Civ5 discussion

[stanleyshi79]

Is this some kind of Zombie thread? It just keeps coming back to life!

No. It is my idea for civ5. I hope CIV5 can enhance random event and coporation in higher lever. Maybe CIV5 will be the last version of civilization.

 

[Tholish]

It's a relic of the Civ 3 1/2 era, kind of interesting in an era of Civ IV's maturity.

There will never be a last version of Civilization. Civ4BtS is probably the greatest strategy game ever made, certainly the best turn based one. However, it is improved with mods all the time. Many of the Must Have mod functionalities, such as Revolution, should be included in Civ 5, but a new iteration is not a mod or even an expansion, it includes changes in ways that could not be done with just an expansion. Stuff as radical as going from 2D to 3D for example. That's the kind of stuff that suggestions should focus on. I think a better representation of the Earth's surface wouild be such an improvement, as would matching scales of all objects (with zoom and flags and stuff so you can see what's going on). Gameplay wise, improvements need to be as profound as the upgrade from techs just having a set research time in civ 2 to requiring a managed resource that varies rate strategically, in civ 3. The upgrade shoudl involve fiddling with the model in the same way as expanding to a world with cottage economy and specialist economy fiddled with the model. Maybe a good example would be a better model for bonuses. I mean, once you have horses you can breed them, once you have wheat you can replant it. Oil gets used up. Iron production varies in quantity. Sure, its not an economic simulation, but that part is lagging behind. The way to think about what needs to change is by looking at changes between old iterations, and the current bonus system is essentially unimproved since at least Civ 2. Sure, it's simple and elegant, but it could get so much better and remain so.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Ombudsmen for Firaxis keep telling me that if they add features to the game they'll have to take other features away. I think that's silly, because there are obviously more features in Civ4 BtS than there are in vanilla Civ4; and more in vanilla Civ4 than in Civ3; and more in Civ3 than in Civ2. And Civ1 was just the bare skeleton of the civ concept, an embryo of a great potential game that had not yet "hatched". (I'm partial to Civ2 though, I think that iteration will never be topped!)

Anyway, advances in computing *allow* advances in game features, and a richer gameplay. The only need to ever "take away" features in allowance for new ones, should be to avoid overwhelming the player. And the breed of player we have in civ, doesn't overwhelm easily.

 

[rysmiel]

and more in vanilla Civ4 than in Civ3.

while I agree with your other examples, I disagree quite a bit in this case; corruption. and a bunch of diplomatic options, and separate attack and defence strengths and health bars, and transferring production between projects, and simplifying building costs into city maintenance and removing citizens having nationalities, and unhappy people no longer causing riots and revolutions, and replacing pollution and city size limits with a single health metric, are non-trivial reductions of complexity which I think pretty well counter the extra additions to Civ 4 complexity-wise. (I also think pretty much every one of these things was a Bad Idea to remove. And, indeed, that the Civ 3/4 air unit model is a Bad Idea compared to having them be actual units like in Civ 1/2. But I digress)

I think you're right that this notion that Civ is as complex as it should be and adding more to it is a bad idea is for the birds; mods like Fall from Heaven add quite a lot more complexity to the Civ 4 engine and lots of people seem to like them just fine.

I am also amused that one of the things BtS had the good sense to bring back was some element ot the Civ 1/2 post-spaceship-building endgame; it also seems to me that an awful lot of people in various threads are asking for some sort of stability metric for an empire, and bringing back unhappy people causing riots and revolutions would certainly fix that.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Civ3 is the version I know the least about because I never played it--stuck with Civ2 until 4 came out and finally took the plunge there. My bad if it was feature rich relative to 4.

But the general point stands that they've still added an awful lot of features and dimensions of play since Civ1 and 2, and there's no harm in adding more so long as the computing power and the player's ability to digest the strategy implications, allow it.

The biggest imbalance in Civ right now is the overpowered strategy of "conquer everything" with some enormous stupid stack of cavalry. Monty on a Huge map, and nobody axe-rushed him early? It's over. No strategy there. To bring balance back very precisely requires bringing REALITY back to the game (and reality is the one word the game's developers hate hearing about the most!)

The reality of the warmonger strategy comes in the form of all the limitations: population limits army size; logistics limit how far you can send how large of an army (which really was the downfall of Xerxes' army in Greece, regardless of how brave the Spartans were in slowing them down--the Persians were so numerous they were dying of THIRST after drinking streams dry!); supply lines are relevant in real life (as Napoleon found out in Russia); and so on.

REALISM ***IS*** BALANCE, and Firaxis will learn this, perhaps someday.

 

[rysmiel]

But the general point stands that they've still added an awful lot of features and dimensions of play since Civ1 and 2, and there's no harm in adding more so long as the computing power and the player's ability to digest the strategy implications, allow it.

Sure, and agreed entirely.

The biggest imbalance in Civ right now is the overpowered strategy of "conquer everything" with some enormous stupid stack of cavalry. Monty on a Huge map, and nobody axe-rushed him early? It's over. No strategy there. To bring balance back very precisely requires bringing REALITY back to the game (and reality is the one word the game's developers hate hearing about the most!)
(...)
REALISM ***IS*** BALANCE, and Firaxis will learn this, perhaps someday.

I certainly hope not, because most of the arguments for better "realism" I see on this forum seem to be quite the wrong scale for actually making the game more fun.

 

[Skallagrimson]

most of the arguments for better "realism" I see on this forum seem to be quite the wrong scale for actually making the game more fun.

I'm thinking in terms of: unit builds should cost population and weapons. Weapons you build in production queues, and population comes out similar to a "whip" but without anger (unless you draft by staffing >1 unit/turn). And while units are standing, in any location, they COST. You've got to feed them, just like you would have to feed those citizens or specialists working in a city. On top of that there's the gold maintenance (salaries) except for draftee units (which would have lower morale, lower base strength).

Gigantic stacks of doom would simply not be POSSIBLE if units were this closely related to food yield and population. The Monty 150+ cav stack would be gone. Purely by accident we get more realism this way, but we can swear up and down to the developers it's for "balance".

 

[rysmiel]

I'm thinking in terms of: unit builds should cost population and weapons. Weapons you build in production queues, and population comes out similar to a "whip" but without anger (unless you draft by staffing >1 unit/turn). And while units are standing, in any location, they COST. You've got to feed them, just like you would have to feed those citizens or specialists working in a city. On top of that there's the gold maintenance (salaries) except for draftee units (which would have lower morale, lower base strength).

I don't think we're in disagreement on most of this. I want food and production costs for mantenance of units back, as well as salaries. I want units to have separate attack/defence/health values as opposed to just "strength", so one could reinstate the way earlier versions of Civ made draftee or captured barbarian units weaker than ones you built yourself in health.

I just do not think it's reasonable to put population into military units, particularly in the modern era, because cities that contain a couple of million people should be able to support crews for a hundred tanks without even noticing by any definition of "realism" I have ever come across.

Gigantic stacks of doom would simply not be POSSIBLE if units were this closely related to food yield and population. The Monty 150+ cav stack would be gone.

I don't want them gone at all; I just want it to take a hundred-city empire to back a force of a thousand tanks, and a game to support that size of play.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I just do not think it's reasonable to put population into military units, particularly in the modern era, because cities that contain a couple of million people should be able to support crews for a hundred tanks without even noticing by any definition of "realism" I have ever come across.

What this indicates is that city population numbers are way out of scale. If a size 18 city is "a couple of million" and a size 4 city is "a couple of thousand", something went exponential somewhere in pop sizing.

However, I'd be okay with a numeric pop cost for a given unit so that no matter how it scales, creating a unit would cost n amount of pop which may not decrease its pop at the higher scale, or may decrease it at the lower scale.

 

[rysmiel]

What this indicates is that city population numbers are way out of scale. If a size 18 city is "a couple of million" and a size 4 city is "a couple of thousand", something went exponential somewhere in pop sizing.

I'm assuming by the numbers of city population in Civ 1, which is the last time I recall seeing actual city populations quoted up front in the game, that this is in fact intended to be the case.

 

[Tholish]

There was a screen in Civ 3 that showed you what the exponential population translated into. Pop 1 was 10000, Pop 2 was 30000 and so forth, adding about a doubling each time.

Realism is a rich source for viable patterns that can enhance the game, and this has been used often enough that large enough violations of it clash so outright unrealistic elements should be adopted only if they are profoundly essential to gameplay and can be justified. Wonders are pure game elements that have no basis in reality, unless you simply justify that pride in your wonder motivates your people to do wonderful things. But it might be good if every time you justify you explain your justification. A civilopedia entry, "Pride in the Collossus so raises the morale of your people that they make more money in trading," or "The Collussus represents an entreprunerial spirit that makes your people rich." Or maybe not. Wonders are rare and can violate the rules because they are wonders.

But slavishly following detailed realism gets into a morass. Elegance, bang for buck, is the ideal here.

For instance, in my mod I give Artillery a 90 percent retreat because that reproduces what they actually are: units that can attack almost without fear of being destoyed by the attack, but which will eventually have to pause the attack to recover(reload), and which must be protected during that recovery time. Of course I balance by giving other units large bonuses when attacking them. If I tried to create some kind of resupply system and count ammunition, that might be more strictly accurate, but would be getting way too much into the weeds. If you add realism detail you must complete the story by including all relevantly related realism detail, otherwise you have added a half truth, an element that represents reality falsely rather than just imprecisely.

Similarly, for bonuses I think tracking tonnage would be not in the spirit of Civ, but to have non replenishable resources vanish on a random basis (with a vanish check for each item using the resource) would do the trick without undue strain. You have ten cities building swordsmen, that's ten rolls for the iron mine to exhaust, oops the vein ran out. That would have to be balanced with exploration for new sources perhaps, and/or salvaging--some harder method for the desperate, similar to oil platforms.

As for Xerxes army, how about some system that units cost normal money support inside your borders, but must be supported by a designated city when outside your borders, with the distance from the supporting city increasing the support cost (which is in food, hammers and and even bonuses, based on a portion of build requirements). Yet you could have supply units, that by moving from supporting city to supported unit in one turn eliminate the distance penalty for that turn.

Unsupported units take damage, healing units take extra support.

I think the Monty issue is best dealt with by simply getting rid of the money bonus from capturing cities. This is what makes warmongers economically viable is it not?

 

[Skallagrimson]

Wonders are pure game elements that have no basis in reality, unless you simply justify that pride in your wonder motivates your people to do wonderful things.

I think most wonders did have effects similar to that, but usually in ways DIFFERENT from how it's represented in the game. For example, the Pyramids: during the *construction* of the Pyramids, it dramatically increased the happy cap for Egypt because they were occupied with the building effort. After construction there was a sort of "amazement" effect that resonated internally as greater religious devotion (perhaps a shorter whip-anger IF the civ is in Theocracy, or maybe just a generic +1 happy), and a +1 diplo modifier from other kingdoms that tended to suspect that whatever black magic Egypt had that enabled the construction, might be applicable to the battlefield, and they'd better think twice before trying to invade that land. The pyramids did not, in fact, enable modern-era civics, nor did ancient Egypt ever attempt a switch to such civics.

One of the most ridiculous wonder effects is Statue of Liberty. What could possibly be the connection between the completion of that statue, and every American city having a free specialist in real life? The real effect was that New York City was essentially able to double its cultural influence.

In fact most "wonders" IRL are cultural in effect; nothing more, nothing less. Civs tend to build them when they want to boost their cultural influence.

Some other wonders just need minor tweaks. The Pentagon doesn't necessarily give American soldiers free XPs when "built" at basic training camps. What it does is allow more effective command and control of the troops during force projection, and create more jobs for military bureaucrats that aren't exceptionally good at anything but shuffling paper. The effect there would be -50% military unit maintenance cost, and +50% commerce yield of the city where it's built (boondoggle jobs).

But slavishly following detailed realism gets into a morass. Elegance, bang for buck, is the ideal here.

I can agree to that, although I have a theory in slight counterpoint: in those areas where the game gets incredibly imbalanced, the answer to bringing the balance back *IS* in fact, more realism in those areas. How do you prevent 200+ ridiculous stacks of doom brute forcing their way to conquest? Well, how did real life prevent that from happening? Oh, you mean you have to FEED the troops too? Keep supply lines open? Keep the troops happy and healthy just like cities? D'oh.........

I think the Monty issue is best dealt with by simply getting rid of the money bonus from capturing cities. This is what makes warmongers economically viable is it not?

The money bonus is realistic, but with Monty the more unrealistic aspect is that he's able to field an army about 500x his citizen population in order to take said city. That's an example of where realism should be called upon to bring balance back to the game.