Imperialism With Lua

[Prof. Garfield]

For a while, I've been thinking about re-working the Imperialism scenario using Lua events and functionality. These are some ideas I've had:

Use Aqueduct and Sewers to designate regional population size, while actual city size represents population involved in the global economy. So, for example, if China is mostly subsistence farmers, they would have Aqueduct and Sewer, but small city size. So they have a lot of potential, but only if significant effort is put into developing that economy. Whereas most Canadian cities would never grow beyond size 8, regardless of how much effort is put into them.

The presence of aqueducts and sewers would also provide other bonuses and penalties that make sense with larger populations. E.g. build 1 labourer and get 1 more free for each 'population' structure, but building a school would first require an 'extra effort' improvement in the city, to represent the increased costs of educating a larger population.

If a city has no courthouse, that represents a sort of indirect rule of a colony (e.g. the Imperial Power sets up a local leader, who actually administers the territory). Building a courthouse would represent direct administration of the colony, which might make the colony more valuable to the player, but would be expensive and require a permanent troop commitment (and maybe trigger a rebellion and/or make rebellion more likely).

There might even be an option to grant full domestic self government (i.e. Canada/Australia), but I'm not sure how to do this in such a way as to not make this the default action all the time.

Structures would have additional bonus effects. E.g. a school/university might have a chance of giving a technology to the owner if that technology is widely known among other civs (which would be a nice catch-up effect). Maybe the chance would be based on the proportion of cities with that improvement.

There would be a maximum military size computed (likely based on population), which if exceeded would prevent new military units from being recruited. This would prevent the 'stockpiling' of a massive army. Having a conscription policy would increase the limit, as would a reservist policy, but these might have some other disadvantage.

Recruitment of certain units would be region restricted, and many units will require special structures in the city (or maybe in a nearby city!) such as a factory or steel mill. Perhaps the city must have a certain number of specialists.

Each turn, players would influence events in the world. For example, they could make rebellion more likely in some city/region or make an independent country produce extra troops (to check the invasion of another imperial power).

There could be a domestic politics element, so each player has to maintain the support of their power base at home (which would limit their foreign policy options).

1 year turns (maybe 6 month turns) so that the game progresses to completion in a reasonable time. I really want this, but it might make war favour the attacker too much, and make blockading essentially impossible (with the increased ship movement rate). I'm not sure how to deal with this.

Would people be interested in playing something like this? Does anyone have any other ideas? This isn't an immediate project (I'm already involved in a few), but I think it would be interesting to discuss.

 

[CurtSibling]

Is this Exile's original Imperialism, or my humble attempt at a sequel?

 

[JPetroski]

I think it would be extremely interesting to take some classics like Imperialism (either version) and add the power of lua. I would quite happily take part in any playtest.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Is this Exile's original Imperialism, or my humble attempt at a sequel?

I was figuring on using yours, since it is already in Test of Time. However, if enough changes are made to the rules, it might make sense to take the map and rebuild from the ground up.

 

[JPetroski]

There would be a maximum military size computed (likely based on population), which if exceeded would prevent new military units from being recruited. This would prevent the 'stockpiling' of a massive army. Having a conscription policy would increase the limit, as would a reservist policy, but these might have some other disadvantage.

Recruitment of certain units would be region restricted, and many units will require special structures in the city (or maybe in a nearby city!) such as a factory or steel mill. Perhaps the city must have a certain number of specialists.

Each turn, players would influence events in the world. For example, they could make rebellion more likely in some city/region or make an independent country produce extra troops (to check the invasion of another imperial power).

There could be a domestic politics element, so each player has to maintain the support of their power base at home (which would limit their foreign policy options).

I like these 4 ideas very much, especially number 3. I think it would give players a lot to do, and readers something to chew on during these games rather than everything being pretty peaceful until one large war.

 

[JPetroski]

Use Aqueduct and Sewers to designate regional population size, while actual city size represents population involved in the global economy. So, for example, if China is mostly subsistence farmers, they would have Aqueduct and Sewer, but small city size. So they have a lot of potential, but only if significant effort is put into developing that economy. Whereas most Canadian cities would never grow beyond size 8, regardless of how much effort is put into them.

This is an interesting idea. If I am following you, you'd make these improvements non-destroyable, non-disbandable, and non-buildable and they'd simply be in areas with historically large population density (but in game terms the cities might actually start very small)? Perhaps you could take advantage of the extra terrain types available with ToTPP to have them start surrounded by "undeveloped" terrain that doesn't provide a large food increase, and requires significant investment via engineering time to transform into "developed"?

 

[JPetroski]

Not to keep flooding the thread but another thing you might consider is revamping how trade and resources work. Currently of course it's all done with trade units which is all well and good but it might be interesting to also have certain regions spawn special resource units that are meant to be brought back to the motherland and 'activated' in the capital to fuel a tremendous cash (or science, or production) reward. This might make certain regions more valuable than others and certain sea lanes especially important to defend, because this trade would need to make it back home. So perhaps there would be spices in the far east, diamonds in Africa, and eventually oil in certain areas too. Perhaps the research of certain technologies would be required for a civ to have any real use of these units/for these units to spawn for them.

For example, perhaps Britain would own Mosul but until refining is researched they would not get oil supply units. Once it is researched, these units would spawn (perhaps with a certain improvement having been built) and it would then be up to the British to bring that oil back to London, press 'k' and reap a considerable cash reward.

This would hopefully drive more proxy wars as players vied for control of particularly rich areas. Given that the current scenario version doesn't use 127 units there is plenty of space and even just picking 5-7 special resources could dramatically alter strategy, trade, sea lanes, and make the game more interesting from beginning to end.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

This is an interesting idea. If I am following you, you'd make these improvements non-destroyable, non-disbandable, and non-buildable and they'd simply be in areas with historically large population density (but in game terms the cities might actually start very small)? Perhaps you could take advantage of the extra terrain types available with ToTPP to have them start surrounded by "undeveloped" terrain that doesn't provide a large food increase, and requires significant investment via engineering time to transform into "developed"?

Yes, that is the idea. Rather than have a special terrain type, I was figuring on having fertile terrain provide 0 food by default. So the farmers might be supporting themselves, but they aren't sending any food to the city to feed the tradespeople or factory workers. Only after they improve their farming methods enough to provide a surplus does the city grow.

I was thinking of a 'food imports' terrain (and maybe a food export terrain also) so certain places could have extra food without farming it locally. Perhaps a blockade could change the terrain to something else.

Not to keep flooding the thread but another thing you might consider is revamping how trade and resources work. Currently of course it's all done with trade units which is all well and good but it might be interesting to also have certain regions spawn special resource units that are meant to be brought back to the motherland and 'activated' in the capital to fuel a tremendous cash (or science, or production) reward. This might make certain regions more valuable than others and certain sea lanes especially important to defend, because this trade would need to make it back home. So perhaps there would be spices in the far east, diamonds in Africa, and eventually oil in certain areas too. Perhaps the research of certain technologies would be required for a civ to have any real use of these units/for these units to spawn for them.

For example, perhaps Britain would own Mosul but until refining is researched they would not get oil supply units. Once it is researched, these units would spawn (perhaps with a certain improvement having been built) and it would then be up to the British to bring that oil back to London, press 'k' and reap a considerable cash reward.

This would hopefully drive more proxy wars as players vied for control of particularly rich areas. Given that the current scenario version doesn't use 127 units there is plenty of space and even just picking 5-7 special resources could dramatically alter strategy, trade, sea lanes, and make the game more interesting from beginning to end.

I'm happy to have the thread flooded with ideas, and I would really like an alternate concept of trade. The Civ II trade mechanic has a 'problem' in that the delivery bonus increases with distance. It should be that goods are transported long distances because they are valuable, rather than becoming valuable because they were transported long distances. The Falkland Islands Trade Hub is a result of mixing cause and effect in this case. This idea seems like a good one.

 

[JPetroski]

Another thing with trade that might work is having some of these resources also able to be "activated" on the same square as a "trade hub" unit. This trade hub unit could be the only unit in the game that can be bribed, but it would be automatically respawned if destroyed. Certain regions like India or China might have more "available" trade hubs than others, and powers could vie for a monopoly by sending diplomats to establish new trade companies. Wars might start to defend the trade hubs.

This would facilitate two-way trade. Perhaps India exports spices but craves finished goods that could only be built in Europe or the Americas.

This would also make trade within an empire make more sense. Another "problem" with the base mechanism is that foreign trade is worth more simply because it is foreign rather than because you truly need what they have to offer.

Perhaps there could even be a way to eatablish a "treaty" with other players where a barbarian or independent trade hub could exist in your lands but only certain civs that are part of the treaty could "crash" into it with the trade unit and derive a benefit... Other civs not part of the treaty could just lose the unit.

 

[Civinator]

Please focus on the naval aspects of such a scenario as you did it with aircraft in OtR. I was allowed to help in the most popular Civ 3 Scenario Age of Imperialism; 1895-1924, Deluxe Version and I can assure you: Civers love the ships of that time.

1. Use the chance of creating a working merchant navy in that scenario.

Let supply shipments be produced in colonial cities and brought to money, if they are reaching harbour cities of their motherland and supply shipments coming from the motherland can be transformed in a better unit in the colonial cities.

Let the wealth of the motherland civs depend on the constant flow of supplyshipments and not on the constant cash from established trade routes.
May be, create some special freighters (and tankers) by lua events, send them to coastal cities of their motherland and when they arrive there, they are disbanded, the imperial civ receives an amount of money and a new freighter targeted to the colonial coastal city is created by an event. When this ship arrives in the colonial coastal city, a better weaponed landunit is created, if the city is still in the property of the imperial civ, that sent out that freighter.

2. Give at least predreadnoughts and dreadnoughts the abilitiy to fire on other ships

- and if possible give this ability to AI ships, too.

- may be give modern ships (like dreadnoughts) the possibilty of automatic firing back when
beeing under fire.

3. Give submarines the ability to fire (torpedoe) on other ships - and only on ships -, too.

4. In the civ 3 scenario Age of Imperialism it showed to be a good decision, to start the scenario in 1895 to reach conflicts between the imperial civs more early in the game.

5. Some additional personal preferences:

- Please build the scenario for human player vs. AI and not as a multiplayer game. It´s more easy to add the multiplayer function to a game than to transform a multiplayer scenario to a human vs. AI game.

- For my taste, the current Civ 2 ToT Imperialism 2 scenario is overcrowded by too many cities inside the land masses, causing too much micromanagement in the later stages of the game.

 

[JPetroski]

It's an interesting thought moving the timeline up to 1895. The game does drag a bit. Of course, with lua, the opposite approach is also possible - you could start even earlier and have the scenario be a true race for dominance rather than a "hope Britain doesn't attack us just yet" that it starts off as (at least single player). The British Empire looked quite a bit different in 1822 and it would be possible, really, for any civs to carve out a large empire. Lua would allow things like the U.S. Civil War to be done (The U.S. tribe could have certain cities taken from them and given to the independents or even barbarians if certain conditions were met).

If you are after a short-paced scenario that rapidly hurls towards a major world war, then Civinator's suggestion makes a lot more sense of course.

 

[Civinator]

The game does drag a bit.

Of course, with lua, the opposite approach is also possible - you could start even earlier and have the scenario be a true race for dominance rather than a "hope Britain doesn't attack us just yet" that it starts off as (at least single player). The British Empire looked quite a bit different in 1822 and it would be possible, really, for any civs to carve out a large empire. Lua would allow things like the U.S. Civil War to be done (The U.S. tribe could have certain cities taken from them and given to the independents or even barbarians if certain conditions were met).

Yes, this could be a very interesting alternative. I toyed around with the techtree and a start around 1815 many month ago for a Civ 3 scenario. So with Civ 2 ToTPP and lua many things in this scenario can be done better as with Civ 3, I show here a screenshot of the techtree in rough outlines, as the problems of doing a convincing techtree in Civ 2 and Civ 3 are mostly the same and may be this sketch of the techtree can be helpful in creating a convincing Civ 2 ToTPP techtree, if the start of the scenario should be set in the time about 1815. Sorry for the bad handwriting. I made the sketch in a train, when going to work (and nevertheless, my handwriting is always bad ).

Spoiler :

And I agree, using the Barbarians with lua for holding some of the cities, could be a good idea.

 

[Patine]

It's an interesting thought moving the timeline up to 1895. The game does drag a bit. Of course, with lua, the opposite approach is also possible - you could start even earlier and have the scenario be a true race for dominance rather than a "hope Britain doesn't attack us just yet" that it starts off as (at least single player). The British Empire looked quite a bit different in 1822 and it would be possible, really, for any civs to carve out a large empire. Lua would allow things like the U.S. Civil War to be done (The U.S. tribe could have certain cities taken from them and given to the independents or even barbarians if certain conditions were met).

If you are after a short-paced scenario that rapidly hurls towards a major world war, then Civinator's suggestion makes a lot more sense of course.

The problem with an 1822 start is that Germany is still 37 separate independent nations, most unindustrialized, and Japan is still under the isolationist, feudal Tokugawa Shogunate, and they're two of the scenario's main players.

 

[JPetroski]

Well, yes, but their early game could be consolidation, just as America's early game could be restoring it's social fabric.

It all depends on what sort of game is sought.

 

[Civinator]

The problem with an 1822 start is that Germany is still 37 separate independent nations, most unindustrialized, and Japan is still under the isolationist, feudal Tokugawa Shogunate, and they're two of the scenario's main players.

In 1815, by the Congress of Vienna, the German Confederation (German: Deutscher Bund) was created, an association of 39 German-speaking states in Central Europe (adding the mainly non-German speaking Kingdom of Bohemia and Duchy of Carniola) to coordinate the economies of separate German-speaking countries and to replace the former Holy Roman Empire, which had been dissolved in 1806. So the Confederation was weakened by rivalry between the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire, revolution, and the inability of the multiple members to compromise, it is much closer to the settings of the current Imperialism2 scenario, as many of the Austrian cities were enclosed in that confederation.

Even with the start of the current Imperialism 2 scenario in 1869, there was no German Reich in reality, which was founded in 1871 (and of course no Tsingtao colony and no Austrian-Hungarian cities in the German Reich, too). Most of the problems listed in Patine´s post would be solved with a start in 1895 (but Tsingtao became a German colony only in 1898 and Austria-Hungary never was a part of the German Reich of 1871). On the other side, a working German Confederation without the conflict between Austria and Prussia and a later civil war in the US would be an interesting fictive setting of that scenario - and please don´t forget, that the current Imperialism 2 scenario has a fictive setting, too.

 

[JPetroski]

Perhaps it would make sense to remake this from scratch given what you mentioned abut continents and how eurasia and the americas are all considered the same continent in game.

I am curious if drawing a temporary moat along the border of India, for example, would turn it into a new continent. I'd assume this would need to be done before first starting a new game on the map.

I'm not sure if this could be fixed by lua or he edition and I'm also not sure if doing that would truly be quicker given how much terrain there is to change.

 

[committed hero]

I have been mulling over ideas for a similar scenario, since the earlier one doesn't take much advantage of the ToTPP's enhanced capabilities. Mostly I blame techumseh for my rekindled interest.

-An Aitoff projection of the world from ~60N to ~60S at the prime meridian highlights Africa & the Indies while decreasing the importance of South America, Australia, and a large swathe of the Pacific. Russia still has eastern and western chokepoints.
-Make sure there are areas in Nicaragua, Panama, and Suez so that one square of terrain can be changed for canals (I include the former because Cornelius Vanderbilt had his eye on it in the 1850s), and no city can automatically become one.
-Can you make a terrain type with a movement of 0? I know in the dim past I tried this and it wasn't a complete failure, but this was like two computers ago. If it worked, engineer units could transform it for a railroad. [EDIT: I tried both a 0 move terrain and the delta idea in vanilla ToT and they both worked]
-Call an airbase a "delta" and put them on water next to the mouths of all rivers you want to be navigable (these must be bottled up with a square of swamp or whatever - maybe not swamp if you convert these to oil fields; call them estuaries or what not). A shallow-draught gunboat can then sail onto a delta and - with the paradrop ability of range one - move onto the estuary and further on into the river. I suppose you'd need delta terrain on both sides of the estuary for two-way movement.
-Speaking of swamps and oil fields, if you make the resource shield on Grasslands much higher, you'd have an incentive to send out engineers to transform the terrain in order to literally strike it rich.
-I heartily second the professor's use of Aqueduct and Sewer to control the size of cities.
-Could you make barbarian resource units in colonial areas that, when killed, generate your trade unit? An example would be a spice unit that, when destroyed, respawns in the same place and also generates a caravan. If it's of high enough cost, they could be disbanded for construction as well as trade [EDIT: John Petroski advocates this first].

 

[Northerner]

Would a LUA script that sets a cap on recruitable units of some kind be possible?

I find myself hesitating to build more Highlanders and Gurkhas, as it isn't realistic at all to build a military on only units based off of very limited populations.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Would a LUA script that sets a cap on recruitable units of some kind be possible?

Absolutely. That is something that has also crossed my mind.

-An Aitoff projection of the world from ~60N to ~60S at the prime meridian highlights Africa & the Indies while decreasing the importance of South America, Australia, and a large swathe of the Pacific. Russia still has eastern and western chokepoints.

I wasn't planning on drawing a new map, though I'm not opposed to using a map someone else wants to contribute. I've been thinking of having ships travel from port to port via a menu option instead of outright movement, so maybe a map projection that preserves the area of land at the expense of stretching the sea might be useful also. (Of course, if the game is to accommodate single player play, that could be a problem.)

-Make sure there are areas in Nicaragua, Panama, and Suez so that one square of terrain can be changed for canals (I include the former because Cornelius Vanderbilt had his eye on it in the 1850s), and no city can automatically become one.

I did think of having an option to build a canal in Nicaragua instead of Panama. It doesn't matter if there is more than one square distance between the oceans, since we can change as much terrain as we want with events.

 

[JPetroski]

I'm carrying a discussion from our game thread over here:

Each nation would need it's own objectives based on their geography and there could be core objectives that overlap. For example Britain & Russia's core objective could be Afghanistan with Nepal, Persia as possible additional overlapping objectives. Manchuria would be core for Russia & Japan and so on. It would take some thought to get right but might give the game a fresh new twist.

That's pretty much in line with what I was thinking. There's a balance, of course, with wanting people to be able to have a sandbox but then something along these lines might prevent every game from devolving into one large final war. I'd really like to see lua used creatively to prompt more proxy wars or colonial wars, for example, than normally happen.

Perhaps something like the historic missions in Over the Reich, but maybe even utilize the dialogue options we're exploring in Rise of Macedon and combine the two. So you have these objectives, but perhaps the player gets to choose which ones they will pursue. As Britain, for example, you might be faced in the first few turns with a dialogue box that says something along the lines of:

Title: Our Imperial Ambitions?
Option A: Build a railroad from Cape Town to Cairo and control a stretch of land between the two;
Option B: Expand influence in Afghanistan and Persia
Option C: Reacquire American Colonies
Option D: Dominate Far East Trade

Perhaps Russia would also have "Expand influence in Afghanistan and Persia" and then if both powers selected this, they'd wind up competing with each other.

Perhaps even the newspaper function from Over the Reich could be tweaked to allow players to change their minds on these throughout the game, with some penalty (maybe a large cash bonus to any other player who had a similar pursuit and hadn't dropped it).