CIV-4 Big picture thoughts

[NP300]

If all western countries are seen as one civilization, they were the only civ to use warmongering/domination succesfully for the world

What about the Mongol Empire, the Islamic Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Aztec Empire, the Inca Empire, the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, the Egyptian Empire, the Japanese empire, the Chinese Empire?

I think I've made my point... This notion that "western" countries are the only ones who have successfully used warmongering/domination "for the world" is BS.

 

[troytheface]

nice retort, so obvious that i missed it. People -are indeed -people.

 

[ShadowWarrior]

I think we're gonna get along quite well. You'll find a lot of kindred spirits these forums who aren't opposed to many ideas, but have set expectations high in terms of resolving gameplay flaws.

Micromanagement is one.
Late game boredom is two.
Repetitive gameplay and unbalanced strategy (expansionism) is three.
Predictable and disappointing AI is four.

I don't think these topics are unrelated either. Micromanagement ties into repetitive gameplay, late game boredom, and is the reason the high difficulties exist (the AI is no less predictable or more interesting at Deity level).

Late game boredom has everything to do with repetitive gameplay and unbalanced strategy -- expansionism becomes especially boring when the borders are well defined. America is the most powerful nation on the planet and has some of the most interesting strategies for dominance, and yet have expanded their borders very little in the past century. Where are the alternatives to expansion?

Anyway, it doesn't take much for me to go off and rant. But welcome to the fold, indeed.

Good point! Why is U.S a powerful country that does not have to maintain that power through expansion? Why is it that the same isn't true of Civ III, where expansion is the only way to survive?

What makes empire building fun is the fact that we who play the role of great statesmen of our nation must resort not only to military, but also economics, ideology, diplomacy and many other channels in order to secure our country's interest. A game that puts too much emphasis on war takes that fun away. Imagine reading the history of a country whose past is dominated by war and expansion? Wouldn't the history get boring to read? But imagine a history of a country whose past is dominated by strategic use of sophisticated diplomacy, ideology, economics, and other instruments of statescraft. I think most of us would prefer studying more about the later than the former.

Civ IV or its successor should think seriously about making the game less about war, and more about survival of and world wide domination by a nation. And although war and conquest is part of the equation of world wide domination and survival, it is not the only variable.

Some case studies:

1
U.S maintained its dominance in the world through a diplomatic technique that I think is called the Bismarkian model.

What is the Bismarkian model? After Bismark of Prussia unified all of Germany under Prussian leadership, and began to look to strengthen German influences throughout Europe, Bismark first targetted the central European nations. I do not exactly know the details, but basically it involves some kind of economic integration between Germany and some central European nations so that the latter becomes economically dependent on the former even though economic efficiency suggests that Germany would have been much better off by integrating its economy into the Western European economies of France and Britain.

U.S maintained dominance through a similar mechanism. Although much of the world hate U.S and her dominance, the world can not do without U.S. She is a vast market, and economic growth throughout the rest of the world depends on her keeping her market opened up. It is this dependence on U.S market that makes the rest of the world prone to cater into the demand of the U.S. And since the demand U.S makes often tends to be the ones that will keep U.S powerful when that demand is fullfilled, this dependence on U.S is significant in maintaining U.S' power.

Of course, U.S needs to have a strong economy in order to absorb all foreign imports in the first place.

2
China no doubt had had some of the world's most technologically advanced military equpiments in the ancient time. Its superb philosophy on war, such as art of war written by Sun Tzi, also helped to make Chinese military one of the strongest for a long time.

However, military is not the only reason that China is strong and dominated the political arena of East Asia. Another reason is ideology. Confucianism flew from China in all directions into Tibet, Central Asia, Mongolia, Manchuria, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. Accompanying this flow of ideology is Chinese culture. Why is it that China benefits from her neighbor's adoption of Confucianism and Chinese culture? Confucianism is fundamentally a philosophy of peace. It is a philosophy based on the central principle of benevolent rule for the people, with the corrollary that war is unacceptable by Confucian standard. China's neighboring countries, upon adoption of Confucianism, would begin to find it less and less rewarding to wage wars for pure pursuit of wealth and prestige because of disapproval from Confucius scholars, and this will make China's boarder much more secure.

And what of Chinese culture? Why does spreading Chinese culture helps to reduce the threat of barbarians of the North, such as the Huns. The reason is that by introducing to the barbarians civilizations and cultures, such as fine cloth, musics, arts, wine, and delicate food, and all the comfort of a highly developed civilization, the barbarians, whose strength derives from their ruggedness, will be made soft. In fact, such a strategy was used during the Han dynasty, and columnated in Han dynasty's subjugation of the Xiung Nu.


Therefore the lesson is this. It is not always about war, conquest, and a strong military that keeps a nation powerful. Other instruments of statescraft, when used wisely together with military, can make a nation great. And it is also that which makes empire building fun. Civ IV or successor games should do its best to reflect this multi-dimensionalism of empire building rather than adding new features such as religions, or incorporating new wonders, new units, or new city improvements.

 

[brtman]

What about the Mongol Empire, the Islamic Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Aztec Empire, the Inca Empire, the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, the Egyptian Empire, the Japanese empire, the Chinese Empire?

These empires were quite impressive indeed, and some were highly succesful in controlling parts of the world via warmongering (or other methods). However, most of these encompassed not more than two continents. Western civilization from ca. 1600 to 1940 ruled Europe, Americas, Africa, South and Southeast Asia, big parts of Oceania.
That is what I meant with 'the world'. Successfully conquering and utilizing the conquered areas.
I'm sorry if you consider this BS, but the 'Western civilization' was definitely the most succesful in conquering and exploiting most of the world. Economically, only in the last 20 - 30 years the economical supremacy of the west is challenged.

 

[dh_epic]

ShadowWarrior, you nailed it in my opinion. Right now, if someone threatening is on your borders, the only thing you can do is either build up your defences on that border, or form a pre-emptive strike. ... let alone paying them off and hoping they keep their word.

First off, I would have many small non-competitive nations, who play historically but not ruthlessly. Only a handful of nations would be competitive enough to never trust you, or to abuse your trust. (see here -- http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2100214&postcount=127 -- for details)

With that, you could open up new strategies for dealing with nations. Strategies that make you more powerful and not necessarily larger. Strategies that can be accomplished with zero use of force, in complement to force, or in spite of force:

1. Culture your rival

- send missionaries, artists and philosophers to make their people bigger fans of you --> more of your culture within their borders
- trade with them, to make them lovers of your luxuries --> more of your culture in their borders
- have an overall astonishing culture, increasing the value of your culture

Conclusion: With their people bigger fans of you -- more of your culture within their borders -- they feel more akin to you. The people experience more war weariness against you, and even the troops have lower morale. With enough cultural similarity/superiority, the entire nation could be absorbed into your empire, even if just one city at a time.

Examples: (Nations that cultured a rival into peace) The Northern Europeans culturing (Christianizing) the Vikings, China culturing the Hans

Examples: (Borders expanded through cultural hegemony and similarity) The spread of Islam (in the non-violent cases),

2. Make them economic dependants

- there's an expression: if Britain sneezes, Argentina catches pneumonia
- make resources more meaningful by making them useful even in buildings and everyday life
- model scarcity and supply of resources
- have the ability to leverage your resources -- be their only supplier of oil
- have the ability to take someone technologically inferior, buy out their resources, refine them (lumber --> furniture, oil --> gas), and sell it back to them!
- have a geographic position such that all trade routes go through you, and allow you to be a third party in said negotiations to demand a small payment for using your roads / harbors
- having a huge population makes you a huge market, and thus huge potential for profit, particularly if those people are demanding world famous products

Conclusion: Nobody's gonna bite the hand that feeds them. Unless getting fed becomes too scarce or too costly, in which case they'll bite in hopes of having direct access to the food supply. This would be the ultimate way to prevent war -- you won't see Britain and France going to war anytime soon, not until some resource starts running out, or one of them starts being a bad businessman. And if trade becomes open enough, you could take them in as a colony, or unite as equal states.

Examples: (Nations that were once rivals but have too much at stake to not be close to one another) -- Canada and USA (19th century), the European Union (20th century), even tense relations between China and the Western World (21st century)

3. Have very common goals, enough to vassalize them or annex them, or just make them need you

- basically, for a high enough price, an AI nation will surrender completely
- particularly early on in the game, throwing down 100 gold could buy you the "surrender" of an AI with one city
- more cultural similarity, economic dependence, technological superiority would make it possible to buy them for cheaper
- happens under the gun -- if they're threatened by someone, they beg to become a province
- happens particularly under YOUR gun -- if there's no hope in hell of winning, might as well accept colony status before war breaks out

Conclusion: Nations are vassalized all the time. This is how empires are built, even unofficial ones. Particularly in the case of AI, factors like cultural similarity and economic interdependance can make the people of that nation more ready to accept membership into your glorious empire, all without firing a single shot.

Examples: Britain colonizing India (Age of Discovery), the Franks and Goths squashing their beef in the face of Islam (Dark Ages), Italian city-states joining the Franks for protection from one another (Middle Ages)

 

[Sirian]

What makes empire building fun is the fact that we who play the role of great statesmen of our nation must resort not only to military, but also economics, ideology, diplomacy and many other channels in order to secure our country's interest.

Great thought, very well illustrated with examples. However, the devil's in the details. Supposing Firaxis were to try something like this, how would you envision its implementation? How can these activities be modeled? The model would have to be simple, clear, and include meaningful choices. (That is, if the solutions are obvious and unvaried, they would not work in a game.)

I, too, would like to see Civ grow into something more than a war game. Civ3 moved the franchise in that direction by ending the automatic "Player vs the World" teaming aspect of the AIs, introducing the first shreds of bona fide diplomacy into the gameplay. Unfortunately, the diplomacy is still too simple, and gameplay devolves into maximum exploitation of it. "Tech whoring" of all shapes and sizes, ability to buy almost any ally on the cheap, AIs unable to unite effectively against looming threats, etc.

Implementing the vision you've laid out is more easily said than done. Do you have ideas on how to do it?


- Sirian

 

[ShadowWarrior]

Great thought, very well illustrated with examples. However, the devil's in the details. Supposing Firaxis were to try something like this, how would you envision its implementation? How can these activities be modeled? The model would have to be simple, clear, and include meaningful choices. (That is, if the solutions are obvious and unvaried, they would not work in a game.)

I, too, would like to see Civ grow into something more than a war game. Civ3 moved the franchise in that direction by ending the automatic "Player vs the World" teaming aspect of the AIs, introducing the first shreds of bona fide diplomacy into the gameplay. Unfortunately, the diplomacy is still too simple, and gameplay devolves into maximum exploitation of it. "Tech whoring" of all shapes and sizes, ability to buy almost any ally on the cheap, AIs unable to unite effectively against looming threats, etc.

Implementing the vision you've laid out is more easily said than done. Do you have ideas on how to do it?


- Sirian

Admittedly, I can not offer better suggestions beyond a general framework of the path on which subsequent Civ games should take. However, I believe that having an idea of the broad direction with which to pivot all later Civ games should go a long way toward compiling good ideas, or at the very least filter out those that are not in line with what I had in mind.

If everyone can be convinced of what I wrote regarding the direction Civ games should take on, then the next step we should do is to form a forum that aims to make that a reality, which I believe will emerge through meaningful discussion.

 

[Sirian]

I believe that having an idea of the broad direction with which to pivot all later Civ games should go a long way toward compiling good ideas, or at the very least filter out those that are not in line with what I had in mind.

This forum is chock full of suggestions. How many do you think will get used?

Even good ideas will be left on the shelf if there is no ready way to use them. If you have a philosophical vision for a game but no means of translating that into gameplay, you may be disappointed. I believe the reason why Civ has been little more than a war game is not because the designers weren't interested in making something more, but because nobody thought of a way to do it successfully. That's where the real gains will be made, if at all.

I thought you articulated the initial vision very well. If you could also design the details as thoroughly... who knows. Maybe your ideas would make an impact.

Admittedly, I can not offer better suggestions beyond a general framework

Nod. Well, you can always hope someone else can design a way to implement your vision. I suspect that Civ4 won't wait, though. They probably already have a vision going in, and I imagine it would take something compelling to persuade them to change it now. Whether or not it already includes elements like you have described is unknown. If so, then they're already ahead of you by several steps, and if not, they're sitting where you are now, with no practical means to make it happen. Either way, it seems that you would have to produce something special to get their attention. Good luck.


- Sirian

 

[ShadowWarrior]

This forum is chock full of suggestions. How many do you think will get used?

Even good ideas will be left on the shelf if there is no ready way to use them. If you have a philosophical vision for a game but no means of translating that into gameplay, you may be disappointed. I believe the reason why Civ has been little more than a war game is not because the designers weren't interested in making something more, but because nobody thought of a way to do it successfully. That's where the real gains will be made, if at all.

I thought you articulated the initial vision very well. If you could also design the details as thoroughly... who knows. Maybe your ideas would make an impact.




Nod. Well, you can always hope someone else can design a way to implement your vision. I suspect that Civ4 won't wait, though. They probably already have a vision going in, and I imagine it would take something compelling to persuade them to change it now. Whether or not it already includes elements like you have described is unknown. If so, then they're already ahead of you by several steps, and if not, they're sitting where you are now, with no practical means to make it happen. Either way, it seems that you would have to produce something special to get their attention. Good luck.


- Sirian

Implementing a new game philosophy into a succeeding Civ game is a gargantuan task, which I frankly feel I am not capable of doing by myself. I am hoping that a method of execution of this game philosophy may arise through discussion. And discussion is really what I want. After all, I think it is a synergy of many people's idea that make an idea truely great.

However, I am in the process of thinking of what we can do to possibly implement the game philosophy I've proposed in the previous post into Civ IV. I will share my ideas with everyone in here when I have the ideas thoughtout, and I hope to have your feedback.

 

[Stid]

one thing you missed oit IMO was bring back the animation style of the civ2 advisors! the were the best part of the game and also had more useful things to say then they do now.that trade bloke i think it is really gets on my tits when he says "germany and france have signed.....i told you they were evil" i wish i could kill him for talking to me in that way

 

[dh_epic]

Hey, I thought I had some decent ideas on non-war strategies to gain greater power, greater reverence, and even greater border size. Take a look upwards for my post.

The short version --

1. Shared Economic Future

If someone depends on you economically -- for resources or for money -- then going to war with you or your allies jeopardizes that. Standing by idlely while someone attacks you jeopardizes that. And for you to anger allies by making war would make your trade network more narrow and volatile. Right now, in Civ 3, nobody is really economically dependant on anybody -- you can somehow be rich without a single international ally.

2. Shared Culture

If someone's population shares some or a lot of your culture, then their people care about you. Standing by idlely while someone attacks you would make their people upset. Vice versa, attacking a people who admire your culture would lead to lower international opinions -- you are not seen as enlightened and cultured, but barbaric. You would even experience international allies boycotting your culture. Right now, in Civ 3, you can be a cultural powerhouse without having a single person outside your borders even LIKE you. In Civ 3, there is no measure and hence no value to moving your culture into someone else's borders peacefully.

3. Shared International Threat

If a small independant city state feels threatened and you happen to be the biggest badass around, they might just ask to join your empire. In fact, tied together with the prior two paragraphs, if a state feels it shares a common economic and cultural stake, they'd be even MORE inclined to join your empire, even if you're not THE biggest badass. If YOU are the threat that makes them scared, they might join you without any amount of war! Currently, in Civ 3, there are no small independant city states or anyone willing to just become a part of your empire, since every single AI is trying to win for themselves.

In short:

- allow players to transmit their culture to other nations through trade (luxuries) and units (missionaries and philosophers)
- measure it and reward it
- increase war weariness between culturally similar nations (nations that have some of each other's culture through trade and units)
- increase "peace weariness" when a culturally similar nation is threatened by a culturally different nation

- give resources more effects -- not just building units
- give resources a supply -- you can't build an army off a speck of oil
- make international trade more valuable than trade within your borders
- trade between two countries seperated by other countries should involve the other countries in the agreement -- allowing them to leverage their role as a middle man

- make some AI city states (not necessarily huge civ empires) that are willing to be bought
- allow nations to depend on one another in a military sense -- sharing units, buying units ...


Oh well, I tried to be short.

 

[ShadowWarrior]

Hey, I thought I had some decent ideas on non-war strategies to gain greater power, greater reverence, and even greater border size. Take a look upwards for my post.

The short version --

1. Shared Economic Future

If someone depends on you economically -- for resources or for money -- then going to war with you or your allies jeopardizes that. Standing by idlely while someone attacks you jeopardizes that. And for you to anger allies by making war would make your trade network more narrow and volatile. Right now, in Civ 3, nobody is really economically dependant on anybody -- you can somehow be rich without a single international ally.

2. Shared Culture

If someone's population shares some or a lot of your culture, then their people care about you. Standing by idlely while someone attacks you would make their people upset. Vice versa, attacking a people who admire your culture would lead to lower international opinions -- you are not seen as enlightened and cultured, but barbaric. You would even experience international allies boycotting your culture. Right now, in Civ 3, you can be a cultural powerhouse without having a single person outside your borders even LIKE you. In Civ 3, there is no measure and hence no value to moving your culture into someone else's borders peacefully.

3. Shared International Threat

If a small independant city state feels threatened and you happen to be the biggest badass around, they might just ask to join your empire. In fact, tied together with the prior two paragraphs, if a state feels it shares a common economic and cultural stake, they'd be even MORE inclined to join your empire, even if you're not THE biggest badass. If YOU are the threat that makes them scared, they might join you without any amount of war! Currently, in Civ 3, there are no small independant city states or anyone willing to just become a part of your empire, since every single AI is trying to win for themselves.

In short:

- allow players to transmit their culture to other nations through trade (luxuries) and units (missionaries and philosophers)
- measure it and reward it
- increase war weariness between culturally similar nations (nations that have some of each other's culture through trade and units)
- increase "peace weariness" when a culturally similar nation is threatened by a culturally different nation

- give resources more effects -- not just building units
- give resources a supply -- you can't build an army off a speck of oil
- make international trade more valuable than trade within your borders
- trade between two countries seperated by other countries should involve the other countries in the agreement -- allowing them to leverage their role as a middle man

- make some AI city states (not necessarily huge civ empires) that are willing to be bought
- allow nations to depend on one another in a military sense -- sharing units, buying units ...


Oh well, I tried to be short.

Your ideas does capture the essence of making the game less about war, and more about other aspects of empire building. Yet, there's something about these ideas that just doesn't fit with what I have in mind, even though I can not exactly point out what it is.

Intuitively, I think I am asking for a radical change in Civ IV such that it will look nothing like its predecessors. Only by doing so can the multi dimensionalism of empire building be truely captured. Current Civ game framework simply doesn't enable us to do that.

Resource model:

Have any of you played Empire Earth and Rise of Nations? It is a real time strategy game. In such a game, we build villagers, who are the workers that collect resources and build buildings. From these buildings, we produce more villagers, who will do more resource collecting and constructing, or we can produce military units used to go fight our rivals.

The resource system in Empire Earth (and many other RTS) is one where to build any buildings or units, we need a combination of resource x, y, z. For example, to build a temple, we need 10 units of resource x, 15 units of resouce y, and 20 units of resource z.

Second, as civilization progresses through the ages, new resources will be required to build new buildings and units, while old resources will become less and less important in contributing to the making of these new buildings and units.

For example, in the ancient time, resource x, y, z were very important to building of anything. However, in the modern time, resource x, y, z, can nearly be done without, and a nation can still survive. This is because technologies in modern era requires different set of resources than the ancient era.

My idea is for Civ IV to adopt a resource model along the line of Rise of Nation and Empire Earth. In Civ IV, we will no longer have just food and some abstract "resource shield". We will have food and two types of resources, such as wood and stone. The building of anything in the ancient era requires some combination of food, wood and stone.

Once we move into the middle age, we will still need food, wood, and stone, but a new resource will be added. This resouce is needed for anything in the middle age to be build. And as we progress deeper and deeper into the middle age, that new resource will increase in importance, while ancient era resources such as food, stone and wood will diminish in importance, although they are still vital somehwat.

Once we move into the industrial age, food, wood, and stones will pretty much become useless. Food will be only good for population growth, while wood and stones are needed only for building of ancient era buildings, such as temples. In the industrial age, the importance resources are coal and iron needed for railways and industrialization, and building of modern army. A combination of two units of coal and three units of iron are needed to build each unit of riflemen for example.

This rise and fall of the importance of resources needed for each era will mean certain kind of possible economic interdependence. Also, it makes this game more dynamic because no longer will one civilization dominate for the entire game. The lack of access to important resources may make them not capable of building important city improvements or military units fast enough to take advantages of their technological advances.

For example, China is wayyyy ahead of the rest of the world in technology. It has already has economics technology. However, China is placed in the unfortunate position of lacking sufficient access to resource y, which is needed to build stock exchange. This means that stock exchange will be built VERY slowly. However, without stock exchange, you can not generate enough income to increase funding for technological research, so the growth rate of technology in China begins to slow down. Meanwhile, other nations will catch up in technology. China may certainly think about using its mighty military to crush opponents who have access to resource y. However, for China to do that successfuly, China will need resource y again to build a more modernized military. Otherwise, China is stuck with resouce x which is only good for producing an inferior type of military. This might mean that China will have to resort to other means of getting resource y, through perhaps diplomacy.

When such a condition of interdependence is created, all of other instruments of statescraft, such as diplomacy, will now have a more important place in player's strategy in guiding their nations.

This is however still a very sketchy idea, which requires refinement. I can already myself think of many objection to such an idea, which needs to be addressed. Therefore let me dwell more on this, and I will share with you what I have to say later. Any feedbacks would be appreciated in the meantime.

 

[Sirian]

1. Shared Economic Future
2. Shared Culture
3. Shared International Threat

Culture in Civ3 has some cool aspects, but also some lame aspects. Culture is strictly per-city, without regard to how large a city may be. Thus the more cities you build, and the more densely you pack them, the more total culture you can achieve. This fits code logic but defies common sense.

There are math problems if this kind throughout the design, and overcoming them for Civ4 will not be easy. I see similar issues with your proposal, DH. Where does the strategy come in with culture or trade? There's next to none in Civ3. Considering that every time a harbor is pillaged by bombardment, the game makes a huge pause to recalculate all the trade route pathfinding, how could Civ4 add in MORE pathfinding options to try to keep track of bunches of new trade mechanisms? That seems unlikely.

As for neutral "minor powers", they'd be nothing but exploit fodder. See Galactic Civilizations for what kind of impact that would have.


If the things that player would do would be "no brainer", they wouldn't make for fun gameplay. Spreading culture off resources that are traded... Players will trade away all surplus resources. There's no choice involved and no strategy, simply "going through the motions" of whatever the map hands you. Worse, players would avoid purchasing resources whenever THEY would get infected with someone else's culture, unless the need for the resource was more dire than the penalty of the cultural infection. See my point?

No, I think you're overlooking something fundamental. As long as the game drives each civ to view each other civ as an enemy or rival, Civ is going to remain a war game. The means of attack may change -- cultural attack, economic attack, diplomatic attack may all be possible -- but if the gameplay still involves ATTACKING in some form, to improve your situation at the expense of other civs, then nothing significant will have changed. And if that is going to be the case, then Civ should try to make itself into the best war game that it can, rather than trying to put on makeup or wear a mask to conceal its true nature.


- Sirian

 

[Jon Shafer]

The problem is that coming up with a true cooperative victory that adds something new to gameplay (rather than rehashing the same "whoever has the biggest army wins" concept or something similar) would probably depart too much from the Civ spirit. Soren has said that for everything added, something else would be taken out. Adding something that big would probably require the removal of most of what we know to be Civvish.

 

[ShadowWarrior]

Population model:

Forget about the population model used in Civ III right now. I propose the below alternative.

We need population to do the following tasks:

Serve in the army
Build city improvements and wonders
Improve land for agriculture, mining and building of roads, forts, and other stuff
Work on those land to produce food, and other resources
Work in those city improvements, such as temples, courthouses, etc

If there are other tasks that I have not listed above, please point them out to me. But they won't be obstacles in my attempting to explain how my envisioned population model works.

Each city improvement requires some number of people to work on it. For example, a temple needs at least six people. Less than six, and the temple will not help to make the population feel happy at all. Having exactly six will help the population to be happy with minimum effect. Having more than six will increase the happiness effect. However, once we filled the temple with, lets say, fifty workers, any further addition will have no more beneficial effect on the happiness of the population. Using economic terminology, there is diminishing return to inputs.

So if we can not increase the population happiness further by adding more workers in the temple, what else can we do? We can build another temple in another city, or we can build a wonder. Or, we can simply "upgrade" the temple in a cathedral if we have the required technology. Given the same amount of workers, a cathedral will increase happiness more than a temple.

That's right. I am proposing that all city improvements with same functions will now be upgraded instead of being built A temple will be upgraded into a cathedral. A market place will be upgraded in stock exchange.

To upgrade or to build any city improvements or wonders, we need yet some population to actually do those upgrading and building. These are different from the population who work in those city improvements and wonders.

We will assign population to improve landtiles, build forts and roads. Then after those are built, we need assign population to work on those landtiles.

Those who work on landtiles to produce food and resources are different from those people who work in the city's temples, libraries, and marketplaces. This will truely create a urban/rural population.

Army will itself requires population, too. In current Civ game, army require gold support, but it doesn't seem to be constraint by population. This will change under this model I now propose. (more about maintainence of city improvement and army in my post about taxation model)

Population growth will continue to be a function of availabitily of food. Perhaps, we can make population growth also a function of standard of living as civilization progresses into middle and industrial age.

Thought experiments to illustrate how this population model works:

I am ruling the Chinese civilization, and I have founded on city, called Beijing. I currently have one hundred people in my civilization.

My aim is to increase population. To do that, I allocate about thirty people out of my one hundred to improve a landtile outside of Beijing. This landtile is a grassland, and is fertile after it is improved. I could have chose to assign only ten people to improve this landtile, however, this will mean that the improvement will not be finished until much later. I could have chose to assign all one hundred people to improve this landtile. But by the law of diminishing return, having one hundred people to improve this landtile will not make finishing such improvement faster than having just thirty.

With thirty people working on the irrigation, I have seventy left. I need at least ten people to work in my palace to administer my kingdom. This leaves me with only sixty currently "unemployed". I'll assign thirty of these sixty to build a temple. To build a temple requires a combination of ten units of wood, and fifteen units of stones. So I assign the ten people to lumber, and ten people to mine in another landtile near Beijing. Of course I could have assigned all twenty people to gather lumber first, then assign those twenty to gather minerals. Now I am down to just ten available workers. I assign them to work on the farms in another landtile near Beijing.

Once the thirty people who were working on the irrigation completed their task, I'll move the ten people who were farming into this irrigated landtile. Now, these ten people will be producing MORE food than they were when they were working in another landtile.

And what of these thirty people who have completed the task of irrigation. I can either assign them to build temple so that the temple may be build faster. Or I can assign five of these thirty to work in my palalce, in which case I'll now have fifteen people working in my palace. This means that the administration of my kingdom is more effective, with the positive effect of decreasing corruption, which leads to increase in lumber, mineral and food production. (But once I take those five people out of my palace, the food, mineral, and lumber production level drops back to its former level) The remaining twenty five workers can go to build roads, or I can draft them into the army.

Immediately, all of your reaction will be this. WAYYYYYYYYY TOO MUCH MICROMANAGEMENT!!!

Those of you who have played Rise of Middle Kingdom, Pharo, or Ceaser never complained about micromanagement of population in those games. Why?

In those games, any increase in population immediately go to fill jobs that are not yet occupied. The same can be done in this population model I propose.

For example, I currently need three more people in my temple to reach minimum effectiveness, six more people in my marketplace to reach minimum effectiveness. I make marketplace the first priority and temple the second. So when the population increase the next turn, the new population will go first to work in marketplace. Any remaining population will go work in the temple.

This should take much of the micromanagement away.

This population model should make some interesting choices for us players. The limited availability of population as well as the concept of diminishing returns means that we will have to learn to cope with trade offs of assigning population to different tasks, and pick those tasks that provides the least opportunity cost. We must ask questions like these. Should we assign more population to build marketplaces to increase commerce? Or should we simply increase commerce by assigning population to build roads? Doing the former means that marketplaces will be built much later, and the benefit of marketplace won't be realized for a longtime. However, doing the latter will allow us to realize the benefit of roads faster because roads are quicker to built. But roads themselves generate much less revenue than having a marketplace. So what should we do?

Or in another case, I might have to make a tradeoff between commerce and science. Given only limited population, should I assign more people to work in libraries or marketplaces?

A grand empire strategy may possibly be created out of this population model. We can assign more people to science research than any other task, and the strength of our empire derives mostly from science. But doing so will always have a cost, which is less accomplishment in the arena of commerce, landtile development, armies, blah blah blah. So adopting a pro science strategy may be the best way to go if we are situated in a fertile region, where less people can work on food production and still generate substantial food to support science. Geographical constraint, in another word, may be important toward determining how we want to use our population. (More about geography model later)

This is all the idea I have regarding population model so far. It is very disorganized at this point. I'll make adjustment to the population model later and organize it a little better to make it more understandable.

 

[Thorfin39]

The one thing I would like to see, that certainly could provide an interesting twist later in the game is revolution and/or civil war..

Civil unrest, disorder... that's easily managed (to an extent) but if my empire or part of that empire decides to 'be free from my tyrannical leadership" I now have a great problem to deal with, and not just from a military stand point, but economic geo-political.. I understand there is some factoring of this, with cultural conversions, but it's not enough.. I want open rebellion, I want to have to deal with factions that will attempt to remove me from power.. to defeat me internally.. I want other nations siding with the revolutionaries to come to their aid... and those other nations that recognize my leadership to side with me.. I think the potential for civil war or a region striving for independence, especially later in the game, would keep my interest longer

That, in my opinion, is the one great thing missing in the game..

 

[ShadowWarrior]

Geography model:

Geography model: (Read my post on population model first)

Population assigned to different tasks will have different effect on the direction of the empire. When we players assign most of the population to irrigate and farm to produce food, we become an agricultural nation, and our population grow incredibly fast. When we alternatively assign more population to work on scientific research, our nation becomes scientific powerhouse. When we assign most of our population to work on mines and forests, we will be a nation rich in mineral resources.

But why would we ever want to assign our population to work on one task as oppose to another? This is where my geography model comes in.

I propose that geography plays a very significant factor in influencing the population task assignment decisions. More specifically, I propose that for each kind of terrain, there are associated disadvantages and advantages. Player's must learn to complement the advantages of the terrain that locates their civilization with the task that they assign to their population.

A grassland terrain will produce much food, some mineral resources, and literally no lumber at all. (Please read my post on resource model) Given such a terrain, civilizations located in this region will grow incredibly fast. Players who find themselves in such situation should aim to adopt a pro-population growth strategy.

Dessert terrain will yield literally nothing. No lumber, food or mineral resources can possibly be had in such terrain. But such disadvantages are offset by the advantages that dessert offers. People who grew up in a desert environment tends to be rugged. They have high endurance and stamina, and make great warriors. Therefore military units build on desert terrain can, given everything else being equal, fight much better than their rivals who come from cultures located in fertile grassland regions. Players whose civilizations originate in desert, should take this into consideration. Their initial strategy may have to be based mostly on fighting. They may have to use their superior fight force to subjugate neighboring civilizations, and demand tributes in forms of certain quantity of lumber, food, and minerals every turn. (I will talk about tributary system, and international political systems and diplomacy in a later thread)

For these desert civilizations, once they have obtained stable tributes, they can use these tributes to begin building up their civilizations. Tributes in form of food will enable their population to grow, while tributes in form of minerals and lumber enable them to build perhaps better weapons or build their cities into civilized metropolis.

In another word, for each terrain type, there must be associated disadvantages and advantages. The disadvantages and advantages should make such a drastic differences that it really matters if players adopt the appropriate strategy.

Second thing about geography pertains more to the map size. I don't know if this is doable, but I seriously propose making the map size much MUCH bigger than it currently is now.

With a much bigger map size, we can truely have a vast region of desert, or vast region of grassland populated only by some forest or hills, or a vast region of mountains and hills populated by occasional dryland or grassland. In Civ III now, a landtile of grassland may sit right next to a landtile of dryland. As a result, players can easily compensate the lack of mineral on grassland by exploiting the adjacent dryland. Geography makes no impact at all in the choice of civilization development strategy.

One last thing to remember is this. It is VERY important that while a vast region may be characterized mostly by one type of terrain, it also MUST have some tiles of other terrain type. A vast region of grassland must occassionally have some hills or forests. This way, although players are forced to select a pro-population growth strategy, they will have some mineral and lumber access to do other aspect of empire building. Otherwise, a severe inbalance of access to different important resources will result in incapacitating the players to do anything. Therefore the key is to strike a good balance. On the one hand, as is the case with Civ III, we do not want to grant equal access to all resources for all players, which removes geography as an influencial factor in our choice of strategy, we also do not want to, on the other hand, make the unequal access to different resources so severe that players cannot do anything.

 

[ShadowWarrior]

Trade model

Read my resource, population and geography model first.

Let us say that I am China, and the geography I am located in is mostly grassland, which means I will have to select a pro-population growth strategy.

How does pro-population growth strategy help me? More population means bigger army, more workers to improve the land, to work in temples, market, libraries, and build wonders.

So more population as a result of being located on grassland gives me more workers. However, without sufficient lumber and minerals with which to build temples, libraries, marketplace, it will be a while until I can actually reap the benefit of having lots of people to research science technologies, create happiness in my empire, and generate wealth from trade and blah blah blah.

In another word, I need lumber and minerals. What can I do? The solution is to trade. This is where my trade model comes in.

So I (China) have a huge HUGE supply of food. I can either use my huge supply of food to grow my population or to trade it for lumber and minerals. Lets say my population has already grown wayy too fast, and its time to simply slow the growth of my population by channeling those food to be sold to international market so that I can trade my food for lumber and minerals.

Civ IV should have an international trade screen. This trade will work like this.

It will show supply and demand for all resources in each country.

For example, it will show that China is now supplying the world with lets say 10 units of food each term. (I can alternatively simply choose to supply only 5 units, and let the remaining five go to grow my population)

The price of each unit of food is two units of lumber, or two units of minerals. I put this price tag on to the international market, and those who acccepts the offer will sign a contract (or a treaty) with me. The treay will basically say that I (China) will trade 10 units of my food in exchange for 20 units of his mineral. This deal will last some number of turns.

Perhaps, my trade partner wants to extend the trade deal for 20 turns while I only wish for the deal to be effective for 10 turns. Then the only way to get me to agree to a 20 turns deal is to increase the price of my food. So in another word, I will want 3 units of lumber for each unit of food now. Or alternatively, I want certain technology in exchange for agreeing to a 20 turn deal. So the number of turns that this deal is valid is negotiable.

I do not want to go too much into details about the barbarians and the diplomacy model yet. But let me just say for now that it is very likely that barbarians will have to play in Civ IV the role of middlemen between civilizations' trading. In another word, barbarian won't be just those mean and nasty nomads who come in, raid, kill, rape, then go away.

Using the above example, China might actually not have been trading with another civilization. Instead, China was concluding a trade deal with the barbarians who obtained those lumbers and minerals from another civilizations with whom I do not yet have contact.

Second, diplomacy will now take a significant role in affecting international trading and development of my empire's economy. Signing a treaty of embargo against me might seriously hinder my ability to develop my empire's economy. More about diplomacy later.

 

[dh_epic]

Shadowwarrior,

I'm a fan of your resource model. I was thinking of something along the same lines, but couldn't articulate it. I think you spelled it out nicely -- resources are required for buildings as much as gold and production. I like the idea that you can still build certain buildings, albeit very slowly, if you're lacking in a necessary resource. (History is an indictator of multiple different paths to the same goal.)

And I agree, particularly when you add this to a few of your thoughts on economy. When you have this kind of resource interdependance, you might try to leverage one resource for another and become very close to one ally. You might try to be the top world provider of a resource. You might embargo your competition who is also trading that resource, or embargo the nation who needs a resource to wage an effective war on you. And if you factor in the nature of trade routes, you might think twice about standing by idlely while India is at war and the trade route through them is jeopardized, cutting you off from important trade.

International trade simply isn't valuable enough in Civ 3, but it is incredibly important in real life. Let's give meaning to "strategic resources". Beyond that of "you'll want to build your city near iron" or "you'll want to conquer this city near oil".

Your population model is also an intriguing idea, and it offers some realism. Unemployment is a neat idea, and so is the idea of tradeoffs between commerce and science that aren't controlled by taxes (which is kind of a dumb idea in Civ). But if I were a developer, would I devote energy to this kind of change? The jury is still out, in my books, because I'm not sure it really opens up many new strategies for all changes involved.

Still, I think that you're laying the foundation of an Economic Dominance strategy, which is completely unavailable in Civ 2, and in Civ 3, the seeds are barely planted, at best. Very important strategy.

 

[dh_epic]

Sirian,

I admit my ideas need refining, tweaking and balancing. But where you see a "culture exploit" (offloading every last excess luxury) I see a risky and viable strategy. Trade away luxuries and become a cultural powerhouse, but contribute to the glorious lifestyle of your enemies, who may kill you. Isolate yourself in pre-emptive defence, and watch as other nations reap the benefits of cultural hegemony. In other words, pursuing a cultural strategy is somewhat opposed to pursuing a domination strategy.

If I could see Civ 4 as a game, I would see it as three equal but distinct strategies. Becoming an economic powerhouse, becoming a cultural powerhouse, or simply dominating through military. Each would slightly interfere with one another. Instead of a race to see who can dominate, as in civ 3, the game would become a race to see who can win their respective goal.

Imagine a military powerhouse that is relatively barbaric and unhappy (Vikings), frustrated by the fact that for every one city they conquer, two of their cities are assimilated into a weak but famous Civ's culture (France).

Imagine a cultural powerhouse (France) that is dependant on an economic giant (Germany) as its main trading partner, only to watch that trading partner say "you know, I think I'm gonna jack up the prices to twice as much. Heck, maybe I'll stop trading with you altogether".

Imagine a rising cultural powerhouse (Israel) sending repeated missionaries into the "uncivilized" world, with more of their culture within the borders of rivals. Firstly, they are sewing the seeds of sympathy in other civilizations, making it harder for rivals to sustain a war against them without weariness, or without angering other sympathetic civs in the region. Secondly, this rising cultural powerhouse is also sewing the seeds of cultural victory. So a rising military powerhouse (Persia) decides to nip this one in the bud, and starts killing any missionary sent towards them, preventing their culture from being contaminated, and preventing a rival from rising up through culture. In fact, a strategy you could open up is "cultural purging" within their borders, trying to drain their rival's culture within their borders, and even embargoing against rival cultures.

But this embargo and cultural purging leads to counter-embargos, and counter-purges, until people finally get fed up and declare war.

You're right, my view is very competitive. It is war-like in some sense, but to say "enh, why beat around the bush, let's just do straight up war" is unfair to the strategies I'm suggesting. What I'm talking about is a three-tiered competition (Economics, Culture, and Military -- with technology choices to support all three). With three different levels, your strategy might be to dominate one tier while making it shaky as hell on another tier that your rivals care about.