Wow, k, only six posts and you've already made a huge, developed argument. I imagine these ideas are more Civ V than anything else (even the most seasoned modder would have trouble incorporating and balancing everything), but that's what this forum's for. Okay, lemme try and tackle this:
kkkk29 said:
I agree that religion should be independent of the tech tree. In general, the game is too dependent on the tech tree. This makes the game too dependent on early game play (the premature climax problem), and specifically, the early game acquisition of land (land based economy problem).
I think you echo almost everyone who's played civ when you say that the early game is too important. The main problem here is that people who get ahead in the early game have more cities, more land, and therefore more research, troops, and the opportunity to spend some time on wonders (and eventually SS parts) in specialized cities. The only way to fix this is to make both early expansion AND holding a large late-game empire less viable. Civ IV succeeds in the latter with maintenance, but the latter remains unresolved since cities eventually become self-sustaining. Imperialism is better in the long run: Once you get past the early commerce hits, you make money in the long run (and ensure your opponents lose money).
A new religion can be a major boost for a struggling civilization, and historically, this is probably not too far off base. Ideas such as religion do not necessarily come from highly advanced civilizations. Revolutionary ideas, such as a new religion, are often discovered in times of strife, in depressed places. If religions are always discovered via the tech tree, then religion only serves to further the imbalance problems of premature climax and land based economy by giving the most advanced and powerful civilizations a bigger advantage. (Technological advancement comes from having a lot of land, which was acquired early in the game.)
Good. If religions could be acquired by weaker civilizations and were more important, that would go a long way towards giving the little guy a chance to fight back. As of right now, the imperialists are not only more likely to found a religion in the first place but also can simply take the Holy City from the little guys, getting all the bonuses as though they had founded it on their own. The latter problem would be best fixed by giving bonuses not just for controlling the Holy City but more importantly for founding the religion in the first place. That way, there would be more incentive to found the religion on your own.
But how to solve the former problem, the fact that large empires will probably found the religion on their own? As you pointed out, bigger empires will spend more on research, allowing them to get the religion first. The only way to fix this would be to somehow ensure that weaker civs would be more likely to get the religion. An RNG weighted towards the little guy is extremely arbitrary, so the only logical solution is to make the religious prospectors go out of their way to found a religion in a manner that would be detrimental in other circumstances but is quite valuable in dire straights.
I have two solutions to help with this issue. First, I think the tech tree needs to be redone. Second, the way resources are derived from land and traded between civilizations needs to be altered to provide balance between development and expansion.
Alright, let's see what implementation you suggest:
Tech Tree
A solution I propose for the tech tree is to bifurcate the tech tree into a "knowledge" tree and an "innovation" tree. The knowledge tree would be similar to the existing tech tree except that advancement would not give a civilization any new buildings or units or tradable goods, and advancements would not be directly tradable. However, knowledge tree advancements would indirectly spread to/from civilizations that have diplomatic relations, and spread faster for civilizations with trade relations (similar to the way current religion might spread but it won’t be city specific).
I see. So, you are suggesting that everyone on the same continent advance at roughly the same rate, with research incentives given by the fact that getting a tech first gives you a head start on innovation. Assuming it were done properly, and the head start was significant enough to warrant spending your hard-earned money, this would go a long way towards keeping some people from being left behind as their neighbors speed off into the future. So long as the designers were careful to discourage "tech parasitism" by making the head start long enough that the first researcher would get a nice advantage, this would work great! The only downside is that imperialists still get the advantage: More cities means more research means faster innovation.
I'd assume that religions would be located somewhere far down the innovation tree, so that imperialists would ignore it while weaker nations, who actually need it, would be more interested. Careful, though, that you somehow account for the effects of active denial (that is, imperialists going out of their way to develop religions simply to make sure that none of the little guys is able to get it). Weakening the effects of religion on large empires is insufficient, as denying a bonus to an enemy is still effective, even if you get no bonus yourself. Perhaps new religions could actually be
detrimental to large empires (new ideas stir up dissent and discord among your complacent sheep). Perhaps even going down philosophical trees in the first place could make the citizens question their government and harm large empires, making each step towards a new religion another blow to the government of large empires. This would even give the little guys a weapon of their own: Prosteltyzing their neighbors, harming strong opponents and forming a bond with weaker ones. Caution must be taken, however, to ensure that imperialists don't simply quash weaker neighbors in a pre-emptive anti-religion strike.
(minor nitpick: I'd recommend different names for the different types of research instead of "knowledge" and "innovation," since large, generalized concepts are certainly innovative and more specific implementation certainly demonstrates knowledge. Perhaps "concepts" and "implementation," respectively, or maybe "science" and "engineering," which would also imply separate spending)
Further, trade benefits would be greater for civilizations with similar advancement in the knowledge tree. In other words, an advanced civilization that makes cars can’t sell cars to a civilization that has not learned about machinery. Also, the advanced civilization would have little benefit buying bead necklaces from the civilization that does not know about machinery. However, over time, with peaceful diplomatic relations, the benefits of trade could grow between these two civilizations. Two civilizations that already know about cars can trade all levels of goods between each other.
A bit of a digression, but it does make sense. Of course, since knowledge spreads naturally in this model, people will probably only have a knowledge disparity if they have just discovered a new continent (or if one guy sprints hell-bent-for-leather towards a certain knowledge, bypassing all the implementation to get a particular item far down the tree).
The innovation tree, however, would be the way knowledge is converted to a useful technology.
[snip]
Some countries have innovated on their own and can build a bomb, but most of the others that know about fission can’t build a bomb. Iran, for example, is a country with knowledge of nuclear fission and is currently trying to innovate.
I've already gone ahead of myself. The big question is how this thwarts the imperialists. I've mentioned that, religiously, innovation could be dangerous for large empires as a balancing factor, but for everything else it simply creates several different, unique civs. Granted, it makes things less predictable as a large "rock" civ could suddenly find himself surrounded by "paper" civs (to use a severely abused but still effective analogy; indeed, surrounding civs would have a vested interest in becoming "paper" civs), but still oversized juggernauts would be able to research more innovation and end the end wind up stronger. Even if other civs can stop imperialists by researching innovations that counter the innovations of the bullies, the bullies still have the initiative and can even, in essence, steer the research of lesser civs.
Furthermore, while knowledge never becomes obsolete because it always leads to more knowledge, innovations should become obsolete. This will lead to an interesting balance in the game. A civilization with an advanced level of knowledge will need to invest resources in innovation to get any benefit from its knowledge level. However, by investing resources in innovation, it is trading against its ability to further advancement. Also, a small civilization that has minimal advancement in either knowledge or innovation can emerge later in the game by developing a new innovation and reaping the rewards (until those rewards become obsolete too).
I presume this is the answer to stopping the imperialists: They rush down the tree and get nifty knowledge while the guy behind them grabs the cool innovation that advanced imperialists can no longer get (like religion, I presume?). The obvious downside, though, is that the weaker civs are likely to get the advanced knowledge that cuts off the innovation spread to them naturally.
Finally, innovation should not be the only option for a civilization to reap the rewards of knowledge. Trade should be the other way. For example, a civilization may have knowledge of gunpowder but choose not to innovate in guns because there is a different civilization that has better innovation in guns and is willing to trade them. This is also a benefit to the civilization trading guns at it will receive a bigger economic benefit.
And, innovation should have multiple levels. For example, knowledge = Gunpowder; innovation = Guns I, II, II, etc with each level leading to stronger infantry. If there was a technology that made Guns obsolete, let’s says Laser Ray Guns for the sake of example, then the Guns I, II, II branch will become obsolete.
Ah, but won't the imperialists be the ones who've gotten the head start and all that tasty innovation?
Land Resources
It is absurd that an undeveloped grassland square yields the same amount of food as a plains square with a farm. It is also absurd that a farm in 3000 BC yields the same amount of food as a farm in 1000 AD. And, again, it is absurd that a large city in 1975 AD depends solely on the food and shields produced within two squares of it. These absurdities need to be addressed.
Technically, each farm supports more people in the late game due to the "population inflation" that occurs, but I see your points.
First, there is not enough emphasis on development of the land. There is no way an undeveloped square should produce the same as a developed square, regardless of terrain type. Because development is underemphasized, the only way to expand is to get more land. Furthermore, the more a land square is developed, the more it should yield (both food and shields). I propose that zero food and zero shields come from a square unless it is developed.
Severe restrictions would have to be placed on Workers to ensure that the imperialists find improving all their terrain difficult. Also, wouldn't it be bad if all your Workers died and your land was pillaged? That'd put you down for good, I imagine. To make this work, the concept of improving land would have to be changed.
One other advantage I've noticed: If it were simpler for smaller civs to improve all their land, it would create an incentive to break your civ into smaller substates. Perhaps these "sub-states" would break away from larger states when unhappy, causing larger civs to suffer greatly. Granted, the loss of some pathetic backwater province hardly seems a downside, but it could also cause chain reactions, making other sub-states more likely to break away and certainly causing unhappiness all the way to the core. Reckless expansionism would lead to revolution and collapse, just as in real life.
Second, land development output does not improve with technology. Therefore a civilization that did not gain a lot of land early in the game is unable to improve itself without warring to get more land. And, war is more difficult because its resources are limited due to the lack of enough land to support a large army. Here, the land based economy problem is linked to the premature climax problem. As knowledge and innovation advancements are made, the output of developed land should and must continue to improve. Having one output increase at the discovery of Biology is not enough to prevent a Malthusian economic situation and an uninteresting late game.
This would certainly help with early-game imperialists who suddenly find that all the resources they've been expending on armies may have been better spent on improving land. Still, if the gambit is successful, they could research better technology and improve their land, but that's why it's called a "gambit." We don't want to discourage expansionism entirely, after all.
Third, a civilization needs large, strong cities to prosper in the game. However, cities are too limited by the squares in the city radius. Early in history, it makes sense to limit a city to a small radius. However, as knowledge and innovation advancement in transport and communication are made, a city should be able to draw resources from greater distances. How else can any modern city exist? New York City probably draws over 99% of its food from distances greater than a 2 square radius.
Furthermore, food needs to become a tradable good. Currently, food can be traded such that it benefits health and provides a minor increase to the food that supports population. But, in addition to these effects, trading raw food to support significantly large populations needs to be incorporated. This will allow cities to develop in locations significant to trade or military strategy even though it may not have arable land (such as Singapore).
This would create some interesting strategies (imagine taking down an opponent's primary breadbasket early in a war, sending all their important cities into starvation!). However, there is no counter to imperalists, who could simply overrun good resource locations. The ability to enact "scorched earth" policies would be helpful.
It is important for improvements to the game to provide balance without creating tedious detail. The proposed changes to the tech tree and to land output provide better balance between the late game and early game, and between expanding outward versus improving inward. If done correctly, I believe the changes will not make the game more tedious and more fun.
In conclusion, well, a lot of this was a bit of a tangent. This is probably deserving of its own topic.
Regarding the religious aspects (assuming I interpreted it right), you are in essence suggesting that religions be founded with extra research irrelevant to everything but religion-founding, correct? As posted above, I suggested that not only should religions be irrelevant for large empires, they should be outright harmful. Combining this with your idea on land improvement (which I interpreted to imply that large empires should have trouble improving all their land) and my suggestion of a sub-state (or province, or feif, what have you) system that would allow more efficient improvement of large empires, a new religion in a sub-state (either founded or spread) could cause a schism, giving the sub-state a chance of breaking away and founding a new empire or possibly joining the civ that
founded the religion (note that I did not say "owns the holy city," as imperialists can simply conquer the holy city).
Here, in a nutshell, are the main points:
-Improvements to the land should be absolutely crucial. Poorly-improved or undeveloped land should be far weaker than well-cultured terrain. Cities surrounded by largely undeveloped terrain should actually be a drain on the economy.
-Improving large empires should be hard to fully improve, while small ones should find it much easier.
-Breaking a large empire into sub-states makes improvement more managable at the cost of political stability.
-Sub-states near the capital or other government centers would be far more stable than those far away.
-Unhappy sub-states could defect to other civs or possibly even break away into their own civilizations, likely with bloody (and certainly crippling) results.
-Even if open war is not declared, a secession may cause other unhappy and/or adjacent sub-states to secede as well and would most certainly cause unhappiness all the way to your core.
-The tech tree would now have more in-depth explorations into techs.
-Founding a religion would involve delving deep into philosophically-based techs.
-Looking too far into philosophically-based techs could cause instability among the sub-states. As noted above, this is less noticable near the core and therefore less of a problem in compact empires.
-Once a religion was founded, it would be randomly placed. Large empires would therefore be far more likely to get a religion in an instabilty-suseptible distant sub-state (perhaps the RNG would be weighted so that the outskirts of an empire would be more likely to get a religion).
-Any new religion entering an empire that is not supported by the central government (this would require the religion to be in a central sub-state; ie the one with the Capitol) would boost the instability of the region significantly.
-Compact empires would not suffer from new religions because their sub-states would be by definition more central and less suseptible to instabilty. Large empires, however, would likely get this new religion in a far-flung sub-state, where the instability has a much larger impact.
-In summary, religion causes instability in large empires. It is the perfect weapon for wounding a strong opponent, but it is a double-edged sword as you yourself may suffer instability. Furthermore, acquiring the religion in the first place requires measures which may temporarily increase instability overall. Therefore, larger empires would suffer from religions and avoid the path that leads to them to minimize its effects, while smaller empires would be more capable of withstanding the damage long enough to reap the benefits.
