Revolutionary Concepts versus Minor Tweaks

[polypheus]

In this forum, there are many fine ideas and suggestions. But I think that philosophically, it is important to distinguish between revolutionary concepts as opposed to minor tweaks.

First let me explain these terms:
Revolutionary Concepts are those that fundamentally changes gameplay and adds an additional level of depth, realism and component. It profoundly impacts the game.

Example: Luxuries & Strategic Resources of Civ 3
I consider this to be a revolutionary concept. You need it to maintain happiness and produce various improvements and units. So you have to find them, secure them, build transport paths to them, trade for them, deny other civs these resources, etc. It gives real depth to non-existent trade of past Civs and creates more inter-dependence between civs. If you disabled it from Civ 3, the game would be so different that it is not worth playing because it is so much a fun, interesting and exciting part of the game.

Minor Tweaks are features that while an improvement to the game does not profoundly impact the game.

Example: Faster Units can retreat from battles with Slower Units
A nice change but hardly revolutionary. If this feature were disabled in Civ 3, it wouldn't fundamentally change the game

There are of course also concepts that fall in between, I guess call them "semi-revoluationary" concepts.

Although there is nothing wrong with discussing tweaks, I think we should focus on discussing various revolutionary and semi-revolutionary concepts that we overwhelmingly want to see in Civ 4. We should also not waste time discussing tweaks that are so minor we could easily mod it ourselves.

It is because of revolutionary concepts that made Civ 3 such a worthwhile game to buy and play. It is because of a near total lack of revolutionary concepts that made Civ 2 somewhat of a dissapointment when I bought and played it.

It would be good if we could make a short list of these revolutionary concepts and semi-revolutionary concepts for Civ 4. In this thread it would be good to make a list of these concepts (but no discussion of implementation of these concepts). I think this will help to focus our discussion on the "big picture".

 

[warpstorm]

I'm for revolutionary ideas to a medium extent. The game still has to feel like Civ. If it is too far from the feel of the series, then that is bad also.

 

[polypheus]

So what are some of these revolutionary and semi-revolutionary concepts that Civ 4 could implement. Here is my partial list. I try to make the concepts as inclusive and as broad as possible so implementation and fine details are left out. It is just the broad concepts. Some are my own ideas and some come from others so I do not take credit for all of them:

Here are some of these (semi-)revolutionary concepts divided into categories:
Economics
1. Tradeable Finished Goods (some of which needed to erect/maintain buildings or units)
2. Physical trade routes (so can be disrupted, attacked, etc)
3. Money/Wealth comes mainly from trading raw materials and finished goods within nation and between nations. The "Mining Gold" method of Civ1-3 can remain but you must eventually generate wealth from trading raw materials and resources to have enough to support your empire because it will not be sufficient
4. Greater Trade increases culture and cultural cohesiveness and happiness
5. Greater International trade increases cross-national cultural affinity (so there are no pre-determined cultural affinity groups as in Civ 3, they are formed through trade/time).


Thus a big part of the game is building up this comprehensive trade network and securing it. War becomes means to economics not economics is means to war.


Politics
1. Client/Satellite States - you partially control it but not completely (you don't micromanage it but have broad power over it) (can rebel also)
2. Occupation Status - you occupy a city but it is not formally recognized and integrated into your nation (takes care of the allies fight alongside you but take over your city and keep it "flaw", also takes care of "you lose a city" and re-taking your own city activates MPP "flaw")
3. Continued foreign population - Even if you occupy or even integrate a city, it can continue to generate "foreign" citizens who may in some cases continue to resist or rebel. Assimilation concept will exist but be much harder especially in modern times of large ethnic populations
4. Barbarians -> New Civ: A new type of barbarians can emerge who can take over cities and start a new Civ in the middle of the game, carving its territory from pre-existing Civs (but raider barbarians still exist so these "civilizing" barbarbarians will be more like a periodic sporadic thing)
5. Own citizens can morph into new "foreigners" under certain circumstances if they are neglected or alienated. For example, if you as "English" found cities in a remote part of the world and it is not strongly tied to the central trade network and culture, suddenly some of those citizens become "American". (These "Americans" then, like other foreigners can resist, rebel, etc)



Military
1. Foreigners under occupation continue to resist and can attack and damage and possibly kill units (if population is large and/or garrison force weak) and can self-liberate.

 

[Garbarsardar.jr]

@polypheus : some of us are trying to do something similar.
please see:http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=89914
we'll greatly appreciate your help!

 

[polypheus]

@polypheus : some of us are trying to do something similar.
please see:http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=89914
we'll greatly appreciate your help!

Thanks for the link.

I've looked through it and think it's a great idea to try to consolidate all the ideas and have them listed on one page. OTOH, listing every single idea regardless of whether it is a "revolutionary idea" (revolts/civil war) or something real trivial (American UU should be changed) that could be easily modded by an individual I think causes the list to lose focus and coherence and become unorganized and unwieldy.

I know that I have my own way of thinking about this and I don't want to and can't impose my POV on others here, but I really think there needs to be shortened list of "revolutionary concepts" only. This is not to say that "minor tweaks" are undesirable or aren't great ideas. For instance, the idea of naming geographic features would be neat.

But I think I can speak for MANY people here that if Civ 4 is simply a bunch of minor tweaks like that, MANY of us will be dissapointed.

I think that ybbor's sticky thread is great for trying to prevent too many duplicate and repeat threads as well as having a place to look up all the ideas and discussions going on.

OTOH, I think it would be good to also organize a companion list of only "major" concepts that have "wide support".

What do people think of this? If there is enough support for trying to focus and organize ideas into a shortened list, maybe we should do that.

 

[socralynnek]

Maybe ybbors list can be divided in great and minor changes, although it's sometimes hard to divide.
And I think y<ou are right, that Civ 4 needs some revolutionary element, so that it is a new game insted of some kind of third expansion pack.

 

[polypheus]

Another thing I want to bring up that is parallel to this is the difference between features/concepts that increase strategic decision-making versus those that increase mindless labor:

To wit:
1. Strategic Decision Making Feature -
Strategic resources is a good example of a concept that obviously increses strategic options and decision-making.

2. Required Mindless Labor -
Remember the double-irrigation of Civ 2? That was a real annoying and tedious "feature" that accomplish nothing in terms of gameplay. It was just required additional mindless labor that you had to endure. Thank goodness it was removed from Civ 3.

So it is important that "required mindless labor" be as limited and as automated as possible.

 

[judgement]

In this forum, there are many fine ideas and suggestions. But I think that philosophically, it is important to distinguish between revolutionary concepts as opposed to minor tweaks.

I agree in general with this, but I think its important to point out a few things...

Revolutionary Concepts... profoundly impacts the game.
Minor Tweaks ... does not profoundly impact the game.

How major a change some suggestion is to the rules is not necessarily the same thing as how big an effect it has on the game. For instance, changing the defense value of spearmen from 2 to 5 is a trivial change, easily done in the editor: its definitely a "minor tweak." But if it were done and all the other ancient units kept the same stats, it would drastically change strategies in the early game. Thus, minor tweaks can profoundly impact the game, and I'm sure if we though about it, we could come up with an example of the opposite, in which some set of major rules changes didn't really alter gameplay all that much.

Although there is nothing wrong with discussing tweaks, I think we should focus on discussing various revolutionary and semi-revolutionary concepts that we overwhelmingly want to see in Civ 4. We should also not waste time discussing tweaks that are so minor we could easily mod it ourselves.

The problem with limiting discussion to revolutionary concepts is that it takes for granted that everyone wants to see such major changes. Perhaps some people would like to see Civ 4 be pretty similar to Civ 3, and thus, to them, minor tweaks are worth discussing, while major "revolutionary concept" changes are a waste of time because they don't want the game to change that much.

Also, just because a tweak can be accomplished in the editor currently doesn't mean its a waste of time to discuss it for the default game. When I buy Civ 4, I certainly don't want to have to spend hours with the editor getting things the way I want them before I play. I want the game to be fun right out of the box, so I think its worth discussing how it should be as default, even if some of the proposals are already things that are possible in the editor. True, the designers have to work out what the basic rules and game mechanics of civ 4 will be, but they'll also have to work out the specifics of how the game will be when it ships (specific unit stats, which improvements do what, etc.), and I don't see the harm in giving input about how we'd like that to be.

It is because of revolutionary concepts that made Civ 3 such a worthwhile game to buy and play. It is because of a near total lack of revolutionary concepts that made Civ 2 somewhat of a dissapointment when I bought and played it.

Again, not everyone agrees. I agree with you, I thought Civ 3 was a bigger improvement over 2 than 2 was over 1, but my wife feels the opposite. She was not dissappointed by Civ 2, she liked it, but she never really got into Civ 3 as much: she didn't feel that the "revolutionary concepts" that were implemented improved the game at all.

The point is, different people have different opinions about how much civ 4 should differ from its predecessors. Therefore, while the distinction between major and minor changes is a good one, I don't think any of us should try to say where the focus of discussion should be. People who want big changes will discuss big changes, people who want minor tweaks will discuss minor tweaks, and either group is likely to suggest something that the designers might decide is a good idea.

 

[polypheus]

The problem with limiting discussion to revolutionary concepts is that it takes for granted that everyone wants to see such major changes. Perhaps some people would like to see Civ 4 be pretty similar to Civ 3, and thus, to them, minor tweaks are worth discussing, while major "revolutionary concept" changes are a waste of time because they don't want the game to change that much.

You make a good point and I do implicity assume that people want to see Civ 4 implementing at least some additional depth in gameplay in terms of new features and concepts (which ones and how to implement them of course is debatable).

I suppose it is possible that some people just want to see Civ 4 essentially be a Civ 3 mod. But if so, why would anyone, even those who want just essentially a modded Civ 3, want to pay full price for a new Civ 4 when they can download all sorts of mods for free?

Maybe I am in the minority (but I HIGHLY doubt it) but if Civ 4 were, as you say, developed so that "Civ 4 is pretty similar to Civ 3" and consists of various minor tweaks with few to little new concepts, it is MHO that there would a huge backlash and outcry because the vast majority of people would expect Civ 4 to be a major revision and not an expansion-pack level revision.

Imagine that instead of calling C3C a Civ 3 expansion pack, it was called Civ 4 and marketed as such. The overwhelming majority (IMHO, I could be wrong) would be extremely dissapointed.

 

[Garbarsardar.jr]

@polypheus. I agree with you on all counts.I think you should replace the term revolutionnary because it gives people the wrong ideas...and you know what the package does for the product
(Garbarsardar.jr the PR manipulator...down beast....down)

 

[judgement]

I suppose it is possible that some people just want to see Civ 4 essentially be a Civ 3 mod. But if so, why would anyone, even those who want just essentially a modded Civ 3, want to pay full price for a new Civ 4 when they can download all sorts of mods for free?

Maybe I am in the minority (but I HIGHLY doubt it) but if Civ 4 were, as you say, developed so that "Civ 4 is pretty similar to Civ 3" and consists of various minor tweaks with few to little new concepts, it is MHO that there would a huge backlash and outcry because the vast majority of people would expect Civ 4 to be a major revision and not an expansion-pack level revision.

Well, in general, I agree with you, I just thought I'd point out that not everyone does. In any case, minor tweaks are worth discussing, because while most of us would like to see some significant changes in certain areas, few of us would like to see significant changes in every area. After all, we like Civ 3 (or else we wouldn't be "civfanatics" ). So while I enjoy discussing some of the larger changes I'd like to see, I also enjoy discussing small changes in the aspects of the game where I don't think large changes are necessary. Both types of discussion seem valid to me, no need to limit our discussions to big changes only.