Ideas for Civilization 4

[anarres]

Originally posted by Laser guided
No bombard for archers otherwise why take the time to invent catapults?

Is this a serious comment? Surely not, as it make sense for archer to have bombard ability when attacked in a stack with defensive units.

What is the basis for your comments? CTP had some advantages over CIV3. Anyone who says different is living in a wibly wobly world all of their own (remember weebles?)

 

[Laser guided]

Redhulkz -- actually the US does not earn $$ money by selling weapons to countries. Private companies do after they received Congressional approval to do so. It is all because of a little thing called technology transfer. So in other words what is the value Civ gains by having this ability? Hmmm... how would the A.I. play with this feature? Hmmm... probably buy all the weapons you are selling and then turn around and use them against you. Cool idea!!! Selling machines of war yes (i.e. catapults, tanks, etc); selling troops maybe! Selling troops would be like mercernaries; how did mercernaries work back in the olden days?

Social Engineering? Too much like SMAC. Too much like Facism, Mao & Stalin style Communism, Maoist in Nepal, Taliban, old school Catholicism, Jonestown Guyana tragedy... No thank you! All kidding aside, honestly, aside from adding to some population demographics what could it matter in Civ the religion you are??? Religion by any other name would still make you happy or oppress you. Keep the separation of church and state.

How about a Vatican City wonder? Gives you a Crusade like option (i.e. mobilization during the middle ages or something like that). If you can Crusade you might as well be able to Inquisition as well. Build an Inquisitor in your cities and corruption is lessened for 20 turns or something goofy or one Inquisitor per 4 cities... just throwing myself out there like you guys have.

Also, globe definitely a cool idea if someone could figure out how to make it work. Travel over long (strategic movement) distances would feel more realistic, but the turn scale would have to be adjusted fandangled because you'd also have to include a tactical movement/map scale too.

 

[Laser guided]

Originally posted by anarres
Is this a serious comment? Surely not, as it make sense for archer to have bombard ability when attacked in a stack with defensive units.

What is the basis for your comments? CTP had some advantages over CIV3. Anyone who says different is living in a wibly wobly world all of their own (remember weebles?)

Since when do meideival archers qualify as artillery ? In a tactical environment archers could be used to soften an approaching enemy, but otherwise archers suck royally. You counter meideival archers who aimed upwarded into the air with every disregard to accuracy by sending in mounted warriors who while the arrows were in flight could run underneath and slaughter the Robinhood wannabees.

To compromise on the so-called archer-as-artillery-for-arguement you have to revamp the entire Civ fighting system. You'd have to come out with a tactical level of fighting each and every battle because of course the computer as in CTP would louse it up.

Archers are not artillery, thus do not deserve a bombard feature! Otherwise why did the guys in the olden days invent catapults?

 

[anarres]

Originally posted by Laser guided
Since when do meideival archers qualify as artillery ?

No-one said they did, and the bombard flag was only to let them get a free shot when attacked and in a stack with other units. IIRC the only reference to archers having bombard was in this sense - the bombard flag, not the 'bombard an adjacent square' property

In a tactical environment archers could be used to soften an approaching enemy, but otherwise archers suck royally. You counter meideival archers who aimed upwarded into the air with every disregard to accuracy by sending in mounted warriors who while the arrows were in flight could run underneath and slaughter the Robinhood wannabees.

You make it sound as though archers were useless units in battle. I suggest you go read some English history.

To compromise on the so-called archer-as-artillery-for-arguement you have to revamp the entire Civ fighting system. You'd have to come out with a tactical level of fighting each and every battle because of course the computer as in CTP would louse it up.

Reading your sentance, I can't work out what it is you are trying to say. Why would the system need to be rewritten? If you are saying the AI would not be able to use the new 'bombard' feature (although really it is not full bombard as the unit can only get a free defensive shot), then this argument has been made before - but I believe the AI does take in to account the unit values when working out what to do. I see no reason that it is not able to understand a modification to a stat for archer.

Archers are not artillery, thus do not deserve a bombard feature! Otherwise why did the guys in the olden days invent catapults?

Er, they invented catapults to take down city walls? The archer 'bombard' flag (as mentioned before) only allows the archer to get a free defensive shot. It does not have the primary ability to bombard adjacent squares. And cataputs were certainly not invented just to help get a free shot at attacking units .

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced you are thinking of archers being able to bombard adjacent squares, are you?

 

[Mojotronica]

Civ 3 does not adequately model the tendency of large sprawling civilizations to fragment over time, e.g. the Roman, Mongol, British or Soviet Empires. Here is a revision of an earlier idea I posted to better simulate this. I have fleshed it out and gotten rid of all the extraneous baggage I saddled w/ the original post. This idea would be relatively easy to program (so says the non-programmer) and add in to a future version of the game. It may even be modable, although I wouldn't even know how to begin to build such a mod.

The idea is an expansion of the "Forbidden Palace" small wonder concept. I would make the Forbidden Palace a City Improvement, rather than a Small Wonder, meaning that one could build one in every city if they so chose... It would be renamed "Provincial Palace," and would still be expensive -- 300 Ind, same as the FP.

Now it would be possible for a player or AI to build a truly huge, world empire w/ almost no corruption -- whoopee!

But the downside... there's always a downside... besides the ridiculous cost, is that each Provincial Palace would have a percentage chance of revolution any given turn. The revolution formula would be based on happiness and cultural strength of the civ.

Revolution spawns a NEW Civ, based on the dominant culture that populates the rebel city. (So if the dom population of the city is f/ an American culture, the new Civ will be Iroquois, Aztec or American -- if Mediterranean, then Greek, Roman or Egyptian etc.) Then the computer checks every city in the original empire w/ a formula based on it's proximity to the rebel city and the true capitol city to see if it joins the new civ or stays with the old one.

This would re-integrate the rebellion concept f/ Civ 1 back into the game, where occasionally a large Civ would split into two based on the game's random disaster table. But it would not be inherently unfair because the players could avoid by not building a Provincial Palace... and I think that most would deem it worthwhile to risk Revolution for the huge benefit of neutralizing corruption...

It would allow the game to simulate the fragmentation of the Roman and Mongol Empires, and the America's Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and long-shot potential future wars between America and the European Union or Japan. I think it would rock

 

[anarres]

@mojotronica, as mentioned in the other thread, I like the idea. Whether or not it could be mod-ed depends on whether or not the FP 'flag' or can be set manually, so maybe a mod-er can tell you.

I don't think it would be wise to restrict the nationality of a rebel city - it should be an unused one at random (otherwise you will find yourself without a civ to change the city to).

I thinkit was CTP that had cities breaking away and forming independant civs if they rioted too much. CTP _did_ have some nice features, despite what people say...

 

[DANGERBOY]

I would like to see city production separated into sliders like the current income (gold/science/entertainment). It would be separated into three categories: military, improvements, and wealth. Like the income sliders, you could set production to various percentages. This way, you could build military units at the same time as you were building city improvements, but you would have control over how much you wanted to focus on the various aspects. Also, the introduction of the slider bar would allow you to earn wealth off of unused shields (e.g. when something costs 50 shields, but you only generate 49 per turn, you lose 48 shields the next turn). There still will be some waste, but significantly reduced from current levels. The sliders would be set for each city individually.

I think this idea meshes well with the model used for the division of income.

An example:

Dangerburgh produces 30 shields after waste and corruption effects. Since it is in the middle of a well-defended empire, currently at peace with the other world powers, there is little need for military expansion. However, there are many city improvements that could stand to be developed from recent scientific developments. After careful thought, President DANGERBOY and the city governor decide that 10% Military (to produce Workers), 70% Improvements (to produce city improvements) and 20% Wealth (to help pay the upkeep of the new improvements) is the proper distribution of production. This would result in 3 shields per turn going towards producing workers, 21 per turn for the new improvements, and 6 shields being converted into cash.

 

[wtiberon]

Dangerboy is on to something here...I like the idea of multiple production and controlling the amount placed into each type of production..ie military, improvement, or wealth (wealth may need to be further developed but the idea is still good). I've also thought that developing techs should be seperated into Military, Scientific, Religious, and Commercial. Similiar to Dangerboy's idea one would use a slide rule to configure how much research spending to place into each...for example a military civ may want to put 50% in military, mabye 20% in scientific, 20% in religious and 10% in commercial..With these in place a civ would be more likely to stumble onto a military technology rather than a commercial technology...ie IT WOULD BE COMPLETELY RANDOM. You may in time develop Monarchy or you may never be able to research it and your only hope would be to trade or steal it.

Also research would depend on how much money you place into your research program..

 

[wtiberon]

Another Idea I've had is a kind of of a discovery aspect of the game...We know that many countries have claimed large portions of land without ever building a single city...A way we could simulate this on the game is to give explorers the ability to place flags..What this would do is give a zone of control equal to a city...If another civ crosses over the flag it would be equal to an attack on a city and they must declare war to do it...This I think would simulate countries such as Russia that own LARGE tracts of land but do not have a city with a cultural border to prevent other civs from setting up cities in their land...

 

[Constantine]

I think this had touched earlier on the this post but i idea i find intersting is a small wonder gave the civ the ablity to have a national store of food. The Advance Refergtion would be a good presqutie. In each city you could select how many food units go to the storehouse. Ex in Rome with 5 surpuls of food 1 could to storehouse. One more idea is a state religion: Christantiy, Muslem, Hindu etc. THis woudl affect how other civs treat in diplomacy ex two hindu civs give ach other better deals more likey to make miltary alliances and MPPs. JUSt my thoughts

 

[Suki]

Originally posted by wtiberon
for example a military civ may want to put 50% in military, mabye 20% in scientific, 20% in religious and 10% in commercial..With these in place a civ would be more likely to stumble onto a military technology rather than a commercial technology...ie IT WOULD BE COMPLETELY RANDOM. You may in time develop Monarchy or you may never be able to research it and your only hope would be to trade or steal it.

Also research would depend on how much money you place into your research program..

they had almost exactly that in SMAC
and the flags were in "diciples" it was fun annexing everyone else's terrtory

but the concept of land ownership is hard to model, a country doesn't own land unless they can back up that statment with a fist. it's only yours because you can keep others from taking it, you know it's true. an example here in Canada is this great white north, we have a branch of the army, the canadian rangers, specially created to patrol thenorthern areas. which makes me think that military units should produce a lesser "culture border".

Yeah, but i mean taking into account the way the real life civs thought. Russia could have larger armies, but badly equiped and out dated. The germans could have the prussian guard regiment, which was really strong.... Also, how about unique regiments, like the black watch, the prussian guard etc.

I think you're making a mistake here, the game is all about rewriting history, how could it have been different. the reason military's have been like they are is that that's just they their leaders chose to play it, just because russia is having a few troubles and hasn't yet finished upgrading to modern arour doesn't mean that there's anything inherently russian about large and low tech. as interesting as the whole UU and UUU would be I'd prefer if not only did the individual units get experience for combat but the unit type as a whole, giving a bonus to all of them. I've always thought it was stupid how it can happen that your civ can make better hoursemen than everyone else, but have never seen a hourse... because really the "unique" are just representations of the infamy that the units have achieved on the battlefield

like the shirt says
"black wach canada: since 1862 building the finest killing machines on the face of the earth"

wtiberon More Civs, definitly..but longer timeline good god no

but at least ave the time line extend to now, have you seen ths month's "popular science"? "the 21st century soldier" I mean they invent longevity, and complete the SDI but can't make a simple UMAV? no rail gun artillery, no ground based laser anti-artillery system, no GPS satalites, no laser guided artillery, no super-cavitating torpedos, no... you get my point? there is a lot missing.

another simple thing I'd like to see is more choice in methodes a good example is the SDI it's just 75% protection from neuclear missiles, but there are many other ways to deliver a nuke, and there are many ways to shoot one down, satalites, ground based lasers, rockets or have you seen that 747-400 with the giant frikking laser beam attached to it?

I could go on and on...

edit: but how is social engineering like facism? do you not think our leaders sit around thinking about how people are going to react to things and how they can best warp us to their ends. besides as far as I'm concerned the social engineering table was just a good way to present the informaton. Is't nice and clear, it also makes it quite obvious that the universal suffrage shouldn't give you +1 police, but the police departments should, and battel field medicine should be called "advanced logistics" and give +2 support...

btw, why can you build the universal sufferage and still have slaves? they seen a little contradictory

it all just bugs me can you tell?

 

[Suki]

Originally posted by Ayatollah So
I heard this idea somewhere on the internet, I don't think it was here. Get rid of squares, don't bother with hexagons and the occasional pentagon either (except some infinitesimal level corresponding to whether 32-bit, 64-bit, etc numbers are used). Just have latitudes and longitudes. Wanna build a city halfway between that oil resource and that diamond mine? No problem. Wanna position a unit to cover both? If it's "big enough" and has enough range for a zone-of-control effect, you can.

Originally posted by Zouave
I agree completely that we are nearing the end of the square/hexagon model. That's a good idea from you.

but believe me when I say that from a programming perspective it's much easier to keep the grid, this way if you mve a unit insted of having to check if it bumps into ANYONE ELSE you can just check the square he's moving to also having no grid can make pathfinding hell using a simple algorythm on the grid you can get the shortest path between two cells without any error.

 

[Laser guided]

anarres

Making myself a little clearer. Nope I'm not against Longbowman having the bombard bonus when someone attacks a stack they also occupy. That seems to me to be very accurate, because the English longbowman were very kick ass!!! Seems to be why most folks in these threads think the English should have had the longbowman as their UU and not the Man-O-War.

But what I would be against is allowing every land unit with the exception of artillery type to have this feature. In that I think would take combat further from realism than it already is.

So yeah the bombard bonus in my book is cool for longbowman but only longbowman.

 

[Laser guided]

Fragmentation idea is sweet as ....!!!

Multiple production is sweet too!

Multipe tech research needs work. Civ techs don't work the same as other games, because of the prerequisites involved in Civ techs. Plus Civ techs are not broken down into separate categories are they?

 

[anarres]

@Laser Guided:
It appears we concur then

Multiple research and production is a must for the future, I would probably not buy civ4 if it didn't have these things in (and lets face it - they have another 6 years before they releaseit )

 

[Laser guided]

Thinking out loud... hmmm...

Something needs to be done with Airports otherwise they are a waste of crap!!! Airports are useless big time compared to the cost and maintenance of building one.

In the real world airports are people movers/tourist/business folks.

Why not have airports tie into some type of tourism concept?

20% of a city's population with an airport could be used to calculate worldwide tourism. 10% could be used for Civs in same cultural group and 10% could be used for all other Civs.

The places (random chance vs static) the tourist go could be based on (or something like this):
Civs not at war
Cities with Wonders 25% of tourist
Cities producing greatest cultural points per turn 25% of tourist
Cities with greatest cultural points overall 25% of tourist
Cities without Wonders 25% of tourist

The kicker is only cities with other airports would be eligible to get tourists, which could add to the cities coffers in some way.

 

[Mojotronica]

W/ the upgrade to Civ 3 (or technically Alpha Centauri,) Firaxis finally incorporated a satisfying means of simulating artillery strikes -- as opposed to treating them as powerful attackers/weak defenders as in previous Civs. For the next version I think that they should make a distinction between MELEE and RANGED units.

A means of doing this is to assign a new characteristic to the units, which I call "Firepower." A unit w/ a greater firepower can get multiple attacks or defenses when facing a unit of lesser firepower. The PC simply subtracts the lesser from the greater number to determine the number of attacks/defenses for the unit with greater firepower.

For example, a Swordsman (Firepower = 0) attacks a Musket Man (Firepower = 2.) 2 - 0 = 2. The Musket Man gets TWO defenses to the Swordsman's ONE attack.

If the difference between the units Firepowers is only 1, then the unit with a greater Firepower gets only one attack or defense -- equal to the lesser unit's number of attacks/defenses. The difference in their strengths is reflected in the attack/defense characteristics, as in the current game.

For example, a Swordsman (Firepower = 0) attacks an Archer (Firepower = 1.) 1 - 0 = 1. The Archer gets ONE defense to the Swordsman's ONE attack.

The Firepower rating is directly related to the unit's Epoch of origin, so Ancient ranged units have a Firepower of 1, Medieval ranged units have a Firepower of 2, Industrial ranged units have a Firepower of 3, and Modern ranged units have a Firepower of 4.

All non-ranged units (which are all Ancient and Medieval) have a Firepower of 0.

All artillery and missile units are exempt because they don't have attack/defense ratings, as well as the Scout, Explorer, Stealth Fighter and Stealth Bomber.

Based on this, the Firepower rankings of the basic units are listed below. I'll ignore the Civ-specific Special units for now, but generally speaking they would have the same Firepower as the basic unit they replace. (There would be exceptions of course, such as the Viking's Berserk unit which is probably a melee unit but replaces the Longbowman, or the Spanish Conquistador which replaces the Explorer -- but I won't attempt to go into those yet.)

Firepower = 0
Warrior
Spearman
Chariot
Swordsman
Horseman
Pikeman
Medieval Infantry
Knight

Firepower = 1
Archer
Galley

Firepower = 2
Longbowman
Musket Man
Caravel
Frigate
Galleon
Privateer
Cavalry

Firepower = 3
Rifleman
Ironclad
Infantry
Guerilla
Destroyer
Transport
Fighter
Bomber
Carrier
Submarine
Battleship
Marine
Tank
Paratrooper
Helicopter

Firepower = 4
Mech Infantry
Jet Fighter
Nuclear Submarine
Modern Armor
AEGIS Cruiser

Pros: Better reflects the vast advantage a unit with a powerful, fast ranged weapon has over a unit with only a melee weapon. Reduces the possibility that a Spearman might inadvertantly defeat a Tank. Doesn't affect units of roughly the same technology. Allows melee units to "have their day" in ancient times, when ranged weapons were weak and slow, but lose effectiveness rapidly when gunpowder comes into the game. Allows the game/mod designers another way to measure the strength of a unit independent of attack/defense strength. Units that currently have "pumped-up" attack or defense ratings can be modified to take advantage of Firepower, reducing the need for a radical increase in attack/defense over epochs.

Cons: It's a change to the fundamental system of the game, which means implementing this requires a programming change. Because it has never been done this way, each unit's firepower is already factored into their attack and defense ratings. Implementing this change could unbalance the game. I might have made some mistakes interpreting which units were primarily ranged units and which were primarily melee units in my analysis.

Pros/Cons:
Most significantly, this change makes Artillery a little less important in defending against assaults. W/ Civ 3, it became desirable to stack defensive units w/ artillery to better defend the stack. This may have been intended to simulate the effect of firepower in the existing game.

However I feel that it is lacking, because a defensive unit such as Infantry should be able to efficiently defend WITHOUT Artillery. And since units of roughly the same technology are unaffected by my idea, the expanded usefulness of artillery should not be impacted.

 

[Mojotronica]

Also it would make Longbowman useful again -- they lost their purpose when the Medieval Infantry unit was introduced into the game.

 

[Seelmeister]

"I think you're making a mistake here, the game is all about rewriting history, how could it have been different. the reason military's have been like they are is that that's just they their leaders chose to play it, just because russia is having a few troubles and hasn't yet finished upgrading to modern arour doesn't mean that there's anything inherently russian about large and low tech. as interesting as the whole UU and UUU would be I'd prefer if not only did the individual units get experience for combat but the unit type as a whole, giving a bonus to all of them. I've always thought it was stupid how it can happen that your civ can make better hoursemen than everyone else, but have never seen a hourse... because really the "unique" are just representations of the infamy that the units have achieved on the battlefield"

Ah, but Russian history has been about getting beaten because she was backwards. I do not mean that Russia would be backwards and thats the end of the story, it would just be harder to become very advanced if you were the Russians. The English could have the best navy from, say, 1600 to about 1900. The Chinesse could be good scientests. The Dutch could be great explorers. I know people want to re-write history, but usually under condidtions close to that of real life.

 

[Mojotronica]

Bangladesh, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia -- massive population, cultures distinct f/ either India or China, ancient and influential civilizations yet no representation in the game...