Devil's Advocate: is this the end of creativity in Civ?

Yes, hopefully. I am so excited about this feature, and I may be more confident than anyone else that this will work out, but I still keep on worrying.

Anyway this new feature already has a group of people very upset and complaining- the people who want actual civil wars. Personally, I wish they would be quiet and be happy that they got something but it just shows how every new feature will make some group of people upset.

dh_epic said:
You know, NYHunter, you've made an interesting for case for how a colony-by-choice might work. The maintenance cost might justify it. Hopefully whatever they did, they made it fun. Or if they couldn't, they erred on the side of player freedom. It'll be exciting see.

Maybe, if nothing else, it will give us a new starting point for our discussions. Always good to have a prototype to refer to.
Click to expand...
 
This might BE actual civil wars, if there are situations where vassals often become free. At least half the benefit is there: new civilizations appear mid game.
 
Well, it's easy enough to make it a Civil War. If they declare their independence, declare war on them. Civil War FTW.
 
Well, it's easy enough to make it a Civil War. If they declare their independence, declare war on them. Civil War FTW.
Click to expand...

Exactly. So the question turns to the step before that. Why would you split your empire, and make part of it a vassal, when so much depends on keeping them under your direct control?

Even if BTS doesn't answer that question adequately, it might be the last and only question we need to ask before Civilization 5 to give us "civil war". That's progress!

Of course, there are still lots of other ideas too. (I still really like Mxzs's idea of two different players with different kinds of control in the same city. It's so crazy that it just might work. I'm just still thinking about how.)
 
dh_epic said:
Exactly. So the question turns to the step before that. Why would you split your empire, and make part of it a vassal, when so much depends on keeping them under your direct control?
Click to expand...

This is what it sounds like to me:

  • Any cities you build over ocean tiles has a much higher maintenance cost than those equally distant but on your landmass
  • If you build several cities on another continent, the combined higher maintenance cost could be crippling
  • You have an option of creating a Vassal Civ out of cities on another continent to eliminate the maintenance cost problem (although 'Having vassal cities will incur higher maintenance cost for your own cities' may still be true; not sure)
  • The same scenarios that apply with Vassals apply here, such as 'the vassal can't break the relationship unless a) it grows to more than half the size (land and population) of the master or b) loses more than half the territory it owned at the time the agreement was created.' (the capitulation scenario) or it might be able to 'The master can demand any resource from a vassal, even those that the vassal is using. The vassal has the right to refuse the demand but if they do they two states are immediately at war.'

When you look at that last bullet point, it sounds exactly like the American Revolution, doesn't it?
 
That's really fascinating. Your analysis makes a lot of sense. But, if you're right, I still worry about trying to encourage a behavior using the stick, rather than the carrot. It'll definitely come down to the subtleties of execution.
 
These posts are amazing, I'm glad I subscribed to it, but a little of topic a subject that I've been wondering about is a filter system (via patch, etc) within the Gamespy option. ping values 100<, PB, Password Protected games, are obvious choices, but add team, Scenario/Mod, and a different filter/channel for Earth or Epic games and a separate filter/channel for Quick and Blazing. Time after time my desire is to play a game where I have the time in a turn to survey the land, communicate threw the diplomacy interface, etc. but it seems everyone is quick to jump in the Blazin!!! games only to find them dissatisfied a dozen turns in the game and quit, and on that point I recall Battlenet (StarCraft) kept track of a user name showing the user as 29-3-14 as an example, he has played 46 games with 29 wins/3 quits/14 loses. This would impact the online game don't you think?
 
Okay, here is the idea for economics I've been working on recently. I got it down to about a 1/4 of the original length.

Hope it doesn't come with too big an air of "so what" about it. If it's not used as the basis for a "national" or "international" trade market, it does have much less utility, and I'm mostly interested in it for the latter. I'm not sure that such beasts would have much use in the regular game, but I think they would have quite a bit of use in a game that (like I've been struggling to describe) made a distinction between the cultural and political control of a city. Only "empires"--cities grouped under one political control, could be grouped together markets through which food and hammers could be shared.
 
I think that one of the considerations of this thread is "Only add or change something if it will add to the collective strategic choices". That is at least how I read the first two posts in the thread.

While I agree in part, I also go back to what Sid Meir himself said when asked why he adds something;

"It is either Fun, or its cool"

To me, those are good ways to classify something to add.

But in addition, what I am really looking for in a Civilization Engine, is that in each era does it allow me to model things that DID happen or may have happened.

For instance, for some strange reason the greeks had a form of advanced government no one else could have had. Civs answer: A work of wonder that allows you to switch to this government ahead of time.

Awesome answer. It allows me to do 'what if' as well, that the greeks this time around didn't go for a democracy.

I think at least in 20th-21st century I see things that are relevant to our world that I'd like to see 'modeled'. Due they neccesarily add a strategic challenge? maybe not, maybe they are just a 'choice' so that I can see the affects of fundamentalism or squabbling over an arid piece of desert that isn't worth much from a strategic perspective.

Fighting in the middle east over a tiny peice of desert may not seem worth it from an androids point of view. Cost Benefit Analysis = Move to a more arable land and raise your children in peace rather than fight an unending conflict.

True.

But that is not how the world works. I want my simulation to offer up situations where through the folly of leaders and nations, we have situations that would really occur.

Example of a Strategic enhancement:
The great Greek ruler gets to a city that does not capitulate, and gets the option: Siege it, or make an "Example of it" and raze it. Razing it makes other cities likely to capitulate given the size of it.

I like when I have choices like that, because now I can weigh the cost of rebuilding the city to get others to surrender versus controlling it. I can also feel like Alexander the Great.

Example of morally ambigous enhancement:

Lets say though I have a democracy and I get a popup that says that the immigrants to my country are being treated as second class citizens and forced to work in labor camps and I can choose to;

A) Great..more workers just what I needed! tell them they got to earn citizensship (+4% ind in all cities)
B) Lets form a commission to look into that (neutral, no change)
C) All people are created equal, sign into laws that reform this (loss of production/+ happy faces)

Awesome. Kind of like the concept of 'good and evil' in Galactic Civilzation if I am collecting points towards one particular alignment and making choices that would come up. GREAT. Does it change the overall game? not really, but the more things that bring me closer to feeling like I am watching a 'what if' version of history unfold the better.


As for instance when I start researching something, elective like 'stem cells', maybe I get revolts. This idea is just too much for my people to deal with but in the pursuit of it, it creates some unrest that will be forgotten in 100 years when stem cell technology has long since been unlocked, that feels 'right' to me.

You could do that with several technologies. lets say a christian nation researches a forbidden technology or "The church of (nation name)" and decides to form its own varation of the religion. This unlocks a national wonder that I can build that is not unlike the holy building of my relgion, but it also causes some unrest.


As for random events, while I dislike passive events, "black plague" some times thats all you can do, and while "no one likes to lose due to some dice rolls" as someone wisely observed, the simple fact of the matter is that history works that way some times and you need to roll with it.

The Golden Horde rides into euroupe as conquerers, resting nightly in the burnt out capitals of the european nations and then due to a drunken accident of fate, has to return home. While you may not 'like it', the fact is, thats random events allow you the chance to realize that the world is not simply 4E- Explore, Expland, Exploit, Exterminate. You must contend with the fickle fate of nations. like or not.

George W Bush would love it if things like Katrina didn't come along to bite him in the butt and he could just keep pressing "End Turn" but the truth is, it did happen and how we respond to that random event defines us as a nation.


In summary, I'd also like to say that I really like this discussion and I am an advocate of "more" not a drastically different system in the game. I think though if there was one enhancement I wanted to see, it was events that occur where you have variable responses. If there was a scripting engine where these occur randomly with some variables based on certain conditions must be true, "Must be at war, must have at least 5 cities" etc. and then the player has three or four options of a response, then this game would really pique my interest.
 
"Sometimes history works that way" is pretty much the exact thing I'm fighting against.

It can be taken to the extreme. Let's say that one day the "Great person making great decisions" theory of history is refuted, and we find out that most of history is cause and effect. Jared Diamond isn't too far off from this: Europe didn't win because they made better choices. They won because their geographic proximity made them less resistant to disease. The variety of isthmuses and hilly ranges naturally created nation states, which produced more competition. The whole Eurasian land mass is oriented east-west, allowing crops to more easily spread across -- unlike the whole American land mass which is oriented north-south, and it would be hard to spread crops from Seattle to Mexico. You could design a very realistic game around this... until you realize that it's not a game at all: pretty much whoever gets the nicest geographic start will win the game.

Don't get me wrong. Randomness is absolutely necessary. It would be pretty lame to have a game where everyone starts with the same terrain, with the same climate, and same opportunities for exploration... but you also get the biggest complaints in an MP game when someone gets a bad start, and someone else gets a lucky start. They don't just "roll with it". Same thing with when that 1&#37; chance kicks in and a longbow manages to kill a tank. Same thing with when that 5% chance kicks in and you generate a Great Artist instead of a Great Engineer.

A lucky player beating a smart player may be realistic. (I think there's a quote like that: one famous leader once said he'd rather have a fleet of lucky generals than smart generals.) But for the sake of a game, it just plain sucks.

As a side note, though, we will be seeing events in BTS. We'll see how random they are. I'd prefer them to offer more choices than mere catastrophe, but we'll see.

Fighting in the middle east over a tiny peice of desert may not seem worth it from an androids point of view. Cost Benefit Analysis = Move to a more arable land and raise your children in peace rather than fight an unending conflict.
Click to expand...

There's already lots of folly in the game: Wonders. Most Wonders, in real life, were a huge waste of money and resources, and were merely to flaunt wealth and power. In reality, the Pyramids wouldn't unlock a bunch of government options. It would more or less generate culture, maybe a shade of happiness -- maybe lower the enemy morale at most. But, of course, that's not very fun. Moreover, people would never build wonders if all they did was generate culture.

I'd actually like to see Civilization push this further! I agree, Civ 4's history is too rational!

But introducing random or foolish incidents is not the answer. The answer is to reward these historical, emotional, non-rational behaviors. Maybe it's time for there to be a meaningful reward for fighting over that useless hunk of desert, or that useless island -- rather than giving all the rewards to the most "rational" decision of just taking as much land as possible from the weakest link.

In that sense, the bonuses attached to wonders are simply an effort to make foolishness into a worthy in-game pursuit. And for good reason: you'd be missing a big part of history if nobody felt like building those wonders.
 
dh_epic said:
There's already lots of folly in the game: Wonders. Most Wonders, in real life, were a huge waste of money and resources, and were merely to flaunt wealth and power.
Click to expand...
Louis Black has a special on Comedy Central (tv channel) where he is talking about the economy. Mostly he makes fun about how the US government thought it would stimulate the economy by giving a tax refund.

But his idea is to instead build a Big Farking Thing. It doesn't matter what the BFT is, it just has to be BIG and it has to be a Farking Thing. You don't build it in your most productive city, or in a city which already has a lot of culture, but you build it in the middle of nowhere where the economy stinks, like Mississippi. Nobody wants to go spend their vacation in Biloxi or Jackson.

The construction of the BFT would of course create a lot of short term jobs. That's just the beginning.

In addition, lots of people would want to see the BFT. People would come from all over to take pictures of the BFT and ride the elevator to the top. Soon, there would be a BFT restaurant, a BFT hotel, a BFT amusement park, even a BFT casino. All kinds of permanent jobs and tourism money coming in. :thumbsup:

Of course, this all has absolutely nothing to do with the Pyramids allowing me to run Representation. :crazyeye:

Wodan
 
LOL fair enough -- so some wonders create jobs and tourism. But unemployment doesn't really matter if you're a slave. And some extra gold, culture, and happiness isn't really enough to make those wonders seem all that fun.

History is irrational in many ways because people are irrational. I actually think this irrationality should be built into the game in some ways. Not as randomness or penalties, but as rewards for doing things that people have celebrated. Even though it's tempting to napalm the entire world and win a conquest victory, we don't. Even though the holy land is hardly the biggest or most productive land in the world, people fight over it. Even though a country becomes less big and powerful when it is split by civil war, it happens all the damn time, and can even lead to other forms of progress.
 
A lot of good ideas here.
I like specially the ideas of Mxzs, in which the player can be a cultural leader and a political one as well. But there is one point on it:
Would it still be Civilization? I have always seen Civ as agame in which you direct a nation more than a civilization or a culture. Although i think the idea is really good, i think it would be another game, no more Civ.

The same idea could also be expanded to other areas. For example: I have played a game (Patrician III) in which the player starts as a merchant during the begining of the renaisance. The task of the player is to trade between cities using ships. This way he adquires wealth and political power. During the game the player can reach political positions, from which he can influence diferent decisions and be elected mayor of a city or even governor of the Hanseatic League.
I am showing this example only to say that Mxzs idea could be expanded in a way that the player could start from diferent positions, not only as a cultural avatar or merchant.

But all of you are doing a really good job. Please contionue with it!!
 
I don't think separating political vs cultural control would be too far off. We have something similar now: vassalage. When you take on a vassal, you gain access to their resources, and they directly contribute to your domination victory. But, at the same time, they control much of their day to day affairs.

I see Mxzs's idea as the next logical step. Conquest of someone gives you the loyalty of their government, but not necessarily control of their people. In that sense, the conqueror and the conquered play separate roles. They have different powers, with the conqueror having a clear advantage in many ways.

The question is how to separate these powers cleanly, and how to deal with any overlap. The question is also what a conquered player is working towards (can they still win?), and if that can be done in a way that still keeps conquest fun and rewarding.
 
Well, if you are refering to the idea that the conquered can still play and win, that is another idea.
But in my opinion this could be implemented in a way similar to the actual vassal system, with the diference that the vassal doesn&#180;t need to split off from his master in order to win. But in this case will it be necesary to make the player an entirely new diferent type of leader? I don&#180;t think i would be necessary. It could be enough only if you are still the leader of your civ (nation) but your powers are limited. (example in civ: Vassals adopt his master external policy).

I also like the diferent ideas about the tech tree. The idea that diferent civilizations research diferent trees because of their culture, necesities or actions.
My question is could it be implemented? For me it seems dificult. The tech tree would become really big and complicated, and if the techs avaiable depend more on the actions of the player, then with time most players will realise what are the diferent actions in order to reach the diferent techs.

The other option is that if the list of requisites for each tech are a wery complicated list, so complicated that you couldn&#180;t predict which techs are you going to be able to research (similar to real histroy) it would take away the control that the player has about the tech tree and make it "unfun". Ithink in such a case a system like the one in SMAC would be better and easier.

More: I have always seen techs not only as a teorical research but also as practical experiments (especially in civ IV were you can transform production into research). So if I ham researching farms I tend to think that my citizens not only learn how to cultivate thinks, but that they also start to do it at small scale. This would explain why you can resear potery if you didn&#180;t build any farms.

I would also argue that the tech tree is yet dependant of the players actions. The only diference is that instead of being the actions that the player has done those who decide what the player is going to research, the actions which decide are those that the player is going to do. For example an agresive civilization (an agressive player) is more inclined to research military tradition that an peacefull player who thinks that he is not goin to build cavalry and that because of this this techs would only delay him in the space race.

The idea of adopting techs seems interesting, although it seems to encounter the same problem as the other ideas: If it is the player who decides wheter he is going to research that tech and adopt it later, then it doesn&#180;t change really much. Only make research longer, more complicated and requireng more managment. Because the player is going to choose those techs that he think he is going to use. If those theoretical discoverys are not selected by the player but come aleatorily or almost aleatorily, then it would not be fun.
The most interesting Idea would be if your actions determine the apearance of theoretical discoveries, which you could then decide to adopt, but again if there is a clear list of which actions lead to which discoveries, then it would not change much, because the player would still be doing those things that he needs to do in order to reach certain techs.
 
The only way you'd be a different leader is you'd have more limited powers after you've been conquered. I don't think Mxzs was referring to two different leaders for every civilization all the time. Just that conquest would only half-way change the control: the conqueror would only gain access to your military and resources, while the conquered would still control much of "the people" and their popular demands. In this sense, vassalage will no longer be an option. Instead, vassalage will be the actual result of conquest, with full control only coming from years of cultural assimilation.

The tech tree discussion is more complicated. You nailed it though. A relatively significant change is suggested, the kind that you know Firaxis would be reluctant to embrace. And what's worse is that the pay off is nebulous. You get the sense that you're taking away more choices from the player in terms of what they can research. And the choices you add -- whether to abandon, maintain, or master a discovered technology -- they are arguably not as fun.

This goes right to the root problem of this thread: a lot of the big ideas have a very nebulous payoff, while the very specific ideas aren't big enough to warrant a sequel. But being able to pin down these big ideas helps resolve this problem, even if it means that some big ideas turn out to be not worth it.
 
Hi!

I love this thread :)

Hmmm, I am preparing a concept of the tech tree and how techs are gained

Outline of the concept:

/EDITED/

I call it CIV-SPECIFIC TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT

Techs would have characteristics (one or more), much like traits:

economic
agricultural
industrial
scientific
cultural
seafaring
military
political (government, espionage)
religious

A tech's standard cost would be decreased
depending on how much the tech's characteristic is in line with factors like:

- type of tile of my cities (shore, hill, plain)
- type of tiles my cities can work and actually working
- &#37; of sliders (gold, culture, science)
- buildings I have in total in my civ
- military power
- leader traits
- peace/war
- civics
- relations with other civs
maybe more things

So the way a civ "looks like" and "acts like" would have an effect on researching technology

An example could be Archery, which could be a military tech,
so certain factors could count as helps to decrease the cost of the tech:
leader having the Aggressive/Protective trait,
civ having a certain number of (or otherwise calculated) military power,
civ having war at the present time,
civ with military civics, etc
 
I think that's a cool idea and one that can make a sequel worth while. But making it work in a way that's not complicated -- that's the challenge.
 
dh_epic said:
I think that's a cool idea and one that can make a sequel worth while. But making it work in a way that's not complicated -- that's the challenge.
Click to expand...

Ah, do you mean I should elaborate it? ;)

By the way, my idea could go hand in hand with ThrCh's (is that the name correctly?) idea on tech tree (Discovery/Mastery)

*

I am preparing a model of a BIG idea:
on how units could do actions in a turn (moves/fight/other) so
that it would be kind of simultaneous:

all units would have a turn in 3 parts:
1. phase(s) of movement and preparation of action
all units of all civs make this, moves/prepares at the same time
2. decision on action
all units of all civs make this at the same time
3. then all action is carried out... at the same time

More you will see on it in a post coming soon in a day or two ;)
 
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