Possible new civilization game: make our own!

[Ward]

Also, I'd like that unique technological advances (represented by UUs in Civ3) should be transferable, if you conquer a major part of that civ. I just conquered China and Korea as the Mongols, and I think it would be more realistic if I could build Hwacha's when I come around to that, too.

I also think that idea of technology and UU transfer is excellent. You have conquered a nation and assuming that you didn't raze all the cities, then you should have access to their scientists and technology. Therefore whatever their knowledge base should be yours also.

 

[Graceheart the Leopard]

.
And the idea with countries evolving later in time (best example: US evolving from British colonies) is good, too. If it's too complicated to implement this in the game (I think it is), you could do it like this: If, let's say, the Germans conquer Italy, the Italian citizens will be more and more assimilated, but they'll remain Italians for a long time (especially if the Italian civ was big at some point in the game); and if the German civ goes through a phase of weakness, Italians could revolt and re-erect an Italian civ. This way, beaten civs may come back.

I believe that played a major part for Rhye's and Fall of Civilization for Civ 4. However, this could be a wonderful idea for this game, though.

 

[Steph]

I was thinking of something similar.

When you conquer a civilization, you get "subjugate" it.

The cities keep their citizens, and you can build local unit here.

The overlord decide what to built... But there is a chance the subjugated civ revolts, gain independance, and then they would have units ready.

Exemple: Rome conquers Gauls and subjugate it. In Gaul city, the Roman can only build Gaul units.

Then, the Romans decide to attack Germany. They have two options :
- They build Roman units only, and use them to garrison Roman cities, Gaul cities, and attack Germany. Or they consider it would put too much stress on their manpower resource, and they decide to raise Gaul units in Gaul cities.

Problem: if Gaul decide to revolts, then the Gaul units would side with them... And Romans are in big troubles.

Moreover, it could be possible that the subjugate civ keeps some controls. For instance, the Gaul would fight battle independantly.

Imagine if Gaul and Rome are both player controlled civ. Rome attacks Germany. A battle with Roman and Gaul units are attacking the Germans. Right in the middle of the battle, the Gaul player decide to attack the Roman units from the back.

 

[Ondskan]

Sounds awesome.


Just please don't get in over your head...

 

[Steph]

To keep things reallistic, my initial goals are:

- Map with different coasts, vegetation, relief and base terrain : done at 75%.
- Movement of units, and small tactical battles. Units will fight in formation of 12 sprites max, and for the moment it will be just for cosmetic purpose, like in CIV. Formations will have no game effect (except some sprites will "die" when you lose HP).
- Units will have weapons (bow, sword) and protections (shields, armor, helmet, etc) that can be define independantly.
- Range weapons will require ammunition.
- In battle, units can fight range attack, melee, charge...
- Morale will have an importance in battle: units can flee and rout.

That's all for the moment. Once this work, I'll see what will be the next step.

 

[Ward]

Steph,
I was working on some buildings and wondering if it was possible to name buildings like you can units. In that way, it would be possible also to also build multiple buildings of the same type. For example: Doctor office. Name one Doctor Smith, then when the town/city had the need and money to have another Doctor in town, build a second Doctor Office to service the town/city. Obviously the costs would have to be there to support the office, but the health of the community would be better off with both Doctor Smith and now Doctor Jones practicing medicine.

 

[Babylon746]

I've got an idea. Don't know if anyone else has thought about this before:
A city gets experience in building the same type of units. Example: If you build your first battleship, it costs 200 shields. Building the second in the same city gives a small discount (let's say 5% = 10 shields). This shouldn't go on forever (probably a maximal discount of 30-50%), as the unit would get almost free at last, but building battleships in 2-3 turns instead of 4-6 turns may give you an advantage. Also, you would protect your "specialized" cities more than you would without this specialization.

 

[Steph]

I think you are the first to state this idea here, but it's already planned for Heart of Iron 3 (see their developpers diary ).

 

[Ondskan]

May I ask on how the progress is?
I say this alot and I usually end up dropping out in the middle of it but at least some work gets done; If you want I could help you a bit with the graphical part or the historic part or such.



What I'm afraid of most is actually not making the game to complex that it takes to long to complete though but making it to complex for an AI to work well with it.
But please keep us updated, I wish you the best of luck!

 

[Steph]

About progress:
- I have worked on the map. Coast are half way done, vegetation, rivers and some mountains have been added. I'm waiting for more graphics to go further. But it's startign to work.

- After some discussion, we start to have some good idea of how the movement and the battles will work. I should start programming it today.

 

[nick0515]

Not sure quite how this would work but some kind of mechinism for supporting smaller civs or vassals if that can be implimented. Eg. you can supply them with weapons that enable them to build better units, without actually trading them the resource. So they could build only as many of that units as the amount of weapons you supplied to them. Or give their units training to make them better. Also if food plays a part you should be able to give them food.

If that is to complicated then you should be able to trade/give your own miliray units to another civ.

Build airfields in other civs territories. These should be capturable.

Unigue/hero units that can only be built once, but can be upgraded. I think Vuldacon already asked for this.

Units should be completely flexible in the editor. Ie you should be able to give any unit trait to and kind of unit. I recently tried to give enslave to a cruise missile unit and it doesn't work. There should be no limit on what units you can create other than the limits of what the game can physically do. Useful if you want to create fantasy type scenarios.

Expand diplomacy as much as the AI can handle.
-Vassalage
-Ceasefires for an agreed number of turns
-Peace treaty, on grounds the other civ pays you tribute for certain amount of turns
-You shouldn't be able to go to war with a civ that another civ you are allied with is allied with without breaking your alliance. Did that make sense?

Naval combat should be different to the civ land combat of just running your boat into the other boat and hoping for the best. The naval combat should be bombarding the other ship only, with the possibility of the combat lasting more than one turn if neither ship is completely destroyed. Actually that last bit should apply to land battles to.

Units belonging to different civs should be able to occupy the same square, like in civ 4, if you aren't at war. However, you should be able to set your units to not allow any units to pass if you choose, or to only allow the units of vassals and allies to pass through the square your unit occupies.

All terrain buildins should be unique to the civ/culture group they belong to. Should be more terrain buildings. Eg. Walls, trenches, bridges etc. Speaking of bridges, boats should be able to move up and down them if possible. You could have different sizes of river, so that the smallest ones are too small for any boat. The size of the river should determine what size of boat can sale on it. Eg only massive rivers can be sailed on by an aircraft carrier. Depth of the river could onlso be a factor.

When areas of your territory are conquered, perhaps resistence movements could arrise sometimes, controlled by the AI. However, you should be able to contact this resistence movement, provide them with add and coordinate your attacks with them.

Unit production in a city should be linked to the buildings the city has as well as what resources it has access to.

I love the what you said about tech research Steph sounds much better than the Civ mechanic. I think your research should be somewhat blind and progress differently depending on what resources you have discovered.

Unfortunately I have no skills in programming or graphic design, but I would like to contribute to this project in any way I can. I love civ 3 but I think we can go a lot further than the scope of civ 3. And by we I mean you!

Keep up the good work!!

 

[Steph]

Some updates

Sample of multisprite units.

And a glimpse at the editor

This is the opportunity to explain the concept of "class".

In the editor, you have the possibilty to edit different "classes". In the screenshot above, it is the "Unit" class.

There will be several list of classes. Like "Unit", "Terrain", "Weapons", etc.

In each list, you can add, delete or edit classes, and each class can have several subclasses.

So in my example, I have created two unit classes, and the cavalry class has two subclasses.

Then, some attributes of objects can be defined against a class, or a subclass.

For instance, you can decide that the Elephant unit will have a bonus against all cavalry unit (ie against the unit class named "cavalry"), and you could decide the pikeman unit has a bonus of +50% against the cavalry class, but -25% against the horse archer subclass.

The important point is that classes and subclasses can be added or deleted easily and with no limit.

So it's easy to make units with bonus vs submarine, or vs cavalry, or dwarves with a bonus against Orc...

Or to decide that the movement cost for "infantry" class will be 3 when in mountain, but only "2" for the "alpine troops" subclass.

 

[nick0515]

Exceptional. This 'classes' aspect will make your game infinitely more strategic than Civ 3. You don't really need this thread Steph. Your ideas are already so far ahead of what most people are thinking of. The things you seem to be planning go so far beyond my wildest dreams. If your project comes to fruition I'll be a happy, happy man.

 

[nick0515]

After sleeping on it I realised a couple of things.

First you can already do this, "Peace treaty, on grounds the other civ pays you tribute for certain amount of turns" in civ 3. Sorry wasn't thinking.

Second having rivers that boats can sail on could be difficult to represent given the scale of the terrain we are dealing with. There must be many other diplomatic options that could be implemented. I can't think of many now, but...
- Ask another civ to join your religion.
- Ask them to end their war with another civ.
- Ask and allied civ to allie with another civ
-etc etc

 

[Vuldacon]

Steph... If this has not already been mentioned, I would like to see the ability to have Air Defense Separate for Cities and individual Units so the Air Defense Flag could be set for Units as a separate animation. As it is now, the SAM is the only Air Defense improvement and it uses silos and Missiles, which just will not work for individual Units as the animation for Air Defense. Many Other animations could be made if there was a separate animation used for each situation.

 

[QXZJ16]

Maybe you could do something about the concentration of your ground forces, like having an infantry holed up in a fortress or spread out across a field. Or having certain units gain more bonus from certain terrain features; an archer gets a bonus from shooting down from a fortress, and a horse unit gets a bonus for charging across a grassland. This could be acheived by tweaking terrain bonuses for each unit class, maybe. Just a suggestion.

 

[Steph]

Steph... If this has not already been mentioned, I would like to see the ability to have Air Defense Separate for Cities and individual Units so the Air Defense Flag could be set for Units as a separate animation. As it is now, the SAM is the only Air Defense improvement and it uses silos and Missiles, which just will not work for individual Units as the animation for Air Defense. Many Other animations could be made if there was a separate animation used for each situation.

I plan to implement a "weapon" system, with possibly different animation for each weapon.

So with a battleship, you could have different anim if you use broadside guns against another ship, if you bombard with a cruise missile, or if you use AA guns or AA missiles.

 

[Steph]

Maybe you could do something about the concentration of your ground forces, like having an infantry holed up in a fortress or spread out across a field. Or having certain units gain more bonus from certain terrain features; an archer gets a bonus from shooting down from a fortress, and a horse unit gets a bonus for charging across a grassland. This could be acheived by tweaking terrain bonuses for each unit class, maybe. Just a suggestion.

Actually, I plan to do it in several ways:
- A terrain will have some base effect vs a unit class (ex: Wood = 50% speed reductionfor cavalry, 25% for infantry, 25% combat bonus for infantry, -25% for cavalry)
- A unit "template" can have a bonus vs a class of terrain (ex: Alpine troops = +25% in mountainous terrain)
- A specific unit can gain experience in a terrain. So if a unit fight a lot in woodlands, it will get a "woodland specialization". A bit like the promotions in CIV, except it will ge bain automatically from actual experience, not something you can just buy. I dislike the fact you can get a "forest bonus" if you never see a forest in the unit life and fought only in desert.

 

[Vuldacon]

This is Very Good Steph... I am not sure if you mean you plan to set up where an animation will play for the actions of Units or if they will be as the Flcs in the "Animations" CIV Folder that are used for Special actions such as SAMs.
IF you plan to use the same type of animations, I am just saying that it would be Great to be able to set Air Defense for a single Unit with a Different animation that Plays for it than plays for a City with a SAM.

One of the Problems with setting Air Defense for a Unit is that the Unit does nothing when the animation is played. This is the same for Cities because the animation is suppose to be the SAMs.

Because we cannot have the Individual Units animated when the Air Defense animation plays, the Air Defense animation should be something that Guards the Unit such as a Laser Satellite so the action appears OK without the Unit doing anything.

I made a Sound of Rifle Fire for the Air Defense and set Blank Flcs for use. The Blank Flcs just allow timing for the sound without showing an animation. This works ok for individual Ground Units but it causes one to wonder Who or what is doing the Shooting... so Air Defense for individual Units is Tough.
Generally this is set for Special Units that were made for Air Defense but there are MODs where a Normal Ground Unit could use Air Defense.

 

[Steph]

The good thing when making our own game, is we can make it how we want .

Unfortunately, due to a death in my familly (my sister in law), I have to leave for my brother's place tomorrow, so that's a few days were I won't be able to work on the project as I planned.

But next week my wife will be travelling, so I'll be alone in the evening and I'll probably use the opportunity to move forward on the battles.