Civ4 Realism Mod (Extended Gameplay and tweaks)

[thescaryworker]

I agree with belgradar. It's not exactly fair for the Aztecs to be stuck with a sucky stone-age unit, while germany gets a Panzer. The only problem you might come up with is the civs that didn't exist during certain time periods. (USA during ancient; Rome in the present) You could always improvize, give a few examples, and let the people vote on which ones they want.

EDIT: I just figured out how to load saves from inside the game without going through all those steps!
1. Rename the 'Assets' folder in 'Realism' to 'Custom Assets'.
2. Create a copy of the hard-coded 'Custom Assets' in the MyGames/Civ4 file
3. Paste the 'Custom Assets' in 'Realism' next to the real 'Custom Assets' file.
4. The game will no longer require itself to load the mod, just move 'Custom Assets' out of where it is to not play 'Realism' anymore.

 

[Simetrical]

i think a major problem right now is you need to specify what this mod is for. you are getting ideas thrown at you that would make sense for maps that represent much smaller areas (like map of europe/middle east) via stronger nukes, artillery that can shoot 10 tiles, etc... and much larger ideas that would be incorporated in maps where a continent might be 10 tiles wide. civ4 tried to balance the gameplay so it could work both ways, and came up lacking some in both. the more you specify your goal the more accurate you depiction will be.

I agree with this. The problem is, if you do the figuring, you get stuff like 150 miles per tile minimum, assuming the largest map possible without modding is Earth-sized. (Of course, that's at the equator; the width theoretically decreases as you move north or south, which is a total headache.) You could use other reference points, of course, but that one strikes me as the most logical.

But the real problem is, any kind of sane scales result in massive ridiculousness, one way or another. A modern battleship, for instance, would take something like 20 years to circumnavigate the globe, where in reality it would take something on the order of weeks (assuming straits and canals are available, or that there's otherwise a straight path to travel). You can't fix this without either allowing entire civilizations to be conquered in a one-turn war that gives them no actual time to respond, or making one turn represent some period of time that would require you to spend years of uninterrupted real time to finish a game (I calculate about 7.4 years straight to get from 3000 BCE to 2000 CE with one-week turns, assuming a generous average of 15 minutes per turn).

This can't be avoided. Compromises must be made. The question is, what should they be?

An entirely new tech tree, not based on the same paradigm would be nice. Say something with actual branches of research. So you had independant paths...possibley to where you could master one branch while completely ignoring others...depending on the situation and what you want from your civ.

Not realistic the way you have it set up. All technological advances inherently depend on prior advances, and the effect of one advance will be completely different from the effects of its prerequisites. For instance, the technology required to build an atom bomb ("military") requires the scientific method and an advanced knowledge of physics (both "pure scientific"), as well as mining ("labor") and doubtless other things I can't think of at the moment. It is simply impossible to build a nuclear bomb without all these things. The same logic applies to all modern technological advances, which depend very heavily on advanced scientific knowledge, and also to a lesser extent to many earlier technologies (you need metalworking to effectively chop down trees and the like, for instance, as well as to forge swords, etc.).

After a certian point, say replaceable parts, or manufacturing, you should have to build a steel mill, or smelter. Wraught Iron stopped being used around the turn of the 20th century. Steel took over.

It didn't have to, though. There's no technical reason you couldn't make guns out of bronze, or aluminum, or plastic, or copper, or tin, or lead, or even stone. Heck, you could probably make a gun out of wood somehow. All those would just be either less effective (for most purposes) or more expensive than their steel counterparts, to a greater or lesser extent.

And by the logic that you need a steel mill or smelter to use steel, you should need to build a forge to use iron. It's assumed that certain capabilities are automatically part of civilian infrastructure.

Much like how riflemen dont require gunpowder anymore, since it was so common by then...a steel refinery should provide all the steel youd need for units, even if you dont actually have iron in your territorial borders.

To the contrary, riflemen should require either gunpowder or some substitute. Any explosive will do, really, pretty much. You can make a gun that uses TNT or C4 or nitroglycerin as its propellant, or you could substitute something else for any one of the elements in black powder (the use of a mix of sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal as the first gun propellant was due largely to historical accident). Again, you'll have to account for various peculiarities of the substances you use, but it's doable.

Iron specifically is abundant in the Earth's crust. More advanced technologies should be able to extract it without an iron resource, albeit at a higher cost. An alternative would be to just use some other material.

in regards to "the nuclear military idea" how about depleated uranium shells? does increased damage, ilness points added after city attack and so on

The precise health risks of depleted uranium are disputed. That it can cause heavy metal poisoning if ingested or inhaled in sufficient amounts, no one doubts; whether the amount of radiation it produces is significant is questionable. Overall, it's probably not terribly dangerous to the population at large, considering it's released basically only on the destruction or attempted destruction of a tank (from certain antitank weapons and from tank armor), and therefore the amount released over the course of a war would be fairly low. If anyone is harmed by depleted uranium, it's probably soldiers, and even that's uncertain. Either way, it's doubtless less dangerous to the populace than the use of lead for bullets, say.

don't know if this is what you meant by illness points, but usage of such shells should reflect the major health problems that soldiers firing the shells experienced after operative duty...
Should be plenty documentation about this available, even if the US still denies it...(last I heard, anyway)

Ah, here we have someone with his mind made up before the discussion starts . . . as I say, the matter is disputed, and there just isn't enough evidence to be certain either way. If you'd like to find environmentalist/pacifist documentation to argue your case, I'd be happy to counter with government analyses.

Would guns be invented without chemistry, metal working, physics, etc?

Sure. None of those is necessary for guns, strictly speaking. However, they would certainly help (or at least the first two would, the last is out of place). You'd need explosives, and for explosives you'd need mining (seeing as virtually any conceivable explosive is derived from mined products), but other than that I can't think of anything strictly necessary for guns. Some inventive guy with access to some materials that are explosive when put together might figure out that they're explosives, and once you have explosives discovered you just need one more clever guy to stick it in a tube, close off the tube at one end, put in a rock, and boom. The tube could be made out of anything, even bamboo, although that probably wouldn't last for more than a few shots.

biological weapons without medicine and biochemistry?

You could use a slave or prisoner infected with Ebola or anthrax or smallpox or whatever as a biological weapon. Not hard, pretty much every society has observed that some diseases are contagious. To isolate the disease and spread it in its pure form would be another matter, much trickier, requiring all sorts of things.

But overall, you have the right idea.

WE ARE all speaking chinese and russian...
chinese is the most common language on earth.
after that, spanish, and I'm pretty sure that after that -- russian.

Mandarin is the most common language on the planet, yes, but only as a native language, and even then it's only spoken by about 13.69% of the world. English is third, with 4.84%, just barely behind Spanish at 5.05%. Russian clocks in at seventh place. (Source: CIA World Factbook)

However, realize that this is first languages only. Many, many Europeans can speak English to an extent, and so can quite a substantial percentage of third-worlders. English is undoubtedly the best-known language in the world―all because of the power of the British Empire, and eventually the power of its former colonies. But this is really a side point.

BTW, does the AI actually take into account new techs?
I mean, I really doubt that it can look at a tech and evaluate whats best to research at any specific point.

I think you'd be surprised―it's not too hard to code something that will analyze the costs and benefits of a tech and make a semi-intelligent decision based on that. However, I think Civ4 just uses simple weights, with each tech having a ranking in the XML files in each of several general groups (Military, Economic, Religious, etc.). This is also undoubtedly the way it gives you those helpful little suggestions on what to research.

Would anyone have bothered researching chemistry if they didnt want to make a gun? Youre looking at it backwards. Nessescity is the mother of invention. You dont research something unless you need it.Only in astro sciences will you be researching something, only for knowledges sake, and end up discovering something completely unrelated and useful.

Really, now. So Newton's laws of motion, were those astrosciences or useless? How about relativity? Quantum mechanics, which promises all sorts of incredible things that it's just starting to deliver on, that's which? How about calculus? For that matter, Euclidean geometry? The list goes on, and on, and on . . . would you like me to list the things any of these made possible, or have I made my point? Theoretical advances have, since the start of the scientific revolution, made practical advances possible.

People thinking hrmm...we gotta get out of this rain, led to construction, which set the stage for people who were thinking...hrmm there has to be a better way to get water into our cities. This also opened the door for people who were thinking hrmm we sure do need something around our city to keep stuff out..though construction could be applied to all of these things, they are not interdependant. They also arent dependant on any other branch of scientific thought.

No, those three ("civil", "labor", and "military", you might call them) aren't interdependent. But they are all dependent on construction itself. I don't know which branch you'd put that in, but if it's in any one branch, other branches will have to depend on it.

I agree with your point about there being too many dependencies, absolutely. But your method of pigeonholing everything into one of a few trees based on its effects is equally faulty. The dependency structure should resemble a tangled patch of shrubbery, the leaves all interwoven but mostly connected directly to the ground, than a tree, with its rigid hierarchy and Boolean dependencies.

I urge you to check out the cia factbook (google it) about russia and china. They are FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR from leading economic powers. I have more sway in my small toe over geo-political issues than russia or china...its just that they have alot of really big bombs.

Indeed? The People's Republic of China has the second largest GDP of any nation on the planet, trailing only the United States. In 2004, it had an estimated $7.3 billion GDP PPP, as opposed to the U.S.'s $11.8 billion. It should be noted that both of these nations are among the world's few largest in terms of land coverage (4th and 3rd respectively). China has immense political power due to its economy, able to force virtually every nation on the planet to pretend Taiwan doesn't exist and ignore China's violations of all sorts of treaties it's signed. Arguably the only more politically important nation is the U.S.

I don't think your big toe quite matches up.

But anyway, the point still holds, to an extent. The planet's largest nation in terms of land coverage, Russia, ranks 10th in GDP, but Japan is 3rd in GDP but about 60th in terms of land coverage. A somewhat better correlation is obtained by taking population instead of land coverage, but it's still not great. And this is, to be fair, reflected adequately in Civ 4: a medium-sized nation can easily trounce a less advanced but larger nation.

(Incidentally, all figures from the CIA World Factbook, which you referred to. It'd probably be a good idea to check the sources you reference before actually referencing them.)

you dont need to discover all the techs in an age to move up right? i havent really paid attention, although i will now

I think it just advances you after a certain number of techs, or a certain number of research points rounded down to the nearest tech.

 

[JakeCourtney]

We haven't heard from jaynus in awhile. He must be hard at work.

 

[kp80]

I know its probably not a good idea to pst something after such a long post, but I want to get this up before I forget about it.

The concept of resources being used up got me thinking about synthetic resources. In WWII rubber and oil were in short supply, so ways were found to synthetically produce them. Perhaps you could add an optional tech that would allow the production of certain resources (like oil). Then you could have a city produce oil for the whole civilization through the production menu. The resource would be similar to the amount of money you have, in that when a unit is being produced it uses a certain amount of that resource per turn.

For example, if you don't have an oil resource near any of your cities you could research synthetic oil and have a city produce oil. That will add oil to an oil stockpile for your civilization. Then as you build a tank or an aiplane the amount of oil in the stockpile is reduced by a certain amount every turn.

There are other ways you could implement this. Perhaps every turn you move a tank you need a certain amount of oil or the tank will not function, rather than using oil during the production. Perhaps all resources could be put into a stockpile, so that as you mine them your civ gets that resource stockpiled but the resource is depleted on the map.

I realize this is a rough idea, and maybe makes the game too much like an RTS for some people. I think it would add more options for people who like long games.

 

[JakeCourtney]

I know its probably not a good idea to pst something after such a long post, but I want to get this up before I forget about it.

The concept of resources being used up got me thinking about synthetic resources. In WWII rubber and oil were in short supply, so ways were found to synthetically produce them. Perhaps you could add an optional tech that would allow the production of certain resources (like oil). Then you could have a city produce oil for the whole civilization through the production menu. The resource would be similar to the amount of money you have, in that when a unit is being produced it uses a certain amount of that resource per turn.

For example, if you don't have an oil resource near any of your cities you could research synthetic oil and have a city produce oil. That will add oil to an oil stockpile for your civilization. Then as you build a tank or an aiplane the amount of oil in the stockpile is reduced by a certain amount every turn.

There are other ways you could implement this. Perhaps every turn you move a tank you need a certain amount of oil or the tank will not function, rather than using oil during the production. Perhaps all resources could be put into a stockpile, so that as you mine them your civ gets that resource stockpiled but the resource is depleted on the map.

I realize this is a rough idea, and maybe makes the game too much like an RTS for some people. I think it would add more options for people who like long games.

Those are some pretty interesting ideas. I wonder how they would play out in the game if properly implemented.

 

[slaxton]

i thought of this yesterday but it slipped my mind until i read kp80's post about synthetic resources.
i was going to give oil as an example as there are ways of actually converting sawdust into an oil that can replace desiel; each lumbermill you have can function as an oil source for one unit. and then theres eythanal (sp?), which can be made from whats left over in a wheat or corn field, and can more or less replace gasoline currently (sure, its substantially more corrosive, but something tells me the only reason they havent overcome that is because theres too much money in keeping us all dependant on oil. oh, and it gels in much warmer temps.... once again, not exactly an impossible to overcome problem); can build eythanol refinery instead of farm on wheat/corn for oil instead of food. and you cant forget rendered animal fats, those can be used as fuel. so a perhaps a rendering plant as a national wonder, that produces an oil source for one unit per pasture of food animals you control.

someone suggested that you should be able to make alcohol from wheat. i figure i should bring that one up again because im talking about alternate uses for resources, and that was a good idea. perhaps instead of building a farm on wheat you can build a distillery, and instead of giving you the food bonus it then gives you a luxury resource (whiskey, say).

also, you should add tobacco and marijuana as luxury resources, both that add +2 happiness and -1 health. coca beans (which you can harvest for either cocaine (with the same modifiers as tobacco) or chocolate (+1 happiness). perhaps with civics (not sure how else to adopt this part) that either make drugs legal in your country (eliminating the -1 to health) or illegal (preventing you from using them at all. and just to be completely unbiased about it, that would prevent wine and whiskey as well, as alcohol is a drug).
there would need to be some up side to outlawing drugs, im just not sure what it might be. maybe you could just set it up so that if that is another countries favourite civic and you choose to adopt legal drugs, you get -6 diplomacy. maybe someone could build on that idea, i know parts of it were suggested by someone else earlier.

oh, and i have to go on record as being for the inclusion of many different kinds of bombs/missiles. well, atleast serveral, 5 or 6, from bombs that need to be carried by planes to short range high yield warheads and long range, small (at first, medium later) yield warheads. thats on top of a tactical nuke and an actual nuclear bomb (that needs to be dropped by a plane or moved into position by a spy).

 

[Lachlan]

Jaynus ??? Where are you ? I want updated version ...

 

[Lightzy]

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

Guns mean guns. Like we know em. that's how it is in Civ at least.
you need chemistry to formulate an explosive, 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), physics to even conceptualize the idea of action-reaction with an explosive propelling a slug.. and so on.

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

 

[LzPrst]

no comments on my suggestions? (pg 12)

they are all well founded... and I think they would definately add realism to the game. especially food limiting growth and trade creating it. that way coastal cities would become more important than farm cities. as is IRL the case. kansas city isnt bigger than New York, despite kansas having a superior food production. it is trade, administration and production that makes cities big. not food supply. Rome was a city of 1 million in the imperial age, but it had no chance to feed itself. the grain came from egypt. when the roman empire collapsed rome shrunk to nothing and didnt grow out of its 200 AD city limits until after WW2...

can grain transports be included somehow?

 

[LzPrst]

concerning bioligical weaponry. I know 2 cases of the top of my head where biological weapons were used in older times.

first. when the mongols sieged a city in the crimea (modern ukraine) they had to cancel the siege because they were afflicted by the plague. as a goodbye present they loaded their plagueridden corpses in their catapults and flung them into the city. the italian merchants that owned the city then sailed home and spread the disease. this disease is commonly known as THE BLACK DEATH! and it wiped out more than half of europes population...

second, in the new world the indians didnt have a resistance to smallpox and thus during negotiations the whiteys gave them blankets from hospitals where people with smallpox had lain. they were infected and brought the disease home and killed off most of the tribe and the colonists could then get their land without hassle...

in fact these human induced epidemics were far more dangerous then than they are now, because modern medicine will allow for ways to counter human created diseases, or at least slow them. in those times there was no cure, no medicine and thus only natural immunity or isolation would allow for survival...

 

[JakeCourtney]

concerning bioligical weaponry. I know 2 cases of the top of my head where biological weapons were used in older times.

first. when the mongols sieged a city in the crimea (modern ukraine) they had to cancel the siege because they were afflicted by the plague. as a goodbye present they loaded their plagueridden corpses in their catapults and flung them into the city. the italian merchants that owned the city then sailed home and spread the disease. this disease is commonly known as THE BLACK DEATH! and it wiped out more than half of europes population...

second, in the new world the indians didnt have a resistance to smallpox and thus during negotiations the whiteys gave them blankets from hospitals where people with smallpox had lain. they were infected and brought the disease home and killed off most of the tribe and the colonists could then get their land without hassle...

in fact these human induced epidemics were far more dangerous then than they are now, because modern medicine will allow for ways to counter human created diseases, or at least slow them. in those times there was no cure, no medicine and thus only natural immunity or isolation would allow for survival...

Then, you can follow up in modern times where they can load ICBMs with Biological attacks.

I think Jaynus might be away, haven't heard a peep for awhile. He might just be working like crazy.

 

[Narcio]

First off I really don't think he is adding things haphazardly just for the hell of it. Anything that has been implemented that turns out not to work can simply be tweaked or removed. I personally don't agree with not being able to raze cities but I am playing the game that way and deciding whether or not it actually makes sense and works well (just for the record I don't raze cities very often, however I like to have the option just in case).

The only thing that really bothers me about not being able to raze cities is that I like playing on raging barbarians and they tend to get a lot of cities in stupid locations when you play with that setting. Its kind of annoying to have to keep every stupidly placed barbarian city that has ever existed. I tend to notice that the AI for the other nations will place their cities nicely separated / spaced out most of the time. When the barbarians place their cities, they have no other cities around them usually so they just kinda randomly set them somewhere and it ends up being a dumb spot.

 

[Narcio]

I would call them armored cars, not tanks. I dont even know if light tank is a good description of them. Several mms of armor to stop rifle caliber rounds, and a swivel, handcrank, or electric turret with a gun in it, doesnt nessacarily mean its a "tank". I guess the name still fits the definition, but not the spirit of a "tank".



Most of polands tanks were imported. Some of them Czech like the 38T. Some of them french or finnish like the Wz19...they built thier own as well. I still would classify them as armored cars, as none of them were capable of stopping a 37mm round fired from any of light or medium panzers and pak AT guns. Even the 20mm autocannons on 232s, PanzerIs and IIs could penetrate the armor of anything poland had.

Without a large supply of materials (and im sure poland had some of its own oil, oil is everywhere, but not in a signifigant amount that they could survive without importing it.) like oil, steel, and skilled labour, you arent going to be able to research and design new tanks....what you CAN do, is purchase the design, import the materials to produce a factory, tool that factory for that design, and then churn out as many as your own resources can handle (which in poland, was apparently 180 tanks its not like they didnt know Hitler was comming) Since global buisiness was a new thing back then, its fairly likely the course of events was something like: Company in poland presents an investment plan to a tank manufacturer somewhere else in the world, and uses the investment capital to build the factory, which will turn out so many tanks a year, and some of those tanks will be being manufactured for the investor.

Germany used alot of those kinds of things to get around the treaty limitations. Private buisinesses were building an army...not germany.





Because germany facilitated that. It was also key in building up strength before actually breaking the treaty. Though it turned out that the tanks werent really all that great. They were all replaced within a year. Though the 38T remained in service throughout the war in police units, and eventually became the design for the Hetzer I believe...

But the overall point is that it wasnt possible for Poland to design a Stug, or Tiger, or Panther, or really much of anything. Let alone mass produce it. All that infrastructure is dependant on resources...if you dont have them....you may have the capability to design and build a few of them, really bad mock offs each one, but youre not capable of produce a number or quality thats signifigant enough to warrant being able to build high technology in mass without the appropiate resources...not even building them really really really slowly.

I apologize if I sounded rude. Anyways, I guess our argument was more a matter of semantics when it comes to the Polish "tanks." It is true that they were 'light' tanks at best. That being said, the Poles also had a fairly large airforce. In game terms and in reality, airforces also require oil. The main point being that a nation with little access to their own oil was still able to field a small number of tanks or armoured cars (both still requiring oil) and a fairly decent sized airforce. Especially in the modern age, everything can be traded for in at least minimal quantities.

Now the rest of this is just my opinion, can't really easily be supported by fact. I just happen to think that even if you can't get a really good supply of oil, if you're going to dump enough resources into it, you could still scrounge up a little from somewhere. I do agree though, that it would be very interesting in game terms to make techs that you would have no reason to research, given your civilization's status, impossible to get. Yes, I agree that if you have no oil, for example, your people wouldn't learn how to use it-at least not until others you had contact with used it and could also trade some to you. In game terms this would mean: A country without their own supply of oil, and if no one else could trade it to them, would not be able to research a tech like whatever it is that tanks / aircraft require. I think people usually tend to react to what they do have.

In game terms this would mean: should a nation be allowed to research a tech that is very specifically dependent on a resource if they have never seen that resource? Should a land locked country be able to research sailing, and other ship related techs? Should a country with no horses be able to research horse archery? Etc etc etc. I think people usually tend to react to what they have access to.

However, as you were saying, its very probable that the Poles did exactly what you said: essentially contracting out the production to another country or funding a foreign company to build a factory on their own soil. Doesn't this itself suggest that a country can indeed build those machines, once others around them have it, despite their own conditions? True, it would indeed probably be more expensive, but certainly still possible for them to get access to some tanks.

I think to sum it up, I'm trying to say that perhaps we should make a game mechanic to limit people with no access to a resource from researching techs that depend on it. At the same time, even if you don't have a large supply of a particular resource, you probably still could build a few perhaps ****ty and out-dated units that require the resource. This, in our example, would mean that a country without any knowledge of oil wouldn't be the pioneer of the combustion engine, but once others around them have it, they would be able to contract out and get a few for themselves.

Anyways, I have to run off to class now or I'm going to be late, so I apologize if this post is messy / rushed.

 

[Krafweerk]

Kwif,
necessity is indeed the mother of invention, but you follow it through with reasoning which ammounts to saying that people invented the wheel because they needed tanks, or that people invented plastics because they wanted to build spaceship components.
People came up with ideas/products, and tried to sell what they came up with to as many different markets as they could
So plastics for example, is used everywhere from tupperware to bombs.

True there is a logical progression from discovery to invention. Obviously in Civ we arent using tupperware so we have to boil it down to the things that actually going to be represented. 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. However militarily, it was a totally new invention. It changed warfare in ways that it had never known it could. The Eifel tower wonder, that decreases war wariness is a perfect military wonder for radio, to represent its effects on society. But I dont see it falling into any other category but military.

As for china and russia.. that depends on what you define as 'rule the world'.
If being the biggest and most populous doesn't satisfy you, then I don't know what would.
Perhaps its more correct to say that NOBODY ruled the world yet? and that our 'game' of 'civ' is yet far from its conclusion?

Id say you were correct in your assumption. Niether Russia, Prussia, or China, has ever been the most militarily powerful, economically powerful, or diplomatically powerful. The Greeks, the romans, the british, and the united states have been the only nations in the history of the world, to achieve all of those at the same time, and it didnt last very long.

As for zeppelins.. navies don't use aircraft carriers anymore?
and if a single carrier could move much much quicker than a ship, and carry a much greater load of aircraft and munitions?
As a weapons platform its not that bad either, but perhaps we ARE getting technologically advanced enough to phase the idea out.. but back in history, if they did it right, it could have worked.

not to mention the potential of zepellins as luxury airliners

Not like we used too. I live Jacksonville Florida...we have Mayport naval station here. We used to have 3 carriers. Saratoga, Forrestal, and Eisenhour. All 3 of those have been decommishened and was replaced with the carrier that used to be stations in Norfolk...the JFK...theyre thinking about removing carriers from the atlantic fleet all together.

Big floating targets.

IF world war one wouldnt have been the war that it was, and someone would have perpared a breakthrough, and had the trucks and supplies to support it, its possible world war one could have ended with VERY different political lines, and territory, and possibley dragged on for another 20 or so years. In that alternate reality yes...I believe zeppelins might have found thier nitch as bombers and aircraft carriers. But they wouldnt last very long...and soon the military would realize building something that big is just to costly to lose. So you might as well not build them at all.

If you really like the blimp carrier idea...check out this game by Rowan and this Webpage.

Air Power by Rowan Software:

http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=2890

Alternate History, and Current Zeppelin technology:

http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/airship/announcements.htm

 

[Krafweerk]

I apologize if I sounded rude.

However, as you were saying, its very probable that the Poles did exactly what you said: essentially contracting out the production to another country or funding a foreign company to build a factory on their own soil. Doesn't this itself suggest that a country can indeed build those machines, once others around them have it, despite their own conditions? True, it would indeed probably be more expensive, but certainly still possible for them to get access to some tanks.

I think to sum it up, I'm trying to say that perhaps we should make a game mechanic to limit people with no access to a resource from researching techs that depend on it. At the same time, even if you don't have a large supply of a particular resource, you probably still could build a few perhaps ****ty and out-dated units that require the resource. This, in our example, would mean that a country without any knowledge of oil wouldn't be the pioneer of the combustion engine, but once others around them have it, they would be able to contract out and get a few for themselves.

Anyways, I have to run off to class now or I'm going to be late, so I apologize if this post is messy / rushed.

You didnt come across as rude at all I really enjoyed and absorbed what youve written. I do have to tend to agree with you. It was semantics. I also tend to agree with you about techs not being able to be researched without having the pre-requisite thats critical to its purpose (IE, no coastal cities, no sailing for you)

Another game I play, world war two online just came up with an interesting game mechanic I believe might be useful here.

In that game, certian units, after they are researched, are rank dependant. Since campaigns can last months, alot of the older equipment is completely outclassed, but its all the newbies can fly/drive/sail because of thier low rank.

All the units work on tiers...tier 0 includes the base rank equipment, and tier 1 is a bit higher...you start the game with tier 0 and tier 1. After a few weeks, tier 2 will come in, then tier 3, then 4, etc etc. By the time tier 4 comes around, it completely outclasses tiers 0&1.

What the devs did to get around this, is allow access to noobs, to tiers 2 behind the highest tier available. So say the highest ranked guys are flying tier 4 aircraft, the noobs, who technically dont have the rank fly tier 2, have those aircraft now available to them. If tier 3 was out, they would have access to tier 1, if tier 9 is out, they have access up to tier 7.

How this could translate to Civ4 is this. We'll use gunpowder as an example. The first units are musketmen...if your not sitting on salt peter you cant build them, though, if another more advanced civ moves past musketmen, and onto riflemen, it unlocks musketmen for you regardless of if you have salt peter...if they move on to infantry, you can now use riflemen. The same could be applied for just about anything...balancing of course would take some time. Even doubling build time because of lack of the resource.

This would simulate a nation just dumping thier stocks of muskets when they move to rifles, and other nations being able to get them on either the free market or black market (maybe theres an opportunity for a wonder here).

Case in point here....No one in africa produces Ak47s...but they all seem to have them. When russia moved to the Ak74, it merely left the Ak47s sitting in warehouses, or just sold them to other nations (who sold them to nations, who sold them to nations, who sold them to guerrillas, who sold them to nations, who sold them to mercenaries, repeat ad naseum)

Another way to handle this would be the ability to stockpile resources....and making units cost "two steel and three oil" in addition to thier shield cost. Each source of resources you have would have a "size" (how many are stockpiled a turn...1 for small, 3 for medium, 6 for large). If you didnt use the resources that turn, they would be stockpiled. So you might have 23 steel, 14 oil, 1 uranium, 8 horses, etc etc. You could then trade those resources to other nations. Who could then use them to build whatever they want.

 

[Krafweerk]

Really, now. So Newton's laws of motion, were those astrosciences or useless? How about relativity? Quantum mechanics, which promises all sorts of incredible things that it's just starting to deliver on, that's which? How about calculus? For that matter, Euclidean geometry? The list goes on, and on, and on . . . would you like me to list the things any of these made possible, or have I made my point? Theoretical advances have, since the start of the scientific revolution, made practical advances possible.
No, those three ("civil", "labor", and "military", you might call them) aren't interdependent. But they are all dependent on construction itself. I don't know which branch you'd put that in, but if it's in any one branch, other branches will have to depend on it.

I agree with your point about there being too many dependencies, absolutely. But your method of pigeonholing everything into one of a few trees based on its effects is equally faulty. The dependency structure should resemble a tangled patch of shrubbery, the leaves all interwoven but mostly connected directly to the ground, than a tree, with its rigid hierarchy and Boolean dependencies.

Relativity was wrong...quantum physics are highly theoretical, and have no practical uses, laws of motion is a theory, not a scientific principal. None of those are techs that would be represented in civilization. They havent had an impact on technological advancement...merely on the psyche of society.

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

For what its worth, it was just an idea I was throwing out to spark conversation on what we could do to make a better tech tree than we already have. I do agree with alot of what you say, and I think if we got together and ironed out an actual new tree, or an entirely new system, we'd really be onto something.

Indeed? The People's Republic of China has the second largest GDP of any nation on the planet, trailing only the United States. In 2004, it had an estimated $7.3 billion GDP PPP, as opposed to the U.S.'s $11.8 billion. It should be noted that both of these nations are among the world's few largest in terms of land coverage (4th and 3rd respectively). China has immense political power due to its economy, able to force virtually every nation on the planet to pretend Taiwan doesn't exist and ignore China's violations of all sorts of treaties it's signed. Arguably the only more politically important nation is the U.S.

But anyway, the point still holds, to an extent. The planet's largest nation in terms of land coverage, Russia, ranks 10th in GDP, but Japan is 3rd in GDP but about 60th in terms of land coverage. A somewhat better correlation is obtained by taking population instead of land coverage, but it's still not great. And this is, to be fair, reflected adequately in Civ 4: a medium-sized nation can easily trounce a less advanced but larger nation.

(Incidentally, all figures from the CIA World Factbook, which you referred to. It'd probably be a good idea to check the sources you reference before actually referencing them.)

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....

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.


Russia is bankrupt
China is over populated and headed for a very large boom, before a huge recession (HAH! welcome to the free market commies!)
France is well...france.
The united states owns the planet...theyre just waiting for the memo to get to every one else
Britian is still in denial
Germany is a wolf in a bears clothing
Japan will rule the world someday (they havent got the memo yet)
And no one else matters.

Really though...8 billion? with 1 billion people? We do better with 350 million. I dont see that as being even a contender in the world stage.

But...

Those...

Nukes....

 

[SlayerofDeitys]

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.

 

[Narcio]

you know i've been thinking about it and i think one of the major aims is to lengthen gameplay and to slow down techs.... as of now the main way peopel have gone about trying to do this is to slow down tech research and make more turns...

what if we just added more techs? there are probably hundreds if not thousands of major technological advances that aren't included in the game, and each could be pretty easily incorporated in the game. i also always thought it would be nice if there were dead ends in techs, i.e. you didnt have to research them but they would benefit you in the short term if you did. for example, a castle building tech taht allows you to build castles. you dont HAVE to research it, but if you do you can build castles which will give you a major boost if you need them during the middle ages. ideally the different eras would last long enough that this would be a tempting option.

something to think about

I think thats a good idea. In the long run, I would like to see the tech tree reworked quite a bit, with more techs added.

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. The higher cost represents your civilization's lack of experience and knowledge with that particular tech. Being able to research something that you don't actually have the requirements for represents the fact that your country can hire foreign companies to help you out ontop of the fact that once you see some particular technologies being used, its much easier for your own country to adopt them.

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." Another nation also wants to research "fortresses" but they have never built castles. They don't have contact with anyone else that can build fortresses either. They have to start with castles first. However, once you finish researching fortresses, those people who have contact with you see how the technology works and can skip castles and directly research fortresses, but at a greater cost.

To help facilitate this, you might also want to put in techs that make other techs obsolete. I.e, from the previous example, once you get the made up "fortress building" tech, "castles" is obsoleted and removed from the list of techs you need to research. (This would just make it so that you wouldn't have a bunch of old techs that you never wanted to start building up in the tech tree.)

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. Of course, it would be harder for you to research those metal hauls than someone else who has researched all of the wooden hauled ships. (Since the natural progression is to go from wooden ships to metal ships.)

This is probably only an extreme long term idea. I'm also not quite sure how much 'more' it should cost to research something you have no knowledge of. If you make it too low, its too easy to skip techs. If you make it too high, it becomes easier just to research all of the earlier techs, which is what I'm mainly trying to avoid.

A lot of little loose ends would have to be fixed if the tech tree was to be reworked like this. Just as an example, even if you get some sort of cannon building technology, but your country lacked the heavy industry required to cast such cannons, you obviosuly shouldn't be able to build cannons. Similarly, it would be hard for your society to build huge metal ship hauls if you have no industry geared to do that sort of thing. Your civilization would have to research the heavy industry required to make those ships, and then also research the particular techs required for the ships.

I think this idea would help out under circumstances where there are two civilizations at very different tech levels. For example, a colonization of the new world. It shoudln't take your civilization in the new world 2000 years to get to the same point as the Europeans who are colonizing you, given that they are bringing these technologies to your land. (Of course, they still might conquer all of your lands before you can modernize.)

 

[Gulio]

Russia is bankrupt
China is over populated and headed for a very large boom, before a huge recession (HAH! welcome to the free market commies!)
France is well...france.
The united states owns the planet...theyre just waiting for the memo to get to every one else
Britian is still in denial
Germany is a wolf in a bears clothing
Japan will rule the world someday (they havent got the memo yet)
And no one else matters.
.

You shouldn't be bashing other nations, this isn't a politics thread. Post your childisdish thoughts to the threads they belong in.

 

[Littlelisa]

Britian is still in denial

But your speaking English
We couldnt rule forever you know, but everyone still loves the Queen

But yeah does it really matter how much money China or Russia is worth? This is about making a game slightly more fun and realistic.