Small Projects for Civ 4 Modders

[dh_epic]

Thanks for the feedback, Aussie.

Re: Victories,

I definitely think that the multiple victories scheme can lay the foundation for several smaller victories, rather than a whole lot of winner-take-all victories. I've already suggested ways to divide up the culture and conquest victories into smaller chunks, so dividing up diplomacy and the space race is a good idea too.

The key is that a game about history will always be unrealistic as long as it's 'winner take all'. Imagine every nation in the world today were conducting its diplomacy around "Winner Take All". Moving away from that is key.

Re: Economics,

I definitely agree that the economic system needs a new look. But I chose to model the economic system closer to expansion-and-conquest than it is to building-and-trading. The latter is certainly closer to what we think of as the basis for Civilization's economy. But expansion-and-conquest is much more robust and fun, IMO. (Still, there's no reason there couldn't be a hybrid. I do think that there needs to be an economic space that's fundamentally competitive, however.)

One last note. Culture.

There are two main reasons we didn't talk about the culture spreading model here. The first is that there are already a few attempts to implement it, and I give that the thumbs up. The second is that the culture-spreading system is really a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. It changes the way culture behaves -- but since culture doesn't do much, spreading culture has no significant impact on gameplay (besides funky border behavior).

We tried to focus on features that could work well in isolation. "Great Culture Trends" seemed to work better in isolation than "Culture Spreading", but you can imagine that the combination of the two could have really big possibilities.

 

[Padmewan]

The key is that a game about history will always be unrealistic as long as it's 'winner take all'. Imagine every nation in the world today were conducting its diplomacy around "Winner Take All". Moving away from that is key.

One thing I think Firaxis (and we) should take note of is the excitement generated in games, for some players at least, of the possibility of forming Permanent Alliances. I think there's a natural urge by a lot of gamers to want to form teams and not just trounce everyone on their own. If there was a non-hippie-dippy way for "everyone to win" that remains competitive but also has an element of cooperation, that would be great.

I mean (to risk hippie-dippy), what if a game goal was "eliminate poverty" worldwide? "Save the earth from global warming." What's exciting about these scenarios is, as in real life, that everyone has to work together, but there are incentives to break from the pack to "win" a different VC.

To make these things work, I think the AI needs to be able to "plan" its own victory path and figure out its incentives. Right now (I think) the AI mainly tries to foil the player (which includes winning). A poor nation would see that its only shot at victory is a cooperative one like "eliminate poverty" and therefore push for that, while the leading player sees that it can also win through economic conquest.

 

[dh_epic]

Thanks again, Padmewan. I love a good discussion.

Hippy Dippy Victories

I think this is actually a good idea. In reality, many of the world's leaders will work together to solve real problems. If that wasn't the case, then the nukes would have started flying a long time ago. If you want to talk about how to make the Civ game more realistic, fundamentally addressing the victory conditions is the best place to start, IMO.

Problem with cooperative victories in a game that's still founded around "Winner Take All" is that a cooperative victory would really just call for more extermination. Eliminate Poverty? Conquer the world, and then balance your budget. Eliminate Global Warming? Negotiate with everyone to switch to Ecology -- and the people who hold out, pound them into submission.

This even coincides with the dynamics of the original "hippy dippy" victory, the UN Victory. Kiss ass to get the votes you need. And if anyone holds out, pound them, take their land, take their population, and make the vote work for you.

The problem with cooperative "Hippy Dippy" victories (sorry, I giggle every time I think of that), is that genocide is the ultimate shortcut to global cooperation.

Why Multiple Victories

With Multiple Victories, there is much more give and take with the victory conditions. Yes, if you achieve Victory A, you receive X points... but if you get Victory B, you get Y points. Which are you going to focus on?

Suddenly you can give out a shared pool of points for a shared victory. What this would do is actually discourage conquest as the one true path. Why? Because genocide takes a long damn time. And if you can get a few nations together to share a few points, that's cheap points for your little alliance! Much cheaper than the conquest route!

With the right balance of rewards... suddenly people might take a different route than world domination. But world domination would still be viable, because it would have its own proportional reward. While Rome/Greece/Britain solve the global poverty problem, and Greece/France/Spain solve the global environment problem (note that greece has positioned itself greatly by being involved in TWO cooperative victories), the Aztecs try to conquer the entire Western Hemisphere.

It's all about tradeoffs. And multiple victories are the best way to accomplish that. (The only alternative being a severe rebalancing of war and peace.)

 

[minite1]

Is there anyway to create new city improvements that if supplied with a general resource can make a new resource like a steel mill having iron and coal makes steel with is needed to make more modern units? Maybe a wind mill that turns wheat or corn into grain then a bakery to bread. Something like that with all the different resources could really change the dept of the game with out all the micromanagemt of other games. Here are some of my ideas

mill - wheat or corn = grain
bakery - grain = bread
textile mill - cotton or silk = cloth
steel mill - coal and iron = steel
forge - copper = bronze
refinery - oil = petroleum

well thats the basic idea anyway. It would be a way of putting true economics into the game by having city improvements using natural resoures and turning them into finished goods which are used by your population generating wealth or sold and trade for more wealth not to mention what could be done with requirements to build units.

just a thought

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Minite. There is hope for you-and it exists in the HERE and NOW. That ultra-brilliant modder, TheLopez (we're not worthy, we're not worthy), has already come to the rescue with the following LINK

Hope this helps you .

Aussie_Lurker.