Making the Great Wall more realistic and fun

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Prince
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Nov 20, 2008
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As it currently stands, the Great Wall doesn't make much sense in how it automatically expands along with your expanding cultural borders. Plus, rushing for the Great Wall as a strategy can be sort of an easy early-game buzzkill in many situations (half of the fun in the early game is fighting barbs. If the GW only somewhat mitigated the barb threat so that they are easier to deal with, then that would be more fun). Here are some suggestions for making the Great Wall more fun:

1. Have the Great Wall (both in its barb defense and in its GG bonus) only automatically apply to the tiles that it originally enclosed. Make this a fixed geographic area for the entire game (see below for possible mechanisms to make it more powerful to compensate).

2. Or, have the same as above, but in order to expand the Great Wall as your cultural borders continue expanding, have the GW open up another build item called, "Expand Great Wall" or something, for a cheap cost (1 hammer per additional tile on normal speed, for instance). This would add more wall graphics in addition to the original wall graphic on the map (so that the GW in the game would look like the actual Great Wall of China--not one efficient line, but layers of confused additions over the centures), and the effects (barb defense + GG bonus) would likewise expand. You could build these additions as many times as you wanted throughout the game. This would give an incentive to wait to finish the original GW until key border pops because that gives you added free protection. It would be a fun balancing act. "Hmm, do I play it safe and finish it now, or try my luck and wait 2 turns after my capital will have its 2nd border pop?..."

To compensate for the reduced effect/added cost...consider any combination of the following:

A). Make the Great Wall function as a terrain feature similar to a river (attempted attack across it gives +25% to defender), albeit one that amphibious promotions don't negate, and one that can only benefit the player who owns the GW (attacking an incoming invader across your own GW will not give you a 25% penalty because it is assumed that your people are manning the wall).

B). Make it so when you build a city along the Great Wall (in the same way that you'd build along a river), that city gets an extra +1 happiness for "We appreciate our military protection" or whatever.

C). Make it so that any opposing unit crossing the Great Wall thereby uses up all of its movement points for the turn. (Would simulate how China used the wall to slow down the incoming Mongol horsemen).

D). Remove the hard-and-fast assured protection against barbarians (which is kind of unrealistic), but make it so the Great Wall automatically inflicts X hitpoints of damage to any (pre-gunpowder or pre-rifling) opposing unit that is crossing over the Great Wall (barbarian or foreign civ alike) within your cultural borders. Say, 25% damage. That means, units with more than 75% damage cannot cross over the GW at all without dying (so they must stop and heal first), and that units will have to stop and heal after crossing the wall or risk taking on your cities with 25% damage. Note: make this even applicable to when the enemy units are retreating and crossing back over the GW. (But of course it would not be applicable to your own units).

I feel that any combination of these changes would make the Great Wall both more realistic in the game and more nuanced and fun.
 
The great wall doesn't expand when your borders expand....
 
Hmm... Some thoughts:

1) Limiting the Great Wall to where it was first build would actually be rather unrealistic. Throughout history the Great Wall was continuously re-built and expanded.

2) As far as slowing barbarians down, you might be interested in the Revolutions mod(Or one of the many mods that encompasses Revolutions). It has a component where barbarian cities can found a new civilization if they grow strong enough. This new horde is a minor civilization(can't conduct diplomacy) and is at war with everyone, however, since they count as a civilization, they can cross the Great Wall and don't have the combat penalty Barbarians have.

Also, if somebody fails to conquer the new horde, eventually it will settle down into a full-fledged civilization. In addition, and cities it captured while it was a horde remain in it's control, so it will rarely be a weak 1-city civ.
 
Hmm... Some thoughts:

1) Limiting the Great Wall to where it was first build would actually be rather unrealistic. Throughout history the Great Wall was continuously re-built and expanded.

2) As far as slowing barbarians down, you might be interested in the Revolutions mod(Or one of the many mods that encompasses Revolutions). It has a component where barbarian cities can found a new civilization if they grow strong enough. This new horde is a minor civilization(can't conduct diplomacy) and is at war with everyone, however, since they count as a civilization, they can cross the Great Wall and don't have the combat penalty Barbarians have.

Also, if somebody fails to conquer the new horde, eventually it will settle down into a full-fledged civilization. In addition, and cities it captured while it was a horde remain in it's control, so it will rarely be a weak 1-city civ.

1. You're right. That's why I'd like to figure out a sensible mechanic for expanding the GW's effects. Maybe you could just keep the effects as they are now, but alter the graphics so that every few hundred turns or so the wall terrain graphic gets updated to the current borders. This may sound nitpicking, but it's little things like that that can really get on my nerves and wreck the atmospherics of a game, really taking me out of it and making it less fun. Maybe I'm just obsessive about the game display seeming realistic and intuitive (I have similar problems with mech infantry not requiring oil. I don't mind the effects as they are, but I'd in that case rather have the mech infantry unit renamed and the graphic changed so that it intuitively and realistically makes sense. Otherwise, it's a rude reminder that I'm playing a silly game, and that I'm not, in fact, Great Emperor Justinian of the Byzantine Empire, for example. I prefer to have my escapism pandered to as much as possible ;) ).

2. Yes, I have tried the plain Revolutions mod, and except for the revolutions mechanic itself, I loved it (the Barbarian civ part, the dynamic names, the start as minor civ option, those were all great). I'm just about to try a game on the WolfRevolution mod once I finish up a vanilla BTS game as Hannibal on the craziest Medium & Small map I've ever seen (for the financial leaders and for Joao, it has been a VERY friendly map with what, from what is usual for me, seems like an absurd global tech rate (fascism by 1300 A.D.? Seriously...looking at Hall of Fame games, it seems that that's not all that unusual, but it sure is for me)).
 
Border Wall: an improvement. One is like a fort (a corner tower from the Great Wall graphic). A series of them gets connected graphics that look like the current Great Wall. Units on the Great Wall have a zone of control. Mounted units cannot pass through Great Wall tiles unless a non mounted friendly unit is there.

But really, the Great Wall was better than regular border walls like Hadrian's wall. It scared barbs off because of its reputation and quality. It really deserved the Wonder status. So, keep the Imp and let the Wonder make the Imp and all zoc from it impassable by barbs.
 
Somewhere I suggested having a wall tile improvement and the civ who has the longest stretch got a bonus, it could be that the bonus is that it keeps barbs out rather than just a defence bonus, or it could provide all the grate wall benefits, with them being shared between the closest cities to the wall. However it should provide a much better improvement than forts, enemies just bypass forts and head straight to cities, and you can't build a fort in the same tile as an improvement to defend it, its rare that there is actually a good bottle neck. Their main use is cannals.
 
Somewhere I suggested having a wall tile improvement and the civ who has the longest stretch got a bonus, it could be that the bonus is that it keeps barbs out rather than just a defence bonus, or it could provide all the grate wall benefits, with them being shared between the closest cities to the wall. However it should provide a much better improvement than forts, enemies just bypass forts and head straight to cities, and you can't build a fort in the same tile as an improvement to defend it, its rare that there is actually a good bottle neck. Their main use is cannals.


That touches on an idea I've had for a little while now: What if you could build fortified improvements? Like a fortified cottage (it would look normal thoughout its' advancement except for the addition of a wall), it would have all of the normal attributes of a cottage along with an additional 15% defense bonus (after all, it's not a true fort). Maybe it grows a little slower too and it would be really cool if you could draft units from it to prevent it being pillaged (e.g. town downgrades to a village and spawns a defender if an enemy unit attempts to pillage the tile; the tile still downgrades, but you get an extra unit and the enemy may lose a unit instead of getting gold)
 
That in turn is similar to something I have suggested too, the ability to build two things on each tile, one would just be a smaller secondary improvement, but mines would still provide the resource they collect, as would other resource improvements. In fact the only thing I want to build as well as anything is a fort. So I can build fortified mines, farms, plantations, villages, derricks (wells). The addition of the fort could inhibit the other improvement, so a village cannot become a town, mines lose 1 :hammers:, farms lose 1 :food:, etc. You could then remove the fort with workers to allow it to continue as before. But I would also like forts to be better than they are now. Strengthening defenders is one way to make military victory a harder proposition.
 
So, just a question, if the cottage never becomes a hamlet but you have the option to take the fort away and allow the cottage to continue as normal, how long would it take to remove the fort? Because it was previously fortified would it be easier to "refortify" later? Allowing you to fortify the cottages during an early war and then later (after peace was achieved) remove the forts to stimulate economic growth and later still refortify after hostilities have resumed (or before you go to war with someone else)
 
Some possible bonuses that could apply to the Great Wall (just a huge list of different ideas, not saying that all these effects should apply, maybe just one or two of them):

+100% attack vs barbarians

+100% defense against barbarians

Places walls in every city (your civ are now expert walls builders and your settlers have the knowledge to build them).

+1 :hammers: from walls
+1 :hammers: from castle

+1 :) from walls
+1 :) from castle

Reduces collateral damage in walled cities by 50%

Doubles defense against siege weapons in walled cities (the great wall doesnt expand, your civ just builds them with better expertise after building the Great Wall).

Walls and castles provide +2 experience points to units created in the city (No expiration on this bonus).

Basic idea here is to have the wonder boost your power against barbarians, and improve the quality of your walls and castles.

Edit - more ideas

Places an engineer in all current cities only

Can convert 2 citizens to engineer in this city

The idea for the engineers comes from how industrious the great wall is, but then this can also be said about the pyramids.

Maybe the Great Wall should boost defence, and the functionality of the pyramids should change to an engineer boost - what exactly do pyramids have to do with government civics?
 
Realistic and Civ4 in the same breath? That won't be very popular...
 
what exactly do pyramids have to do with government civics?

It was the Pharaohs (Kings of Egypt) that had the pyramids built, they were one of the earliest monarchies, correct me if I'm wrong. It was their power as leaders that enabled them to organise the constructions that still stand and impress to this day. Civ is not about reliving world history, so the Pyramids give you the choice to select any government not just the Monarchy.

Anyway, back to the Great Wall discussion.
 
Civ is not about reliving world history

The tragedy is that it *could* be, or there could perhaps be some new expansion pack that allows that, but they don't see it as relevant, leaving a whole class of gamers out in the cold.
 
The tragedy is that it *could* be, or there could perhaps be some new expansion pack that allows that, but they don't see it as relevant, leaving a whole class of gamers out in the cold.

Thing is, it seems far more positive to me to make a wide-ranging and flexible base game of Civ 5 which can then be modded for tighter "realism" for those who want that than to make a tightly "realistic" game and keep the capacity to mod it for increased flexibility. Sooner or later one will run into hardwired limitations of the core code, unless one wants to rewrite the whole game oneself from scratch (in which case why is one messing around with modding?), so it seems better to me to make those limits loose and allow them to be tightened, than make them tight to begin with.
 
Well that brings up another issue. It is absolutely ridiculous to expect people to learn Python in order to mod.

It should be a GUI, like a beefed up Worldbuilder where you can make a mod from there.
 
Well that brings up another issue. It is absolutely ridiculous to expect people to learn Python in order to mod.


Hmm. What are the odds that a campaign for Civ 5 to be written in perl (in which I am actually fluent) would get anywhere ?
 
She sells C-shell by the seashore!

if [ -f civ4.exe ]
then
while $player_alive = "TRUE" do
playciv()
done
fi
 
If making MODs was that easy though you would lose the power you have, its like saying that writing a game should be easy and anyone should be able to just tell a computer what to do. Some things are worth working for, worth the effort.

There already are mods which are about world history, Ryhs and Fall? Or would you prefer it that you have to fulfil your civs exact path through history to get a good score/win/stay in the game.
 
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