					<Has>
						<GOMType>GOM_BUILDING</GOMType>
						<ID>BUILDING_CULTURE_NATIVE_SOUTH_AMERICAN</ID>
					</Has>
				</Or>
			</ConstructCondition>
			<!-- Construction -->
			<iCost>-1</iCost>
			<bAutoBuild>1</bAutoBuild>
[B][COLOR="DarkGreen"]			<NewCityFree>
				<IntegrateOr>
					<RelationType>RELATION_SAME_PLOT</RelationType>
					<GameObjectType>GAMEOBJECT_UNIT</GameObjectType>
					<Has>
						<GOMType>GOM_PROMOTION</GOMType>
						<ID>PROMOTION_CULTURE_SOUTH_AMERICAN</ID>
					</Has>
				</IntegrateOr>
			</NewCityFree>[/COLOR][/B]

Or would the settler be gone before NewCityFree kicks in for the newly built city?? Could you check the order that things happens at city founding for me?

Else I will just have to drop the promotion system entirely and make new cities get it regardless of what city the settler originated from as long as a native or adopted version of the culture is present in the capital.

This would be the appropriate thread for this discussion so we don't clutter the subjects in the other one.

I'm going to have to check the code on this BUT there SHOULD be a unitcombat for all cultures. Although I may not have implemented it yet, all units should eventually get one cultural unitcombat from their city (probably of the highest percentage of influence once this project is further commenced, either that or a random selection based on percentages of influences that exist in the city, making the selection similar to that of a Great Person to be birthed.)

Then, when they plant the city, what probably should happen at that point is that the city picks up a free heritage building that enhances the Idea influence generation for that culture in that city.

I'm not sure how this would work with what you're trying to do exactly.

You asked"Or would the settler be gone before NewCityFree kicks in for the newly built city" and I think it would be gone before it could be there to qualify any autobuilds. It would be tough to track through the code to be sure but that would be my suspicion. It would be easier to put some test xml together as you have, and try it.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Or would the settler be gone before NewCityFree kicks in for the newly built city?

The settler unit is long gone for everyone except the human players. This is what was wrong with the Colonist and Pioneer. They only worked for the human players giving them a huge advantage. I think I have fixed the problem in C2C. I hid the units because I could not see why you need expensive settlers when settlers would do the same thing.

 

[Toffer90]

I think I have fixed the problem in C2C.

I will do some in-game test to see if the AI gets the culture buildings that the settler is promoted for. Thanks for pointing out that there is a difference between player and AI here or I might have jumped at the conclusion it was working a bit too early.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Bumping for Hydro. This is something we REALLY do need to get working on imo!