Suggestion: Real borders - not cultural borders! (Civ 4 or 5)

at least implement the "or else" threat part in civ4
now i don't have to make the real border idea
 
I've read up a bit on this, although I do propose a slight modification on the cuture producing forts idea.(Adding stuff rather than taking away.) One thought is that fort production should not be confined to culture boarders, like it is in Civ4 Vanilla. In Civ3, Civ2, and Civ1 I almost never built forts that close to my territory, I used them to keep foreign areas of prospective interest under my control, and maybe built one or two near my lands to keep a central troop dump to hold large armies of mobile units from across my empire in my main economic cores. (This was mainly a Civ1 and Civ2 thing to bypass the killstack rule, and have a force to fight the barbarian wars, and to hunt down those pesky leaders.) Seeing as rules have changed drastically since those days, I have little use for forts as Civ4 presents them... off the nostalgia trip/strategy comments and on the point I have.

Spoiler :

1.)I definitely think forts should be buildable outside of your territory, or even in enemy territory if you can keep a worker alive that long. My thougths are that making it take twice as many turns to build it outside your territory and making it cost 4 times as many turns while additonally requiring the "Engineering" tech to build one inside enemy territory should amply balance things in that area.

2.) Forts should produce culture like cities, but should also grow like cottages. This is in line with what the person who posted the thread has already put down. I think it's radius should not exceed 1 square, but I still think it's culture growth rate should vary... this is it's influence will not be far-flung like that of a city, but its influence will be very strong on the squares right next to it.

2b.) Growing like cottages would function simply. The defensive bonuses will go up with each tier, also the maximum culture bonus will go up with each tier.(potential names for them could be Fort, Garrison, Keep, and Stronghold... or somethign like that) Additionally, higher tiers would offer defenses geared towards higher tech opponents(many granted only after certain techs are discovered) that slightly counteract some later advantages. Forts would only grow if units are in them.

2c.)Culture should be generated based on the number of higher level units in the fort. If units are in the fort, it will generate +1 per turn. For each unit that is level 4 or higher an additional +1 will be generated. The maximum that could generated would be equal to 2 per tier, making it +2, +4, +6, and +8. Additonally, culture points will not exceed a total of 1000(This keeps people from spamming fortresses to make their culture scores insanely high.) Culture would grant a fort a culture defense bonus like a city, but it will not progress in culture levels.

3.) Ownership of forts will be determined by the nationality of the units in the fort. Whenever it is unoccupied, the ownership is neutral, and no nation without otherwise existing culture in the area will posess the area. Ownership will always belong to whichever nation has it in its own culture border. As such If the fort itself sits within the cultural influence of a city, it will always belong to the nation that controls that city, even if enemy units are in it; however, the fort itself will only exude control over its culture radius when it has a unit from the specified civ camped inside.

3b.) Forts that are in enemy territory will not produce culture or grow as a result of your units. And units of other nationalities do not cause forts to grow or give them culture, although all units inside a fort benefit from it's defensive bonuses. Forts only change hands after being occupied after being vacant.

4.) Religions should spread to forts, like they do cities. They do not count as a city when determining the number of cities a religion has, but they do increase the culture by +1 per religion, but not to exceed the maximum culture output of it's given level. They can spread through traderouts and missionaries, and they are unaffected by the "Theocracy" civic unless the fort itself is inside the culture radius of one of its owners cities. A religion cannot be founded in a fort.

5.) Forts should be able to become cities, in any one of three ways. If this does happen, any religions in the fort are in the city that is created. The city is assumed to have walls if the fort is a Keep or better, or is a Garrison with 250 or more Culture points. If it is a Keep or better and has 500 or more culture points, it is assumed to have a Castle. If the fort is a Stronhold or has 1000 culture points said city starts with a random assortment of buildings, ranging from temples or monastaries of pre-existing religions, to monuments if a level 5+ unit ever based there, to a grocer, or a forge, or perhaps even a library. The city will only have 4 buildings maximum counting the Walls and the Castle. If the fort is a Stronghold and has the maximum 1000 culture points, it has an even chance of starting with 5 buildings. There are 3 ways a fort could become a city:

*A Settler can build on top of it. Any religions, and culture value the fort has will be transferred to the city.

*A Great Person can join a Keep or Stronghold with a culture value above 100 as a superspecialist. This will turn a Keep into a size 1 city, or a Stronhold into a size 2 city, that has said superspecialist. In addition buildings associated with said superspecialist will be put in the city. These buildings do not count against the number or buildings randomly placed in the new city. This is a possible list of Great Persons and the associated buildings. Note that if a building selected can't be built yet, it will not be placed.
--Great Prophet: Temple or Monastery of one random religion. If no religions are in the fort, the state religion or a random existant religion is placed in said fort if there is no state religion, and the Temple or Monastery of said religion is put in that city.
--Great Scientist: Library or Observatory.
--Great Artist: Theatre or Broadcast Tower.
--Great Merchant: Market, Grocer, or Harbor.
--Great Engineer: A Ganary, plus a Forge, or a Levee
--Great General: The Heroic Epic national wonder if not yet built, additonally Barracks, Walls, and Castle are granted, and do not count against the 4 or 5 random buildings.
--Great Spy: Courthouse, Library, and Jail are granted.
It may seem unbalanced to be able to get seemingly free cities out of great people, but great people are nominally more valuable than settlers... and even if the city does get the superspecialist, it probably wouldn't unbalance the game, since this can only be done on older forts that are likely to have already had settlers put on top of them already, addionally, said great person would not be able to join a more powerful city, start a golden age, or create a special building.

*The third and final way a Fort may become a city, is to naturally evolve into one. Each turn the fort has a 1 in 100,000 chance of becoming of becoming city for every culture point it has produced. That is if it has 10 culture points it would be a 1 in 10,000 chance. If it has 1,000 it would be a 1 in 100 chance. Secondly, if it's a Keep or a Stronghold, the total, food, hammer, and commerce value of all squares within the forts culture radius each add 1/1000 per unit to the the odds. If it naturally evolves into a city it has the same effect as if a settler was put there.


P.S. I think the "Do X or else" threat would be a good addition too.
 
I posted this a while back and is similar to what your looking for.borders of nationality and culture

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This is part of a bigger mod but it could stand on its own, posted for your opinions .This is also here to see if someone wants to pick it up and run with it.
growth In the original game population growth is handled in the cities and determinate on the amount of food yealds of that city.I think that population growth should happen outside of the city and out of your controle.this would be a national population.

This national Population should expand along river deltas ,flood basins,coast lines,and trade routes.This should be a natural expansion and happen when ever there is excess food available in a given tile.this population should expand a seperate border the same border as the fog of war and rename this border as the border of nationality.

This border would expand starting at populations outside of your city and cultural border as these population spread and improve tiles, the fog of war would lift and this border would spread.Cities and improvements within this border are part of your nationality but not of your empire.cities within this zone could be traded with no financial impacts.thses cities could also be bgrought within your empire with statesmen and generals.

this concept of national border also helps in the idea of colonization,if the population spreads outside of your cultural border and spreads in response to your technological abillities Than as your naval technologies increase than your nationality will spread along routs of exploration.

Cities within this national border have already a positive attitude torward you and will trade with you before they trade with anyone else .however letting a city grow and become angry will create a warring city within your border.

Some goverments could have the ability to create represtation within these national cities thereby bringing them into full controle of the original city.

This is the creation of city states.

cultural borders
In civ4 culture is based on improvements within your city. The one aspect that I dont like is that you have no controle of this culture,I think you should be able to put culture where ever you feel it should be by having units controle culture .In this way you could expand your empire as far as you need it to be .Units can be created in your cities by hiring speacialists, these units can expand your culture to bring tile improvements and even cities into your empire.These units and how they are created are listed below. Along with speacialist units some millitary units should have culture as well.

There will still be a limited amount of culture that a city produces ,but this will need to be scaled back considerably.

How this would start is, improvements outside of your city would grow if there is excess food that your city is not using, it would create a national worker,this worker would not be in your controle.this worker would fallow a priority function and spread the national border.


This AI worker will have a priority function the priorities are :
1.immigration.If a city that is within 2 moves of the worker has infistructure that will allow it to immgrate to that city it will do so increasing the city population by one.

2.growth. if the worker can not satisfy its immigration priority it will look for a tile to expand population on .the improvement that the worker builds will be determinate on the available technology of the nearest city . This function will absorb the worker.

3.production.If there is not any available tiles to irrigate the worker will look for a production tile ,such as a hill or forest to improve on.again this will be determined on technology.

4.commerce.The next expansion will be commerce ,if there is a rescorce that is valuable it will improve that tile.

5.trade.if all tiles have been developed it will look for the above 3 tiles next to each other and build a settlement to connect them.this is the begining of a city and the trade center of these tiles.

You can still build settlers and build cities, but your nationality will spread on its own as well.

In this way population growth will happen outside of cities rather than in cities and without control ,population growth within cities will be handled by imigration and the desire of the populous to imigrate into the city.

Population growth of cities will be determinate on the ability of the city to house,feed and protect the population and comprise of speacialists.The population within the city would be responsable for the production,science,culture,trade,commerce and millitary with improvements and resorces enhancing that ability.Each population would represent 1,000 population.

It will not be enough to simply have happy healthy cities to incourage growth , but you will also need infistructure.In the game this will be a housing improvement ,this improvement could be compounded to create more housing for population .This is the represntation of zoneing something in real life that requires wading through a lot of red tape,hence the need for the improvement.

The speacialists and thier abillities are as follows:

1.worker.This is the default speacialist and what is responsable for the production of improvements within the city.The amoant of workers within your city determins how many turns something will take to make.

2.soldier.This is part of the basis of unit prodution depending on the unit that is being built ,this one population point could produce multiple units or a single unit.This depends on the amount of population this unit requires.A warrior might require 200 popualtion ,meaning that one soldier speacialist could create 5 warrior units, while an infintry unit comprised of a 1,000 population would require the entire population.

3.general.This speacialist gives you a culture unit that helps in expanding your cultural border.You will also gain great person points such as now with speacialist.Building improvements such as a barracks,wall,stable and etc.will allow you to hire the general speacialists in that city,every general that you hire creates a general unit.This unit travels with culture and you can move it about to create borders or take in a single tile to collect rescorces without the cost of trade.


4.priest.Another speacialist that will give you a culture unit,unlike the general the priest does not have culture untill it is established in the suroanding country side, this is done by fortifieing the unit on an improvement in your national border.The speacialist will still have the same ability in the regular game

5.artist.again this speacialist will produce a culture unit ,that works much like the priest. Hiring these speacialist add happiness and produces a unit that establishes perminate culture where ever the unit is fortified,this action turns the unit into a permanite improvement that compliments the excisiting improvement.


6.merchant.This speacialist is not any different from the regular game.It does not produce culture.

7.enginear.This speacialists unit will improve the production of tile improvements depending on what tile it is improving.It also produces great person points and does not create culture.

8.Statesman.This speacialist would allow for civic improvements and create a unit neccesary for housing govermental controle over non capitol cities( cities within your national border,but outside of your cultural border ),without a statesman you can not acces the cities production que and is treated as a city state with its own agenda,without a statesman the city could revolt if its not protected or unhappy.this speacialist also produces culture, and GP points .

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looking for ideas and responses along this line of thinking.
 
I like the idea of actual national borders, but I don't think that should stop cultural expansion. It should limit it to an extent so your culture can't expand too far beyond the border, but your culture should still be able to expand beyond your national border. That way we can create Alsace-Lorraine type situations, where one city/area is fought over frequently by two civs that both have significant culture there. Another effect I just thought of is that we could have plebiscites held in the UN on multicultural areas.
 
i have an idea for early border expansion. When you first start out, your military unit (scout or warrior) can start claiming territory by moving to that tile. This means that the border will automatically expand that way. However, you have no means of holding the borders so anyother civ can come into your borders and settle there. The only way to hold those borders would be by stationing military units here and there.

This could even be used for later in the game, but I don't know how it would be useful. Maybe early on you could pay gold to build small settlements in your borders, and those would eventually evolve to cities (over a period of time).
 
I like the idea of actual national borders, but I don't think that should stop cultural expansion. It should limit it to an extent so your culture can't expand too far beyond the border, but your culture should still be able to expand beyond your national border. That way we can create Alsace-Lorraine type situations, where one city/area is fought over frequently by two civs that both have significant culture there.

Go through the old article in the third post. This was part of the idea. This is already like in Civ4 though, where culture can accumulate on tiles you don't own.
 
Here's what I would like for borders to be changed from the Civilization 5 thread

Here's an (I think) old one, CHANGE THE BORDERS! Right now the system is OK but I have some ideas that could make it better. First off, you could make a "claim" an area of land which could be used as transgressions for war if another civ's city is built in it. Now before you say that it could be overpowered by "claiming" the entire world, but here's some things you have to do before you can claim:
1: Research Map Making (or some other tech)
2: It has to be on your own continent

Which brings me to continents. At the beggening of the game, the game randomly makes 7 continents. The rule for the game to consider a place a continent is that it has to be atleast 100 tiles big. (for standard)

Second idea: Stealing land.

I think that during a war, if your troops stay on a tile for 5 turns, the tile becomes yours. BUT the tile has to be less than 76% owned by the currently controlling civ. So for example, a tile thats 89% American cannot be stolen by the Romans(just an example, remember) but a tile 62% American CAN become Roman. Also, another condition is that your culture has to be atleast 15% yours. So if the 62% American tile is 30% Indian and 8% Roman, only the Indians could take control of it. BUT if it was 19% Indian and 19% Indian, both could take control of it. You would be able to see EVERY cultural influence on a tile by holding your mouse on it, just like you do now, cept it has EVERY influence.

Third Idea: Getting land.
I think you should be able to trade some land in diplomacy. If you click the option, it goes back to the main map and you can select tiles you want to control. You can also do cities, but the odds of them giving a city to you are slim, unless you just whooped their butts in a war. You can only ask for territory if it's connected to you or it will be connected by other tiles you want to get. Oceans can be an exception to that rule, but you can only ask for less than 25 tiles overseas each turn.
 
I'd definitely support a border change to allow more non-city-based fighting and territory trading. When I read this thread, I thought of another idea someone had brought up in a discussion over the explorer: that explorers could be fortified to claim a certain amount of territory (perhaps 1 square to start, expanding to 9 squares after a certain number of turns) that would then be placeheld for a city there.
 
I'd definitely support a border change to allow more non-city-based fighting and territory trading. When I read this thread, I thought of another idea someone had brought up in a discussion over the explorer: that explorers could be fortified to claim a certain amount of territory (perhaps 1 square to start, expanding to 9 squares after a certain number of turns) that would then be placeheld for a city there.

To take this further, I'd say technologies can unlock how much sway an explorer has in claiming land. And land disputes don't have to be war-time decisions. Peaceful resolutions to land disputes are essential.

What I agree with:
  • All units can claim "empty" land
  • Scouts, explorers, etc are "better" at it
  • Techs can unlock how much land can be claimed
  • Anyone can claim unclaimed land, with appropriate units present
  • Anyone w/ units can "dispute" claimed land (becomes dual/ triple claimed, etc)
  • Land disputed only for X turns, say, 10 turns, can be peacefully (diplomatically) negotiated
  • Land disputed for Y turns (say, 20+) may only be decided via warfare
  • EDIT: I also vote that culture gets treated like religion, and cities instead grow borders by using this same "claiming" technique. (Culture could be used to influence a host of other things, similar to religion)
  • EDIT: Perhaps instead of mandatory war, a growing diplomatic penalty (pushing towards war)
  • EDIT: Problem: who gets to work the land???
  • EDIT: How about whoever claimed it first, or if only one civ _can_ work the land...

I think the biggest issue, from a programming perspective, is the AI. Perhaps once land is claimed by two nations, a third can't lay claim? Might be an essential sacrifice...
 
Non-Cultural Borders would take a lot of practice to understand. Let's leave this subject 'til CivV cometh around.
 
Yeah, and, due to a pattern I've noticed, we'll get another Expansion first.
CivI: N/A
CivII: 1 Expansion
CivIII: 2 Expasions
CivIV: Possibly Three?
 
I think land should be a commodity for sale just like any other. A civilization A that owns any tile it has the plurality of culture on, but it can sell it to another civilization B if B's culture on that tile is at least half of A's. Also A can "rent" the tile to B or any other civlization that has any culture on that tile for a very small amount of gold.

Another idea I had that concerned trade was a more incorporated imports/exports section. Any tile not in a city's X should be able to ship to any city within the empire for a cost in gold proportional to the distance. Similarly tiles in one empire could export to another one for a price and vice versa.

Finally, I think peace negotiation should be a lot more versatile. Aside from allowing both sides to concede whats currently available, the length of the peace treaty should be up for trade (a longer treaty would be worth more to the weaker side than to the stronger one). The losing side would be more willing to surrender a city for a 50-turn treaty than it would for a 10-turn long one.
 
Thanks for the invite to the thread. You've got my gears grinding, but before I form my ideas into something presentable, I'd like to throw out a couple questions. How would you handle one civ with Nationhood running into another that hasn't reached it yet? Water tiles are rather difficult to have much of a population living on - how would you handle water borders?

LM
 
I am all for claiming land, i have written several posts on this topic, and i agree with the ideas here. I like the concept of land being owned by the person who claimed it last before peace was declared. This could be implemented alongside the idea of countries giving back (all or some of ) the land they have claimed during a war.
 
yea would be a good idea, using military presence and forts to stop the enemy from moving in and claiming parts of your border for themselves.
 
On Borders--Cultural and Political

The problem, as I see it, is that the cultural border expands so far, it is actually beyond where the city population could go. The main city, the capital, which is usually in the center of the empire, but not always, MUST have the largest cultural border, PERIOD. That is, peripheral cities could only have an expanding cultural border that extended one extra tile out from their technical tile limits, the swollen cross area. Extra culture produced in any other ctities would be absorbed, tallied, calculated,etc., as the expanding culture of the capital city, which would neccesarily expand into those intermitent tiles between cities that currently are covered by the present cultural border method.
In Civ 2 for the PS there was always the issue of other civs finding that one tile you don't control in the midst of your empire and buidling a city there--very frustrating, and something the cultural borders prevent. However, they went overboard by having so much culture expand from peripheral cities.
By limiting secondary city cultural expansion through run-off growth directed to the capital, not only is one compelled to keep their captal centralized, but even to periodocally move the capital to a city more centralized. This would also have the affect of allowing the player to basically concentrate cultural(to a rightfully limited extent) toward a given area. So if one is Russia and they want to move their capital from Moscow to a city farther east, they can do so--although they would be sacrificing the overall cultural growth factors in the west if they did.

In this way, not only would the cultural border BE a realistic political boundary, it would also prevent those cases where a single cities cultural growth blocks whole sea lanes on account of international relations. Also, this would make culture clash in tighter areas more realistic, and allow the city-trading peace provisions to be limited only to those border areas, as stated above, where this a reasonable cultural issue to be dealt with.

I don't think there is a reasonable way to trade "land" in and off itself. I think it opens up a real can of worms.
 
Yeah, I'm going to go with NO and I still think claiming land and for that matter sea tiles, to become part of your territory is the best option. That way if you want to control sea tiles then you need a navy to defend them. Your suggestion about having to move the capital sounds frankly awful.
 
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