Civ4 Realism Mod (Extended Gameplay and tweaks)

[Ackillez]

GNP, GDP is not a measure of a nations economic prowess. Why wont they let china into the WTO then? Or WB? I am well aware of the statistics in the CIA factbook. Merely pulling the GDP numbers is a discredit to your obvious intelligence. You know there is more to economics than GDP.

Take a look at manufactured goods, imports, exports, stability, world bank ratings, inflation, literacy, it all comes together....

GDP is the chief indicator of a country's economic prowess. Boasting such extensive knowledge of the subject, I'm surprised you didn't find the need to mention that.

And if trade balance (import and export) is that important, the U.S. definitely won't score very high. Not to mention the deficits in the government budgets. You should know that the deficits in YOUR governments budgets and ultimately the stability of the dollar depends on financial backing from the Chinese government, who willingly buy heaps of American government bonds to keep their primary export market afloat.

Also, the growth rate of the Chinese economy is about twice the size of the growth rate of the American.

And China is a member of the WTO. Has been for the last four years.

I also attest that China has the same political sway as any nation that is nuclear capable, no more no less. MAD is the "big black chip" (as they say in poker) that keeps them at the bargaining table. Political savvy is not thier strong point.

As has been made evident over the corse of the last four years, nor is it the strong point of the U.S.

Really though...8 billion? with 1 billion people? We do better with 350 million.

Since when was GDP per capita the important factor? Following your logic, Luxembourg should be at the top of the food chain.

I dont see that as being even a contender in the world stage.

That's what the U.S. did for many years too, claiming that Taiwan was China. Now, however, I don't think there's anyone but you who holds this opinion.

 

[Narcio]

I still think captured cities need to keep very least 200 culture or so or a % of what they had. It dont make sense culture is reduced to 0 and you have no borders. But its good no razing so you have to try and hold onto your victories.

I think directly after you take a city, and the city's radius is reduced to just the city itself represents the anarchy and collapse of government infrastructure between the two regimes. Looting and all sorts of things are going on which can make internal trade in the city come to a stand still, hence starving and what not.

What I don't like is that when you take a city, the city's neighbours tend to pick up huge amounts of land through cultural radius mechanism. When you are at war with another country and you take their city, unless the other country is at war with you too, they shoudln't suddenly take all of the land of the country you were conquering.

I.e, they didn't redraw the borders of Turkey, Syria, Saudia Arabia, Iran, and others when the US occupied the Iraqi cities. Thats just one recent example.

Not sure how to fix this though.

 

[Narcio]

What needs to happen is adding actual economy to civ4. Not just in distance to capital or a rudimentry system that calculates cost on number and size.

Civ outputs numbers for GNP, manufactured goods, life expectancy, etc (check all the screens when you win or lose a game) those numbers should be used in more creative and meaningful ways.

A civ with 8 cities, with 8 forges, 6 harbors, aqueducts, and two tiles of iron, are going to be FAR more productive than a civ with 16 cities, no forges, a few harbors, and one source of iron. At least when it comes to manufactured goods.

Whats completely ignored in Civ is what all those people in your cities are doing. You get notices in civ4 that tell you when you hit a million people and whatnot...though I always find myself asking, heck ive got a million people, everyone else has slightly less or alot less, im the smallest nation city wise, why cant I use my labour force. Im forced to pick tiles that balance between shield creation and starvation. Though one city away I have WAY more food and health +'s than I could ever use...why I cant I use that food to use my superior numbers in labour to outproduce the other guys.

If the largest nations always came out on top...we'd all be speaking russian or chinese by now.

I agree that the Civ 4 economy is a really poor reflection of reality. Perhaps "resource collection" and "production" should be separated. Presently, we have "hammers" which kind of abstractly represent your ability to make things.

Perhaps, we should change this. Now, maybe "hammers" represent generic raw materials that you need to make things. Once you have the requiste raw materials collected, you need to use your work force (usually in big cities with factories etc) to produce what you need. The amount of stuff your people can make would depend on the work force size, a rating on how industrialized / efficient your workers are at that particular task, and finally you'd be limited to the amount of resources you have available.

I.e, You're trying to make a tank. You have lots of "hammers" or raw resources lying around (ontop of any other specific resource required), you have a large work force, but you don't have any factories to make the tank parts in this city. This might mean that it would take you a long time to build the tank, despite having a large work force. They still don't have the requiste industry to build the tank parts efficiently. Lets say instead you wanted to build an aircraft of some sort. This city might indeed have some sort of aircraft parts factory. So, you have the raw resources, you have a large work force, and your people are really good at their particular task. So the same city might be bad at making tanks, but good at making aircraft.

Also, perhaps this might mean that you could either buy / trade for raw resources (hammers.) You would want to trade raw resources to your big cities, where you will have the required factories and work force to pump out the goods. Once you get things like railroads, you should pretty much be able to instantly and easily transfer raw resources to your big cities.

Anyways, I just pulled this example out of my nether-regions. But, some way to separate raw resources (hammers) and the actual ability to produce things with those resources would be interesting. I think the way to make Civ4 more dynamic and interesting (such that more land doesn't always mean more power) is to make the economic system more realistic.

 

[Littlelisa]

Way to fix it is when anarchy is over have a city have more than 0 culture

Most annoying i did, i took 2 cities, 1 flipped back to previous owner, and other was deep inside their territory now and so even after riots were over it was reduced to city only.

So i had to start trying to rally my weakened forces to capture 2 close cities so that city wouldnt be reduced to 1 population from 13, but it was in the end.

 

[Simetrical]

In WWII rubber and oil were in short supply, so ways were found to synthetically produce them.

Ways were found to synthetically produce oil? I'd've thought I would have heard of that . . . Alternative fuels, those are produceable (but hard to incorporate into oil-dominated infrastructure―network effect here).

simetrical:
You base too many arguments on dreams of what could have been.

Civilization is entirely about what could have been. It's no more reasonable to say the player should be constrained to the historical course of technological development than that they should be constrained to the historical course of wars.

you need chemistry to formulate an explosive

No, you just need serendipity. Chemistry is a system of methodical analysis and recording of the behavior of materials in isolation and combination; happening to see a pile of sulfur get hit by a spark and go up in flames and then investigating is not itself chemistry. You do, however, need explosives, which are distinct from chemistry.

metal working to create the actual gun (.. I don't buy that wooden gun crap. when you say 'gun' everyone knows what you mean. guns like we have here today)

Again, you're chaining the player to the course of historical events for no reason. Obviously it would be very unlikely that explosives and the concept of a gun would be developed before metalworking, but there's no reason it's not possible and no reason it shouldn't technically be doable.

physics to even conceptualize the idea of action-reaction with an explosive propelling a slug..

Guns were invented long before anything resembling what we call physics existed. The human mind is, through hardwiring and/or familiarity, instinctively acquainted with principles such as action and reaction, at least to a degree, and the unspoken genius who first thought up the gun didn't have to know anything about these principles to guess that explosive force could be channeled. Any weapon depends on action and reaction.

as for ebola slaves, that's to biological weapons what slings are to M16s.. precursor but unrelated in any form other than purpose

That was pedantic, yes.

Take Radio for example...the discovery of radio, led to everything from intercoms between aircraft which increased thier effectiveness 100 fold, to television remote controls, to police scanners. Though Radio, for all intents and purposes in Civ4, is only a military improvement. It took many many years, and billions of dollars to build up civilian radio infrastructure, which had, imho, a fairly negligble effect on society. It was just an evolution of sitting around the fire and telling stories.

How about allowing planes (which are of fairly major importance to society) to communicate with ground stations, which is critical to their success? How about enabling remote communication with anything mobile, in fact, such as emergency vehicles? How about various non-invasive medical scans that have doubtless saved many, many lives? How about satellites? Radio is nowhere close to the civilian importance of something like the combustion engine or the computer, or to radio's importance to the military, but it's still pretty significant to civilians, far from negligible.

But I dont see it falling into any other category but military.

Oh, nor do I. But would you put satellites and spaceships in the same category? They depend heavily on radar, and while the military does make good use of satellites, it's not the major market for space travel today.

Relativity was wrong...

Excuse me? General relativity is absolutely correct, to the extent of our knowledge.

quantum physics are highly theoretical, and have no practical uses

Not many yet, no, but I think you'll change your mind if we ever get quantum computers.

laws of motion is a theory, not a scientific principal.

Erm, what's the difference?

None of those are techs that would be represented in civilization.

What do you think the Physics tech represents, if not advances such as relativity and quantum mechanics?

They havent had an impact on technological advancement...

You do realize that relativity underlies the principle e = mc^2, I hope, and that that principle is what caused people to realize that vast amounts of energy could be produced by somehow converting matter to energy, and that this is what triggered the research that ultimately led to nuclear weapons? More directly, the laws of motion are absolutely critical to things such as calculating rocket trajectories―how do you propose a ballistic missile be launched from America to Russia if not by calculations based on the laws of motion?

Newton, einstien, oppenhiemer, none of these people made a longer lasting lightbulb, a better mouse trap, or a way for me to make my life more convienant.

But they enabled others to do so.

Not to mention all of them were the classic case of standing on the shoulders of giants.

And, in turn, the technologists stood on their shoulders.

Von Braun on the other hand...who worked very closely with his engineers, and even did some of the manufacturing of prototypes himself, has contributed more to modern society with advances in computers, algorithms, fuel efficeny, rocketry and theoretical musings than all previous scientists in the world combined. Every car you drive, every plane you fly on, every satallite in space is a credit to that mans brilliance.

And yet he could not have accomplished an iota of what he did without things like integral calculus and Newton's laws of motion. You can't make use of rockets if you can't calculate their flight paths.

GNP, GDP is not a measure of a nations economic prowess.

Then what did you want us to look at in the CIA World Factbook?

Why wont they let china into the WTO then?

China has been a member of the WTO since December 2001.

Or WB?

The World Bank is an organization of developed nations whose primary (stated) goal is to assist developing nations. As China is a developing nation, its membership would be rather against the point. Furthermore, since it's still nominally communist, its admission undoubtedly wouldn't sit well with the capitalism-dominated membership.

Merely pulling the GDP numbers is a discredit to your obvious intelligence. You know there is more to economics than GDP.

Of course there is, but GDP isn't a bad measuring-stick if you want to boil things down to one number.

Take a look at manufactured goods

Why should manufactured goods be more important than other goods?

imports, exports

Third-largest in the world in each.

stability

Not near, say, the U.S., but not that bad.

world bank ratings

I don't see any ratings, just reports.

inflation

4.1%: high, but not quite crippling.

literacy

Not directly relevant to an economy. Only relevant to certain portions, and to assume that those are the only relevant portions is unreasonable. Money's money.

it all comes together....

To show that China is an economic superpower on the global stage. Third-largest importer and exporter in the world. The only more important economic entities in the world are the U.S., Germany, and the EU, roughly in that order (the EU is less important than the figures indicate because of its limited control over its member states).

I also attest that China has the same political sway as any nation that is nuclear capable, no more no less. MAD is the "big black chip" (as they say in poker) that keeps them at the bargaining table. Political savvy is not thier strong point.

To the contrary, MAD is wholly irrelevant short of war. Nobody is going to launch nukes except during war, precisely because of MAD, and therefore all nukes do is rule out war. Since nobody has much reason to go to war with China anyway, its nukes aren't a big deal. Its trade deals are.

Really though...8 billion? with 1 billion people? We do better with 350 million.

And therefore our population is vastly richer, congratulations. As a nation, we aren't that much better.

I dont see that as being even a contender in the world stage.

6.6% of global exports and 6.3% of global imports makes it a major contender.

But this is getting massively off-topic, so I think I'll drop this line of discussion. Or continue via PM/e-mail, if you feel the need to respond to the issue of China's economic status, since I'm not one to let others have the last word. The issues about Civ 4 technology, of course, are entirely relevant.

Another idea I like as far as teching up is this: If you are the first person to research any one tech you would need the "standard" requirements to get that tech. However, once you have contact with someone else with a tech that you don't have, you don't need the requirements to research it, but you do pay a higher research cost. . . .

I think a "trickle-down" effect would be a better model of reality. You would gain knowledge of others' technology based on contact with them. Based on the number of trade routes and adjacent borders you'd have, and maybe the number of battles you fight with them and the number of units you have in each other's territory, and also based on the simplicity of the tech itself, you'll slowly gain tech points in every technology they've researched.

An example would be something like this: Your country has already researched castles. Now you want to research a made up tech that gives you a more modern fortress. You already have castles, your people have put work into that sort of thing so your people can start researching "fortresses."

IMO, you shouldn't have to have castles to build more advanced fortresses. Only strictly necessary prerequisites should actually be prerequisites.

Another example could be something like this: Your nation has never built boats (for whatever reason.) Now suddenly foreigners come in contact with you in ships with metal hauls. Your people can now directly research these metallic-hauled ships rather than researching 5 techs relating to wooden hauls.

Again, wooden-hulled ships shouldn't be prerequisites for metal-hulled ships.

 

[Narcio]

Way to fix it is when anarchy is over have a city have more than 0 culture

You're probably right. After the initial occupation anarchy period is over, it doesn't really make sense that a city loses all of its culture.

 

[Narcio]

I think a "trickle-down" effect would be a better model of reality. You would gain knowledge of others' technology based on contact with them. Based on the number of trade routes and adjacent borders you'd have, and maybe the number of battles you fight with them and the number of units you have in each other's territory, and also based on the simplicity of the tech itself, you'll slowly gain tech points in every technology they've researched.
IMO, you shouldn't have to have castles to build more advanced fortresses. Only strictly necessary prerequisites should actually be prerequisites.
Again, wooden-hulled ships shouldn't be prerequisites for metal-hulled ships.

I also actually already posted one message on a trickle down system similar to what you mentioned. The other system that I was talking about here that you just commented on would be in addition to what I said before on tech trading. I think my previous post was on page 8, you can look at it if you wish.

I see what you're saying about not having to know how to build castles to build fortresses, but I also think its fairly unlikely that you'd be building fortresses without already having some knowledge of defensive structures. I'm just saying that as a nation, if you've never built defensive structures, then to suddenly go ahead and pioneer some new structure would probably be rare.

Now, I do agree though, that if someone else already has fortress building and you want to build fortresses too, you shoudln't have to go back and research castles to get fortresses, provided you have contact with them.

Maybe though, for something like a fortress, you could research it without castles, but get a bonus if you'd already had castle building. Forts, like the historical ones used during the colonization of the Americas by the European powers, did have quite a lot of similarity to castles, and I tend to think were a natural sort of progression of the castle.

 

[Narcio]

Again, wooden-hulled ships shouldn't be prerequisites for metal-hulled ships.

Also, I find it EXTREMELY questionable that a nation that had never built a ship in its existence would spontaneously be able to build metal hauled ships. The exception to this (which I discussed in my first post) would be when you make contact with another nation that already has the idea of metal hauled ships. Then, I did say that you should be able to research those metal hauled ships without going back to research all of the wooden ones.

Maybe you are right though, and there might be some strange situation when a civilization had never built a wooden hauled ship and without contact with another nation, would get the idea to build more advanced metal ships. I completely agree that this could happen. I just don't think this would be too likely.

I am having difficulty trying to figure out what mechanism you would infact have in place to prevent people from somehow skipping many techs and doing weird anti-historical progressions, while still maintaining enough flexibility such that nations can arrive at a different era in different ways. This seems to be the problem.

 

[Sobsob]

How about if you kill an advanced unit you get a reduction to research the tech that builds it.

After all the Americans make a point of trying to blow up any downed stealth bomber to stop people learning it's secrets.

 

[Gulio]

Is it possible to have X amount of research points in Research_Thingy_1

while you're researching Research_thingy_2?

If you can, could you add sci points to your research whenever you take over a city that has some different techs?


----

Another would be to take the geographic location of your home city, and use that for your techs.

If you live on the water, you'll be more adapt at researching water techs.

Where as if you live in the mountains you'll be more adapt in metalurgy.

 

[1c0n]

thats similar to the idea i posted about gaining techs for capturing cities from highertech civs, my way was the small percentile chance, but i like your way Gulio, gain a small amount of tech from the city in the area of the corresponding tech your missing.

 

[Simetrical]

I am having difficulty trying to figure out what mechanism you would infact have in place to prevent people from somehow skipping many techs and doing weird anti-historical progressions, while still maintaining enough flexibility such that nations can arrive at a different era in different ways. This seems to be the problem.

Well, let's look at why no nation has ever built a metal-hulled ship without ever having heard of wooden-hulled ships. The reason is, an average person who looks at a way to get across water via flotation devices will naturally look first to substances that have been observed to float already. Basic ideas of buoyancy will develop, but it will normally take a long time to realize that it's the weight/displacement ratio that's important, not just material density. If, however, you already had an advanced knowledge of fluid dynamics before ever conceiving of a boat, you would already have a more sophisticated idea of what will float, and the concept of building a ship out of metal would come naturally when you consider how to protect these new ships.

The thing is, this order of events is almost assured to never happen on a remotely Earth-like planet. Water is everywhere, and getting across it is important, so even the least advanced tribe will experiment with boats, while it takes millennia to build up the basis of knowledge for fluid dynamics required to know in advance that metal can easily be made to float.

So how to model this in-game? I would suggest that we reform the simplistic flat tech points system into something more like an "obviousness system". How obvious is it that you can make boats out of wood? Extremely obvious, no matter what (again assuming a vaguely Earth-like planet), so the tech should require few if any tech points to invent. How obvious is it that you can make boats out of metal? Extremely abstruse―unless your civilization either has a long history of sailing, depends heavily on sailing, or has access to the scientific method, or you've seen another civilization use metal-hulled ships. Any of these conditions, therefore, should automatically add research points to the techs required to build metal ships (assuming there is one).

I should note three further things. First of all, many techs would still have absolute prerequisites―it's simply incoherent to discover Steel before Iron Working. Second of all, one thing that should contribute slightly to all techs is simple time―the more time passes, the more likely someone is to think of even non-obvious things. Finally, these additions to research points should ideally take a sort of hyperbolic form; that is, the more time passes, the less each unit of time contributes, so that waiting around to leech techs off your neighbors will mean you'll always be well behind the curve.

Another would be to take the geographic location of your home city, and use that for your techs.

If you live on the water, you'll be more adapt at researching water techs.

Where as if you live in the mountains you'll be more adapt in metalurgy.

Well, not just your home city, but certainly it seems reasonable that boat techs should be harder to research if you don't border on water. We have to be careful not to make the requirements too elaborate, though, otherwise everyone will be totally confused and have to resort to picking techs at random. Which would be entirely realistic for ancient times, but not very fun.

 

[JakeCourtney]

I can't wait for Jaynus to get my ICBM version done.

 

[DaemonDivinity]

I'm seeing a lot of arguements being thrown around. Everyone debating here is completely right on some points and dead wrong on others, especially where economics, technology, and science are concerned.

That being said, you really have to understand one thing, and that is Civilization always has been and will be a poor simulation in a lot of respects. The issue of them trying to juggle the development of an economy, tech leaps, and warfare means that you have to find a balance in the middle. On a practical note, the issue is temporal. Units should probably be able to move 2 spaces per month realistically. Technology seems about proper pace. But expansion of settlements and building construction is slightly slowed.

Realistically, we're starting at 4000 BC and going in 20 year increments early on. By the time of the paleolithic we already had hunting and gathering down, and that's 100,000 BC about. 30,000 BC is the start of aggriculture. The origins of empires are actually about 8,000 BC, while we're researching tech they'd long passed centuries later.

The game reaches rough parity in non-military aspects around the renaissance.

In terms of modern, things go way faster than in reality (save for war).

The result is that unless you really want to start the game at about 8,000 BC, truncate the starting techs, and cut early research and domestic construction to about 1% while playing the game 1 month at a time, you're not going to have historical accuracy. And a 1 month timescale means you're going to be spending longer on 1 Civ game than FFVII ever took, even if you went for the complete (glad my friends vouched for that, I will not be caught dead doing it).

 

[Narcio]

Well, let's look at why no nation has ever built a metal-hulled ship without ever having heard of wooden-hulled ships. The reason is, an average person who looks at a way to get across water via flotation devices will naturally look first to substances that have been observed to float already. Basic ideas of buoyancy will develop, but it will normally take a long time to realize that it's the weight/displacement ratio that's important, not just material density. If, however, you already had an advanced knowledge of fluid dynamics before ever conceiving of a boat, you would already have a more sophisticated idea of what will float, and the concept of building a ship out of metal would come naturally when you consider how to protect these new ships.

The thing is, this order of events is almost assured to never happen on a remotely Earth-like planet. Water is everywhere, and getting across it is important, so even the least advanced tribe will experiment with boats, while it takes millennia to build up the basis of knowledge for fluid dynamics required to know in advance that metal can easily be made to float.

So how to model this in-game? I would suggest that we reform the simplistic flat tech points system into something more like an "obviousness system". How obvious is it that you can make boats out of wood? Extremely obvious, no matter what (again assuming a vaguely Earth-like planet), so the tech should require few if any tech points to invent. How obvious is it that you can make boats out of metal? Extremely abstruse―unless your civilization either has a long history of sailing, depends heavily on sailing, or has access to the scientific method, or you've seen another civilization use metal-hulled ships. Any of these conditions, therefore, should automatically add research points to the techs required to build metal ships (assuming there is one).

I should note three further things. First of all, many techs would still have absolute prerequisites―it's simply incoherent to discover Steel before Iron Working. Second of all, one thing that should contribute slightly to all techs is simple time―the more time passes, the more likely someone is to think of even non-obvious things. Finally, these additions to research points should ideally take a sort of hyperbolic form; that is, the more time passes, the less each unit of time contributes, so that waiting around to leech techs off your neighbors will mean you'll always be well behind the curve.
Well, not just your home city, but certainly it seems reasonable that boat techs should be harder to research if you don't border on water. We have to be careful not to make the requirements too elaborate, though, otherwise everyone will be totally confused and have to resort to picking techs at random. Which would be entirely realistic for ancient times, but not very fun.

Well, you've mentioned a lot of ideas and most of them seem reasonable to me. Maybe you could just elaborate a little bit on the specifics of the system.

A couple of questions:

You mention that time should contribute. Is this really any different than just saying that you have some abstracted research number (your total research as the game presently has.) Every turn you are researching a tech, you get that number of research points applied to the tech you are researching.

Or, are you saying that you should have some amount of research dumped into every tech that would be obvious to your people, every turn, but with a diminishing return (perhaps with limit as time goes to infinity of 0)? The main difference is, do you get points in all techs that are determined to be "obvious" for your civilization, or just points in the particular tech that you're actually researching?

The problem I see with the time contribution, as I see it--and I may be very wrong about what you mean by it, is that it basically just overall reduces the cost of a tech. You could get pretty much the same result by just making the tech cheaper in the first place, rather than giving extra points while researching.

If I'm not getting the idea, please explain with more detail.

Now, when you mention the obviousness system, does this already include factors like: other nations having techs you're trying to get, relative extent of use of a particular concept in your society? What factors, specifically, would the "obviousness system" use? Is the obviousness system much different than just saying for example, researching something like mining costs less than researching iron working? Basically, if the "obviousness" is a constant that each tech has (like mining = 1, iron working = 2; where lower is more obvious), it is the same as what we presently have.

If the "obviousness" is some sort of dynamic function of variables involving how much contact you have with others with the tech, how much use the tech would be for your society, other techs that would naturally lead to a new area (like if you had iron working and all sorts of metallurgical knowledge, it would help you to get steel), etc etc, I think the obviousness scale would probably be a good addition and is a fairly good simulation of the actual reasons for tech development.

Btw, you eloquently explained what I ineptly tried to describe when you were discussing the reasons for developing metal hulled ships. Anyways, that was just an example; I'm not too concerned with the specific techs yet, but more with a general model for the system.

 

[JakeCourtney]

There are a lot of good ideas here, but the fact that this is a game, means we should strive first for good game play then for total realism recreation.

 

[Shadowlord]

Expounding on the random natural disasters that are already being added I would like to see some multiple choice events like an older computer game I played called Castles I believe. As the king of the country you would have random events pop up such as whether or not you wanted to allow a person or such through your land. If you did and they turned out to be devil worshipers then god would smite you. Not really but you get my point.

So, maybe a town’s person could come to you in the ancient era and say that Antium's people are afraid of a wild beast that has been eating people and live stock in the middle of the night.
Do you:
A. Worship the beast and sacrifice some of the people of Antium regularly (lowers happiness and population, increases wild animals in enemy territory)
B. Take the towns representitive head and have it put on display as a warning to all who dare bother you with such trivial concerns (lowers happiness but decreases random events)
C. Send your units to subdue the creature. ( Uber bear would appear on the map and if you successfully kill it happiness goes up and you gain extra gold in tribute from Antium, if you ignore it then Antiums' population decreases every so often)

These events could partly be based on religion as well. If your country is Christian you may have a Salem witch trial type of event, or a crusade against a Muslim country may travel through your land and you have the option to commit troops. In the modern era you might have an abortion issue brought before you, or alien abductions or things along those lines.

Obviously I haven't sat down and fleshed out these ideas and better events, bonuses and penalties need to be created. Of course if you think it is the worst thing to happen to the game ever you should also have the option to turn it off. Hopefully I explained my thought process well enough to see what everyone thinks. I don't know if this really fits a game like civilization but I for one would like more of a role playing aspect added to the game. I think it would add an element of immersion to it even if it doesn't mean much in the game overall.

Now that would be absolutely LOVELY!

 

[mayonaise]

There are a lot of good ideas here, but the fact that this is a game, means we should strive first for good game play then for total realism recreation.

I'm glad someone chimed in, I was beginning to think the same thing. I want to add more realism in very abstract terms-- i.e. nations can have civil wars and split, wars can last longer, techs are more varied. Some of you are going waaaay to far. If the game was ever designed that you are wittling your way down to, it would be an absolute snooze fest and a disaster. Managing 100+ trade routes that span the entire map EVERY turn? Building gunsmiths to be able to make guns? What about blacksmiths for swords? factories for tanks? Obviousness factor of techs + tech availability + civs strengths... its just getting way too bogged down

As I tried to suggest in my earlier post, the best thing for the modder to do would be to make a list of GAMEPLAY priorities.. Problems he sees in the game that need fixing, and find the least disruptive ways to accomplish them.

KISS - keep it simple stupid. best advice for taking on any project.

oh- and slayer, i think thats a brilliant idea. it would add so much flavor to the game that can at times drag on (as you wait for that one more turn before something interesting happens!)

 

[JakeCourtney]

Making small changes, then testing those changes is best. Work on the balance of each and every change.

 

[Lightzy]

Simetrical, I still disagree with you :>

Civ is indeed a game of 'what might have been', but it isn't a blank board.
You get to control what your civ is doing, but not what its made of.. so to speak.
It comes with the assumption that 'civ world' is the same as ours.. technology is the same as ours, that people form communities and cities, that the laws of physics are the same, that natural resources are the same.. that guns are built in the same way

It's kind of like scientific experimentation
You get to play with X all you want, but to get a result that you can make sense of, Y has to remain constant
Thats why I don't buy wooden guns.


Also, chemistry WAS needed to create guns.
It's just more basic chemistry than what we have today, that's all. Examining the qualities of elements/compounds and how they react to things is as chemistry as chemistry gets.
Same with physics.. action-reaction is a physics concept. just really basic physics, but they DID need to understand it in order to make use of it, as we do now but on a more advanced level