Civilization 5

[Birdman6]

It's an issue of scale, really. I don't think there's any reasonable way to implement something that could be called "weather" on a scale of ten-to-a-hundred-miles to a side tiles and turns of at very minimum one year, and I would see larger scale climate as being effectively reflected in what the terrain of a tile is like. And various Civ games have done things with larger scale shifts, the various models for global warming, sea level shifts in SMAC and so on.

Obviously mimicking weather on a micro level where it changes each turn and varies from tile to tile would be extremely complex, not to mention quite demanding on your average consumer CPU. And I agree that the terrain is somewhat reflective of climate, but only marginally. But why not implement some basic things, like temperature and snow, which historically have been known to greatly affects wars in real life. Why not have it snow every once in a while in a broad region, and then create mobility and health penalties and a camouflage bonus for an army that's on the march? Creating a simple model along these lines can't be that difficult. You could implement seasons, where you have greater likelihood of snow or where forests and jungles grow quicker. It seems to me these things are too relevant to life to not TRY and program.

 

[rysmiel]

Ok fair enough, but available for widespread consumer purchase?

I'm not aware of any such, but there's a goodly amount of use and development of them in bioinformatics and computer science, so it would surprise me greatly were there not freely available basic NN engines which someone with the right programming skills could theoretically put in a game.

 

[rysmiel]

But why not implement some basic things, like temperature and snow, which historically have been known to greatly affects wars in real life. Why not have it snow every once in a while in a broad region, and then create mobility and health penalties and a camouflage bonus for an army that's on the march?

But how long a scale are you considering averaging over ?

It seems to me that the very minimum for meaningful "seasons" is four turns a year, which in a Civ-scale game seems a non-starter to me. And if what you want to simulate is "well, this bit of land gets a great deal more snow on average than this other bit", then making them different terrain types with mobility and health penalties seems a perefectly reasonable solution to me.

 

[Birdman6]

I'm not aware of any such, but there's a goodly amount of use and development of them in bioinformatics and computer science, so it would surprise me greatly were there not freely available basic NN engines which someone with the right programming skills could theoretically put in a game.

Interesting, I didn't know that.

 

[Birdman6]

But how long a scale are you considering averaging over ?

It seems to me that the very minimum for meaningful "seasons" is four turns a year, which in a Civ-scale game seems a non-starter to me. And if what you want to simulate is "well, this bit of land gets a great deal more snow on average than this other bit", then making them different terrain types with mobility and health penalties seems a perefectly reasonable solution to me.

But terrain types by themselves never change. As it stands now an ice tile remains an ice tile unaltered throughout the game. No matter how you slice it that's not weather.

I'm actually not thinking of 4 seasons every year...more like each season lasts anywhere from 4-8 turns. That way you get enough of an effect that the player must account for it, but it's not so long that it dominates the game.

 

[EmperorFool]

Neural networks are a real contemporary technology.

True, but they are very simplistic. They also tend to be used mostly for categorizing things in a binary way. A classic use is spam-detection. Each node takes a set of inputs from other nodes and applies an algorithm to produce a single output value. You typically have only a handful of nodes in a fairly simple network, for example 3 rows of four nodes each.

Next you take a large set of sample data that has been precategorized and use it to tune your algorithm. Some people call this step "teaching the AI," but that's very misleading. You run your sample data through the net and look at the results. Based on which ones are incorrectly classified, you change the algorithms in the nodes, typically by altering the constants and weights in the calculations. You do this over and over again until you reach a point where you are happy with the error rate of your network.

You could apply this to Civ on a grand scale, perhaps "Should I DoW on player X?" You would need to classify a lot of saved games. The problem is that the question asked is a lot fuzzier than "Is this email spam?" The tougher part is designing a representative set of calculations to be run against the game data.

 

[civfanatic14]

I suggest bringing back the High Council of Civ2 only this time, they will be different according to both period AND nationality. In some cases, let them show the player an overview video if the civ is anarchy.

 

[(Alexandros)]

I'm actually not thinking of 4 seasons every year...more like each season lasts anywhere from 4-8 turns. That way you get enough of an effect that the player must account for it, but it's not so long that it dominates the game.

But that would mean completely disregarding the time scale of the game. Do you really find it appealing to have seasons that last as much as centuries (early game) to 2-3 years at best in the very final stages of the game?

The best way (and "best" does not mean actually good) I can think of for some sort of weather to be implemented is through random events that only last one turn and mostly represent extreme cases. Such an event could be for example "severe winter in this region" and the effect would be that a number of terrain squares would have their defense/food/production/commerce changed accordingly only for one turn. This would signify that at some point in the time period covered by this turn there was an unusually severe winter. Even so, I find this an extremely shaky idea at best, because it would mean that anything happening in that period (a period of, let's say, 5-10 years) would, in game terms, actually happen in the precise period of the unusual event.

 

[Camikaze]

Seasons could be applicable on very slow speeds (if much slower speeds were implemented), but they would not be applicable otherwise.

 

[Naokaukodem]

However, what they could do is meteo graphics, only for the sake of beauty. It could be nice to see clouds shadows on the map, sometime rain in some parts of the map, and sun shinings.

 

[Camikaze]

Yeah, that would be pretty sweet. So long as it didn't actually affect the game in any way. Although, I suppose if the weather was continuously moving throughout a singular turn, It would be okay to have the weather have an effect on stuff, so you just had to wait for a time in any given turn when it is not raining. That was clear, wasn't it!

 

[Naokaukodem]

Although, I suppose if the weather was continuously moving throughout a singular turn, It would be okay to have the weather have an effect on stuff, so you just had to wait for a time in any given turn when it is not raining. That was clear, wasn't it!

I don't think it should affect gameplay in any way though, just as you said.

 

[(Alexandros)]

It would be okay to have the weather have an effect on stuff, so you just had to wait for a time in any given turn when it is not raining.

That would cause many fun moments of scanning the map for weather patterns. [Joke]You could also have a national wonder, "Weather service", that would alert you to phenomena so you wouldn't have to search yourself... [/pathetic attempt at humour]

 

[Ganda1fs Puppet]

One thing that I have looked for but never seen is a Star Trek Mod for Civ. I had hoped that with Final Frontier somebody would come up with one but...

I think that Naval warfare could be a little more in depth in the next version.

Also, I am begging the developers: Can you make Democracy/Universal suffrage worth more, it kind of sucks. Wow towns produce 1 hammer and I can rush units! Big whoop! for those players that almost never have a lot of gold Military State is so much better and Easier.

I also would suggest that religions have their own traits. Christianity has -10% science but +25% happiness or something like that!

And In Civ 5 can they make it so that you can actually talk to people like Tokugawa and Shaka without having to be their vassal or their religon!?!?!?

 

[rysmiel]

Yeah, that would be pretty sweet. So long as it didn't actually affect the game in any way.

Even weather that's basically a pretty background detail will take processing power, so it will do that little bit more to slow the game down; so I vote against, I'd rather have a less "pretty" game that worked on a wider range of computers.

 

[Balderstrom]

But that would mean completely disregarding the time scale of the game. Do you really find it appealing to have seasons that last as much as centuries (early game) to 2-3 years at best in the very final stages of the game?

You really can't apply CIV's time-scale to anything in game, since units move 1-2 squares every turn (Centuries). It takes 5-15 turns to "build" a single unit (Settler/Worker/Warrior...) - Hundreds of years to get a settler so you can build a new town, Hundreds of years for that same settler to walk off into the yonder to plop down said new city.

It's really not that far of a stretch to have seasons within this context.

Personally I'd rather the game got away with the Exact year, stick with turns and what Age you are in; possibly also show what the average Age for the world is: add up each CIVS: Population of CIV * Age, divided by total world population.

 

[IamJohn]

Weather systems for civ wouldn't be a good idea imo, it's something that would be hard to simulate on a many thousand mile/kilometer wide continent, however the rain pattern type of stuff and the effect that has on food production/hammers seen in smac might be an interesting idea to have.

 

[jsweeney]

One thing that I have looked for but never seen is a Star Trek Mod for Civ. I had hoped that with Final Frontier somebody would come up with one but...

I think that Naval warfare could be a little more in depth in the next version.

Also, I am begging the developers: Can you make Democracy/Universal suffrage worth more, it kind of sucks. Wow towns produce 1 hammer and I can rush units! Big whoop! for those players that almost never have a lot of gold Military State is so much better and Easier.

I also would suggest that religions have their own traits. Christianity has -10% science but +25% happiness or something like that!

And In Civ 5 can they make it so that you can actually talk to people like Tokugawa and Shaka without having to be their vassal or their religon!?!?!?

I agree that religions should have bonuses but that area is a bit tense and can't judge religions for political reasons. What i would like is a navy as in-depth as it was in the RtW mod, i mean that just made since to me. (also, i would like a helicopter transport unit that move 4 units through rival territory.

 

[Camikaze]

Even weather that's basically a pretty background detail will take processing power, so it will do that little bit more to slow the game down; so I vote against, I'd rather have a less "pretty" game that worked on a wider range of computers.

I like the idea of designing the game so that it would max out on the best computers in five years time, but also having other settings for even the worst current computers. That way you can optimise your settings better, to get a good aesthetics vs. gameplay balance.

I also would suggest that religions have their own traits. Christianity has -10% science but +25% happiness or something like that!

Welcome to CFC.

As much as it may seem like a good idea, it will never happen, 'cause it would inevitably discriminate against some religions, which isn't a good think, for:

1. Publicity.
2. Sales.
3. General courtesy and tolerance.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

And of course, Firaxis should keep newcomers and people who aren't seasoned elite players in mind. I don't think the Noble difficulty in Civ IV really does provide such an even playing ground. True, the human player does not get any free ones, but the AI is a bit too clever and competent; the experiences of a lot of expert Civ players have been applied a somewhat too assiduously. So whether that means tweaking the Warlord levele or the Novkle level or doing something else, I think there should be a level without extras for the human player but with an AI which isn't quite so dauntingly smart.