Creating your own borders

[Karsinogeeni]

Sure there are expanding borders, but hey, what would be things without real sabre rattling. Claim your own land. "I was here first, so get your settlers away from here!" "No way you are taking away my iron mine!" "That gap belongs to us!"

Basically the system would go like this - if you have been there, you can claim the land. The others can ignore it if they wish, but the point is that if they do, you can say something against losing your colony or a strategic piece of land when their cultural borders expand. Claim a large jungle area between your capital and remote cities to prevent your opponents setting up their tents there... or if they dare to settle, wipe them out. It was yours after all.

 

[Jon Shafer]

How about every military unit has a border around it 1 tile out? So you could saturate an area with military units and prevent other civs from settling in "your" territory.

Of course, you'd have to deal with possibly exploitation of this system.

 

[Phoenix]

Its definetly a good idea but I don't think it can be easily implpemented and as Trip said there would be too much exploitation of it. However thats no reason to give up.

 

[Dell19]

I can see the idea of claims on territory and units claiming land as quite a good idea but it would be nice to see some more development into how you would prevent exploitation and whether it might make the game rely too much on luck as if you got a spearman to the only iron resource first then it might be difficult for any other empire to dislodge your claim.

 

[Heinz4lif]

This may be a good secondary use of explorers. I rarely ever build them because a military unit can do mostly the same thing, plus fend off a barbarian attack. Anyway, maybe setting time limits on land claims will avoid exploitation. If the land claim was good for 10-15 turns, that should be enough time to divert a settler to the new location (unless it's a hundred squares away). When the time expires, the character cannot place a claim on the exact same spot, so they would have to shift over and claim a new plot.

I think it's a good idea that with some tweaking, could work.

 

[Shirastro]

I think borders should work as did in Alpha Centari.....in other word, expand arond your cities but in much larger scale than they do in Civ3.

 

[Greg1066]

In the real world, nations could and did claim any piece of land they had been to. Perhaps CIV could allow you to claim anything in this way, but would have AI nations recognize different strengths of claims, so that when war breaks out over a peice of land claimed by two nations, they would react differently depending on how strong the claim of each nation is. Claims might be strengthened by such factors as
1. Who discovered the land.
2. Who has units there.
3. Who has the closest cities.
4. Who has the best reputation for fair dealing.

 

[ComradeDavo]

How about upgrading the Outpost feature which we currently have. By building one next to your border, you would be able to expand you border a little bit.

 

[ybbor]

theory: each time you build a city you get 8 "territory points" and when it expandes you get 12 more. you can spend these inanyway you want with the following conditions:

A) a city must have at least the 9 tiles suroounding it covered
B) all squares you apply this to must be connected to a city or current culrual borders
c) a line of expansion cannot go more than 3 squares out without a 2nd square "supporting it

i.e [X=territory, O=open:
acceptable:
XXX
XXO
OXO
OXO

not acceptalbe:
XXX
OXO
OXO
OXO
D)in the evnt two civs want to claim a square the one who was there first gets it

 

[Heinz4lif]

This is an interstining idea Ybbor, But what would happen to the "territory points" if your expanding city is in the center of your territory and there are no new available spaces adjacent to it?

Also, what if your expanding city is on a foreign border and there are no new adjacent spaces? I like that the computer takes territory away from the weaker city. I'm thinking this might work if you could use these "territory points" in like an ongoing auction for that plot in foreign soil, and the civ that bids the most points on that plot would have it. But there still could be problems with this...

 

[Hephaistos]

IMO, there's two cases,
1. your border is right next to the other civ's border
2. it's unclaimed territory next to your border

In the first case there should be something like land-stealing. Compare it to the spy trying to steal tech. It might work or it might not, it can get you into war.

In the second case I vote for a settlers approach (settlers as in the game settlers) You can have your workers expand your borders as if they are building improvements. Question is though what happens when an enemy city is founded right next to the newly claimed land? Does it stay with the claimer or does it convert to the newly placed city?

Slightly going off topic, are there any good ideas for occupation forces? The occupied territory might wabt to be independent but still, the use of the land and the resources still go to the occupier.

 

[skycommando]

i like the idea of being able to subdivide your empire into states. that way, if you colonize an island, you can make that into an imperial subdivision (even appoint a governor if you wish). but the main application would be a naval invasion of enemy territory. if you seize enemy lands, then keep them in the peace treaty, you should be able to treat that as a separate state. each state could have a capitol (to ease corruption in far flung parts of your empire). and, you could annex or surrender individual states at a time. there would have to be requirements to qualify, of course: size of territory and number of cities, mainly. but you group the cities, select a capitol and BAM, you have a state.

 

[skycommando]

one quick addition: this could even ease a re-introduction of the old civil war concept from civ1. neglect a state, and it could separate and form a new civ, a la the american revolution, or modern affairs like chechnya.

 

[Dell19]

Splitting empires has been covered several times in other threads including the one in my sig. It may be better to choose one of those threads to post in rather than in this border thread.

 

[Tventano]

Claiming a territory as your own only works when others recognize your borders. You can agree about borders with your neighbours, this means peace and trade. You can war about them, till you agree. Or you can agree to disagree and trade anyway. The last only works as long the interests are not to great or the trade is too important.

Still today many countries disagree with their neighbours about their the border should be. In reality most of the time only one (or neither) country is in control.

You have to be able to back your claim with arguments:
having a city their is pretty strong
having an outpost/colony their also
having military their continuous since long ago
visiting the area regularly
been their once before
having mapped the area

It is a matter of politics, being unrealistic, meaning having quite different opinions then your neighbors will bring you trouble.

Most important: keep it simple!

 

[Simon_Sez919]

I had a rather legnthy post in a different topic about my ideas regarding this topic but I can't find it now!!!

The jist of it was that an explorer could claim 1 tile per X number of turns (perhaps flucuating with difficulty level). If a rival civ built a city or claimed a tile that you had already claimed, you would have the option of declaring war or conceding the territory. I believe in civ 3, if a rival places a city in your border war is automatically declared, but I could be wrong. If you choose to go to war you would have to re-take the territory by force. Neither side would be considered the aggresor for the purposes of war weariness. You could also conceed land as part of a peace treaty.

As far as explotation is concerned there are built in checks. If you claim more land than you can defend, others will take it militaraly. If you claim stategically, to stregthen your capital or to secure resources, you should be able to defend that territory. If you start claiming tiles 100 spaces away from your nearest city, there is really nothing stopping a civ from building a city on your newly claimed land, making the entire endevor fruitless. Also proposes intersting new wonder "Manifest Destiny" - claim X free tiles.

 

[ShADoW^HawK]

OHhhhh... I like it! Maybe we could automicatically add that option to the old scout. Of course, then other civs would need a type of ancient age explorer, that they would have to research or something, and that would cost more.

This would actually add a lot more value to Expansionist Civs! I like that, especially since in Civ3, Expansionist trait is very bad (I mean, only scouts-- you get the same value and more from being aztecs). This would increase the greatness of expansionist civs by far.

Good Idea Simon_Sez919

 

[ybbor]

This is an interstining idea Ybbor, But what would happen to the "territory points" if your expanding city is in the center of your territory and there are no new available spaces adjacent to it?

that's actually one of the benifits of this system, when your city expands into territory you already own, you can put the points toward the edge of your borders

Also, what if your expanding city is on a foreign border and there are no new adjacent spaces? I like that the computer takes territory away from the weaker city. I'm thinking this might work if you could use these "territory points" in like an ongoing auction for that plot in foreign soil, and the civ that bids the most points on that plot would have it. But there still could be problems with this...

i was thinking that, it must have just slipped my mind while writing it

 

[ShADoW^HawK]

Yes, these ideas are all good, but I especially liked Simon_Sez919's idea, since it adds an extra element to the advantage of scouts and expansionist civs.