Civilization 5

[KaiserElectric]

Sid should put an easy-to-use Civilization creator in the new game. I have a mod that supposedly has one, but it doesn't work unless you screw around with the scripting (which is something I'm not entirely fond of doing...)

 

[rysmiel]

I didn't mean in real life, I meant I didn't want there to be a war in 1918 in a game because there was one in real life then.

Agreed entirely.

WWI was largely fought because of the planet running out of places to go and claim that nobody was exploiting with any efficiency; in Civ III terms, that happens before the end of the ancient age.

If you want a global war, a diplomatic tendency to form competing alliances in the industrial and modern ages would suffice.

 

[morss_4]

One thing that's always bugged me about Civ is that everything is just too regionalized in the late game. The population of New York city is not limited by the farms near Albany, and when they built the Hoover dam they didn't have to worry about low hammer output in Las Vegas, they brought in workers from all over the country.

So I think that at some point in the industrial era all food and hammers should get pooled on a national level, allowing you to redirect them where you please. For example, a "breadbasket" city might pump out 70 food or more, but you only allocate 40 to the city itself. This leaves you with 30 food per turn surplus that goes to the national level. You can then dump this into your production city, so you can workshop that thing without worrying about farms. Then you can take the hammers it produces and pump them into a tank in your heroic epic city. (And why do I have to "build" the heroic epic? It's a poem. That thing should be tied to culture.)

It may be that this is too over powering, and the first Civ to get the "national economy" tech would have too much of an advantage, so maybe you phase it in. Say for example when you get compass you can nationalize 25% of your food and metal casting does the same for hammers, then you get another 25% at optics and machinery and so on.

 

[KaiserElectric]

That's a great idea morss 4! In addition, you should put your spare food and hammers into diplomacy and demand them from and give them to your opponents! Maybe if you gain a vassal, a fraction of their hammers and food should go to you, which makes perfect sense historically.

 

[morss_4]

That's a great idea morss 4! In addition, you should put your spare food and hammers into diplomacy and demand them from and give them to your opponents! Maybe if you gain a vassal, a fraction of their hammers and food should go to you, which makes perfect sense historically.

Also a good idea.

 

[Balderstrom]

Myself and others have posted in other threads, about bringing back some kind of version of the Caravan. Along w/ my idea of a Gatherer unit.

The basics allow for cities to pool excess Production or Food, which can be saved for X-turns before it starts to degrade ... similiar to how production degrades on Builds that lay dormant too long.

The Caravan (or a Settler) can withdraw from the pool, and walk to another city to distribute. A settler carrying resources could also use them as a 1st turn bonus towards a new city.

I think Corporations kinda do what this auto-redistribution is suggesting, though not exactly. Unlimited distribution without any consequences does seem overpowered imho.

What I would like is if Corporations weren't limited to one CIV. Mining Corp, Sid Sushi etc, should be Corporation Templates. If I start up Mining Corp, then its:
Egypt's Mining Consortium (Mining Corp), or The Egyptian Mining Consortium
Another CIV could still compete with my mining corporation
The Roman Mining Consortium

 

[morss_4]

Unlimited distribution without any consequences does seem overpowered imho.

It's only overpowered if the AI can't deal with it. It's not like I'm introducing new hammers or food into the system, just giving you more freedom in using what you have.

Personally I played Civ 2 and Civ 1, and shuffling caravans all over the place was a PITA. I'd much prefer to have everything automatically sent to the national level for simplicities sake.

 

[RedRalph]

Definitely agree. Its pretty ridiculous when in the modern era you have Paris starving while Marseillies grows... totally unrealistic.

 

[Scilly_guy]

Its not that it is unrealistic that is the problem, it is that it is frustrating, the random event to send food aid seems to be a solution but it is random rather than always available and only ovr from one civ to another. I agree, after certain techs more and more food should become nationally available, with refrigeration resulting in 100%. Other techs could be things to do with better understanding of food degradation and improved transport networks.

 

[flyingchicken]

It was possible to transfer food, a long time ago (in Civ2, I believe). I think it was removed for game balancing purposes (function over flavor!).

 

[morss_4]

It was possible to transfer food, a long time ago (in Civ2, I believe). I think it was removed for game balancing purposes (function over flavor!).

The Civ 2 system was different and more of a pain to manage. You had to shift caravans around.

I don't really know why it was removed. Balancing purposes is kind of vague.

 

[flyingchicken]

Balancing purposes is kind of vague.

Well, they usually have pretty good reasons. For example, in Civ3, you could move people around through settling workers and settlers in existing cities. IIRC, it was removed (in Civ4) because you could exploit that by churning out an inordinate amount of people and settling them all at once one turn before the end to get a massive score boost from specialists.

 

[morss_4]

Well, they usually have pretty good reasons.

Yes but without knowing what that reason was I can't know if this was one of them.

Besides, the systems are not the same, although they accomplish a similar purpose.

 

[rysmiel]

The Civ 2 system was different and more of a pain to manage. You had to shift caravans around.

You say "more of a pain to manage"; I say "allows more precise control". Possibly too much precise control; I don't play Civ2 much any more because knowing how to manage caravans makes it trivially beatable unless you hack the difficulty levels for AI bonuses to five levels harder than Deity, or some such.

I don't really know why it was removed. Balancing purposes is kind of vague.

Because in Civ 2, a food caravan costs a fixed number of shields, but always delivers 50% of the amount of food the target city needs to grow by one population point; so two food caravans arriving per turn will make your city grow by one point even if it is starving, and if you set two or more cities to just building and exchanging food caravans every turn, you can pump them up by one point in population every two turns until they are overpopulated enough that the amount they are each short of food is equal to the amount the caravan can deliver per turn; I've seen rings of cities pumped up to sizes over 100 this way, though I believe trying to make a city larger than 128 causes problems.

To my mind the preferred solution to this would have been to have every food caravan deliver a fixed amount of food - maybe increasing with tech as people have suggested - and/or take as much food out of the city building it as it delivers to the city receiving it.

If the system for managing this does not have caravans, it does not let you steal other people's caravans, or use caravans for terrain denial, or other things which are IMO legitimate and cool fun features of the game.

 

[rysmiel]

Well, they usually have pretty good reasons. For example, in Civ3, you could move people around through settling workers and settlers in existing cities. IIRC, it was removed (in Civ4) because you could exploit that by churning out an inordinate amount of people and settling them all at once one turn before the end to get a massive score boost from specialists.

I don't consider that an exploit myself; not being able to move people around like that is a degree of freedom Civ 4 is poorer for not having.

 

[flyingchicken]

If the system for managing this does not have caravans, it does not let you steal other people's caravans, or use caravans for terrain denial, or other things which are IMO legitimate and cool fun features of the game.

Espionage missions! Area missions (like blockade)! There are so many things you can do without having to move your units around.

I don't consider that an exploit myself; not being able to move people around like that is a degree of freedom Civ 4 is poorer for not having.

It's not an exploit--it's exploitable. It's like taking advantage of an unintended mechanical bug in Magic: The Gathering (the by-the-rules legal things banned in tourneys); there's nothing wrong, but it's broken (in the gaming sense). Which relates to your little gripe on why you don't play Civ2 much anymore: you could simply deny yourself the pleasure of exploiting game mechanics.

 

[morss_4]

You say "more of a pain to manage"; I say "allows more precise control".

The Civ 2 system does NOT allow for "more precise control" than the one I suggested. The one I suggested allows you to put the food/hammers where you want when you want with no restrictions. I fail to see how you can get more precise than that.

Maybe it is not exactly what YOU want, but it is certainly precise.

Because in Civ 2, a food caravan costs a fixed number of shields, but always delivers 50% of the amount of food the target city needs to grow by one population point; so two food caravans arriving per turn will make your city grow by one point even if it is starving, and if you set two or more cities to just building and exchanging food caravans every turn, you can pump them up by one point in population every two turns until they are overpopulated enough that the amount they are each short of food is equal to the amount the caravan can deliver per turn; I've seen rings of cities pumped up to sizes over 100 this way, though I believe trying to make a city larger than 128 causes problems.

If I understand this correctly then my system is not exploitable in the same way that this is. The key difference between the two being that this system essentially allows you to "create" food for a cost in shields (and worse yet the conversion rate is not fixed). My system does not allow you to create new hammers or food, it only allows you to distribute what you have in the way that you like.

If the system for managing this does not have caravans, it does not let you steal other people's caravans, or use caravans for terrain denial, or other things which are IMO legitimate and cool fun features of the game.

You can put "routes" in the game without neccesitating the construction of a caravan. The Total War series for example does this.

The easiest way would be to just use the capital as a hub. If you cut the route between your enemies production city and his capital, then he can not send its hammers to the national level and it cannot take food from the national level. You could even institute a system where you "steal" both easily enough.

You can even put a little guy in a wagon or a tiny ship on the map that can be raided if that's what you want.

 

[LordKestrel]

Well the reasoning's each CIV goes to war is probably blackboxed and handled individually for each CIV. If we consider if the game had an option for World War. Then prior to each AI taking its turn there would be a Declare-War-Check for each AI. If one AI is determined to declare war, then the other AI's would be re-checked.
Thus you enable a feature where on one turn the Romans might declare war on the player, one of your other neighbours might also declare war on you.
One of Romes neighbours might declare war on them to take advantage of Rome....etc.

Thus removing the BlackBox from war declarations, setting up whether a world war can occur, by doing a pre-turn DeclareWar logic loop.

[EDIT]
Also there could be a pre-war declaration, where the AI will contact you, and attempt to bribe you to stop it from joining the merryband of warmongers against you. It could offer to Sweden/Abstain, or perhaps join your defense...

That is a very good set of things I'd like added, especially the possibility of being completely neutral. I'd like to be able to set my nation as neutral to all parties, much like Sweden and Switzerland have been for the last two hundred years. Hopefully this would stop the spam of countries asking you to join in on wars and trade embargoes. Perhaps it could be a civic choice, mandated by adopting that civic.

 

[morss_4]

Reflecting on things a bit more in terms of gameplay I really can't see a problem by allowing food to be shared on a national level. If you really want to use all your farms to support a size 70+ city, that's fine, it will just mean that your other cities are smaller. In addition, the health and happiness systems already put a soft cap on population size. Because some (a lot) of your food will be "wasted" through health concerns if you dump it into a size 70 city, I think it's likely that having such a city won't be a winning strategy anyway. If it really becomes a problem you can always just throw a hard cap on city size.

Hammers are a bit more problematic. I'm not entirely convinced that sharing all hammers on a national level is a good idea. For starters it makes wonders problematic. More importantly I could see that the "winning" strategy would just be to dump all your hammers into one city every turn, this way you get to build something immediately. In addition to changing the character of the game (and the fact that shifting production every turn would be a PITA), I'm not sure the AI would handle this well, since establishing build priorities on a national level is something I could see it failing at.

Perhaps instead just a fraction of your hammers should be shared, say 25%. I still like the idea of being able to supplement production in hammer weak cities, or focusing on important projects, but having all of your production free might be detrimental to gameplay. Perhaps another way to go would be to require that you can only change hammer distributions in your cities every 5 turns or something like that.

 

[rysmiel]

Espionage missions! Area missions (like blockade)! There are so many things you can do without having to move your units around.

Just speaking for myself, I find it a lot less fun to push a button saying "espionage mission" than to insert an actual spy unit into another civilisation's territory, and I'd be happy to see both those options removed and replaced with something unit based.

My preferred behaviour for blockading, for example, would be to be able to assign a unit a specific route to patrol every turn until told otherwise, unless interrupted; a simple enough overlay of existing goto commands and sentry functionality, I would think.