How do they solve "big becomes bigger" without corruption?

[Aussie_Lurker]

Great post, OldStatesMan. It particularly highlights why Civ4 MUST expand the concepts of both conscription and mobilization-as well as introducing the concept of Readiness.
Basically, I see conscription et al as part of a broader civic system tailored towards the nature of your military (we know that such a thing ISN'T in vanilla Civ4, but could turn up in later expansions). Such a civics option might allow Conscription, Drafting, Mercenaries, Reservists or Standing Armies. Each would have its benefits and downsides, as well as setting the BASE maximum free unit support allowed.
The other area is Mobilization-which could probably be kept much as it was in Civ3, but with a MUCH more severe impact on your domestic economy (pehaps a health impact from being war mobilized?)
Lastly, Readiness needs to be introduced, where a civ can maintain a large force-on the cheap-by reducing their readiness. Doing so, though, means that your units are at a penalty to their strength AND promote at a much slower pace. Alternatively, your nation can be on HIGH readiness, but your army costs a LOT more to maintain. However, they get a strength bonus AND they promote faster.
Anyway, just a few extra ideas into the mix !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[JavalTigar]

MAN! If Firaxis was smart they would hire statesman and lurker as consultants. Those are awesome ideas!

 

[oldStatesman]

Thank all of you for the praise - you are too kind. Being a fairly new CivFanatic (4 months), I am humbled.

Of coarse, being an unemployed M$ network engineer right now, a job offer would be a welcome thing...

AL, agreed. And the great thing about concepts like these are they are high level Strategic concepts that would not require much change in the mechanics of game play - merely a tweak to the rules. The designers want to get rid of the bad unfun boring stuff... controlling (not necessarily eliminating) the snowball effect that makes the end game such a forgone conclusion halfway through the game,and boring, in Civ3 through high level strategic means in many phases of the game similiar to those discussed in this thread could only be a step in the right direction IMHO.

 

[playshogi]

While bigger is better in Civ3, it is also a strategic choice. You CAN win in Civ3 with only a few cities. Further, you can win with 1 city all of the victory conditions except domination. Nerfing the big empire as is being discussed in this thread applies mostly to multiplayer rather than a solo game it seems to me. Otherwise, we should also be discussing why it should be possible to win in civ with just 1 city. I don't think you can get very far in MP with just 1 city!

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I am sorry, Playshogi, but in ALL of my playing experience-in Civ2 AND Civ3-the biggest nation has ALWAYS been the one to win. Because of this, I feel the Bigger=Better thing DOES need to be nerfed.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[dguichar]

You could do something similar by requiring food as well as 'hammers' to produce a unit.

requiring food to "support" the unit, rather than to "produce" the unit

 

[Naokaukodem]

I am sorry, Playshogi, but in ALL of my playing experience-in Civ2 AND Civ3-the biggest nation has ALWAYS been the one to win. Because of this, I feel the Bigger=Better thing DOES need to be nerfed.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

That's because AI power is based on size.

 

[xiaoafei]

Adding some rebellion features into the system will solve this problem. bigger countries are harder to control, thus leads to more rebels, except you have a better government or religion. think of USA. USA became a independent country after rebelling the English rulers, even though Britain was pretty much the most advanced and powerful force in the world at that time.
But, according to the official declarations, this is called annoying features and must be avoided in civ4. And I agree with them that even though our civfanatics who are most likely to be a real history fan at the same time may think these features as fun elements, those new gamers who just want pure fun might think these features annoying and making the game harder and more depressing. My personal wish is that they give us the option of being a realist or a pure fun hunter in the system, while default settings could be for the latter ones.

 

[xiaoafei]

BTW: difficulty levels in the previous versions have always been controled through the degree of AI's cheating. why not use different settings and different AI levels to control this? even though the latter may be difficult and costly to achieve, changing settings should be easy.