Civilization 5

[Skallagrimson]

Civilization, that's the name of the game, not destroying (other) civilization by warfare.

Problem right there.

It's a MISLEADING name. Civilization is never "civilized"--anyone knows that. The AIs will rexx all over the good land and leave you with nothing. And when they build up an impressive army they'll use that to take all the rest of what you have. No matter how "civilized" the leader supposedly is: there is no "peace-only" strategy in any random map that will ever work, ever. At the very least you have to *prepare* for war and *threaten* it at key points. And then if you don't have to use that army to defend yourself, (and the best defense is an active OFFENSE), consider yourself lucky.

The AIs behave, not like "civilized men", but like a virus, and you have to kill them as such, to prevail.

As it is now you can go to war for decades or even centuries losing dozens of units and your Pop growth doesn't slow down the least bit, although lots of young men dying before having children and thus generating a female surplus to the utmost level.

Lack of males doesn't slow down breeding, as a single male can impregnate amazingly high numbers of women, even in societies where polygamy is outlawed.

That's because building military units doesn't deduce from your Pop like in Civ2/3 building settlers did. Similarly going to war doesn't spread desease despite lots of rotting carcasses in the rivers and the like. And its for free (except the hammers to build the units) as long as you lose your units fast enough and avoid having too much of them at the same time.

That's a noteworthy point. Wartime is less healthy overall than peacetime. In addition to WW on the happy front, the game needs a "war unhealthy" on the health front. But there need to be primitive medical facilities early on to accurately represent the measures taken by civs to address the issue.

So much for realism. The greatest lack of realism is the easy executable warfare, for increasing the fun developers would say. Going to war, more so in modern times, should be a painful and costly thing for the nation in many respects, a step to be well considered, not the simplest way to prosper and win. Going to war should not even be a help in winning, more like an ultimate means if all other things fail.

Depends on the type of society. A warlike gang of Mongols are if anything going to wonder about your leadership ability if you DON'T rally them all up to go bonk heads somewhere. In America even a key conflict to defend your interests and vital oversea resources with measured and limited force will get people going absolutely nuts against it, irrationally. Civ4 abstracts that with civic types, although there should be more of a micromanagement playing field to employ propaganda techniques, domestic spending on distractions, etc., to give more realism to the WW challenge in a pacifist wet noodle society.

Concerning realism in warfare: Taking 5 turns of 10 years = 50 years to built a unit during the middle ages, and then another 50 years to move it into battle is ridiculous right from the start in terms of realism, so why care of all the other shortcomings of Civ warfare for the matter of realism?

Another good point. Realism altogether on many levels is just not there, at all. What some of Civs ardent defenders will say is that they don't even WANT "realism", they want "playability", but they don't understand that realism folds back into playability--the ability to suspend disbelief and get more into the fantasy of being a real-life medieval King running a real-life kingdom. Speaking of which, where's the HAREM? D'oh... never mind, hehe.

Besides, there is a whole lot of turn based wargames out there, that specialize on warfare. Why not play them, if you like a deep and realistic warfare simulation, instead of desperately trying to tweak a game in that respect whose timescope of years, decades or even centuries per turn makes unit level warfare unrealistic by default. Unit scale warfare was in from Civ1 only for the fun IMO, but it shouldn't be. However, tactical intelligence will always be the weakest part of the AI anyway, never capable to cope with an experienced human general.

The existence of war isn't unrealistic, but the way Civ presents war is. That's my point.

The timescope of Civ games is ideally suited for the speed of society development processes, also the shortening of years per turn in more modern eras, cause then also the society changes faster. That's what the game design structures suit best: coping with society changes, reflected by changing demands of the people e.g. emancipation or democracy or get rid of capitalists/communists or introduce free speech/press etc. The game shpuld take more effort to confront the ruler/player with the will of his/her people and make it a challenge to influence it, let alone change it.

True to an extent.

Civ5 proposed slogan: Make civ not war!

Meh... then realism really IS out the window.

 

[50_dollar_bag]

^^ Spoken like a true builder.

I don't think the developers will ever take the warfare aspect out of CIV, I know you weren't proposing that, but for a lot of people warfare is the selling point and what keeps people playing the game.

 

[Tomek]

a lots o words about realism. Of course it is imopssible to create playable game like civ that covers perfectly all the aspects of life.

Anyway my point is that it is still a lot can be done in this area not decreasing the playing factor.

In the 'game improvement' topics a lot of attention is paid to a unit related issues. I propose to look at the game from highly global/fundamnetal point of view:

1. lets make the planet as a real globe - this affects the square divided map - thre will be no sqares anymore, and elements on the map would be positioned using latitude and longitude

2. do not artificially speed up the game in the early ages by giving 20 or even 40 years per turn (trully saying this iritates me badly!)

3. science:
a) should be a link between a map characteristic and science - I assume that on the planet with almost no seas/oceans there will be no natural pursuit to a water related inventions -and on the waterworld planets - there would be more posibilites for the inventions like that (i.e. including underwater colonies)
b) separate science and tech - science as a way to a tech/building/unit improvement - so it should be rather like gathering points in some science areas: biology-related physics-related, social science-related and others - that give you a certain boost in building some tech improvements. Of course you can try invent sth like nuklear weapon having little knowledge in physics - but it will take long time if you have high level on physics related areas you'll build it much quicker. This concept eliminates IMHO wrong situation when inventing chemistry you'll get right to build frigate and grenadier automaticly. It should be also allowed to work at several areas simultanously and of course being advanced on some areas you may discover other (but still understood as a pure science not tech)
c) science and tech is spreading independendly on Earth - it was always spread by natural contacts and trade - so my opinion is that some 'invention points' on certain areas should be exchanged automaticly between civilisations - the stronger trade route factor, scout/explorer activity and geografical closeness (especially in early game) is the strongest automatic science exchange should take place - more or less it should work as a internet wonder but in much more sophisticated way. It will cut funny situations of very outdated civilisations stucked in a stone age while others build tanks. It also eliminate strong relation between territory (number of cities) and science

4. more realism in cities would be strongly recommended:
a) number of people living there (not presented a single 'heads') - i've never achived the number of population in the city like several millions and like 5,000,000,000 in total even on huge maps
b) employment factor - in small city there will be not enough people to cover all built facilities, and on other hand in cities with huge population the player would be forced to build some facilities to
c) facilities/bulidings - should became obsolete same as units - and should be upgraded - i.e. antique granary into silo or modern warehouse, colloseum should not work in late game - but of course it may add to a touristic attractiveness. Old factories may be upgraded (using money) to more effective ones
d) If I want to double the production in the city, having enough people ready to work I'd like to build more than one factory, or more than one power plant to supply energy

5. units: as i said a lot was spoken about units/terrain a/d bonuses/movement/special abilities/logistic(supply) factors and many more and mainly good ideas. I would like to remind one thing that I like from Alfa Centauri game - units were not pre-prepared as a game fixed element - they were totally designed by the civ owner - I like this concept and combining this with fixed units would bring an advance to the game
some new ideas regarding units (i.e. movement,battle) come in the stright way from other concepts above like No.1 - there would be no more square -to-square fight as the will be no squares at all!

Of course everybody has own ideas for changes but I'm open for further discussion.

my best regards

 

[Skallagrimson]

1. lets make the planet as a real globe - this affects the square divided map - thre will be no sqares anymore, and elements on the map would be positioned using latitude and longitude

I think with polar ice caps it's not so unrealistic to see a flattened-out view in the early years, but yes, in the modern era when bombers can flip across the poles to do bombing raids across continents, then a square map drops down exponentially in realism and that good old "give me a break" factor that I get trying to play the game.

2. do not artificially speed up the game in the early ages by giving 20 or even 40 years per turn (trully saying this iritates me badly!)

A huge peeve with me too. I think this was designed because they didn't want to proliferate a huge ancient tech tree or make a game seem to "take forever" to get to the modern age. That's unfortunate because then what little realism they had left of ancient play, goes completely out the window. 15 turns of 40 years to build a SCOUT just drives me absolutely insane with rage at the game, and building wonders in real life never took even 1/10th the span of years attributed to their construction in the game.

It also makes no sense that chopping a WOOD forest will help you build a STONE wonder. One of many issues.

3. science:
a) should be a link between a map characteristic and science - I assume that on the planet with almost no seas/oceans there will be no natural pursuit to a water related inventions -and on the waterworld planets - there would be more posibilites for the inventions like that (i.e. including underwater colonies)

Perhaps having all the possibilities available all the time would work--and then in a waterworld people would pursue the underwater colonies, while in a dry land world they would not.

b) separate science and tech - science as a way to a tech/building/unit improvement - so it should be rather like gathering points in some science areas: biology-related physics-related, social science-related and others - that give you a certain boost in building some tech improvements. Of course you can try invent sth like nuklear weapon having little knowledge in physics - but it will take long time if you have high level on physics related areas you'll build it much quicker. This concept eliminates IMHO wrong situation when inventing chemistry you'll get right to build frigate and grenadier automaticly. It should be also allowed to work at several areas simultanously and of course being advanced on some areas you may discover other (but still understood as a pure science not tech)

I'm kind of sort of with you there. There should at least be "pure science" gateway techs that lead to more particular "inventions" of things. There is some concept of that already in the game, as every tech is a gateway to some other tech, but the complexity of science in reality has a much wider applicability for "gateway techs" and much narrower range of applicability for "inventions". One area that continues to bother me is the fact that you get GUNPOWDER before you get CHEMISTRY. If it weren't for chemistry nobody would have bothered mixing sulfur with saltpetre and charcoal to see that the result is powerfully explosive.

To me chemistry is a key "gateway tech" and NOT an "invention" to allow a specific unit like a Grenadier. My custom tech tree would have "chemistry" as a prerequisite to both Gunpowder (Musketeers) and Explosives (Grenadiers). I'd also have a specific Cannoneering invention-tech which would be the tech allowing both the Cannon unit and Frigates, requiring Gunpowder as its prequel.

Grenadiers, while we're on that subject, are too powerful in the game. They were in use much earlier on, in history, than musketeers (with the earliest grenades being made of flammable naptha in the middle east), and of an effect much more like Catapults: collateral damage made them effective against dense concentrations of units, but you wouldn't field them all alone on a battlefield as you could with Civ4 Grenadiers, with impunity. To be realistic they should be about an 8 in combat strength, collateral damage like cats and chokonu archers, unable to wear down city defenses like cats, but unlike catapults they WOULD get terrain bonuses on defense.

The key balancer to Musketeers would be Grenadiers, but to Riflemen there should be more reliance on Cannons on offense, with Grens more as a field supplement to a hasty hilltop defense (maybe with an added hill bonus like archers). IMO.

c) science and tech is spreading independendly on Earth - it was always spread by natural contacts and trade - so my opinion is that some 'invention points' on certain areas should be exchanged automaticly between civilisations - the stronger trade route factor, scout/explorer activity and geografical closeness (especially in early game) is the strongest automatic science exchange should take place - more or less it should work as a internet wonder but in much more sophisticated way. It will cut funny situations of very outdated civilisations stucked in a stone age while others build tanks. It also eliminate strong relation between territory (number of cities) and science

True to an extent, and it's always been a challenge of how to express that "natural spread" of a tech. Civs 1 and 2 used to give you one of the enemy's techs whenever you conquered a city, which allowed some weird mixes of techs like the ability to make mech infantries but all the rest of the units were stuck in the middle ages. I think SOME probability of acquiring a tech should be there whenever there is a "clear victory" on the battlefield: weapons get captured, and scientists get put to work on reverse-engineering the captured weaponry, aircraft, etc.

Also, in history not all civs got their weaponry through "tech discovery" or even "tech trading", but rather, direct purchase of (or being given by the rivals of the more powerful civs), or most often CAPTURING, the actual physical *weapons*. American Indian tribes, for example, didn't have little scientists in laboratories busily trying to replicate what the U.S. Cavalry was fielding against them on the American plains. They just plain came across the weapons, in various ways: traded for buffalo skins in some cases; captured in raids; GIVEN to them by rivals of the Americans; and so on.

To me it's even more important to divorce "the ability to produce a unit" from "technology level" than it is to slice up tech research into different minute categories. Tech should be required to produce *weapons*, but weapons, acquired by whatever means, should be what's required (in addition to population points as expended on military levee) to produce *units*.

Trade routes should indeed have a percentage chance of spreading techs in both directions: this would balance the "reward" of a trade route with the RISK that over time you leech out your tech secrets to your trading partner (which means people would be duly careful in whom they traded with, as kingdoms WERE in actual history!) Diplomacy here would play a key role in the overall tech advancement strategy, as it should.

4. more realism in cities would be strongly recommended:
a) number of people living there (not presented a single 'heads') - i've never achived the number of population in the city like several millions and like 5,000,000,000 in total even on huge maps
b) employment factor - in small city there will be not enough people to cover all built facilities, and on other hand in cities with huge population the player would be forced to build some facilities to
c) facilities/bulidings - should became obsolete same as units - and should be upgraded - i.e. antique granary into silo or modern warehouse, colloseum should not work in late game - but of course it may add to a touristic attractiveness. Old factories may be upgraded (using money) to more effective ones
d) If I want to double the production in the city, having enough people ready to work I'd like to build more than one factory, or more than one power plant to supply energy

Yep. Too much abstraction in city management, in Civ overall, to be sure. In ancient cities, if one aquaduct got maxxed out for population, they weren't just limited to their current population, as they could BUILD ANOTHER ONE. But then, whether that other one would do any good would depend on whether there was enough fresh water nearby TO aquaduct. But not all cities were built right exactly on riversides or lakesides, as aquaducts were able to transport water from the fresh water location to the city site. For this I think it's vital for there to be a concept, similar to roads and irrigation, like an "aquaduct line" that a worker could build. If you're three squares away from fresh water, you have to build your aquaduct line TO it before your city can build an aquaduct. How many aquaducts you build should depend on how much volume of fresh water is available: one square of "lake" is not gonna cut it. But a HUGE lake would be far more able to supply a huge city. Civ apologists claim this is too deep a level of micromanagement, but the game already has a lot of facility for automation, for players who want to dumb their games down to "ugh, build unit, ugh, move unit". Automated cities would simply attempt to build infrastructure on their own, on a "most-needed" basis, such that a laissez faire emporer could know that a reasonably-good effort at it would be made by an appointed mayor. As an additional facilitation of the game, an "infrastructure complete" status could be notified to a player, to let him know that the city can build units or wonders without falling behind in health and happiness, for the moment.

Also there should be a "none" option for a city to do nothing in those eras before currency allowed a "wealth" option. It's ridiculous to require a city to build units once all the buildings are built. Speaking of which, if there's isn't currency yet, why is trade calculated in COINS? Where are the COINS coming from eh? It should probably be an all-food-and-hammers economy prior to Currency!

5. units: as i said a lot was spoken about units/terrain a/d bonuses/movement/special abilities/logistic(supply) factors and many more and mainly good ideas. I would like to remind one thing that I like from Alfa Centauri game - units were not pre-prepared as a game fixed element - they were totally designed by the civ owner - I like this concept and combining this with fixed units would bring an advance to the game
some new ideas regarding units (i.e. movement,battle) come in the stright way from other concepts above like No.1 - there would be no more square -to-square fight as the will be no squares at all!

Civ2 gave you three "slots" to build custom units very easily. The customs I usually built were: Mobile SAM (like mech infantry but had anti-aircraft capability); Special Ops Team (similar to Alpine Infantry but could airdrop and amphibious attack, higher movement range, stronger in combat, much more expensive in "hammers" {shields in those days}); and ...Zodiac (a stealthy transport, similar invisibility to Submarine but could transport units).

Of course everybody has own ideas for changes but I'm open for further discussion.

my best regards

I love discussions like this. It's this sort of brainstorming that gives me ideas for a fantasy game I'd make if I were to ever win the lottery and gain startup capital for my own company, to go up against both Civ and Total War. Their ignorance and refusal to listen to ideas, would be my gain, hehe.

 

[Yakk]

What if, instead of food being the factor that determines city growth, infrastructure was?

Your abillity to harvest food would be like your ability to make happiness or health. At low tech levels, moving food around would be wasteful (like 80% wasteage), so your city size would be limited by local food supplies.

This built up infrastructure acts both as a limit on your cities population, but is also what you use to purchase "buildings".

Your infrastructure could be divided into:
1> Military
2> Cultural
3> Civil

Military infrastructure reflects military traditions in the city. Cultural infrastructure reflects the effort bent towards, well, culture -- from a university, to the pyramids, to a courthouse. And Civil infrastructure reflects buildings and social structures that keep people alive.

When you develop masonry, you can start building up the cultural infrastructure to build a great masonry project (like the pyramids).

When you go to war, your military infrastructure, together with your military technology, determines how well your city defends against attack. It also determines how many offensive units you can muster, and how close to top-of-the-line they are. Maintaining units "in the field".

Your civil infrastructure represents the size of your city. It is also spent on making particular buildings for your city.

Trade networks to export and import goods (like food, stone, wood, marble, copper, steel, etc) consumes civil infrastructure. Some of these goods are lost in transport (to theft, spoilage, corruption or dozens of other problems), so using them close to home is safer. Higher tech societies have less problems with this (unless they are being blockaded).

And yes, it is time for a round world.

 

[Yakk]

As it is now you can go to war for decades or even centuries losing dozens of units and your Pop growth doesn't slow down the least bit, although lots of young men dying before having children and thus generating a female surplus to the utmost level. That's because building military units doesn't deduce from your Pop like in Civ2/3 building settlers did.

Total military mobalization, in which a large percentage of the population is mobalized for war, happens very rarely. It takes a special society (modern industrial -- or the mongols) to pull that kind of thing off.

And even then, a large drop in the number of males doesn't really impact your societies population. 1 man can father children by 100s of women if required. Practically, you can see this in modern times -- take a look at the population growth rate of nations that lose many tropps, yet win a war. There is barely a blip in their population growth.

Similarly going to war doesn't spread desease despite lots of rotting carcasses in the rivers and the like. And its for free (except the hammers to build the units) as long as you lose your units fast enough and avoid having too much of them at the same time.

Desease gets spread regardless. It is true that more people died from the influenza epidemic than died in WWI -- but even that didn't slow down the population growth of the world.

You really can produce and send out military units as fast as your industrial capacity can train, move, equip and feed them.

So much for realism. The greatest lack of realism is the easy executable warfare, for increasing the fun developers would say. Going to war, more so in modern times, should be a painful and costly thing for the nation in many respects, a step to be well considered, not the simplest way to prosper and win. Going to war should not even be a help in winning, more like an ultimate means if all other things fail.

War, in the real world, has had a brief pause. Post WW2, one side had won the world war, and divided the world up. Then, as erstwhile allies starting rubbing each other the wrong way, the two-world superpower standoff kicked off -- with a world war prevented by MAD.

Civilizations fight wars. Some civilizations spend centuries preparing for war and never fight it, but they are anomolous in history (the swiss, as an example). For the most part, civilizations build up a large defensive military force (because without a defensive force, your infrastructure is easy pickings), and then discover that it is profitable to use that force to go beat up on less defended civilizations and take their stuff.

If anything, Civ4 has far less war than is realistic, and that war is far too final. The Greeks conquored everything from Macedonia to the edge of India in a span of less than 20 years. They then fell apart (lacking any practice in managing a large empire). The Romans slowly repeated an even greater feat, unifying the med. world.

Arabia came out of nowhere, and within mere centuries had conquored an empire that rivaled the Roman empire.

Britian took mere centuries to build an Empire larger than the world had ever known.

Russia took conquored Eastern Europe in WW2, and held it for 50 years before they fell apart.

Concerning realism in warfare: Taking 5 turns of 10 years = 50 years to built a unit during the middle ages, and then another 50 years to move it into battle is ridiculous right from the start in terms of realism, so why care of all the other shortcomings of Civ warfare for the matter of realism?

The 100s years war -- while units did move quicker, actually taking terrain and conquoring your opponents took about that much time.

One should view the building of a unit as the use of rare excess infrasturcture resources to build the social and physial support base for a unit in the field. It isn't a knight you are building -- it is a knight-class, a tradition of knightly honour, a breeding program of horses, and the armorers to keep it going. When the unit is killed, this damages the economics of the knight class, requiring a new injection of excess infrastructure to rebuild it.



Possibly support costs for units should be higher than they are, and building costs less. But that leads to problems, as players can easily fall into a trap of having too many units around...

 

[Skallagrimson]

The way this discussion has gone has reminded me of where I'd like to see production go in a future version: Separation into *types* of production resources (wood, stone, iron, etc.) and *classes* of production: renewable and non-renewable.

Fresh water and wood are renewable resources, TO AN EXTENT. They should have limits to what you drain out of those squares, x number of tons of water aqueducted from a river, or x number of tons of wood used from a forest for general production.

Mining hills should NOT just be "general mining" but should be mining SOMETHING, some sort of mineral resource out of it, which should more frequently be found in the hills to make such mining worthwhile: about 50% of the hills should have ...SOMETHING. Stone should probably be the most common, as some form of it is really pretty widely available, especially limestone. Some hills might have a special resource like "Fossils" which in ancient times can provide mythical relics for Temples, and in modern times, boost the cultural value of buildings like Museums! And some of the hills, which have nothing, should be candidates only for hilltop towns (which should be possible on plains-hills as well as grass-hills), or windmills. After all, in reality some hills are really just piles of dirt. You can dig forever in such hills and really only come up with... DIRT!

For the mined resources, the availability of it should NOT be unlimited. You should have X amount of stone available in a stone quarry, after which, it's tapped. Ditto for any mine, be it Iron, Copper, whatever. Production of unit weaponry should have a cost of an amount of these resources, against supply. Once all your mines are tapped, you'd better have friends somewhere willing to SELL you a needed mineral resource! Or be ready to conquer it.

Portability: food can be transported, as mentioned above with a percentage loss due to transport spoilage and waste, but some of it SHOULD be able to get moved from one city to another, such that a breadbasket city should be able to supply a consumer city with said food. Think in terms of Egypt supplying Rome with wheat: why do you think Caesar went there, just to date Cleopatra? Pshaw!!!

Anyway, all resources should be portable yet limited in some way: renewable with volume limits, or non-renewable with discrete amounts available. In their transport to other cities, food should be more "lossy" due to spoilage, and minerals should be less lossy, as they are non-perishable, and then the only losses would be due to theft, shipwrecks, etc.

What this should encourage would be less emphasis on all-whipping, all-the-time or extreme specialist-flipping in a high-food city's early years, and more of a notion of distributing some of its food to more dry (yet mineral rich) areas, to integrate the city resources of an empire as a whole rather than just see cities as completely atomic units that can't even send a sandwich across a river to its neighbor. Similarly with the minerals, just because some Roman city somewhere didn't have an iron MINE nearby, doesn't mean that city couldn't GET iron, y'know?

 

[Rasputina]

^^ Spoken like a true builder.

I don't think the developers will ever take the warfare aspect out of CIV, I know you weren't proposing that, but for a lot of people warfare is the selling point and what keeps people playing the game.

I'd actually completely disagree with that. You like conquest and war, you play an RTS. Civ is all about the entire aspect. I know warfare will always be there (which is good for the holistic experience), but I don't think its what keeps people playing the game.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I'd actually completely disagree with that. You like conquest and war, you play an RTS. Civ is all about the entire aspect. I know warfare will always be there (which is good for the holistic experience), but I don't think its what keeps people playing the game.

What I WOULD like the most, but it's not offered anywhere under any guise, is as fully realistic as possible "overall experience" game, where all aspects of rulership come into play. Civ takes it a step farther, but only one step, IMO. When plundering a city, why not REALLY PLUNDER it, and have the game shift to more of an FPS "Grand Theft Auto" mode and you're roaming the streets doing damage? When in campaign mode, why not REALLY be in the campaign mode fully, and worrying, not ONLY about the economy and "beakers" and turn-advantage, but also other worries real rulers had like FACTIONAL politics within the empire. Or the more enjoyable aspects like sumptuous dinners, lovely mistresses, (or male lovers for hetero female and gay male players), etc.

Yes, Civ takes it to the "next" level from RTS, but not to the FULLEST level, and if anything it still remains too simplistic, too brute force, too dependent on cheap gimmicks like tech slingshots and other b.s. rather than introduce truly *strategic* challenges, and truly realistic ...benefits of success.

 

[johny smith]

How about not making just a new civilization game, and instead incorporating all the sid meier's game into one. I would like to see a game civilization, pirates!, railroads!, colonization, and alpha centuari in one. This is course bringing in the best features of each, and give an option to turn on or off turn based. Just a crazy idea I know.

I would really love to place a pirate-colonization style civ age of discovery age. Then also have a real industrial like age from the basic idea of railroads then advancing into more industrial stuff. Plus of course the finally ending of the game turning into some exodus into space then beginning all over again.

All of this with several options when to begin and end a period with the chance for each player to win a victory from each age. Each of these victories could be titles. Maybe a tycoon title for super merchants, builder title for super civilization builders, the great warlord title, even maybe the super pirate title, there all sorts of possibilities. The player can just earn the titles like the top five cities, but they receive a bonus for each on the game. The player can loose the titles as well but keeping something for winning an age. It would give players a different strategy for playing the game making players want to specialize into one strategy for bonuses.

Ya I know it is crazy, but all of the features from these games would be what I would at least really like to see plus others.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Maybe catherine will take that part for russia as a totalitarian regime.

Why not Ivan the Terrible? His by-name means "terrible" not in the sense of "lousy", but in the sense of "cruel". He was a very able and very ruthless Tsar. He inspired terror.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

It seems like "free religion" was supposed to reflect that, but it reminds me of another issue: when was there ever a religious-based war started up by Buddhists? Or Taoists? It's really only Christianity, Judaism, and Islam who have that in their resume, and it seems that "holy war zeal" wears off over time.

True, but with regard to the wearing off over time, we have some holy warriors (western and Muslim) at this very moment. As for the Aztecs, see below.

It's pretty hard to see a Buddhist Montezuma out on a religious crusade, without smirking and wondering what these Firaxis people were on when they programmed this.

The Aztecs kept starting wars in order to capture more prisoners to sacrifice. When they had conquered all their neighbours, they started so-called "flower wars" against already subjected peoples in order to gather in more human sacrifices.

I'd also like to add that I dont want "total realism" in Civ; I want a game that is fun to play.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I'd also like to add that I dont want "total realism" in Civ; I want a game that is fun to play.

I guess I'm weird because to me, realism IS fun.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

I guess I'm weird because to me, realism IS fun.

Then I take it you don't enjoy playing Civ much? It's great fun, it isn't "realistic".

 

[Skallagrimson]

Then I take it you don't enjoy playing Civ much? It's great fun, it isn't "realistic".

What else is there, chess? World of Warcraft?

MTW has its moments, but the campaign map for that game drives me up a wall. I mainly just play battles there.

 

[Tomek]

It also makes no sense that chopping a WOOD forest will help you build a STONE wonder. One of many issues.

Not exactly. Wood is a basic recourse used in transportation ans engineering. Althoug stonhenge or the pyramids are not built of stone a lot of wood was used to build it

One area that continues to bother me is the fact that you get GUNPOWDER before you get CHEMISTRY. If it weren't for chemistry nobody would have bothered mixing sulfur with saltpetre and charcoal to see that the result is powerfully explosive.

Not exactly again. I would say Chineese invented gunpowder before they reached high level in chemistry. That was many times in the history that people invented sth before they learn the theory. Thats why I propose that it shouldnt be that we *invent* certain area of the science. We are just less or more advanced in phisics, chemistry, biology etc. as a consequence it gives us a boost to certain inventions like gunpowder, galvanization, steam engine. On the other side invention become milestones for the science. I. e. we master our civilisation on physics, as a consequence we can invent optics stuff: microscope, telescope. Both are milestones, respectively, for biology and physics giving possibility to boost pure science levels

Trade routes should indeed have a percentage chance of spreading techs in both directions: this would balance the "reward" of a trade route with the RISK that over time you leech out your tech secrets to your trading partner (which means people would be duly careful in whom they traded with, as kingdoms WERE in actual history!) Diplomacy here would play a key role in the overall tech advancement strategy, as it should.

Totally agree. IMO it would make Mercantilism more attractive for advanced and powerful civs that do not want to share their inventions. And another idea: automatic spread tech would spread only inventions (boosting pure science levels of course) but not pure science stuff that would be allowed to trade only on diplomatic level.

Also there should be a "none" option for a city to do nothing in those eras before currency allowed a "wealth" option. It's ridiculous to require a city to build units once all the buildings are built. Speaking of which, if there's isn't currency yet, why is trade calculated in COINS? Where are the COINS coming from eh? It should probably be an all-food-and-hammers economy prior to Currency!

Nice idea, but question is how to distribute these hammers? Somehow automaticly or is it should be player decision? Anyway the final effect is the same - boosting production instead of buying com city facilities. Coins are kind of simplification that IMO not spoil the game

Civ2 gave you three "slots" to build custom units very easily. The customs I usually built were: Mobile SAM (like mech infantry but had anti-aircraft capability); Special Ops Team (similar to Alpine Infantry but could airdrop and amphibious attack, higher movement range, stronger in combat, much more expensive in "hammers" {shields in those days}); and ...Zodiac (a stealthy transport, similar invisibility to Submarine but could transport units).

I meant sth like designing units while playing. There is no one kind battleship or tank. Do I need faster and less armored tanks or heavy tanks? Do I need far or close range bombers? Of course better armored/far ranged units would cost more... This idea would give more flexibility in warfare and war strategy.

I love discussions like this.

Me too. All the best to you Skallagrimson.

 

[Tomek]

And even then, a large drop in the number of males doesn't really impact your societies population. 1 man can father children by 100s of women if required. Practically, you can see this in modern times -- take a look at the population growth rate of nations that lose many tropps, yet win a war. There is barely a blip in their population growth.

True, but definitely the disadvantage of Civ4 is that number of troops is independent from the number of the population. IMO the population of the cites should be more realistic then if you bulid a military unit you draw some of the population to become a soldiers. In the same way you change the status of the citizen into merchant/scientist/worker. Soldier is a kind of specialist and if its created it sholud decrease city ability to work on farms of in the factories. On the other hand: once military unit is killed the population of civ should be decreased. Of course in many small wars it shlould not be a significant factor, but several times in our history it happened that significant percantage of population was killed by war, by deasese or other means (cataclizm)

Desease gets spread regardless. It is true that more people died from the influenza epidemic than died in WWI -- but even that didn't slow down the population growth of the world.

Probably it did, and without it the world population would incerase faster if only there would be enough food/recources to feed them

Civilizations fight wars. Some civilizations spend centuries preparing for war and never fight it, but they are anomolous in history (the swiss, as an example). For the most part, civilizations build up a large defensive military force (because without a defensive force, your infrastructure is easy pickings), and then discover that it is profitable to use that force to go beat up on less defended civilizations and take their stuff.

true. nothing more nothing less.

 

[Tomek]

For the mined resources, the availability of it should NOT be unlimited. You should have X amount of stone available in a stone quarry, after which, it's tapped. Ditto for any mine, be it Iron, Copper, whatever. Production of unit weaponry should have a cost of an amount of these resources, against supply. Once all your mines are tapped, you'd better have friends somewhere willing to SELL you a needed mineral resource! Or be ready to conquer it.

totally agree. Anyway the limitation is the map itself. as long as it is divided into tiles the separate tile has its own designation - it is a farm, or a windmill or mine. Theres no multifunction on one tile. I propose get rid of tiles - there would be enough place for each resource, the deposits of copper or coal could be re-newed or digged somwhere else. Of course some revolutionary approach to units movement would be required.

Portability: food can be transported, as mentioned above with a percentage loss due to transport spoilage and waste, but some of it SHOULD be able to get moved from one city to another, such that a breadbasket city should be able to supply a consumer city with said food.

yeah, thats one the thing that also bothers me. Some cities would may flourish even more if required. And IMO it should concern hammers as well. It should be possibility of internal import/export between the cities to some extent. Some cities may help to build the wonder or building in other city

 

[Skallagrimson]

Not exactly. Wood is a basic recourse used in transportation ans engineering. Althoug stonhenge or the pyramids are not built of stone a lot of wood was used to build it

That would be a problem in Egypt as there is no wood there. I really don't think enough is known about how those pyramids were built to make the claim that it required a huge amount of wood. For Stonehenge at least wood was available for use in its construction, but there too we don't know for sure that it in fact *was* used. All archaeologists have at the moment are rough guesses, no "fact".

Not exactly again. I would say Chineese invented gunpowder before they reached high level in chemistry. That was many times in the history that people invented sth before they learn the theory. Thats why I propose that it shouldnt be that we *invent* certain area of the science. We are just less or more advanced in phisics, chemistry, biology etc. as a consequence it gives us a boost to certain inventions like gunpowder, galvanization, steam engine. On the other side invention become milestones for the science. I. e. we master our civilisation on physics, as a consequence we can invent optics stuff: microscope, telescope. Both are milestones, respectively, for biology and physics giving possibility to boost pure science levels

I really don't think it's accurate to disparage Chinese chemistry as "not being high level" when they did in fact pioneer Gunpowder. Chinese medicine is pace-setting even by "modern" standards, in spite of it not having changed considerably for milleniae, and while much of it is herb-based rather than based on artificial chemistry, it would require a good chemical understanding OF the herbs to allow their use to a Chinese level of sophistication. It's really western arrogance that looks down upon all things not based on what the Greeks were up to.

Totally agree. IMO it would make Mercantilism more attractive for advanced and powerful civs that do not want to share their inventions. And another idea: automatic spread tech would spread only inventions (boosting pure science levels of course) but not pure science stuff that would be allowed to trade only on diplomatic level.

This reminds me of another issue. I have never read in any history book anywhere, or in the news in today's current events, any sort of a diplomatic negotiation where the main focus was on an exchange of *technology*, and where relations between states hinged upon it. Nearly all tech-spread that I've ever read about happening in the real world (and yes, I know the "real world" is anathema to Civ but hear me out, Civ fantasy-purists!) was based on reverse engineering through trade; private sector purchase by mercantile or personal agents (who in turn would offer the tech up to his King in order to gain favor); INSPIRATION based on OBSERVATION of another civilization's tech (Leonardo Da Vinci was able to observe many things brought to the court of the Medicis from the Muslim world, and from China, and it's possible that his inventions were really adaptations of the wondrous curiosities bandied about in the high society of Milan at the time); or battlefield capture in war (which was usually just a capture of weapons or machines, but sometimes this enabled reverse engineering for independent production).

In sum, trade and warfare was the chief conduit of tech-spread in the real world, not Kings visiting each other offering them up for sale or haggling over a scientific quid pro quo. This was why isolated kingdoms were way behind those that existed on the large triple-continent of Europe/Asia/Africa with three-way land access via the middle east. It wasn't because the European, Asian, and African kings were haggling and trading techs with each other, but because the techs were spreading, through trade, through the scientists of empire A boasting about their wonders to the scientists in empire B, and the scientists in empire B being able to replicate those wonders in their own laboratories after taking copious notes.

Even today, tech symposiums among the scientists of the world spread techs among modern states, and when national leaders try to gain those techs through espionage, it's typically far less reliable than simply letting scientists talk among themselves and bring back what they bring back, from the worldwide gatherings (or the Internet).

Nice idea, but question is how to distribute these hammers? Somehow automaticly or is it should be player decision? Anyway the final effect is the same - boosting production instead of buying com city facilities. Coins are kind of simplification that IMO not spoil the game

One thing I miss about Civ2 is that you used to be able to build a "hammers" caravan, and transport that caravan to another city, where you could apply those "hammers" (shields in that version), to production in the target city. You could also build a food caravan and transport food from a breadbasket city to a starving city. Even if the "hammers" caravan approach isn't 100% realistic, a FOOD caravan if anything would improve the realism (which is perhaps why Civ won't implement it: we can't have *realism* now, that would spoil the cartoony fantasy nonsense!!!)

I meant sth like designing units while playing. There is no one kind battleship or tank. Do I need faster and less armored tanks or heavy tanks? Do I need far or close range bombers? Of course better armored/far ranged units would cost more... This idea would give more flexibility in warfare and war strategy.

In a sense this could be achieved by having a base class of weapon, for example "a rifle", with a base combat strength it affords a unit of n size in battle. To design an "improved rifle", you could add strength bonuses to the rifle through a concept of engineering longer range, greater rate of fire, durability, etc., to the rifle, which would be captured in a weapons build screen as taking more hammers to produce that improved rifle. If you want a larger volume of cheaper rifles, you could design a cheaper mass-production model which would have some strength deficits in combat. Same concept could apply for a tank, or a bomber, etc.

And to make it more interesting, perhaps these modifications would require inventions of their own, such as "proximity fuses" for an improved artillery unit, etc.

 

[Skallagrimson]

True, but definitely the disadvantage of Civ4 is that number of troops is independent from the number of the population. IMO the population of the cites should be more realistic then if you bulid a military unit you draw some of the population to become a soldiers. In the same way you change the status of the citizen into merchant/scientist/worker. Soldier is a kind of specialist and if its created it sholud decrease city ability to work on farms of in the factories. On the other hand: once military unit is killed the population of civ should be decreased. Of course in many small wars it shlould not be a significant factor, but several times in our history it happened that significant percantage of population was killed by war, by deasese or other means (cataclizm)

I generally agree here. Population is population, and you can't "mine" axemen out of the hills, the way Civ4 presents it. What you "mine" out of the hills are AXES (from the copper or iron), and having a huge pile of axes is different from having a huge army of axe MEN. The MEN part of the axeMEN comes from population. Two different dimensions, two things to manage, and really three overall dimensions to unit production: production of the weapons; recruitment of the troops, and training of the troops.

The way it was usually done in medieval times was that population was "borrowed" from the cities and countryside on a temporary basis, as men were brought into armies to fight a limited-scope war, and usually in a nearby area but sometimes marching from one end of a kingdom to the other. They'd assemble after the spring planting, and planned to be back home in time for harvest--with the summer being a time when they could best afford to be without agricultural labor. In this way a kingdom was somewhat able to have the best of both worlds: they had a fully manned army that could fight, AND at the same time, fully manned fields raising the crops to feed them all. Things became more complicated and difficult for a kingdom if fighting ranged outside the summer months, and often the kingdom's economic back was broken if the war launched at them too early for them to muster, or lasted too late into the harvest season. Vikings in particular were able to exploit this vulnerability because their planting and harvesting seasons were different in Scandinavia, so they could offset their expeditions to maximize the differential of how many troops they could field, and how many the French, for example, to throw northward to defend what ended up being called "Normandy" (duchy of the Northmen--the Vikings, who ended up being given that land in exhange for a promise they'd stop invading).

Soldier as a specialist is an interesting concept, and Warlords already has the "Great General" who can either become an instructor or build a military academy.

I think if the dimensions of unit production were segregated into weapons production (hammers based), soldier recruitment (population based), and training (time based), the ability to flip a military "specialist" from building a barracks, should be to improve the time-to-training dimension, or XP-to-time dimension, of the training dimension of unit-building. Then again, if you have a blacksmith, that should enable the building of a weaponsmith shop, after which you should be able to flip a weaponsmith specialist who could speed up the time-to-build dimension of weapons production, and/or improve the quality OF said weaponry.

For GPPs, a weaponsmith specialist should generate either Scientists or Engineers, and trainers should generate... hmm, not sure. Probably not Great Generals, as that should indeed come from combat experience the way Warlords does it, but maybe a random pick between Artists, Engineers, and Prophets. Or maybe GGs after all, or nothing at all--that would be something to ponder for a while, run past a committee, LOL.