Regarding "minor civs"

[azzacanth]

An idea I've seen brought up repeatedly on this forum is that of a "minor civ", in other words one that does not play to win, but plays for the sake of realism in the game.

I did a quick scan to see if I could find a post specifically about this idea already and didn't notice one so I am making a new post.

It seems to me that who is a minor civ should be decided on a by game basis one way or another. Maybe even as the game progresses. That way, you can't just assume Rome will be a major player, and the Palouse tribe won't be. Maybe Rome will be content being a backwater nation and someone unexpected will rise to conquer the world (or at least, try). Then in the next game Rome will be building for a cultural win...etc.

I think it would add more interest and challenge if this was randomised or at least to the extent of being based on the game world in some way, rather than pre-set for each civ. Especially if this information was hidden from the player until the end of a given game. Obviously you're going to have some clues when Rome's culture score skyrockets above the rest, or the Palouse are marching across civ after civ crushing them underfoot. I would guess that there would be more subtle ways of making it known too, perhaps even the text mode in diplomacy. (which would be nice if it were more varied in general).



Anyway, feel free to post your minor civ ideas on this thread.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

If you check the threads relating to Barbarians, then you will find that eventually somebody (usually ME ) brings up the Subject of Minor Civs. The way I see it, Minor Civs could effectively replace both barbarians and Goody Huts, and will provide a much greater challenge to players, IMHO. Basically, I think that Minor Civs could work very well if they were done similarly to those in Birth Of the Federation. It would be up to you whether you tried to live peacefully with them, or try to eliminate them, but all the minor civs should have some kind of 'unique ability' which at least makes it worthwhile bringing them into the fold.
As for how they play. Yes they should be non-competitive, but if they are aggressive enough, then they will still try and make your life difficult-also any minor civ will still work hard to protect its interests.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[OLX]

I've been thinking about this for some time. So, here goes...

I was thinking that Minor Civs would only build cities until they expended their list, and usually that list would be less than 15 City Names. Also, they would have benefits if you chose to assimilate them peacefully like Special Units and Improvements.

 

[rbis4rbb]

As kind of spinoff, I really like the idea of "Sattelite states" or tribute states as well. You subjugate them, but do not want to destroy them. So they can act as a buffer state, or pay tribute to you.

 

[Darwin420]

It seems to me that who is a minor civ should be decided on a by game basis one way or another. Maybe even as the game progresses. That way, you can't just assume Rome will be a major player, and the Palouse tribe won't be. Maybe Rome will be content being a backwater nation and someone unexpected will rise to conquer the world (or at least, try). Then in the next game Rome will be building for a cultural win...etc.

I think it would add more interest and challenge if this was randomised or at least to the extent of being based on the game world in some way, rather than pre-set for each civ. Especially if this information was hidden from the player until the end of a given game.

That is a most excellent idea!!

You set up a game with 8 civs and 4 minor civs. You now have a choice, decide what 12 civs will be on the map - but you can elect not to assign the civ to a role as major/minor. (for those control freaks out there, you'd have that option of assigning specific civs to role of major/minor). This way, once you get into the game, it will take quite a while before you can figure out who your real opponents are (against a win, that is).

 

[dh_epic]

>> Why Minor Civs?

I once did a thread about two types of AI -- one that is competitive, and one that is there for realism. The reason you need two types is because competition and realism are diametrically opposed in Civ.

Realism requires you to honor your alliances, be a little bit more favorable to cultures that are similar to you, hold grudges, and declare war for sometimes passionate reasons.

Competition requires you to break alliances, declare war on whoever, make peace with the biggest tyrant (for now), and pick on the weakest link, and declare war in a cold and calculated fashion.

You can see that pure competition gives you Civ 2 -- a bunch of Civs who suddenly grow a hive mind and go after you. Realism contaminates competition. Realism is a form of weakness.

By having two different kinds of AI, you get the best of both worlds. The major players play like psychopaths, and the minor Civs become the pawns that the major players manipulate on the way there.

>> Who Minor Civs?

I don't think you need to create an all new list of "minor Civs", either. Just draw from the overall pool of 32 Civs. Say, four major players (friends or AIs) pick their Civs. Then a few other random minor Civs are thrown into the mix, with a few cities here or there, to give people some interesting characters to interact with.

>> What Can They Do?

As a side note, because minor Civs don't play to win, nobody would mind if they get hit by random crazy or weird events. These events can stimulate worldwide responses.

- A minor Civ gets hit by an earthquake and appeals to other nations for aid
- A plague starts in a minor Civ, and other nations seek to contain it
- A minor Civ is shook by their inability to control local terrorists
- A minor Civ discovers a huge supply of oil, and the major players take notice

Or minor Civs could just play quietly and rationally -- making friends, holding grudges. I'd be cool with this too.

 

[Justy]

This idea I have always thought about. I think that if could be implemented it would be good. I like the whole realism / competition idea. That's good.

I think ideas like puppet states, fiefdoms, city-states, absorbed autonomous regions, breakaway colonies, etc. need to be brought into the game for the sake of variety and realism.

It would certainly bring into play internal politics and spheres of influence. If you look at the real world there are many countries with distinct cultures. Yet, in an average game of Civ by 2005 the whole map is controlled by a handful of civs.

I don't want to dump the idea of world conquest by one civ. Yet, the idea of one culture with every planetary citizen ascribing to that one culture should be tossed. I think that a world domination victory should be more attainable.

Having many civs in the game would dramatically increase the flavor of the game. It would make UN votes much more interesting.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I think the best solution to the Realism/Competition Dualism is to make the rules such that Good Competition leads to Realism.

The idea here would be rules that make the diplomacy (both foreign and domestic) part of the game stronger by always keeping your power low. If a puppet state won't be as hard to suppress, but will tend to more 'peacefully' break off if your power wanes. Or if suddenlly nuking your longstanding ally to remove the obstacle to your final win lead to a full scale seperatist revolt among your native peaceloving populace.... In either of those cases your power is limited but still allows you to win the game.

Diplomatic Wins could become the 'Easiest' way to win for a superpower without necessarily playing for that win.

One other thing that could eliminate the Realism/Competion problem is Voluntary unification... In reality, there is a small benefit to uniting with another 'civ/government' There should also be a competitive reason to do so.. The best I can see is allowing two players to join into one civ, so that they can "share" the victory (and probably the final Victory points as well). This would allow a method of "Diplomatic Conquest" ...

So that the end game could still be 'Dominate or Leave" the world, but Domination could come by Persuading most of the other civs to join your UN World Government. Of course you wouldn't get as many VP as if you had conquered the World and Forced them to Bow the knee, but that would be a whole lot harder (and the total world victory points would be a lot lower due to the massive slaughters of rebels, etc.)

(Essentially, then you would have a Minor Win...sort of like the 'surviving to 2050'..ie you joined the winning team..and a Major win, you have the most VPs of the winning team)

Essentially the game would become a matter of knowing which team to join and when to maximize your score.

You could also have degrees of control like puppet state, etc. where you are partially joined but are 'keeping your options open' so Egypt or India could essentially play a history of the world through.

If a new Civ was formed through a Human and an AI fully joining, the Human would get control, if a Human and Human joined, whoever they agreed to pass it off to, if AI-AI.. it would stay an AI controlled Civ.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

Good idea, but one small problem: Getting lots of points for a victory by conquering the world would encourage warmongering, not to mention that Firaxis has always had the highest points go to the peaceful modes of victory. And, as you said, it would be harder. So why not instead give the diplo stuff the huge number of points--it's harder, it does little to encourage warmongering, and it's a Firaxian tradition.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Perhaps another solution (aside from DH_Epics) is the one I have put forward a few times, which is to have the game end on a different date each game. This way, players take HUGE risks going for a quick win by attacking everything in sight, because this time round the game might go for an extra 40 turns. In another case, a player may hold off from his final domination victory, waiting for the right opportunity, only to have the game end in 3 more turns! Obviously, all games should end a certain number of turns AFTER most-or all-civs have entered the modern age, but with the exact date remaining unknown.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[dh_epic]

Krikkitone, I think me and you are speaking the same language. I don't think that the question of making the AI more realistic is a question of AI at all. It's a question of the fundamental gameplay rules.

Right now, there's no penalty to being a Caesar. Caesar was assassinated by his own friends, and his empire crumbled in 50 "turns"! But the Caesar strategy is untouchable in the Civilization Franchise. So why would you have the AI do anything but play like a Caesar? Keeping allies temporarily, while you conquer each Civilizations one by one, ofen picking on the weakest first. Backstabbing, throwing your resources behind expansionism and military. Why would you do anything else? You'd be foolish to.

The solution to making more realistic gameplay is to make realism profitable -- in a competitive way.

Still, even with minor civs as a band-aid solution to "realism", there are more benefits than just that. They offer you a chance to have dozens of small nations to deal with as pawns. History is much more interesting and complex than superpower versus superpower.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Here was another idea I had about the whole minor civ thing.

1) First, you get to select the general 'amount' of minor civs in your game, from 'None' to 'Very Many', with each one relating to the # of minor civs per culture group represented by the Major Civs.

2) When the players select their civs, they can select either a COMPLETELY random civ, a random civ from a specific Culture Group, or a specific Civ from a specific culture group. The thing is that each culture group will contain a list of not only the current major civs, but also all the 'civs' currently represented by 'goody huts' and 'barbarians'.

3) Once all MAJOR civs are chosen, the computer randomly selects the minor civs based on the culture groups respresented in the game.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Good idea, but one small problem: Getting lots of points for a victory by conquering the world would encourage warmongering, not to mention that Firaxis has always had the highest points go to the peaceful modes of victory. And, as you said, it would be harder. So why not instead give the diplo stuff the huge number of points--it's harder, it does little to encourage warmongering, and it's a Firaxian tradition.

The idea is that pure warmongering wins should be much harder and involve alot fewer 'Total' Points (because it would probably involve eliminating others and recolonizing rather than conquering..conquering being a political act not a military one) but you would get all of them (because no one joined you)

After all if you look at some of the biggest empires...(British/Spanish/Mongol) they did not successfully conquer...they all fell apart from the inside out.

long term politically stable territorial acquisition is usually achieved through slaughter and recolonization... or moving in to the area entirely and giving up your original homeland.

PS I'm talking about the general score points, not the bonus for winning the game in a particular way.

The idea is that this would help things like a diplomatic win in that it could give you a Reason to vote for someone else as a leader of the UN (essentially ending the game at the UN could be considered everyone merging into one civ..with a point bonus for the 'Winner'...and another bonus for everyone who voted for the winner) Which means the person voted to 'lead the world' might not be the winner of the game if they didn't have enough other points.

This would allow a Diplomatic Win in a highly multiplayer game and would provide a more rational method of AI voting (if they were instructed to maximize relative points...ie vote for UN leader and have a showing even if not a win, or keep the world warring and probably be eliminated... or be left out of a UN vote and not get that bonus).

Going along with this is the idea that "Winning" the game should be hard. Probably the best way to make this point the the Civ slogan :
build an empire to stand the test of time.
Conquering..or even UNing the world should be nearly impossible on most difficulty levels for Any player human or AI...
Truly winning should lie in staying strong throughout the game (as survival should actually be relatively easy..because truly eliminating someone should be highly inefficient)

 

[dh_epic]

As a side note, diplomatic victory really sucks. I could phrase it more eloquently to convince other people, but I think most people already agree with me.

Part of me thinks that diplomatic victory should be overhauled completely -- something different from a UN vote. But minor civs offers a new hope. If there are lots of civs lying around who are not playing competitively, and you can have good relations with a lot of them, UN victory almost seems fun.

 

[mhIdA]

I agree with a minor civs, but in a certain way.
The minor or major could be seleted at beginin of game. We choose the number of major and minor civs. By this systems the AI play to maintain the pre-selected minor civs as minor. But I prefer another way.
In that, we only choose the total of civs or civs itself. So as game evolve the civs are become minor or major, and the distinction is given by certain conditions. Number of cities, size of cities, # of techs discovery, government type, and so on. This cconditions could vary from era to era or still the same entire game. So a civ could stay as major entire game if fullfill the conditions to that or stay as minor if don't fiil them or change between major and minor during the game, since fullfill or not the conditions, respectivelly. What determines the conditions and therefore the more or less expansion and growth of a civ is tied to geography, geology (a feature I'd like in cIV), clima, culture, religion, government type.
How we know if a civ is minor or major could be in High Score Screen. If a civ change from major to minor disappear from High Score Screen, but if change from minor to major it appears. Of course the way score is calculate could vary from era to era and a civ could have 1000 score points but if change to minor and latelly appear again as major could be 800 or 1100, it depends they're situation at a time. The calculation to determine who is major or minor could be in every 20 turns.

 

[crimson238]

I think that if you were going to do minor civs, then they should simply get a city where the barbarians camps/goody huts are. Their city's cultureal bourders adn expand, and they can produce units. Thy don't really research technology, but have al lthe technology which is shared amoungst 3 major civs (kind've like a GL.. and it keeps them competitive.) They can trade, make alliances/treties/ect as well as control and consume resources. Also, they can expand through conquest and build workers to improve their terrain ect... If they do happen to expand through conquest they can produce a specilized settler unit, whose point value is higher than a regular settler unit. But, here's the kicker, if/as they expand through conquest, as part of a military campaign, each conqured city decreased the cost of the settlers/worker units by some percentage (5% maybe.. Firaxis would havbe to play around with the # to figure out what is balanced and it hsould bbe tied to map size and an average # for for ammount of cities.) Thus, this allows minor civs to become major civs. Just a thought.

 

[mhIdA]

kikkritone
Joining a group of civs in a cultural, religion, geography basis, something like pan-slavism, pan-arabism or European Union, is a feature I'll like to see, but this is quite diferent of regional blocks like EEC, Mercosul, NAFTA, NATO, COMECON, WARSAW Pact more tied to economy, militar or governmental type. Of course the first are in some how a consequency of first but the premisses are diferent.

 

[dh_epic]

I'm with crimson238 on minor civs. They should ultimately replace barbarians and goodie huts. And the AI doesn't need to be sophisticated, because the player isn't competing with them. You give the minor civs 'cheats' to keep them relevent, but they don't cheat so much that the player is constantly falling behind a minor civ, or harassed by a minor civ. A minor civ would probably get conquered by a player pretty quick.

Although crimson238 is right. If a minor civ, by some luck, manages to get even 4 cities, the AI should switch gears to something more competitive and "real".

 

[mhIdA]

I'm in complete favour of a dinamic system of minor civs in sense that a major civs still in that major if have the requirements for that, and if not change to minor civ. The requirements changed from era to era. Also disagree that they replace barbs. The world is full of people: barbs, minor civs, major civs, regional powers, superpowers, hiperpowers, why left this behind? I wonder a world full of people and gradually evolve fallow this path: camps => villages => towns => cities => => metropolis. Each kind of urban center need more vital space than the precedent and is an atraction to them. So as higher level of urban center grow the lower levels of urben centers fall in population. I thik this a way to apply the urbanization trought out history.

 

[ivanof]

Just pointing out that if You would start the game off with minor civ's it would be technically unfair. It wouldn't give everyone even the remote chance of becomeing a major civ. So maybe it could be decided that lets say you have 12 civs on the map and by the time 3 civs reach medieval age, the 4 most backward nations are instantly made into minor civs.

It's basicly still be more fair. And incase they can somehow regain them selves, then by the end of the next era for 3 civs, again thae 4 most backward ones become minor civs and the previous ones might become major ones.

But basically, There should be more minor civs at all times, because frankly, there are more of those. Count the minor nations in the world. You'd get a whole lot more then the major ones.

But you could also incorporate the new Cultural Spreading Model that in one part states that civs could fight their way out of the other, larger one. It isn't very efficient in civ 3. Because Estonia (my homeland "Minor civ") was under forreign rule for 800 years and wasn't united before that either. We regained a nation in 1918 after 60 years of cultural racing. You couldn't do that in civ 3.