Spatzimaus
Mad Scientist
From a discussion in Sullla's walkthrough in the general forum:
There are currently, IMO, two major drawbacks to the Civ4 Diplomatic Victory.
1> It distributes votes purely on the basis of population and territory. This completely favors the aggressive warmonger civ over the small, builder civ. Besides not reflecting reality (China doesn't have far more power in the U.N. than the U.S. does, not to mention the U.K., France, or Germany), it also means that once a civ has 40% of the land it can't lose diplomatically.
2> It completely neuters the Domination Victory. Once the U.N. has been built, any civ going for a Domination would simply find it easier to vote themselves into a win. Once you have 60% of the land, you don't need any sort of diplomacy to win the Diplomatic.
While I don't want to go back to Civ3's one-vote-one-civ system, something in-between would be nice. One suggestion was to change from straight population/territory to Score, which would include things like culture, but IMO that's not enough. I want to change how the U.N. gives votes entirely, to give fewer votes to the massive empires and more to the small culture-heavy civs that have kept on good terms with everyone else.
Each civ would get a number of Diplomacy Points (DP) based on many factors. The factors I have so far:
3 points per non-angry population
-5 for each point of net unhealthiness in each city
1 point per tile within your borders, +1 if it's got a resource of any kind
100 points per Holy City
25 points per World Wonder
+100 points for the person who built the U.N. itself
5 points per technology you possess
1 point per 3 GP/turn you get from trade routes
1 point per city improvement
1 point per 200 culture accumulated to date
5 points per relationship point you have with each other civ. (This can be positive or negative. Add your points for all other civs together.)
-25 points for each civ you're at war with (on top of the above)
-50 for each civ you've eliminated
-200 if you ever used nukes
+100 if you're currently the U.N. General Secretary
So, the peaceful builder would lose out on population and territory, but would pick up points for all that other stuff. The aggressive civ would have plenty of population and territory, but would lose tons of points for relationship points, wars, and eliminated civs.
Out of a flat 1000 total votes, each civ would get a number of votes based on its fraction of the total DP. You could do it linearly, possibly with a hard cap at an arbitrary level (I'd favor 33.3%). I probably won't do it linearly, though; I'm trying to work out a function that'd asymptotically approach 50%, with it very rare that any civ ever has over 40%.
Anyway, feedback? Remember that "too complicated" isn't really applicable, since this is something that'd happen completely behind the scenes anyway; the player doesn't need to know WHY the game gave him 274 votes, as long as it "feels" about right.
Do most people think the current system works? What other factors would you add in?
There are currently, IMO, two major drawbacks to the Civ4 Diplomatic Victory.
1> It distributes votes purely on the basis of population and territory. This completely favors the aggressive warmonger civ over the small, builder civ. Besides not reflecting reality (China doesn't have far more power in the U.N. than the U.S. does, not to mention the U.K., France, or Germany), it also means that once a civ has 40% of the land it can't lose diplomatically.
2> It completely neuters the Domination Victory. Once the U.N. has been built, any civ going for a Domination would simply find it easier to vote themselves into a win. Once you have 60% of the land, you don't need any sort of diplomacy to win the Diplomatic.
While I don't want to go back to Civ3's one-vote-one-civ system, something in-between would be nice. One suggestion was to change from straight population/territory to Score, which would include things like culture, but IMO that's not enough. I want to change how the U.N. gives votes entirely, to give fewer votes to the massive empires and more to the small culture-heavy civs that have kept on good terms with everyone else.
Each civ would get a number of Diplomacy Points (DP) based on many factors. The factors I have so far:
3 points per non-angry population
-5 for each point of net unhealthiness in each city
1 point per tile within your borders, +1 if it's got a resource of any kind
100 points per Holy City
25 points per World Wonder
+100 points for the person who built the U.N. itself
5 points per technology you possess
1 point per 3 GP/turn you get from trade routes
1 point per city improvement
1 point per 200 culture accumulated to date
5 points per relationship point you have with each other civ. (This can be positive or negative. Add your points for all other civs together.)
-25 points for each civ you're at war with (on top of the above)
-50 for each civ you've eliminated
-200 if you ever used nukes
+100 if you're currently the U.N. General Secretary
So, the peaceful builder would lose out on population and territory, but would pick up points for all that other stuff. The aggressive civ would have plenty of population and territory, but would lose tons of points for relationship points, wars, and eliminated civs.
Out of a flat 1000 total votes, each civ would get a number of votes based on its fraction of the total DP. You could do it linearly, possibly with a hard cap at an arbitrary level (I'd favor 33.3%). I probably won't do it linearly, though; I'm trying to work out a function that'd asymptotically approach 50%, with it very rare that any civ ever has over 40%.
Anyway, feedback? Remember that "too complicated" isn't really applicable, since this is something that'd happen completely behind the scenes anyway; the player doesn't need to know WHY the game gave him 274 votes, as long as it "feels" about right.
Do most people think the current system works? What other factors would you add in?
