Sullla's Ideas for a New Civ

[Celevin]

On combat in civ:
I believe what is needed is just a bit more finer scaling of the map in actual combat,
more fine than the strategic map, but not set apart for a tactical map... the solution, yes:

More units on a tile when making combat, BUT not unlimited... maybe 2 or 3...
(see my sig for a version of 2)

If we need a finer scale, why don't we just consider increasing the city production distance from 3 to 4, and also decreasing unit cost / unit maintenance?

 

[Solo4114]

Right, it's a great idea and I thought about this. Games where you design your own units (Master of Orion, Galactic Civ, Alpha Centauri) have a lot to recommend them. However, I see two issues with a unit design workshop mechanic:

1) Intimidating/confusing for newcomers.
2) Thematically doesn't fit with Civilization (since the game is about re-creating history).

Two minor points. First, it doesn't need to be confusing for newcomers. MOO and SMAC aren't confusing, really. You start with relatively few options, and gradually increase the number of options as the game develops. That gives players the sense of "Ok, I can build a warrior with a shield, or with a heavier club" to start with, and gradually gets them used to the system before they're having to ask themselves "Should they ride Arabian horses, or a larger European draft horse? What material should I make their lance tips out of?" or however in-depth you want to go.

Second, I'm not so sure that Civ is meant to recreate history. I think it's meant to recreate in a very general sense the development of civilizations, but not necessarily history itself (although I do tend to play more historically based games, and focus on "Earth maps"). I think it's worth noting this if only to address how other folks play the game, and the degree to which we pay attention to history in coming up with theories on how the game improves.

I believe that the concept works much better for a science fiction theme, as anyone playing will expect "spacey, futuristic" stuff and you can make up various ships without any real immersion problem. I don't think it works as well for Civ though; there's sort of a general expectation that you're be using swords in the Ancient Age, and then rifles in the Industrial Age, and so on. Designing a fantastical unit (guys riding llamas and wielding halberds?) would be rather confusing, not to mention overwhelming for inexperienced players. I'm not saying it couldn't work - actually, the whole concept would probably work better with a randomized tech tree - I'm simply not sure it's the right fit for Civilization as a series.

Oh well. It's not like this game is going to be created anyway.

I think it could be made to work. It depends on how in-depth your system gets, and what options you give players. Some of that would necessarily be tied to the tech tree. So, for example, prior to discovering bronze or iron working, you could make warriors with, say, bone armor or no armor, stone axe or wooden club or stone spear, hide shield or no shield at all.

When you discover bronze, you can build units that use bronze weapons and armor, and would have new abilities to make wooden items with more detail (kind of like "neutronium armor" for MOO). So, now you could build a bronze-tipped spear, bronze armor, bronze swords. Eventually, you'd discover horseback riding, and that'd create an entirely new unit type, which would have its own set of designs taht you could use (IE: sabre cavalry vs. lancers, and so on).

As the game wore on, certain unit types would either be removed or would cease to be effective against your enemies. So, your cavalry units are phased out and replaced with tanks and helicopters.

The system COULD be made to function and could be fun, but the devil's obviously in the details.

I think these ideas would be great for Total War, a Master of Orion spin off, or a new series entirely but I don't think it's good for Civ.

I think Civ is very much a macro based game, and by that I mean it's a game where the appeal comes from managing your empire and seeing your civilization evolve.

What I think Sulla wants is to make the micro management in the game more involved than it has any right to be. To put it bluntly, there's a reason why you don't settle cities in Total War or in Heroes of Might and Magic, it would take away from the experience. You would have so many more things to do, it would obfuscate the ultimate goal.

This is what turned me off from HoI3. By the end of my experience with that game I didn't even know what was going on.

I personally think Civ works better when you don't have to micro everything. If you disagree fine, but this is not where I want the series to go.

Again, I think Sulla's argument (and pardon me if I'm putting words in your mouth here) is that, if we accept the premise that people want more tactical combat, we need a two-tiered system. And on that score, I agree wholeheartedly. You either need a two-tiered system or a MUCH bigger map.

Or you scrap the idea of "micro" combat, and go back to "macro" stacks/armies of some sort with some other kind of limitation so a gajillion axemen can't stand on a single tile.

 

[Hail]

Right, it's a great idea and I thought about this. Games where you design your own units (Master of Orion, Galactic Civ, Alpha Centauri) have a lot to recommend them. However, I see two issues with a unit design workshop mechanic:

plus the issue that after every researched tech, new(better) unit types may become available and the player should therefore visit the unit workshop to design those new unit types. after a while the unit workshop thing looses a lot of it's appeal and turns into a tedious tech to tech work

I'm sure Sulla will pick up the full Civ5 SDK as soon as its out and create the game of our dreams. Like all critics, he's good with words and can make a strong point. That doesn't make him a game designer. Talking and making are two completely different things.

why should anyone, who does not like civ5, spend his time and effort to mod the game to a state of his liking?

What? No!

I want paradrop mech infantry and gravship workers!

; The following numbers control various key rules
; of the game. GREAT discretion is advised if you
; opt to change these. Values too far out of the
; expected range can cause the game to behave strangely.


on topic
three key issues i dislike in New Civ's design:

• tactical combat(for the reasons already mentioned by Camikaze and others)
• armies containing thousands of really cheap units (to me this sounds MM and maybe at first the "epic" part might outweigh, but the MM part will overwhelm in time)
• more land is always better philosophy. mm.... mostly disagree. a larger nation should have an edge over a smaller nation, but it [edge] should be relatively small. otherwise your game [New Civ] will be prone to snowball effects and premature climax

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Or you scrap the idea of "micro" combat, and go back to "macro" stacks/armies of some sort with some other kind of limitation so a gajillion axemen can't stand on a single tile.

A gajillion axemen on a single tile are ok as long as that doesn't make them Immune to multiple smaller groups of axemen.

THey should not die, but they should suffer damage that costs the player something.

 

[Howard Mahler]

Many interesting ideas from Sulla, the majority of which sound good to me.
Obviously, an interesting idea may not work well when implemented or may be implemented poorly.

One idea I really like, is the "imperial reserve" idea.

If you want to have tactical combat in Civilization, then the separate tactical map is the way to go in my opinion. (I, Sulla, and many others have mentioned this many times before. Yes CyberChrist, I was also thinking in terms of Heros of Might and Magic.) For those who did not want to spend time on tactical combat, there should be a reasonable autoresolve option. In most cases in Single Player Mode, using the autoresolve option would reduce your chance versus the AI. Those who want to use autoresolve option would probably have to play at a lower difficulty level.

 

[CyberChrist]

If anyone wants validation for the merits of a "Move units collectively as 1 army on Strategy map and fight in divided subgroups on a Tactical map" then all you need to do is look to the way it is done in Heroes of Might and Magic.

In HoMM you can have a limited amount of armies moving about (controlled by Heroes - could be Generals/Warlords in Civ) and each army can contain a limited amount of stacks of different(or same) types of units, but each stack of individual types can have as many units as you can muster. The limit on amount of stacks in an army also applies to the limit on stacks on the tactical level.

This works like a charm in multiplayer as well

IMO then tactical battlefields would be a totally viable approach for Civ as well, but - as always - an option to conduct battles purely on strategic mode should be included as well. Possibly the tactical scale should only be invoked if either side was led by a general/warlord.


On a different note then I find the concept of using a MOO type approach with limited fields to pursue for Research with uncertain Technological benefit reward completely detrimental to the way a Civ game should function imo. It is FAR too rigid and random (almost as bad as the 1UPT concept that has crippled Civ5).

However, the idea that a standard civ only got to choose 1 of the available benefits from each tech researched and would have to trade for the other benefits (more like in MOO2) might be an idea that could work. Perhaps with an added option to re-research the same tech several times to obtain further benefits from the same tech (at a lower research cost). There could even be a unique bonus(es) for fully mastering individually specific techs/fields. "Do we invest further in this technology we have slowly begun to master in order to cheaply gain more benefits? Or do we immediately start working towards higher - and expensive - goals, in the hope/knowledge that we won't regret not patiently mastering this current field of expertise?".

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Making customizable units with complex abilities will almost inevitably make the AI very bad at using them on a tactical level.

I believe the word you're looking for is cumbersome.
In the strict sense, it's a gameplay immersion issue that hits the Human player on the intellectual level full head on; options, variety, complex, decisions, macroman, etc.

K-I-S-S principle wasn't invented for silly reasons, designers either aim for the golden road or risk limiting themselves into a clear market - casual or hard-core.
If Starcraft has soooo much success, we may well ask why. Simple, it targets a specific audience. RTS, SciFi, have a blast.
Civilization(s) is a different beast altogether (as stated by almost everyone above) where "cumbersome" sneaks up into cities and never lets go. The casual gamer *must* handle the development of its Empire while battling over on many fronts; techs, defeat an AI, stage Peace and/or War. But anyone here knows this, i guess.

The entire argument revolves around a single thing -- balance.

Whatever features end up in a ruleset, it drives the engine of Win/Lose conditions... AI algorithmic tricks can only fuel the rythm to entertain & put facts on the world map for us to witness. IF such coding acrobatics can't mimic fair intelligence (on both strategic and tactical levels, btw)... all we get is the usual well-known reaction; stupid AIs.

"DANGER!" -Will Robinson.
A bad design can collapse like a house of cards if the deck is loaded -- tooooooo much.

 

[Howard Mahler]

I agree!

If another civ game is made, there are two considerations which imo should be front-and-center of the designers' minds throughout the design process:

1) Economical system requirements. I don't want to have to go out and buy the latest super-duper top-of-the-line deluxe computer because my current computer which I bought brand-new 2 years ago isn't capable of running the game properly. There's little if any need for high-end cgi wonder videos and ultra-spiffy animated leaderheads in a civ game anyway;

2) Maximum flexibility. I want to be able to customise my civ games as much as possible without having to be an expert modder. There should be a diverse range of game options, with standard default settings of game options which you can turn off and on as you please. Doing it this way might mean it takes longer to properly balance the game, but it would enhance replayability.

 

[Howard Mahler]

One area where I have a slight difference with Sulla's post, but probably not Sulla, is the idea that the "larger" civilization should win.

All other things being equal, we expect a 10 city civilization to beat a 5 city civilization.
However, most of the time all other things are not equal in a well designed game.

Expanding to 10 cities may have costs in other areas, tech level, city improvements, size of cities, size of military, etc.

Using Civilization 4 as a reference point, I would like to see a little more of an advantage to building up relative to building out. (Both should be viable options and the player should have a choice within the strategic constraints of the particular game.) I would like for there to be even more ways to make a city with in a good location extremely strong (in whatever dimensions matter) by putting lots of time and energy into it as opposed to doing some other things. Such opportunities to improve cities should continue as the game continues. (Thus maybe 3 rings of hexes for cities would be useful in an otherwise well designed game.)

Having a few very, very good cities should be a viable option versus grabbing as much land as quickly as one is able. More importantly there should remain a good tension between improving current cities and founding new cities.

 

[ruff_hi]

The solution regarding how to develop an auto-resolver for tactical battles is a known (and solved) problem. It requires a multi-step process.

Step 1
Build the most detailed auto-resolver that you can and get it as damn near perfect as you can. Don't worry about the run time.

Step 2
Run this auto resolver lots and lots of times with varying inputs (army sizes, compositions, terrain, etc) and record the results.

Step 3 - Option A
Analyse the inputs and outputs and produce some sort of mathematical 'black box' that will link the two together (GLM will come in useful here).

Step 3 - Option B
Take the input and results and use this as your pool of simulated results. Thus when you have a tactical battle in the game, it takes the inputs you actually have (army 1, army 2, terrain, etc), looks up in its pool of results for the matching (or almost matching) inputs and then randomly selects one of the results.

This simplified mathematical (or database of results) black box will replace the detailed auto resolver black box that you initially started with. Ideally, both 'black boxes' will generate similar looking results with the later versions being much much faster.

This method is used often in insurance when individual, detailed calculations are too time consuming. Effectively, you are removing items that just disappear as part of the simulation process (ie their random contribution is indistinguishable from noise) or you are replacing n identical calculation loops with 1 loop times n.

 

[Camikaze]

Which actually reminded me of the WarCraft (certainly not WoW_MMPORPG but only the initial title that started it all.) Towers.
Dumping cannon balls on troops, shooting arrows - now *THAT* was some tricky but efficient tactical positioning by design.

PS; After reading up further down this wonderful thread (even Sulla chimed in!), i realized people brought back the infamous subject of Stacks and as i said in many earlier comments in this forum; From 1upT, to Stacks, to SOD, to Carpets of Stacks, to Carpets of Stacks of Doom... that's how it goes. No matter how fine-tuned any concept of Stacks are, it will always lead to the very same clug effect we already have with 1upT -- only on a much worse & monumentally (un-micmanageable!) complex scale.

I will come back to address some other points later, but for now I'll just address this one. What you suggest as the natural progression should stacks be re-implemented is quite definitely not so. It is certainly possible that such a re-implementation would result in CoSoDs (trademark pending), but that's only if the implementation sucks. It's a given that when people suggest a return to stacks, they don't mean a return to a bad implementiaton of them.

 

[PrAyTeLLa]

Summery: Great ideas. I'm sure he much fun in writing it up, and good on him for trying to offer an alternative rather then just critize the current version. Overall, at least to me, he wants a game that takes the empire/city building civ game and mashs it with the Total War tactical battles with Paradox games empire management & research setup. Havent played MOO or the Galactic Civ games so cant comment but I like the ideas taken from them.

I think I would still want Hex's though (using 2 bands around city should be fine). Just feels & looks better than squares.

Longer version:
Sounds like some of his ideas regarding tech tree & units can also be found in the Paradox games (Universalis Europa, Hearts of Iron etc) however for instance with the units, they try and limit the SOD by having attrition from province limits. This usually limits armies to around 20 or so units (with the the defender having higher limits as they own the territory), otherwise you end up losing more men you can reinforce. They also use available manpower pool to reduce the size of the armies as well, usually depletes rather fast and can be quite crippling if you are trying to expand rapidily. Cant say I'd like attrition or manpower in the game though.

The tactical battles may as well be all auto-calculated. After starting any Total War game, I would normally fight every battle as a bad start can be quite hard to come back from, and defeating AI on the tactically battle usually meant few loss's compared to auto-calc. However once I had a decent enough army and the game at progressed, I couldn't be bothered to fight battles anymore. In those cases, auto calc worked fine for 75% of the game length. Just taking advantage of bad AI shouldnt be a good enough reason to add in tactical battles. If you dont have them, perhaps you wont need to give the AI crazy bonuses, which I'd prefer.

Espionage was crap and I quickly learnt to disable it for new games. Obviously people liked it, but it was tedious and certainly when playing against AI it was a massive pain in the arse that you really had little control over. Never played MP much, so not sure how it played against humans. Anyways, glad to see it gone and hope it doesnt come back without some massive changes.

Religion added flavour. I generally liked it, but thought it silly to have the first 2 (or 3 if you're lucky) religions being the only ones the AI would choose, with usually only one dominating. Generally I like Sulla's ideas for religion. I'm can kinda see how people would get offended by giving traits/benefits to religions, but don't agree with it. Why not just make it so you choose the religion name from a list and also having the option of just naming it yourself. So rather then research a tech to give you Hinduism, you researd a tech to found "a religion" that gives you i.e a food bonus. It was already an option in Civ 4 to choose religion, so shouldn't that then fix the whole 'offensive' nature if they leave the name of that religion til after you found it.

Corporations should be left out, with the idea of specific bonus's to religions instead. I didnt like them mainly cause they felt like I was just spreading another religion around. By the time corporations came into the game, I was over spreading stuff and my empire usually was too big for the micromanaging and I was too busy kicking ass with my tanks.

Friendship pacts, denoucements etc can be left, but as a stepping stone to more formal alliances or pacts. So not quite the same as Civ 5 but along those lines as I do like the idea of declaring a friendship or to be able to denouce the actions of another civ. That way you see how the blocs are being formed and you could even try and stop it from happening with some cunning diplomacy. Also having a diplomatic option outside of war was good. I would love to have much better options for the UN, perhaps with some conflicting decisions that you had to choose between.

Citystates was a nice addition. Obviously they have some issues, but I would like them to some extent as flavor/diplomatic options.

 

[Bibor]

I got a fair warning from a mod about my comment on Sulla. I agree it was improper.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

PrAyTeLLa comment reminded me that i also wanted to extrapolate on Sulla's take on the whole Espionage_Religion_Corporation concepts in general;

-- Bring 'hem on!

-- But, be extra careful with tooooooo complex features that would;

a) Lack some worthy gameplay activities,
b) Obviously fail at most if not all micman levels,
c) Contradict current principles such as Empire Growth, Research Importance, War/Peace ratios, etc,
d) Much more importantly... cancel out any Win conditions path (current or newly designed, btw) for both Human & AIs.

-- Stay Rational. Reality is a two edge sword that can cut immersion sharp & wide while games should remain fun.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Conclusion to Sulla's conclusion?

Well, I could keep going with this, but there's a limit to how much time even I'm willing to spend in typing up the design features of an imaginary game. In the fantasy scenario where I would be put in charge of designing a Civilization game, this is how I would do it. I've tried to incorporate the best features of the dozens of different turn-based strategy games I've played over the years, while staying true to the core features of what makes the Civ series great. I've tried to focus on designing game mechanics that would be fun and interesting to experience, and stay away from things that would penalize the player or be too tedious to manage. I believe very deeply that the Civilization games are about empire-building, and therefore should reward expansion, teching upwards, and building a large army. The civ that can do those things the best is the one that deserves to win the game.

Anyway, that's my piece on designing New Civ. I hope that's a sufficient answer to those who claimed I simply wanted another version of Civ4. Firaxis, I'll give these thoughts to you for free. If you want to hire me as a design consultant to turn New Civ into Civilization 6, you know where to reach me.

Once the Full & Final SDK and the DLL source is formally released by Firaxis -- i want you to MOD these ideas into not a NewCiv (call it what you want though!) but a superb fairplay competitor to what Thal_Alpaca_Valk(etc) have already done.
In the meantime, get to work and put the sweat where your mouth is.
And, i mean that in a friendly wishingly way.

(PS; LeoPaRd is roooooaarrrring quite well as of today... and i just can't wait to compile it -- but i'm a perfectionist and certainly won't try screwing up the beta-to-stable experience_s either!)

 

[Howard Mahler]

I like Sulla's idea of Great Generals giving bonuses to military units in their hex. Great Generals are leading their army. (This assumes no one unit per tile. With one unit per tile, the bonus would have to also apply to units in adjacent hexes.)

The list of possible bonuses is long. (Think of the possible unit promotions in Civ IV.) Each Great General could have a different bonus or pair of bonuses.

The bonuses could be determined when the Great General is born. Either the bonus is picked at random, picked by the player from the whole list, or picked by the player from a randomly selected portion of the whole list. Alternately each named Great General could have its bonuses picked in advance, but which general you get is random. (One could have the generals civilization specific, but this would require more work.)

It might also be possible that some would be Great Admirals who operate at sea with appropriate bonuses. This option should only apply on certain map types, such as archipelago.

However, with this change to Great Generals, there is no need to totally throw out unit promotions. Rather we could go back to the simpler system in earlier Civilizations games (such as Civ. III?) You would have: militia, recruit, regular, veteran, etc., with different number of hit points.

If these changes were made, I might also somehow increase the rate at which Great Generals are created. Maybe there should be some other ways to get Great Generals than combat. For example, low probability random event, chance when there is a Golden Age, certain buildings or Wonders generate great general points, etc.

If these changes were made I would not have Great Generals be able to be used to help research techs or to start a golden age.

 

[Dale]

Looking through Sullla's design, I can't help thinking that the game would be loaded very heavily to production. Pretty much every idea revolves around hammers.

It is fact that Civ revolves around any element that allows rush-buying. In Civ4/5 it is gold. Spam cottages/trade posts and buy yourself to victory. In New Civ you will spam hammer producers (mines, forges, factories) to buy yourself to victory. The Imperial Reserve forces this.

To ensure the fastest growth of science, money, culture, production you will use high-production cities to rush-buy (Imperial Reserve) things in low-production cities. The more production you make, the more low-production cities you can support. Instead of rush-buying happiness and gold buildings, you'll rush-buy happiness and hammer buildings. ICS!

As seen in Civ5, city placement will become irrelevant, because with a couple super-production cities you'll be able to support a massive amount of low-production cities through Imperial reserve.

Sullla's design is no different from what we have now.

 

[Hail]

Looking through Sullla's design, I can't help thinking that the game would be loaded very heavily to production. Pretty much every idea revolves around hammers.

production is the king.
that's ok with me as long production cannot be efficiently converted into other entities(gold, science, etc.)

To ensure the fastest growth of science, money, culture, production you will use high-production cities to rush-buy (Imperial Reserve) things in low-production cities. The more production you make, the more low-production cities you can support. Instead of rush-buying happiness and gold buildings, you'll rush-buy happiness and hammer buildings. ICS!

rush-buying hammer buildings in low-production cities
go on! i am intrigued

ICS? how is going to pay all the cities' maintenance?

Sullla's game design has the trade off between working hammer tiles for more hammers versus working cottages for gold(the gold can be used to support another city not working cottage tiles). but! if the mentioned city is not working cottage tiles, what kind of tiles it is working? hammer tiles? then the hammer tiles should have been worked in the first place!

As seen in Civ5, city placement will become irrelevant, because with a couple super-production cities you'll be able to support a massive amount of low-production cities through Imperial reserve.

Sullla's design is no different from what we have now.

the mentioned couple super-production cities would probably not even be able to support themselves

 

[Howard Mahler]

I like the idea of the imperial reserve.
Your comment ignores the specific features of Sulla's proposal.

Any production put into the reserve is halved.
One can only add to a city from the imperial reserve in one turn its base production.
So it would be possible to run a small city at double its normal production for a while.
(The hammers being used from the reserve are costly, so there is a decision to be made as to whether this is worthwhile.)

Any proposed change such as this one would need to be carefully game tested.

I do not know whether as proposed it is balanced.
Maybe 1/3 would work better than 1/2.

However, it is obvious that this proposal is significantly different than rush buy or slavery or chopping forests.

The imperial reserve would be a substitute for these other methods of rushing production.

Looking through Sullla's design, I can't help thinking that the game would be loaded very heavily to production. Pretty much every idea revolves around hammers.

It is fact that Civ revolves around any element that allows rush-buying. In Civ4/5 it is gold. Spam cottages/trade posts and buy yourself to victory. In New Civ you will spam hammer producers (mines, forges, factories) to buy yourself to victory. The Imperial Reserve forces this.

To ensure the fastest growth of science, money, culture, production you will use high-production cities to rush-buy (Imperial Reserve) things in low-production cities. The more production you make, the more low-production cities you can support. Instead of rush-buying happiness and gold buildings, you'll rush-buy happiness and hammer buildings. ICS!

As seen in Civ5, city placement will become irrelevant, because with a couple super-production cities you'll be able to support a massive amount of low-production cities through Imperial reserve.

Sullla's design is no different from what we have now.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Looking through Sullla's design, I can't help thinking that the game would be loaded very heavily to production. Pretty much every idea revolves around hammers.

It is fact that Civ revolves around any element that allows rush-buying. In Civ4/5 it is gold. Spam cottages/trade posts and buy yourself to victory. In New Civ you will spam hammer producers (mines, forges, factories) to buy yourself to victory. The Imperial Reserve forces this.

To ensure the fastest growth of science, money, culture, production you will use high-production cities to rush-buy (Imperial Reserve) things in low-production cities. The more production you make, the more low-production cities you can support. Instead of rush-buying happiness and gold buildings, you'll rush-buy happiness and hammer buildings. ICS!

As seen in Civ5, city placement will become irrelevant, because with a couple super-production cities you'll be able to support a massive amount of low-production cities through Imperial reserve.

Sullla's design is no different from what we have now.

Civ 4/5 it is gold because gold does Everything.
Pays for cities/building/unit maintenance
AND allows construction of cities units buildings
The tile choice is food (always need certan amount... so not much of a choice)
Civ 5: Gold v. Hammer
Civ 4: (Gold v. Science) Commerce v. Hammer

But because Gold->Hammer, Gold was always the ideal

in "SullaCiv"
Gold pays for maintenance of cities+units... but can not rush things

So
Hammers->Imperial Development (buildings) and Imperial Growth (units)
Gold/Commerce->Imperial Development (techs) and Imperial Maintenance (gold)

Since Excess Hammers can't help you Sustain a large empire... and you can't change from Hammer->gold easily (even with replacing improvements)
Excess Hammers-> Run out of buildings to build... Build+Disband Useless units
Excess Commerce->Units+Buildings Obsolete before you build them



He does need a serious "Culture" role.
And I don't like the "sliders" idea... Instead each city should put all its commerce into Gold, Science, or Culture.