[MODCOMP]Immigration Mod

[Watiggi]

I have just skim read the previous posts: Appoligies if this has been said or is already included but it would be great if you could actually attract these immigrants to your empires cities based on your empire building choices, thus rewarding a good builder with increased growth. Who knows...maybe it could get to the point where one could win a game simply by making a vastly superior empire that attracts the other civs population.

Maybe immigrants could be attracted to cities with high culture, high happiness, high healthiness (both of which will decline as the city gets bigger), good economy, wonders, Emancipation, etc. Ultimately an empire that looks after the people and gives them a degree of freedom to pursue their dreams might become more attractive for them.

Maybe a new city of size 1, connected to luxuries and food, bringing in 18 healthiness and 20 happiness - which would have a high net happiness/healthiness (note the emphasis on 'net') - would become rather attractive for new immigrants. The high culture and wonders of your core cities could attract them to your empire, and the high net happiness/healthiness of your new cities would attract them to those new cities. It could make for a new, interesting form of expansion - a strategy where one could build an empire (and possibly win) by aiming to attract the worlds population to their cities.

....just a thought

Watiggi

 

[mbeifield]

I think this is a really fantastic idea, possibly the most creative Civ mod ever.

I would like to point out to dh_epic, that many times, refugees DO travel in large groups choking up roads and blocking both civilian and military traffic. Sometimes that exodus in and of itself becomes the humanitarian crisis.

You could implement this by taking away a movement point (or a fraction, or relegate rail to road, etc.) of any unit that shares (or passes through) a square of an immigrant.

This could be interesting in a few ways. For example, if you conquer a big city and it spawns several immigrant units, it would make it harder to both send reinforcements to guard the city and enemy offensive units to retake the city.

Also, if you razed a city upon capture, I think it might be interesting to turn all or most of the population into immigrant units, thus presenting the issue of where do these immigrants go, and do I use my next turn or two commanding my units to kill the "refugees" instead of moving toward the next target.

You could also do something with unit promotions and immigrants. Maybe a certain type of promotion would discourage immigrants from entering a city, or a peace-keeping promotion could force the immigrants to "settle" into some kind of refugee camp, maybe decreasing food at that site, stealing food from neighboring cities or even occasionally spawning hostile units. Maybe time and culture could cause a city to "absorb" a refugee camp into its population, joining the city as welcome/happy/loyal. This could go either way, creating burdens for enemy civilizations or "stealing" passing immigrants for your own, eventual profit. You could implement a UN resolution making it impossible to kill immigrants as well, and have killing immigrants negatively impact your relations with the civ that created the refugees.

Wherever you go with this mod, however, I think it'll be great.
-m

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Ah, so you could build a pseudo-settler building that could only join cities or should the current settlers be allowed to do this? Or better yet, should settlers be renamed pioneers and should only be allowed to create cities and then the new settler unit could do both create a new city or join an existing city?

Well, I think that if one does that, pioneers should not be controlled by the player but should instead function like the immigrants. I've been working on a component that would allow for rural population and city's spawning independently of the player's action, but it doesn't use the mechanism of a new unit to do this. In general, I would just make the settler have the ability to join cities as it did in Civ3.

As for forced resettlement:

I think that the Civ3 model has already provided for a satisfactory solution to a "forced resettlement" option. It also provides another aspect of ancient warfare: enslaving civilian populations.

When you take a city, you should get the option to enslave some of the population... In civ3, it was an all or nothing deal. You either kept the city and got only the workers that were in the city upon capture, or you leveled the city and got a number of workers based on the population of the city.

Ideally, I'd like a button for enslaving population that would be like the draft and hurry production button though not necessarily located next to them since there's really no room. But a pop up upon city capture would do as well. Like drafting and hurrying production under slavery, this would create unhappiness in the city you were performing this in. And if you select to raze the city, by default, you'd get a certain number of slaves.

So if you take this and combine it with the other Civ3 mechanism of letting Workers and Settlers join existing cities, you've got a simple means of implementing forced resettlement. When you enslave the population of a city, you can then move them to another city and have them join that city... then you can also move existing settlers or workers from your civilization into the newly-conquered cities and repopulate them with your own people. Or you can continue to use them as slave labor. Slave labor, of course, would not be as effective as regular workers and you'd need more of them to complete a task quickly... however, since you'd have probably captured a lot between capturing defeated soldiers (such as in Sevomod) and taking civilian population as slaves, you would probably be able to mass a lot on one task.

Naturally, freed slaves in a city would change the city's population to be partly of the nationality they were like the Immigrants do. Also, their religion should be spread to the city as well if it's not there already.

Naturally, this restricts forced resettlement and enslaving laborers to the slavery civic, or at least it probably should... I feel like there's other civics under which you could probably get away with decimating a foreign city, enslaving its population, and then scattering them to the ends of the earth. Maybe we could call them "conscripted labor"

Of course, this is the simplest way to do it that provides the greatest flexibility with the most general historical accuracy... if you want to get fancy with it, however, then that's entirely up to the creator of this mod component.

Also, it might be interesting to make immigrant boats that would spread to other coastal cities either of your civilization or someone elses... could simulate everything from the colonization of the Americas to Cubans in converted Chevy's washing up on the shores of Florida.

 

[Bungholio]

Do the immigrants take religion with them to the place they go?

 

[TheLopez]

Do the immigrants take religion with them to the place they go?

The default configuration of the mod gives them a 5% chance of carrying one of the cities religion with them.

 

[King Squanto]

wow, this is such an exciting idea! i had been thinking of a similar thing, though I had imagined it being done with percentage numbers and not actual units, but i have no mod knowledge to speak of- and I love how you've done it! I haven't tried this yet, so I'm not sure if it's already there, but when you raze a city, are immigrants created? It would make sense to me that when a size 10 city is razed the 630000 people don't just die but many are simply displaced- as happened with such historic razings as Atlanta, etc. You could have a configurable feature where a size ten city when razed would produce 3-7 immigrants, the number being lower if more enemy military units are present in surronding tiles. Another cool feature (of which I'm sure you're already overloaded with) would be pre-emptive immigration, such as if a large enemy stack is outside a cities wall's, the citzens may leave before invasion to escape the hoardes- such immigrations occured in masse when people were fleeing Napoleon's armies. And one last thing, as it is now, is there a chance something can be added in about immigrants leaving because of low or negative money output (reflecting search for new jobs) or low culture, to the more cultured cities, but only from cities over 30 turns old (so colonies don't bankrupt themselves?)

all in all, those are minor details, not worth much more than afterthought. I think you should focus on getting that immigrants colonies is the new-world thing down, that is one of the most notably absent features of the game. I wish Fraxsis, with the money to make something like this possible, would make a whole "Age of Discovery" expansion pack which could make things like immigration, looting mesoamerican kingdoms, establishing mercantilism, un-state sactioned colinization, and the Revolutionary War possible!

 

[dh_epic]

dh_epic, then tell me how you would do it? Would you rather it just automagically happen?

More or less. I would have the immigration happen instantaneously, with no unit at all.

Still, you want immigrants to make sense. It would be silly for a Mayan immigrant to appear in Rome in 500 BC. As it exists now, an actual unit is constrained by terrain, but also the threat of animals and so on. So I'd offer the following constraints:

- Allow immigrants to only travel according to connected trade routes. An unconnected city will produce no immigrants.

- Give immigrants a specific range. Early in the game, select between cities within a range of about 10 tiles. With the arrival of, say, calendar, give them a range of 20. With the arrival of astronomy, give them a range of 40. And with combustion, infinite range.

But then, I'm the kind of guy who wants less units. I'm sure many people love killing little immigrant units in transit -- which has never happened in history. (Never more than a few hundred people, anyway -- not an entire 'population point' moving in transit!)

 

[Dom Pedro II]

But then, I'm the kind of guy who wants less units. I'm sure many people love killing little immigrant units in transit -- which has never happened in history. (Never more than a few hundred people, anyway -- not an entire 'population point' moving in transit!)

Well, you can't really use the population point thing as any kind of a real marker since the population point is so nebulous as to be without any real meaning whatsoever. If it were in any way a consistent number, you'd have your first city in 4,000 BC starting off as a size 1 and your biggest city in 2000 AD being a size between 1,000 and 3,000 depending on what you'd say is a reasonable amount for the first cities.

But I like less units as well. I would perhaps restrict any tangible units however to refugees fleeing in droves from some calamity rather than regular immigrants who move in steadier but smaller numbers.

 

[Fachy]

-----v0.4.5------

- Changed the immigrant AI from UNITAI_SETTLE to UNITAI_SPY and
UNITAI_MISSIONARY which fixed the issue where immigrant units do not move
away from cities. Reported by Komori.

Do the graphics differ in gameplay?? It's much nicer to have it as a settler than as a spy/missionary

 

[Fachy]

Squato, I like the idea of a chance of people fleeing when army stacks are outside (and stronger than defending garrison) BUT on condition that:
1) The invading civilization has less total culture points than the invaded one by, say, 50% or more (they don't want to live under barbarian rule)
OR
2) The invading civilization has raized one city of the invaded civ (they're afraid of being slaughtered like their peers)

I read that most Soviets were happy with Hitler's forces "freeing" them from communism, until the German soldiers showed very harsh treatment.. see what I mean?

 

[TheLopez]

Do the graphics differ in gameplay?? It's much nicer to have it as a settler than as a spy/missionary

The problem having them use the settler AI is that if a computer player has too many cities the immigrant units will not move.

 

[Jeckel]

Do the graphics differ in gameplay?? It's much nicer to have it as a settler than as a spy/missionary

And, no Fachy, the graphic will not change, it is only a change in how the AI uses it.

 

[RogerBacon]

TheLopez,

I've turned Debug on and I see a lot of messages saying that the immigrants can't reach X (city). What happens if an immigrant can't reach any city? Does it go back to the city that spawned it or does it just die?

Great mod, by the way.

Roger Bacon

 

[TheLopez]

TheLopez,

I've turned Debug on and I see a lot of messages saying that the immigrants can't reach X (city). What happens if an immigrant can't reach any city? Does it go back to the city that spawned it or does it just die?

Basically, the check to see if they can reach a target city is done before the unit is actually created. If the immigrant cannot reach any target city then the immigrant will not be generated at all.

The individual check was done like this so I could easily update the mod later to allow immigrant units that can travel through oceans to other continents, islands, etc.

Great mod, by the way.

Roger Bacon

Thanks

 

[Fachy]

I'll never understand why does using a settler's frame spawn problems which are solved when using a spy's frame.. but the mod maker knows best!!

 

[TheLopez]

I'll never understand why does using a settler's frame spawn problems which are solved when using a spy's frame.. but the mod maker knows best!!

I'm using the spy and missionary AI functionality instead of the settler AI functionality. It has nothing to do with the graphical representation of the unit in the game.

 

[Fachy]

Oh dear! Ok sorry *feels stupid*

 

[TheLopez]

Oh dear! Ok sorry *feels stupid*

Fachy, don't feel stupid, it was an honest question.

 

[Jeckel]

The only stupid person is one that doesn't ask questions until they understand.

 

[Lanthanide]

I like the idea for this mod, but the current execution leaves something to be desired.

I played with the immigration mod on during my last game with the Great Options Mod, and IMO it just made the game way too easy.

Why? Because within 10 turns of any of your cities going unhealthy/unhappy, an immigrant would leave that city and head towards another one of my own cities. The result of this is that I never really had to worry about unhealthiness or unhappiness in a particular city, because soon enough the people from that city would lave and join another one, making the 2nd city more powerful and simply restoring balance to the first city without me having to lift a finger.

This can even be exploited, as I inadvertantly found out - if you specifically make a high-food city but make it unattractive to live in (eg, don't station any military units in the city, and don't build any +happy/health buildings), it will constantly be growing bigger, spawning immigrants which walk off to your other cities and shrinking again. You could actually get to the point where you have 1 or 2 super-food cities for your whole empire whose sole purpose is to create population, with every other city being set for maximum production and stagnant growth and 'import' all the citizens required from the food centres.

Even worse, is that I found brand new cities (settled within the borders of my empire on some extra tiles lying around) would grow to size 5 or 6 within the space of about 15 turns, simply because of all the immigrants coming in from my other cities.

Basically this mod lets you automatically redistribute your population around for maximum efficiency, without any cost to the player at all - you don't even have to think about it or do anything, the game will simply do it for you.

I think this mod seriously needs to be rebalanced. As to how to handle this, I'm really not sure.