Naming units & cities

[DaveShack]

How do we want to go about naming things in this game? Past experiences have been:

1. Define a priority list of citizens based on what office(s) they have been elected / appointed to. Name things in this priority order. Everyone in the citizen registry names something before anyone gets their 2nd name.
2. Citizens get to name things based on the order they signed up for the game. If we hit the end of the list, we cycle back to the beginning.

Other suggestions from the past have been:

1. Use the citizen registry as the starting order. Take some number of names from the registry and vote on the order within that set, e.g. take 5 names, vote for those 5. When #5 is used vote on #6-10, etc.
2. Random ordering. As names are used cross them off, use a RNG each time a name is needed and keep drawing numbers till you hit an unused name.
3. Name according to significant events, terrain, or other factors.

Additional questions:

1. Should we limit names to ones which are appropriate for the civilization we're playing?
2. Should we rename acquired things?
3. Who should be held accountable for naming? Should anyone be accountable, or should it be a best effort only?

 

[Armed_Maniac]

How do we want to go about naming things in this game? Past experiences have been:

1. Define a priority list of citizens based on what office(s) they have been elected / appointed to. Name things in this priority order. Everyone in the citizen registry names something before anyone gets their 2nd name.
2. Citizens get to name things based on the order they signed up for the game. If we hit the end of the list, we cycle back to the beginning.

Other suggestions from the past have been:

1. Use the citizen registry as the starting order. Take some number of names from the registry and vote on the order within that set, e.g. take 5 names, vote for those 5. When #5 is used vote on #6-10, etc.
2. Random ordering. As names are used cross them off, use a RNG each time a name is needed and keep drawing numbers till you hit an unused name.
3. Name according to significant events, terrain, or other factors.

Additional questions:

1. Should we limit names to ones which are appropriate for the civilization we're playing?
2. Should we rename acquired things?
3. Who should be held accountable for naming? Should anyone be accountable, or should it be a best effort only?

hmmm... I don't think we should limit names to the civ we are using, since we are probably changing the civ's name it's like starting a whole new civ (without actually changing anything but names...)

We should use city names from the citizen registration list, though i'm not sure how you would choses which ones (it should be an active member and not one that applied thinking this was a demo for civ4). Conquered cities should be renammed as well for one of the names in the list so we would use as much of those names as possible in the goal of everyone having their city in-game (for the fun of it... Unless a republic is used then it they might lead the city they named?)

I'm not sure who could be held responsible for that, but i list should be made with the citizens and their city names on it, in order from the most active to the inactive.

 

[RoboPig]

i like naming things according to signifiCANT EVENTS AND location. it would be pretty fun i think

 

[Gloriana]

Events and location have my preference as well. That would also be most in accordance with real history, not that we have to take that into account though...
What would be nice though is having a citizen/office holder name a city as a kind of gratitude for rendering special/heroic services or something, the special/heroic services still having to be determined... but like a great discoverer would have something named after him (Tasman-Tasmania for instance, or the Hudson Bay)

Renaming of conquered cities: only if they are still small and not very significant. If we'd capture a large, important, strategic city though let it keep its old name so it stands out as a sort of 'trophy'

 

[Strider]

I think we should just name them all after me.

Regardless, I think bringing back the Citizen Honors program and allowing "honored" citizens to name cities would be fun.

 

[Alphawolf]

How do we want to go about naming things in this game? Past experiences have been:

1. Random ordering. As names are used cross them off, use a RNG each time a name is needed and keep drawing numbers till you hit an unused name.
2. Name according to significant events, terrain, or other factors.

I like these two.

Additional questions:
Should we limit names to ones which are appropriate for the civilization we're playing?

I say no in the strongest fashion.

Should we rename acquired things?

I think this should be voted upon as we acquire things, we might want to rename something and not others.

Who should be held accountable for naming? Should anyone be accountable, or should it be a best effort only? [/LIST]

What do you mean "held accountable"?

Regardless, I think bringing back the Citizen Honors program and allowing "honored" citizens to name cities would be fun.

I would like to hear more about this.

-the Wolf

 

[DaveShack]

Who should be held accountable for naming? Should anyone be accountable, or should it be a best effort only?

What do you mean "held accountable"?

I would like to avoid igniting old arguments (and it seems to be working given not a lot of response to the accountability question), but this does kinda need an explanation.

Spoiler history :

In previous DGs, we sometimes had a volunteer naming office. The director / owner of the naming office would organize the list of names to be used and make it easy for the designated player to be informed of what names to use. One individual took up a crusade for browbeating people into using names (changing their minds to use names) which were suited to the civ we were playing. That same individual also either chose to ignore the defined order of naming and give earlier positions to citizens whose names he preferred for the situation, or was incompetent and screwed it up all the time. The next game, the "wronged" citizens pushed for and got a rule that the President was in charge of naming and could be punished if names were done incorrectly and on purpose.

My personal preference is that names are a peripheral aspect of the game that we should not expend a lot of effort controlling with rules, and definitely should not be holding anyone "accountable" for. However, gotta get input.

 

[Alphawolf]

Thanks for the info. I agree with you on this one, names are a fun part of the game, but not really important.

-the Wolf

 

[Alighieri]

I think if we rename a captured city, it should (in most cases, at least), retain to some degree its original name. E.g. Londo = Londinium = London or Colonia Agrippa = Colonia = Cologne = Koln. On the same note, I think our cities' names follow some sort of pattern or language. Not necessarily something as obvious as ending them all with -um, but perhaps just making them all sound like they're in the same language. I think that would add a bit to the RPG element.

As for deciding how they're named, I don't really care.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Sorry I missed this...see my post in the Citizen Right's thread about how this should work;

If we have a 'citizen databank' thread or something, citizens can post names for units/cities. Then, like some previous DGs, we should have an office (elected for life), who keeps track of what names have been used, etc. Just go in order of who posted in the thread, then loop back to the beginning if necessary. Hopefully this would eliminate some names from people that sign up and never come back...

Name units + cities (is there really anything else to name??). Maybe we could also let governors/mayors name things within their cities/province's radius (Civ4 has the ability to label things, right?).

 

[Chieftess]

Some things to note before you get all disappointed.

1 - Units can't be named.
EDIT: Ok, so they can. I guess this one was of the last minute beta additions that I didn't notice.
2 - Labels and lines aren't saved into the game data. They're good for screenshots though, like pointing out where a significant battle (or battles) took place.

Also, pressing "Shift-Printscreen" allows you to save the screenshot as a jpg, making screenshots much easier.

 

[DaveShack]

Some things to note before you get all disappointed.

1 - Units can't be named.
EDIT: Ok, so they can. I guess this one was of the last minute beta additions that I didn't notice.
2 - Labels and lines aren't saved into the game data. They're good for screenshots though, like pointing out where a significant battle (or battles) took place.

Also, pressing "Shift-Printscreen" allows you to save the screenshot as a jpg, making screenshots much easier.

Wow, something that Chieftess doesn't know? Don't see that too often.

Units can indeed be renamed. Select a unit, and then click the unit type in the info box on the lower left corner of the screen. A popup opens to put in a new name. Shift-printscreen lets you name the jpg file, just printscreen also takes a screenshot with the default naming convention. Unfortunately the input box that shift-printscreen opens stays on top of the window you're trying to take the picture of.

 

[Chieftess]

I've already told Firaxis about that bug.

 

[Alphawolf]

Did the patch stop the signs from disappearing or do they still disappear when you load? Also a random question: does any one know how to download the patch onto a disk; my gaming computer is not hooked up to the Internet.

-the Wolf

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Alphawolf:

(1) The signs and lines still disappear when you load a saved game you made them in.

(2) Just download the patch online, burn it to a CD / floppy, and put it on your gaming computer. You can find online mirrors on the CivFanatics homepage.

 

[Blkbird]

My suggestions:

1. Use default names for cities. Civ does a pretty good job to make (somewhat) historically reasonable suggestion.

2. Do not rename newly acquired cities. There isn't any need for that.

3. Name worker units using simple alpha-numerics, like "Worker Moscow A", "Work Boat New York 2".

4. Name other units we produce after significant events (including reference to the Real World, like naming the first settler we send on a ship towards a newly discovered continent Columbus) and/or geographical features and give the naming authority to the city which produced the unit. Let the governer nominate a few names (at least three nomination) for the residents of the city to vote on. The vote should start shortly before the unit is about to complete, so the unit receives its name in time when it's "born".

5. Let captured and given (if that ever happens - I sure doubt it) units be named by the global citizenship upon nomination by the central government. We should also discuss if we want to "discriminate" formerly foreign units in their naming patterns.

I very much dislike the idea of letting single citizens name units in turn. But in case we decide to go that way, we need some guidelines. I don't want to see a Panzer named "Hitler" or a Knight named "Britney Spears" running around.

 

[RoboPig]

i think we should use
1.Events
2. Location
3. Hon. Citizens

For renaming captured cities we should just rename it Colonial whatever. Thats what i do

 

[Nobody]

i think we should have a system (either random from the registry or leaders ect) but also have a system where we can name it after events. If it goes anything like a civ3 demogame we will have a million cities and naming each after ingame events or terrain will get hard. (Hillcity 1, hill city2...........hillsburg22334)

 

[Man'O'Action]

I definitly think we should be renaming anything and everything. This game is going to move along fairly slow and for the average citizen just living somewhere in the empire, it would be nice to see a Knight or a Worker named after your noble city.

I think however the rules should be done on a case by case basis.

 

[Stilgar08]

I consider this issue as not being that important but I like to rename things, as well. The case-by-case basis is a good thing, IMO.

Many good suggestions were made here already. So here's my approach:

- conquered cities (wether by culture or force):

poll about renaming the city yes/no (this way you might don't have the necessity to vote collect name-suggestions for every city (I'm sure if we conquer Paris, New York, London, Berlin we don't necessarily want to name it differently) - if yes: collecting of suggestions - poll about selected suggestions (maybe selected by the governor of the new city) - every citizen has a vote, inhabitants of the city count twice (good idea??? - I don't know... We should definitely limit the ability to move in and out just to push votes for certain cities... What do you think?)

units: Everytime a unit gets created or conquered there should be made suggestions for the name and then it should be polled just like cities. Equal votes for everyone here, IMO. Maybe workers should be kept out of this and just be numbered. I know this will create a time-lag between naming and creation. Until polling is done the unit should be named after the city of production (e.g. given here for Karakorum) or the civ from where we got the unit from (e.g. "worker-Spain-1" and so on) like this: "warrior-Karakorum" "warrior-Karakorum2" and so on. This will clarify as well, which unit we vote about then: "poll about renaming warrior-Karakorum2" and so on.

When it comes to an important battle or when a unit is serving in a dedicated spot (closing a bottleneck or blocking a certain passage) citizens/the government/a citizen-group (whoever!) can suggest to rename the unit in remembrance of this glorius fight. Result: poll about the name with one option for keeping the old name!

sites, interesting geographical things like massive goldsources in connected hills or mountains and passages: Did I undertstand that right? When we put signs on these (you can see them from the strategic/glaobal view) they don't get saved and we loose them after reloading??? That would be BULL****! :shakehead If not: The DP OR secretary of war (when explored by a unit) OR the secretary of foreign affairs (when explored by LOS due to same religion) can suggest to name this special place, sugestions from others can be taken and so on... If these signs don't get saved then let's not bother about naming mountains, landsides or straits and coastlines (would be a pity...)

What do you think? Too much voting? You don't have to participate in naming-polls if you consider them not being important, so I don't think it's too much! We could put up a naming-polls sub-forum for this...