My ideas on comprehensive changing Civ game

[ShadowWarrior]

Motivation:

Why is U.S a powerful country that does not have to maintain that power through expansion? Why is it that the same isn't true of Civ III, where expansion is the only way to survive?

What makes empire building fun is the fact that we who play the role of great statesmen of our nation must resort not only to military, but also economics, ideology, diplomacy and many other channels in order to secure our country's interest. A game that puts too much emphasis on war takes that fun away. Imagine reading the history of a country whose past is dominated by war and expansion? Wouldn't the history get boring to read? But imagine a history of a country whose past is dominated by strategic use of sophisticated diplomacy, ideology, economics, and other instruments of statescraft. I think most of us would prefer studying more about the later than the former.

Civ IV or its successor should think seriously about making the game less about war, and more about survival of and world wide domination by a nation. And although war and conquest is part of the equation of world wide domination and survival, it is not the only variable.

Some case studies:

1
U.S maintained its dominance in the world through a diplomatic technique that I think is called the Bismarkian model.

What is the Bismarkian model? After Bismark of Prussia unified all of Germany under Prussian leadership, and began to look to strengthen German influences throughout Europe, Bismark first targetted the central European nations. I do not exactly know the details, but basically it involves some kind of economic integration between Germany and some central European nations so that the latter becomes economically dependent on the former even though economic efficiency suggests that Germany would have been much better off by integrating its economy into the Western European economies of France and Britain.

U.S maintained dominance through a similar mechanism. Although much of the world hate U.S and her dominance, the world can not do without U.S. She is a vast market, and economic growth throughout the rest of the world depends on her keeping her market opened up. It is this dependence on U.S market that makes the rest of the world prone to cater into the demand of the U.S. And since the demand U.S makes often tends to be the ones that will keep U.S powerful when that demand is fullfilled, this dependence on U.S is significant in maintaining U.S' power.

Of course, U.S needs to have a strong economy in order to absorb all foreign imports in the first place.

2
China no doubt had had some of the world's most technologically advanced military equpiments in the ancient time. Its superb philosophy on war, such as art of war written by Sun Tzi, also helped to make Chinese military one of the strongest for a long time.

However, military is not the only reason that China is strong and dominated the political arena of East Asia. Another reason is ideology. Confucianism flew from China in all directions into Tibet, Central Asia, Mongolia, Manchuria, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. Accompanying this flow of ideology is Chinese culture. Why is it that China benefits from her neighbor's adoption of Confucianism and Chinese culture? Confucianism is fundamentally a philosophy of peace. It is a philosophy based on the central principle of benevolent rule for the people, with the corrollary that war is unacceptable by Confucian standard. China's neighboring countries, upon adoption of Confucianism, would begin to find it less and less rewarding to wage wars for pure pursuit of wealth and prestige because of disapproval from Confucius scholars, and this will make China's boarder much more secure.

And what of Chinese culture? Why does spreading Chinese culture helps to reduce the threat of barbarians of the North, such as the Huns. The reason is that by introducing to the barbarians civilizations and cultures, such as fine cloth, musics, arts, wine, and delicate food, and all the comfort of a highly developed civilization, the barbarians, whose strength derives from their ruggedness, will be made soft. In fact, such a strategy was used during the Han dynasty, and columnated in Han dynasty's subjugation of the Xiung Nu.


Therefore the lesson is this. It is not always about war, conquest, and a strong military that keeps a nation powerful. Other instruments of statescraft, when used wisely together with military, can make a nation great. And it is also that which makes empire building fun. Civ IV or successor games should do its best to reflect this multi-dimensionalism of empire building rather than adding new features such as religions, or incorporating new wonders, new units, or new city improvements.

 

[ShadowWarrior]

Resource model:

In real time strategy games, players must collect about three to four different kind of resources. For the production of each kind of military unit and buildings, there is a required combination of different resources. For example, building a unit of archer might require a combination of ten woods, fifteen stones, and five foods. To build a temple requires sixty stones, thirty woods and ten gold.

Second, as in the case of some particular real time strategy games, as technology progresses, new resources will be required that were irrelevant in previous ages. Also, those new resources will become increasingly more important while the old resources will make less and less impact on production. For example, in Rise of Nations, and Empire Earth, industrialization requires oil, which during previous era were totally absent. Meanwhile, as players in both games progress into modern and future ages, resources like wood, which were important in building literally everything during ancient times, become nearly irrelevant.

I suggest that these two above features (multiple resources requirement for production and new resources for new era) should be implemented in Civ IV.

For example, in Civ IV, resources in the ancient era are lumber from forests, minerals from hills and mountains, and food from grassland, and dry land. In the middle ages, they are still lumber, minerals, and food; but to those are added another resource, which may perhaps be iron. At the start of the middle age, lumber, minerals, and food are still quite important. However, as civilizations progress deeper into the middle, iron will become more and more important, and the three resources from ancient period will become less and less so. More and more buildings and military units will require iron as a significant portion of the production materials. The same cycle of rise and fall of new and old resources will happen again in the industrial and modern era. By modern era, wood should literally have zero impact. All buildings will from henceforth be made with steels, which requires iron and coal.

To all of these, I suggest an additional feature, which is substitutability. What if a nation has progressed into the industrial age faster than everyone else, but found itself with no access to any important resources needed of the industrial age? Substitutability means the ability to substitute the old resources for new resources. For example, in the industrial era, factories will require steel, which are processed from coal and iron. However, if there is severe shortage of those two resources, then it is possible to substitute those two resources with the ancient era and middle age resources. But the cost is much inferior performance. If a factory built of steel can increase production by 100 percent, then a factory built of previous era resources can only increase production by 50 percent. The same is true of military units, which will fight less effectively when built with previous era resources.

This substitutability is meant to allow players to make the transition to the new era. Players will be punished however if they rely on old era resources all the time because of inferior performances.

The constant need to change resource requirement to conform to different technologies of different era will create possibility of power shift. Nations once powerful may find themselves in trouble as they lack access to resources needed for new age. The need to adopt a radically new empire strategy in response to conditions of new ages will introduce novelty to this game. More details about how all these might happen will come later when I have finished explaining my population, geography, trade, diplomacy, and other types of models.

P.S: I may make adjustments to the resource model later on as I see fit.

 

[ShadowWarrior]

Population model:

Forget about the population model used in Civ III right now. I propose the below alternative.

We need population to do the following tasks:

Serve in the army
Build city improvements and wonders
Improve land for agriculture, mining and building of roads, forts, and other stuff
Work on those land to produce food, and other resources
Work in those city improvements, such as temples, courthouses, etc

If there are other tasks that I have not listed above, please point them out to me. But they won't be obstacles in my attempting to explain how my envisioned population model works.

Each city improvement requires some number of people to work on it. For example, a temple needs at least six people. Less than six, and the temple will not help to make the population feel happy at all. Having exactly six will help the population to be happy with minimum effect. Having more than six will increase the happiness effect. However, once we filled the temple with, lets say, fifty workers, any further addition will have no more beneficial effect on the happiness of the population. Using economic terminology, there is diminishing return to inputs.

So if we can not increase the population happiness further by adding more workers in the temple, what else can we do? We can build another temple in another city, or we can build a wonder. Or, we can simply "upgrade" the temple in a cathedral if we have the required technology. Given the same amount of workers, a cathedral will increase happiness more than a temple.

That's right. I am proposing that all city improvements with same functions will now be upgraded instead of being built A temple will be upgraded into a cathedral. A market place will be upgraded in stock exchange.

To upgrade or to build any city improvements or wonders, we need yet some population to actually do those upgrading and building. These are different from the population who work in those city improvements and wonders.

We will assign population to improve landtiles, build forts and roads. Then after those are built, we need assign population to work on those landtiles.

Those who work on landtiles to produce food and resources are different from those people who work in the city's temples, libraries, and marketplaces. This will truely create a urban/rural population.

Army will itself requires population, too. In current Civ game, army require gold support, but it doesn't seem to be constraint by population. This will change under this model I now propose. (more about maintainence of city improvement and army in my post about taxation model)

Population growth will continue to be a function of availabitily of food. Perhaps, we can make population growth also a function of standard of living as civilization progresses into middle and industrial age.

Thought experiments to illustrate how this population model works:

I am ruling the Chinese civilization, and I have founded on city, called Beijing. I currently have one hundred people in my civilization.

My aim is to increase population. To do that, I allocate about thirty people out of my one hundred to improve a landtile outside of Beijing. This landtile is a grassland, and is fertile after it is improved. I could have chose to assign only ten people to improve this landtile, however, this will mean that the improvement will not be finished until much later. I could have chose to assign all one hundred people to improve this landtile. But by the law of diminishing return, having one hundred people to improve this landtile will not make finishing such improvement faster than having just thirty.

With thirty people working on the irrigation, I have seventy left. I need at least ten people to work in my palace to administer my kingdom. This leaves me with only sixty currently "unemployed". I'll assign thirty of these sixty to build a temple. To build a temple requires a combination of ten units of wood, and fifteen units of stones. So I assign the ten people to lumber, and ten people to mine in another landtile near Beijing. Of course I could have assigned all twenty people to gather lumber first, then assign those twenty to gather minerals. Now I am down to just ten available workers. I assign them to work on the farms in another landtile near Beijing.

Once the thirty people who were working on the irrigation completed their task, I'll move the ten people who were farming into this irrigated landtile. Now, these ten people will be producing MORE food than they were when they were working in another landtile.

And what of these thirty people who have completed the task of irrigation. I can either assign them to build temple so that the temple may be build faster. Or I can assign five of these thirty to work in my palalce, in which case I'll now have fifteen people working in my palace. This means that the administration of my kingdom is more effective, with the positive effect of decreasing corruption, which leads to increase in lumber, mineral and food production. (But once I take those five people out of my palace, the food, mineral, and lumber production level drops back to its former level) The remaining twenty five workers can go to build roads, or I can draft them into the army.

Immediately, all of your reaction will be this. WAYYYYYYYYY TOO MUCH MICROMANAGEMENT!!!

Those of you who have played Rise of Middle Kingdom, Pharo, or Ceaser never complained about micromanagement of population in those games. Why?

In those games, any increase in population immediately go to fill jobs that are not yet occupied. The same can be done in this population model I propose.

For example, I currently need three more people in my temple to reach minimum effectiveness, six more people in my marketplace to reach minimum effectiveness. I make marketplace the first priority and temple the second. So when the population increase the next turn, the new population will go first to work in marketplace. Any remaining population will go work in the temple.

This should take much of the micromanagement away.

This population model should make some interesting choices for us players. The limited availability of population as well as the concept of diminishing returns means that we will have to learn to cope with trade offs of assigning population to different tasks, and pick those tasks that provides the least opportunity cost. We must ask questions like these. Should we assign more population to build marketplaces to increase commerce? Or should we simply increase commerce by assigning population to build roads? Doing the former means that marketplaces will be built much later, and the benefit of marketplace won't be realized for a longtime. However, doing the latter will allow us to realize the benefit of roads faster because roads are quicker to built. But roads themselves generate much less revenue than having a marketplace. So what should we do?

Or in another case, I might have to make a tradeoff between commerce and science. Given only limited population, should I assign more people to work in libraries or marketplaces?

A grand empire strategy may possibly be created out of this population model. We can assign more people to science research than any other task, and the strength of our empire derives mostly from science. But doing so will always have a cost, which is less accomplishment in the arena of commerce, landtile development, armies, blah blah blah. So adopting a pro science strategy may be the best way to go if we are situated in a fertile region, where less people can work on food production and still generate substantial food to support science. Geographical constraint, in another word, may be important toward determining how we want to use our population. (More about geography model later)

This is all the idea I have regarding population model so far. It is very disorganized at this point, and there are many loopholes and flaws with this model. I'll make adjustment and organize it better later on. Check back frequently and give me feedbacks please.

 

[ShadowWarrior]

Geography model: (Read my post on population model first)

Population assigned to different tasks will have different effect on the direction of the empire. When we players assign most of the population to irrigate and farm to produce food, we become an agricultural nation, and our population grow incredibly fast. When we alternatively assign more population to work on scientific research, our nation becomes scientific powerhouse. When we assign most of our population to work on mines and forests, we will be a nation rich in mineral resources.

But why would we ever want to assign our population to work on one task as oppose to another? This is where my geography model comes in.

I propose that geography plays a very significant factor in influencing the population task assignment decisions. More specifically, I propose that for each kind of terrain, there are associated disadvantages and advantages. Player's must learn to complement the advantages of the terrain that locates their civilization with the task that they assign to their population.

A grassland terrain will produce much food, some mineral resources, and literally no lumber at all. (Please read my post on resource model) Given such a terrain, civilizations located in this region will grow incredibly fast. Players who find themselves in such situation should aim to adopt a pro-population growth strategy.

Dessert terrain will yield literally nothing. No lumber, food or mineral resources can possibly be had in such terrain. But such disadvantages are offset by the advantages that dessert offers. People who grew up in a desert environment tends to be rugged. They have high endurance and stamina, and make great warriors. Therefore military units build on desert terrain can, given everything else being equal, fight much better than their rivals who come from cultures located in fertile grassland regions. Players whose civilizations originate in desert, should take this into consideration. Their initial strategy may have to be based mostly on fighting. They may have to use their superior fight force to subjugate neighboring civilizations, and demand tributes in forms of certain quantity of lumber, food, and minerals every turn. (I will talk about tributary system, and international political systems and diplomacy in a later thread)

For these desert civilizations, once they have obtained stable tributes, they can use these tributes to begin building up their civilizations. Tributes in form of food will enable their population to grow, while tributes in form of minerals and lumber enable them to build perhaps better weapons or build their cities into civilized metropolis.

In another word, for each terrain type, there must be associated disadvantages and advantages. The disadvantages and advantages should make such a drastic differences that it really matters if players adopt the appropriate strategy.

Second thing about geography pertains more to the map size. I don't know if this is doable, but I seriously propose making the map size much MUCH bigger than it currently is now.

With a much bigger map size, we can truely have a vast region of desert, or vast region of grassland populated only by some forest or hills, or a vast region of mountains and hills populated by occasional dryland or grassland. In Civ III now, a landtile of grassland may sit right next to a landtile of dryland. As a result, players can easily compensate the lack of mineral on grassland by exploiting the adjacent dryland. Geography makes no impact at all in the choice of civilization development strategy.

One last thing to remember is this. It is VERY important that while a vast region may be characterized mostly by one type of terrain, it also MUST have some tiles of other terrain type. A vast region of grassland must occassionally have some hills or forests. This way, although players are forced to select a pro-population growth strategy, they will have some mineral and lumber access to do other aspect of empire building. Otherwise, a severe inbalance of access to different important resources will result in incapacitating the players to do anything. Therefore the key is to strike a good balance. On the one hand, as is the case with Civ III, we do not want to grant equal access to all resources for all players, which removes geography as an influencial factor in our choice of strategy, we also do not want to, on the other hand, make the unequal access to different resources so severe that players cannot do anything.

 

[ShadowWarrior]

Trade model:

Read my resource, population and geography model first.

Let us say that I am China, and the geography I am located in is mostly grassland, which means I will have to select a pro-population growth strategy.

How does pro-population growth strategy help me? More population means bigger army, more workers to improve the land, to work in temples, market, libraries, and build wonders.

So more population as a result of being located on grassland gives me more workers. However, without sufficient lumber and minerals with which to build temples, libraries, marketplace, it will be a while until I can actually reap the benefit of having lots of people to research science technologies, create happiness in my empire, and generate wealth from trade and blah blah blah.

In another word, I need lumber and minerals. What can I do? The solution is to trade. This is where my trade model comes in.

So I (China) have a huge HUGE supply of food. I can either use my huge supply of food to grow my population or to trade it for lumber and minerals. Lets say my population has already grown wayy too fast, and its time to simply slow the growth of my population by channeling those food to be sold to international market so that I can trade my food for lumber and minerals.

Civ IV should have an international trade screen. This trade will work like this.

It will show supply and demand for all resources in each country.

For example, it will show that China is now supplying the world with lets say 10 units of food each term. (I can alternatively simply choose to supply only 5 units, and let the remaining five go to grow my population)

The price of each unit of food is two units of lumber, or two units of minerals. I put this price tag on to the international market, and those who acccepts the offer will sign a contract (or a treaty) with me. The treay will basically say that I (China) will trade 10 units of my food in exchange for 20 units of his mineral. This deal will last some number of turns.

Perhaps, my trade partner wants to extend the trade deal for 20 turns while I only wish for the deal to be effective for 10 turns. Then the only way to get me to agree to a 20 turns deal is to increase the price of my food. So in another word, I will want 3 units of lumber for each unit of food now. Or alternatively, I want certain technology in exchange for agreeing to a 20 turn deal. So the number of turns that this deal is valid is negotiable.

I do not want to go too much into details about the barbarians and the diplomacy model yet. But let me just say for now that it is very likely that barbarians will have to play in Civ IV the role of middlemen between civilizations' trading. In another word, barbarian won't be just those mean and nasty nomads who come in, raid, kill, rape, then go away.

Using the above example, China might actually not have been trading with another civilization. Instead, China was concluding a trade deal with the barbarians who obtained those lumbers and minerals from another civilizations with whom I do not yet have contact.

Second, diplomacy will now take a significant role in affecting international trading and development of my empire's economy. Signing a treaty of embargo against me might seriously hinder my ability to develop my empire's economy. More about diplomacy later.

Coming soon: Models on diplomacy, taxataion, science, political systems/ideology, special resources

 

[ShadowWarrior]

Special resources models:

Please read all my previous models first in the posts above

In my resource models, I have said that each age has its associated strategic resources that are needed for production of city improvements, units, and wonders. In ancient era, those resources are food, lumber, and minerals. In middle ages, those resources are still food, lumber, and minerals, with the new addition of iron. As civilization evolve deeper into the middle age era, iron will become more and more important as part of the production materials while ancient era resources will steadily diminish in importance. As civilization enters industrial era, ancient era resources, such as lumber, will have literally zero impact on production, while new resources such as coal may slowly replace iron as the primary production materials even though iron will still be quite important in the dawn of industrial age.

These resources can be mined and extracted by exploiting the terrains as is the case in current Civ III games. Food will be harvested from grassland, lumber from forest terrain, minerals from mountains and hills, iron from another type of terrain, and coal from yet another type of terrain. As long as there are people working on those terrains, resources associated with that terrain will be avaialble for production.

How will special resources factor into the game under this resource model then? In Civ III, special resources are needed to build important military units. In my resource models, those special resources are readily available. So will special resources have any meaning at all in Civ IV under my resource model?

I propose that special resources are, like in Civ III, still found in certain specific landtiles. Sitting under these special resources are HUGE deposits of whatever resources it is. For example, in a typical normal grassland terrain, I'll be able to produce ten units of food with certain number of assigned farmers. However, when if that same grassland landtile has a "grain" resource on it, then I'll be able to produce fifty units of food per turn with the same number of workers.

Mountain is where minerals are mined. Lets say that when fifty people work in that landtiles, then ten units of minerals are extracted per turn. If there's a special mineral resource in that same landtile, then fifty units of minerals will be mined instead of just ten.

Now please go back to my trade model. You should remember that a civilization that is located in a grassland region will have advantage in food production, which makes adopting a pro-population growth strategy an optimal strategy. However, this means that the this same civilization might have lack of access to mineral resources, since grassland do not produce much minerals. Under my proposed trade model, we can sell our food in the international market for minerals.

However, if we get lucky and happen to have a square of mineral special resource lying within our empire, then the problem of lack of access to minerals will be solved.

Imagine in the industrial era when oil will become increasingly more important, we can still extract oil. However, imagine if we get lucky and have a landtile of special oil resource. This will boost our oil production dramatically and we will be able to sell oil to the international market, possibly making everyone in the world dependent on our economy.

But the situation can also be reversed, in which we end up becoming dependent on another nation for their oil, because we lack a special oil resource landtile, and whatever oil we can extract from within our empire are not enough to meet all the empire's demand. This is the kind of power shift that I am talking about as we enter each new era. Powerful nations that found themselves in a new era with little access to the strategic resource of that new era might need to learn to be nice to their neighbors, and use other instruments of statescraft rather than just outright conquest.