Having a more realistic population nationality control

[LSrulz]

My goal is to discuss the way the game calculates the % of people from different nationality in cites, thus I find causing many unrealistic consequences.

My text is long, you can skip to the suggestions if you don't want to read the intro.

Introduction :

Ok here's my point of view. I am at war with another nation at 4000 BC. What will happen if we win a fight and capture a city? All the males will be killed, all women will be declared prostitutes and lets say we spare the kids. And that's a gentle army with compassion, because we all know what would happen in ancient times to women and children...

Now we are (lets say in the 21st century) and a certain civilization called the Americans are conquering cities in Irak. Now, with all the cameras and , we cant do some horrible things like that. This means that captured cities will remain all their (not dead by collateral damage) population, causing lots of troubles.

Lets say now I'm Israel conquering palestine or china conquering tibet. They force massive immigration in these territorry to ensure that in some years their people will be dominant there, but in the eyes of the world it doesnt feel right that they take the land from the other citizens.

Lets say I'm a french in Paris in World war II and I know the nazis are coming straight for the capital. I WANNA GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!!!!!!! There was a massive migration of population to the south as the germans advanced in france.

First point :

Ok, I'm playing civ now. I'll be french and I'm at war with england. I just won a fight and razed a city, cant affort to keep it, its too much in their border. Now tough fights and we sign peace, I put a settler (built in a 100% french city) and found a city in the ruins. It's 99% english and 0% french. WAIT, WHAT!?! A 100% french settlers founded a city populated by english? My comment is "... WTH"

Second point :
Ok, now my city is growing... size 2... size 3... Still like 98% english and 1% french. Man, nobody from my advised government had the brilliant idea to say : lets settle our people there so we can claim the land as our own! NO! they let the original population make babies and some tiny increase.

Third point :
Ok, lets say I kept the city, it became size 10 after the fight. Now, all these brilliant people are staying there. None of them is thinking : "I don't like being in france, lets go back to england". NO! they say : "I'm not happy there, lets put more unhappy faces so we will get ivory and whales that will keep us from not working". Let me just say that the luxury ressources and military units under monarchy doesnt really make conquered people feel more happy.

Final point :
Ok, lets go back some turns ago. An english city defended with, lets say, 3 longbows with a whole warrior is seeing an army of 5 knights, 10 trebuchets, 8 macemans, 2 pikemans and 2 longbows approaching. All citizens in the city say : "wow, no need to worry, well win anyway" "LETS FIGHT TO THE DEAD!!!!"
NAOOOOOO! They want to GET THE OUT OF THERE QUICK BEFORE GETTING RAPED BY AN UGLY "no teeth smile" FRENCH WARRIOR!

Finally, here are the suggestions :

Population % control

We need to have a way to control population migration. It can't be all cultural influenced.

Open and Closed borders should be a major function to reduce the migration of foreign people to your land. Even if we have closed border, our borderline cities can have like 50%-49% population, which is unrealistic, due in fact that the passage is restricted.

We could also have an option : stop emigration to X, stop immigration from Y. This should be an independant option with people you have open borders, with the opposite leader's attitude variation if used in excess against his people.

Also, we could have an internal control of population via civics. I'm not good at naming but it could go like :
Afraid of foreigners : Your people kill strangers as they see them. No foreign population spread trough your land and they decrease at an intense rate, with a malus in food produced (which is influencing the city population), may cause a city to reduce its population. Badly reduces population in captured cities (or forced to raze).
Purge the infidels : Decreases population fast from civ that doesnt share state religion, greatly reduces the size of captured infidel cities. Lots of faces and malus in relation with leader.
Colonization : Increases the rate of your people taking over conquered cities. Lots of faces.
Assimilation : spread the people from a city trough your other cities but they get assimilated and their % decreases faster.
Tolerance : They all go in getthos and never get assimilated. bonus attitude with leader.

All this could affect the enemy civ leader's attitude.
Maybe the attitude toward a civilization can determine how well the assimilation is going. Happy civs will be more likely to be assimilated (in a pacific way of course).

Also, the culture increases the assimilation rate, depending on civics, but is not as the most important factor.

Lastly, the population growth could be a major factor. Lets say I get the Colonization civic. When a city grows, it gets a lot more population from my civ than the conquered ones in the process.
Example : Size 1 city(99% english) is (I dont know the values in game) 100 000 people. Size 2 is 200 000 people. Well, those 100 000 aditionnal people would be majoritarly from my civ, immigrating in city, meaning that in those 100 000, lets say 75 000 are immigrants and 25 000 are new borns. meaning that we have a 75/200 ration for now about 33% french and 66 english. and so on...

I wont elaborate further but this could take in consideration the % in close cities in the empires (lets say we have a 50% barbarian city near, they send less people).

Lastly, we should be able to move our population from cities. If we are to get attacked and a city is doomed to be conquered, start a migration towards safe cities. Slowly increasing their size while decreasing the doomed city's. Not all at once, lets say 1-2 point per turn (or 10% city size), only when enemy armies within X squares etc. to prevent abuse.

All the migration/assimilation civics could also play with the city size and population number. Lets say Colonization again for example, we take 1 food from all cities producing more than 3 extra food and giving it to this city.

I also think that when we eliminate a player from the map, we sould not get all his citizen assimilated right away, it is so unrealistic. Keep them and maybe, they will try to gain independance and start out with another leader from this civ.
In real life, the english conquered the new-france in north america like 300 years ago, and now all french are in Canada and the province of Quebec (french at 80%) is trying to get independance. Canada didn't assimilate the french enough so here they are, increasing in population and claiming to control their nation.

Finally, maybe there could be a way to control this a little in a simple way. Let's just display, in the city population, how many are of which nationality. Also, the population number in a city (if it doesnt already, I never looked quite closely at this detail) should increase or decrease with food stored, as it is the way of growing a city. With this mean, we can keep track.

We could give a nationality to food stored and food produced, but I think it's weird. It might be simple for calculation tho. Maybe all the food alteration mentionned earlier could be altered with another variable.

I think thats all, thanks for comments or suggestions.

PS : I cant believe this have not been talked about yet. Got so much to say.

 

[Trias]

We could give a nationality to food stored and food produced, but I think it's weird. It might be simple for calculation tho. Maybe all the food alteration mentionned earlier could be altered with another variable.

I think actually that if you are going to have a migration mechanic (which I think civ 5 should have), then it is better to get rid of the food bar altogether. You can simply have a population bar that shows the cities progress towards the next city size. This is what the foodbar is currently representing in an abstract way any way. The natural growth is based on how much surplus food the city is producing (like now) plus any amount of migration from other cities.

This also makes it much more natural to keep track of the nationality/culture/ethnicity/whatever of the new citizens. In fact the city can keep track of the size of each subpopulation. So maybe you will have:

City London:
TOTAL POPULATION: 1,005,400
english: 755,000
indian: 203,400
french: 42,000
(no relation to reality implied)

PS : I cant believe this have not been talked about yet. Got so much to say.

Similar ideas have been mentioned before.

 

[bob rulz]

Sorry for the long post, but immigration is something that I've thought a lot about and I think should be implemented in the next game.

I completely agree with this. Both religion and ethnicity should have more variety in a game.

I believe that immigration should be a major factor in the game. Introducing ethnicity in Civ III and religion in Civ IV was a step forward, now let's take it to the next level in Civ V.

If a country is struggling financially (I think they could introduce a bit more complexity to the economic system, but obviously not too much so), citizens could start emigrating to more affluent countries (ala what occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with mass migrations from Europe to the U.S.). Also, oppressive or authoritarian governments could encourage emigration out of the country (although the governments in question could take more aggressive steps to curtail it as well).

The same could apply for religions. Religions that are being controlled or discouraged in certain nations could encourage members of that religion to emigrate to countries more favorable to that religion.

Immigration would be rare in the ancient and middle ages but could increase particularly in the industrial age (perhaps with the advent of nationalism or whatever equivalent there is in Civ V). Immigration would follow understandable patterns, such as new citizens arriving in border towns or major seaports (and then airports in the industrial age). Immigration could also occur throughout your empire. For example, ethnicities from conquered empires could slowly spread throughout your empire and people of the native ethnicity could slowly populate conquered towns (given that trade routes, which are synonomous with immigration routes in this case, are available). I think that conquered and other non-native ethnicites would always be less happy than others (at least until/if universal suffrage is implemented). Curtailing immigration within your empire would increase unhapiness among minorities, but would also keep these unhappy ethnicites from proliferating to your more productive "core" cities.

Between-country immigration is more difficult to implement but also I think would be an interesting element of the game. If you choose to have closed borders, you could effectively keep immigrants from your country (to keep it simple, closed borders would ensure no immigration). Open borders would allow immigration although I think you should be able to take more specific steps (details undetermined) to limit it.

This wouldn't have a significant effect on the game, I simply feel that it would present a more realistic and balanced proportion of ethnicities throughout the world. Maybe an occasional exchange of citizens coming during certain times. Like, for example, your empire is suffering economically and there's a more powerful civ nearby with open borders, and you get a message saying "economic troubles in your country have led some of your citizens to flee to so-and-so country! What are you gonna do about it?" etc etc. You would of course also have the option of stopping immigration from your empire. On the flipside, you could also get the reverse happen to you, where you get the message that troubles from other countries are causing immigrants to flock to your country.

I think that war would also lead to some massive exchanges of population. If a massive force is approaching a city, the citizens of that city should start fleeing to other nearby cities, swelling their population and putting pressure on its infrastructure (just as happens in reality). Cities tend to rapidly de-populate when armies are approaching, so that should happen in Civ, too. Of course, the computer could cut off all routes leading out of the city, ensuring no immigrants leave. (Or the immigrants could try to leave and you get a message that you've killed or even captured immigrants fleeing from that city).

And of course, I think you should be able to forcibly remove certain ethnicites and religions from your cities to create a more "pure" empire.

Finally, I think you should be able to check how many citizens of your ethnicity are residing in other countries and be notified whenever the computer takes certain actions against them. The computer would know how you're treating their citizens (and you would suffer diplomatic penalties for racist policies against that specific empire's citizens), so you should know how the computer is treating your citizens as well!

 

[Camikaze]

There have been a few threads on this topic:

Rebellions, Civil Wars and Civ Disintegration, Camikaze, 24/9/09
Immigration., aimeeandbeatles, 24/8/09
Migration and Immigration, ProfessorK, 17/10/06

I particularly recommend the first one for a discussion on how ethnicity could be incorporated into the game, and how it would relate to empire stability (but perhaps I'm biased ).

One major problem with allowing nationality control, as opposed to allowing for varying nationalities naturally occurring, without the player's intervention, is that is could technically be construed as allowing the player to partake in genocide, if the system gave enough options for it to be viable. For instance, if you could kill off a certain nationality in your city, that could be construed as genocide. Similarly, if you didn't take migrants or something, or forced assimilation, that could also be construed as a form of genocide. Now obviously the intention is not to allow for this, but to have a more realistic culture and nationality system, but it is a constraint on this idea being put in the game. The game developers cannot allow any scope for abuse of the system that could pander to those with prejudices.