New Idea: Always War

Black_Hole

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Jan 4, 2004
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Since it looks like we are playin the Japanese... I thought we could try an "Always at War". For those of you who don't know, this means once you find a civ, you must declare war on them that turn(You can trade with them that one time). You can never be at peace with anyone. :goodjob:

Who wants to play a game like this?
Of course this pretty much eliminates the Foreign Advisor's job :confused:
 
yeh, but think of all of the fun it would be...
especially with our military/religous civ(probably) we could have a pretty fun time...
 
Rik Meleet said:
And the trade-advisors job as well. O.K. not eliminates, but reduce greatly.

As would Foreign Affairs. No need to stop when you meet a civ. Just declare war. :)

Domestic might be reduced somewhat, since you'd ben concentrating on units.
 
I was thinking the exact opposite of Always War.

What about Never War? This is where we play as an honorable nation who will only fight when attacked, and even then can have no more than one ally against our new enemy. This will give our civ a chance to emphasize infrastructure over all else, while still needing to prepare for a possible invasions on all sides. To increase the challenge, we can play on a Pangaea map.
 
My idea gets too little attention to my liking, so I repeat it here.

I think we can gain the most by changing / modding the rules in the editor. But only in a way which lowers the human effectiveness against the AI while not hurting the AI a lot.

random ideas:
- make luxuries appear with techs, for instance with Philosphy. Or perhaps even later: Engineering or perhaps even Economics.
- Make all resources jump around like Iron does.
- Can only form an army if you have 10 cities.
- Barb units: spear and knight.
- Remove cats, cannons, arties and bombers.
- etc.
 
Perhaps we could combine Rik and DZs ideas? I am all for the never war, seeing as (and I have already stated this) a 20k culture or diplo game. The combination of Riks proposed mods would make it more interesting. Expecially the lux tech. The resource jumping would be interesting, seeing as it would need a lot of territory and we would be unable to declare to regain resources. I wonder if anyone would be willing to run a test?

SaaM
 
I like RM's, DZ's, and Stuck's idea all rolled into one. Mod the rules, never war, and a 20k city. What a great game.
 
I made luxuries vanish once in a mod, but that can throw a kink in trading...
 
CT: exactly what we want; uncertainty in trading while the change gives us no extra advantage over the AI.

BTW I've playtested the tech "Luxuries" and it works quiet well. There are no luxuries (visible) in the Ancient Age, thus more temples and higher lux-slider. When I researched luxuries I could see my luxuries, but couldn't trade them; the others still had to have the tech ....



It was annoying when my only dyes-luxury left and never came back. Also my 2nd gems left. The effect wasn't that big, but entertaining enough.

If anyone wants the test-mod, PM me your email address and I'll email it.
 
Why not tie different luxuries to different techs? For example, Gems could require Iron Working, since you could say it is an offshoot of iron production. Spices could come with Navigation, since that was the primary goal of naval exploration in the middle ages. An example list:

Gems: Iron Working
Spices: Navigation (or Map Making, to make them all AA techs)
Ivory: Mathematics (Statue of Zeus)
Furs: Warrior Code (Needed archers to hunt the animals)
Wines: Pottery (amphorae)
Incense: Mysticism
Silk: The Wheel (spinning wheel)
Dyes: Alphabet (Needed ink to write with)

As you can see, I have them all AA techs, which doesn't heavily unbalance the game.

Of course, there's other ways to make interesting mods. Why not require certain units, buildings, and Wonders require other buildings? For example, the Great Library should require the city to have a normal library in it (Yes, this prevents pre-builds). Same with JS Bach's Cathedral and Sistine Chapel, they should both require Cathedrals. Smith's Trading Company should require a bank, Great Lighthouse should require a harbor, Oracle should require a temple, etc. Another possible list:

Great Lighthouse: Harbor
Great Library: Library
Oracle: Temple
Sun Tzu: Barracks
Sistine Chapel: Cathedral
Magellen's Voyage: Harbor
Shakespeare's Theatre: Colosseum
JS Bachs: Cathedral
Newton's University: University
Smith's Trading Company: Bank
Hoover Dam: Hydro Plant
SETI: Research Lab
Temple of Artemis: Temple
Secret Police HQ: Police Station


I realize it's not much of a mod, but it's enough to change certain behavior patterns, such as pre-builds.
 
Kind of reminds me of one of the first mods I started to make, but never finsihed. :) (The only thing was ivory that could be exhausted). Although, this will be for vanilla Civ3, so no SoZ.
 
Very interesting Neuro. And well thought out.
I do have some minor comments:

We are playing Vanila Civ 3, not conquests, so Temple of Artemis and Secret Police HQ are non-existent.

I don't think it will eliminate the prebuilds completely. But we can work on it further. Why not have instead of 1 colosseum for Shakes, have 5 (or 10) ?

I like to have the luxuries pushed back to early Middle Ages or even Late Middle ages. Reason = it will force us to use the slider and build temples ( +cathedral / colosseum). This reduces, in my point of view, the advantage humans have over the AI.
 
We could really tweak things to make this seem interesting. Rik, perhaps we could lower the possibility of luxes jumping around? Maybe that would make things a bit less hectic. And as for tying wonders to buildings, it seems good, but I fear it would confuse the AI too much.
 
Also, we still want to keep the game welcoming for the newcomer. It would be a shame if we successfully managed to pare down our legal ruleset only to find that new citizens have a volume of mods to sift thru to understand the current game.

I know it won't get to that point, but figured I would provide a word of caution nonetheless.
 
At most twice from what I've seen.
 
I don't know about all this talk of luxuries, but I'm certainly against the always war thing. Seems like it would not help the game at all, and sooner or later we'd be using mottos like "War is Peace." On the other hand, no war sounds like we'd get our asses kicked. So I say we take war seriously, and only enter into after a lot of debating, which seems realistic (though only if we're the agressors).
 
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