Civ V - Earth in time, scheduled release

[RedRalph]

Cheers

Actually territory in general would be a lot more valuble if it brought benefits even outside the fat cross, why wouldnt gold mines provide money or farms produce food or a just because they are far away from a city lol

 

[Gaius Octavius]

Guys, if you like the capturing borders scenario, I suggest you check out moctezuma's Influence Driven War mod.

 

[eric_]

blitz, I'd love to help you mod it in, but...I've never modded. I could probably learn to do it, but I'm not sure I'd have the time.

I build an army with much more defensive units than usual, build many roads near the frontier so I can rush units to the front. I make a DOW. across a broad front, I invade China and, having pushed a max depth of three tiles in, (which covers one of his oilfields, and some good agricultural land), my objective now is to occupy as much of these tiles as I can until peace. I hold most of them for 15 turns, and approach Mao for peace. As part of the treaty, I can highlight the tiles I insist on keeping, and , after some further negotiations, he agrees.

I like this. In terms of my comments about how culture offsets a unit's or a stack's area of control of territory, I meant to indicate that it is offset only if a) you're deep in the enemy's territory where they have upwards of 90% of their culture present or b) you're anywhere within the cultural borders of someone with whom you share open borders.

But, let's say you're at war with someone and you have a stack of troops on a shared border. You're on a tile that is 52% their's, 48% yours: I think military presence should be able to flip that tile to your side if, as you say, you can hold it. So, basically, military area of effect can influence the culture of a tile if enough of your culture is present to bolster the military area of effect.

I do also like the idea of being able to negotiate for certain swaths of land. To expand on that, the presence of troops in and near the tiles would be required to prevent it from flipping back to the opponent after, say, 10 turns of guaranteed control.

the idea of a city changing to another copuntry because someone did a brilliant painting nearby in modern times is ridiculous.

I don't agree. I think it's just that cultural pressures move boundaries over very long periods, and many cultures are very well established at this point, so it takes even longer for that to happen. So, such movements happen less frequently over the course of a lifetime.

But, there are examples of where it still happens: Israel/Palestine/Syria/Lebanon - it's very much a clash of cultures causing serious border disputes; Kashmir; Taiwan; Pakistan (particularly in the Waziristan province); Iraq (internal battles over which culture controls what, Kurds v Turkey); Eastern Europe, particularly Bosnia, et al; Island of Crete; etc.

Nations are only able to control their borders to the extent that they can militarily defend them. I mean, Internationally Waziristan may be recognized as part of Pakistan, but does that really mean anything? Does Pakistan's government really have any influence there?

 

[RedRalph]

blitz, I'd love to help you mod it in, but...I've never modded. I could probably learn to do it, but I'm not sure I'd have the time.



I like this. In terms of my comments about how culture offsets a unit's or a stack's area of control of territory, I meant to indicate that it is offset only if a) you're deep in the enemy's territory where they have upwards of 90% of their culture present or b) you're anywhere within the cultural borders of someone with whom you share open borders.

But, let's say you're at war with someone and you have a stack of troops on a shared border. You're on a tile that is 52% their's, 48% yours: I think military presence should be able to flip that tile to your side if, as you say, you can hold it. So, basically, military area of effect can influence the culture of a tile if enough of your culture is present to bolster the military area of effect.

I do also like the idea of being able to negotiate for certain swaths of land. To expand on that, the presence of troops in and near the tiles would be required to prevent it from flipping back to the opponent after, say, 10 turns of guaranteed control.



I don't agree. I think it's just that cultural pressures move boundaries over very long periods, and many cultures are very well established at this point, so it takes even longer for that to happen. So, such movements happen less frequently over the course of a lifetime.

But, there are examples of where it still happens: Israel/Palestine/Syria/Lebanon - it's very much a clash of cultures causing serious border disputes; Kashmir; Taiwan; Pakistan (particularly in the Waziristan province); Iraq (internal battles over which culture controls what, Kurds v Turkey); Eastern Europe, particularly Bosnia, et al; Island of Crete; etc.

Nations are only able to control their borders to the extent that they can militarily defend them. I mean, Internationally Waziristan may be recognized as part of Pakistan, but does that really mean anything? Does Pakistan's government really have any influence there?

none whatsoever from what i can see. but Waziristan will never declare independence, seceed, become part of Afghanistan etc no matter how strong Afghan culture becomes. but I afghanistan had a huge army, invaded Pakistan and seized Waziristan, it would. ditto formosa (copuld declare independence, but strenght of culture wont allow it, it will either happen because of US military commitment or wont because of Chinese miltary strenght. Culture would make the transition more easy, but it couldnt be the cause.

you do have a point though. If gibraltar or The Malvinas became thoroughly saturated with Spanish or Argentine culture, then in all likelyhood they would rejoin spain/Argentina. but not spontaneously. It might be negotiated between the govts.Culture alone may well ease the passage of territory changing hands, but if the sifde thats losing the territory dosent want to and has a superior army and a commitmemnt to keep the land, it wont happen

 

[eric_]

if the sifde thats losing the territory dosent want to and has a superior army and a commitmemnt to keep the land, it wont happen

Exactly my point. It's armies, not international recognition, that offsets cultural defections. I have little doubt that Waziristan would declare independence if it thought it could hold off a Pakistani invasion.

 

[RedRalph]

Exactly my point. It's armies, not international recognition, that offsets cultural defections. I have little doubt that Waziristan would declare independence if it thought it could hold off a Pakistani invasion.

They may yet do it watch and wait, my friend

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A9BE2641-2857-4C54-8D24-06A4B132D646.htm

 

[eric_]

Wow...crazy.

I don't know how often you read al Jazeera, but have you noticed that in every single article about Pakistan over the last couple of months (mostly since Musharaff fired that Supreme Court judge) the same "Your Views" quote is up?

"Pakistan needs a military leader who can control both civil and possible military extremism"

It's very weird.

 

[IglooDame]

Moderator Action: Thread moved to Civ4 General Discussions.

 

[RedRalph]

Wow...crazy.

I don't know how often you read al Jazeera, but have you noticed that in every single article about Pakistan over the last couple of months (mostly since Musharaff fired that Supreme Court judge) the same "Your Views" quote is up?



It's very weird.

Probably some guy in a US airbase or Pakistani barracks putting it up every time

 

[Mccash000]

Absolutely. Know what the best way to fix that is? dont have cities as the only objective to capture. IMO, you should be able to capture asquare by occupying it for 5 turns. At the end of war, you can negotiate which (if any) squares will be returned, as part of the negotiations.

One of the few thinsg I hate about civ is that you have ot fight to capture cities, sometimes you have to go to war for a city when in fact all you want in one resource. soemtimes you have to capture 3 or more cities to guarantee you will get that resource, to make sure cultural borders wont reclaim it for the other civ. fixed borders after nationalism and an ability to capture specific squares would be a brilliant addition to Civ5

What a fantastic idea!!! Gold star for you!
If you could have barbarians that could reclaim boundaries and jigger unit maintenance costs, you could have a FAR more realistic simulation. You could demonstrate how difficult it is to build massive empires (and keep the whole world from being claimed by the time caravels appear) before the modern era. That would add a great balance to the game, and finally make the late game more interesting (mimicking the 18th/19th century European carve up of the world).

Maybe you could make cultural boundaries different. Enemy units in cultural boundaries suffer high rates of attrition. Cities outside cultural boundaries suffer more unhappiness and revolts.

Shame we can't mod it into civ 4.

 

[RedRalph]

Thanks. Capturing cities would obviously still be important, and I think by capturing one you should automatically get its thin cross... but maybe to compensate for the fact that your army would be so dispersed (SoD's would be a hell of a lot rarer for one thing), cultural defences should be lower.. though I suppose it would balance out because it would be harder to defend cities if you actually had a border to defend as well. In WW2 terms (the only war I'm really familliar with, at least to operational knowledge extent), the present wars to take cities are the Battle of Stalingrad, Berlin, Monte Cassino etc, and thats cool, but I'd like if in civ 5 you could also fight the battle of Kursk, battle of the bulge, etc,

 

[eric_]

Yeah, having proper fronts would be amazing...

 

[Spitefire]

What about giveing units a cultural errotion ability or cultural convertion capacity, where by a unit sits on a square and the culture in that tile (and mebey the 8 nearby tiles) if not the same as the owner of that unit is ether reduced/changed on a turn by turn basis the limiting factor could be any nation you have open borders/defence pact/alliance with, that should be reletively simple to do.

The other possability that comes to mind is makeing 2 layers of borders with one being military and the other as civilian, but i think that might be overly complex.

 

[JesusOnEez]

I really really hope there is. i know nothing about how the industry works, but surely Civ is too popular a franchise to be dropped. Unless revolutions becomes massive (unlikely). Isnt the Sims what killed off Sim city?

Except there's a new SimCity (Societies - SimCity 5 for all intents and purposes) game coming out in the not too distant future. Biiiiig change from previous SimCity games though.

 

[Red Adept]

make the civilizations more unique. with more unique buildings and units. This really adds more flavour to the game. If units had different stats, different appearance etc. More unique buidlings, even things as simple as different appearance would add to the game.

I'd like to see them include a Civ Builder. You create the name and a leader then get a set # of points to spend for two attributes (weighted) and then borrowing from SMAC/X you get to create a unique building and a unique unit based off the existant ones, again diminishing that pool of points . You could then upload a static picture for leaderhead and choose from a stock pool of alternate units which you could add to (like you can now). Then you could save this Civ and either play it, or have the AI run it.

Then people could HAVE Poland, or the Dark Elves, or the freakin' Kzinti if they want. Or dinosaurs, or Cyborg Simians.

 

[Charles 22]

They should add an attrition effect which would slowly weaken armies walking in ennemy territory, like it was in Rise of nations. This might get border pushing funnier.

Cities should not only occup one single map square but mere as they grow.

There is also a lack of points of interest or strategic places on the world map. Terrain squares are just good at contening one ressource type or giving a defense bonus.

Better yet. Make the tiles alive, IOW, the tiles would serve whoever possessed them. Normally if your city has enemy units within the cultural borders, those tiles won't generate anything for you. Why not let them serve whoever is in them? If it's a farm that normally somewhat weakening enemy units would actually build strength a bit as they are feeding off the farm that was yours before it was occupied. This would put a major fight factor into doing more than sitting in cities and taking the road or rail out to assault the enemy within the fat cross and people would actually have to man some of the important resources within the cross. This, of course, could work outside the fat cross as well, where territory that is no-man's land could be feeding units, etc. As things are now, if the enemy occupies one of your fat cross tiles, he gets nothing and so do you, but this way at least the fat cross tiles would be alive to whoever was occupying them.

What's more, for resources the enemy could not use them, unless they had a road or better up to it. So roading up to your enemy could be a two-edged sword, where it could allow the enemy to occupy and then use your resources. Man, talk about some wars breaking out. Think at first you built a road to an enemy city because you planned on occupying and taking one of his resources you do not have, but don't want to bother taking the entire city. Then after it's built he takes your worker(s) and tries to take a resource you have, that he doesn't. Then your emphasis on the battle could be looking for a way to sever that line again if his occupance is too strong.

That might be very difficult to program an AI for though.

 

[Wenla]

I really really hope there is.

I really really hope that there isn't.

Wenla

 

[Airefuego]

You don't even have to try and balance the civs- base their abilities on historical success. Make it harder to win as a Zulu or Aztecs than it is with England/Germany/US (though this would never ever happen, its probably racist at some level)

The good news is, it's not really racist, it's more kind of unnecessary, because Civ already has it - the Aztecs and Zulus did worse than others in "the real world" not because they were inferior, but because they had worse land with fewer of the key food resources, and no horses.

This is pretty much exactly what happens in Civ now, it's just random who gets the bad starts...

(if you're interested: this book reveals all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel

 

[brianshapiro]

I'm a hardcore Civ fan myself, but I don't think I'm underestimating anything, on the contrary. Fans of any game tend to overestimate their impact a lot, when in fact they make up only a tiny fraction of all customers. A game that would solely cater to the fans would not sell as well as one that catered to casual players also. The reduced revenue would then limit the options for further development of the series. And this is why I, although I would like to *play* a Civ game that is aimed at the hardcore fans, I wouldn't recommend Firaxis to take this route, because it will lead to less good games in the long run.

There's a poll active right now where a rather large majority says they value gameplay over realism. So not even the hardcore fans (that you want to address) seem to value realism as much as you do.

Well of course they value gameplay over realism, thats like polling Americans "whats more important government reform, or the war on terror." The war on terror is a matter of life and death issues, so people will say that, but people might think the reason its going wrong is because of a corrupt political process. A game is about gameplay, but you're also assuming realism goes against the spirit of the game.

I think this misunderstands the market for Civilization. People go to see a historical movie to get lost in a recreation of a historical drama in a way that the actors of history come alive. People play Civilization out of a deep respect for history and culture. Whether they are hardcore fans or just casual players. A casual player who isn't interested in history and civilization, will not buy Civilization, period.

Dumbing down Civilization to make it fun and friendly will cause it to lose casual players, not gain them.

The problems with the requests of some hard core fans, isn't more realism, but geeky demands like: 300 more units, 300 more technologies, more more more more, like a higher number of things makes it better.

No, the structure and tone and feel of the game makes it better. History isn't a list of 300 types named of units that you gain at different points of development and plan a game around and 300 technologies that society mechanically moved from one to another by selecting what it wanted on a technology tree. Its about the movements of society, responses to change, development of culture, and what you're able to do with that culture. 300 units/300 technologies doesn't make things more realistic, it makes things more tedious and geeky.

But Civilization needs to be less cartoony and focus more on history. Epic games are also I feel the only sort of games that matter, because otherwise you start to feel everything is happening too fast, and you end up playing the same game every time, because you make the same choices, and because there are only a certain number of turns per years, you're at the same place at the same year every game , and the game gets stale and boring. Making Civilization a short, fast paced, cartoony game will destroy the gameplay, not make it better.

(And if epic games are long but made in a way that you will want to, casually, go back to a game that you last played a month ago, because you built something cool and interesting and want to continue it, that works too)