These Fractured States of America - Development Thread

Dont try to replicate history
An united america has no reason to enter either world war
indeed without an American government seeking to control china there is no reason for its intervention in the second at all.
France, Britain, Spain and Germany are enough foreign powers to be going on with, as America never had anything to do with the orient untill well after its debubt as a world power.
I would suggest that the best place to set it would be the year of the Civil War only with the north having volunteerily given the south its independance, so very frostly relations between the two but no war.
For this setting and inclusion of the Revolutions mod might work quite well as a disunited America without an all power federal army would be prone to instability.

I don't see how it would unfold that the Union would allow the South to sucede peacefully. It is just too important a part of the country to not fight over it. An important piece of this will be the fact that the North and South will start the scenario at war. Both nations will be much bigger, more populous and better developed than any of the new, western nations. The only way the western nations can get some breathing room and get a chance to develop would be if the two big nations start at war with each other and keep each other bogged down. Plus 1851 works better since the two halves would be more equally matched than they were in 1861.

America had a huge amount of contact with China & Japan during this period.

For China:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Door_Policy

For Japan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese-American_relations#Commodore_Matthew_Perry

The opening of Japan was definitely a big deal. We helped westernize them and by the end of this time period Japan was a world power in its own right. Plus Chinese immigration was a huge factor out west and contributed to the construction of the railroad. I was hoping to use that as a mechanism. Plus it is likely that west coast nations like California would have more incentive to trade with and partner with Asian nations like Japan and China.

I think some diplomatic options would be unavailable for Japan and China at the start of the game - like blockades and military assistance - but they could come in as the game progresses. It would be a good mechanic to have where some civs rise and the diplomatic situation is forced to change to accommodate it.

As for Vermont, they were an independent nation for 10 years during the American revolution. So it would be entirely appropriate to keep them in this despite the difficulty they'll have at staying alive. I think they will seek out vassalage by either Canada or the United States for survival, which I think would also be appropriate.
 
Without the strength of the union behind it would the north risk war with the south.
But the main danger with the civil war is that there is, as far as i know, no way to programme in for a state not to want to take terrotorie, the Civil War was to the south one of independance and only of independance, they did not want to control the north, and so there is a danger that if the war happens ingame that the south will unite the united states thus fullfilling the wishes of the north but not their own.
As to asia, Japan maybe as it was a world power, but certainly not china which was for most of this period either subjugated or being invaded from east and west alike.
West Coast nations would still have the incentive to trade with europe, or in this relatily with other american states before resorting to the yellow empires.
they would import from european colonies in the east, unless of course my some slight of alt. history Californias' asain immigration grew to such an extent that the asains became the ruling class in which case it would definately trade with china, but likely be shunned by the white american nations except for when war and nessacity due them to call on californias aid.

I say keep Vermont, not for any historical or logical reasoning but simple because its small enough to not really be a problem and would be the most fun to play. perhaps if they started off, for their disadvantages diplomatic ties to the enemies of the U.S., a fully industrialsed state and and advanced army which cannot support thus forcing the player into instantanous military action against its neigbours.

As to the leaders, Why is Davis imperialistic i would think that charismatic or organized would fit more, especially as his terrotory will be pretty much settled to start with. And also if you use just the last names rather than the full name then it would clear a lot of clutter on the scoreboard and during negotiations.

were you think of random events when you made the list of outlaws and important events?
the trans. railroad as a challenge, abolitionists as a disaster for nations with slavery.
although discovers would come as a modified tech-tree. The second industrial revolution sounds promising as era.
no worries, like the concept.
 
Davis supported acquiring Cuba, taking land for the Panama Canal, and building a southern transcontinental railroad (and thus purchasing land from mexico to do so). So I think it fits with him personally, but I've heard other mentions of the South turning their attention to latin america if they survived the war.

As for the actual game mechanics, no they won't be settling any new land, but the other bonus the trait gives is more great generals and the South did have an excellent supply of qualified, skilled generals. So I figured it would be entirely appropriate. My earlier draft was giving him aggressive, but I think imperialism fits better.
 
Yeah, that's a good point. Canada is Britain. And if the US wasn't going to be a huge unified powerhouse, then Britain wasn't going to give up total control over its remaining North American territory. In fact, it might even try to do some kind of power grab in the western chunk of North America.

I've been thinking about the status of Canada a bit more (and discussing it over at 'poly: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=169681) and I guess it would be a bit of a stretch for Canada to start as an independent nation. It sure makes the modding easier, heh, but I guess if we can it would be best to start Canada as part of the UK and then allow Canada to build or invent or use the diplomacy system to produce the British North America Act that would transfer control to a new civ - Canada.

Rhye's and Fall of Civilization has a feature that could create such an effect, so I know it is possible to do, it'd just be challenging, heh.

After that point, Canada was mostly independent but wasn't in charge of foreign policy or a few other affairs till the 1930's even. We could mirror this in the game through the diplomacy system as well and allow Canada to only build British diplomats. That would both show the close relationship between Canada and the UK, but it would show how Canada doesn't have any direct relations with any other foreign powers since the UK handles that. Canada would be allowed to interact with other North American powers just like normal.

If Canada couldn't conduct foreign policy with outside powers the diplomatic recognition victory condition would be impossible. So we'd need to create a new victory option for Canada, or a modified one, where their goal was to seek total independence from the UK. Perhaps it could be coupled with a goal of getting diplomatic reognition from foriegn powers after that point, but that might make it too challenging.
 
I would again suggest you look at the Revolutions Mod which has its own sub-forum, As its probably easier to intergrate than Rhyes pythons.
Also you could disinclude Vermont and many other small states but still include them in the XML and as former states in the game and have the chance of them proping up later in. [I.e. build all cities in vermont in the world builder and then use the terrotory tool to hand them into the power of the North so that Vermont isnt in the game to start with but if there is reason vermont may return its independance.

Dont worry about too challenging, instead think more fun.
 
I'll try to get something up tonight.

I have some more brainstorming though on expanded/tweaked features.

New Territory Model - Eliminating Culture

Someone else posted a thread a sec ago about how to stop culture from changing borders when it'll mess things up for a historical scenario. That got me thinking about the issue of culture for this game. Like Vermont for example. It'll just be one small city in this mod and surrounded by Boston, New York, Buffalo, and Montreal. Vermont could quite easily get gobbled up by the other's culture. Or they could really invest everything into culture and end up dominating all those major cities with its culture. Neither situation is terribly realistic. Linking culture with taking territory isn't a good mechanism with established civs where borders are determined by treaties.

Another example is how Canada owns a lot of western or nother canada on the map, but probably won't have settlements all through it, or if they do they will be rather small outposts. So the question would be whether we'd want the territory to be completely open with a few spotty settlements here and there, or make some backwards outposts juggernauts in culture so they can take up the appropriate amount of land. That would be awkward as well.

So one thought is that we eliminate the standard culture system altogether. I place the cultural borders at the start of the game and I remove culture from all the buildings and specialists who produce it. For frontier towns, they could instead build a building like "Suburbs" or "Urban Sprawl" or "Advanced Administrative Techniques" that would grow their borders up to level 2 so they could work the fat cross.

We'd have to get rid of the creative trait though, or find some other function for the trait. I'm sure that could be figured out. Maybe a happiness bonus, since creativity/culture has more of a connection (in the real world) to happiness than to territory acquisition.

Enhanced Forts

We'd have to think of other mechanisms as well for the western nations whose borders aren't at all defined like the more established countries. Allow culture for them, but not others? That could be abused.

Maybe... maybe we could change the effect of forts. Forts were used to hold and maintain territory. So maybe we could have them do so in the game too. Forts could start with a ring of culture around them like cities do, and you just need to string a chain of forts together around land you wish to claim. To stop abuse, we could require that a unit from that civ has to be placed in the fort to gain this effect. So lets say Deseret builds a fort, it creates nine squares of Deseret territory when they place a rifleman in it. California sends some units in and capture the fort. By placing their unit in the fort, the 9 tiles flips to California territory. This could also create the need and desire for strategic warfare instead of always fighting to take major cities. If a border fort is sitting on some gold, just take that fort and take the resource.

There could be a substantial boost for pillaging forts that we could give to the natives to highlight their strategy/motivation of stopping the white man's effort to take territory.

That could change their approach altogether. Since, for example, the land the Sioux was on was technically owned by the United States, but they lived on it. That is a tough fact to emulate. But if they lived entirely off of their camps (like in the Genghis Khan scenario) and they were allowed to pass through national borders, then there could be a civ entirely alive and contained within the borders of another civ. The Five Nations however are more settled and would have cities. But this is definitely something we could play with.

For the forts, you could invent different techs that would upgrade the forts and expand the reach of their borders. Or we could give fort bonuses to expansionist civs. They could build them quicker, or they could each hold more territory. You could have some types of military units build forts too, instead of just workers.

New Territory Model 2

Another thought, is that we simply replace culture with diplo-points. Since if negotiating borders is a matter of treaties, you can assume the more and better diplomats you have the more land you could get. (imperfect, I know, but more plausible than culture). We could also, in theory, create a mechanism where if X tile flipped from Canada to the United States, Y gold would transfer from the US treasury to Canada, as if the territory were purchased by the United States (as often happened at that time) and create some kind of compensation for a civ losing land, and consequence for a civ gaining ground.
 
Me and Shiggs are planing on making an "America MOD". What it would do is have several scenarios about things in American history like The American Revolutio, and the Civil War. Maybe we can imcorporate your scenario with them?
 
Yea, that'd be cool actually. Maybe we can get a dev forum. :D

I'm great with ideas, I can do some very, very basic modding, I'm great with maps, and I'm pretty good with history. But I need some serious help with art and implementing some of the more advanced features I'm thinking of. I'd be happy to pool our talents/resources for a wider American Mod. I'm sure a lot of the art at least would be applicable for multiple scenarios.

Anyhow, this is the map I was using. I found it somewhere, I don't know who made it. I tweaked it a bit, but I have a lot more tweaking to go before I'm satisfied with it. But here is the basic scope. I'd like to expand the map a bit more east and south so we can give Mexico some more land, include Cuba, and not chop off New England and the Maritimes so abruptly.
 

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perhaps if you still use culture, but have a treaty which locks borders, i.e. once signed borders no longer move, eliminates close borders as a negative factor for diplomacy
 
perhaps if you still use culture, but have a treaty which locks borders, i.e. once signed borders no longer move, eliminates close borders as a negative factor for diplomacy

If you mean removing "-2: our close borders...", this could be easily done in SDK.
 
He also means that the borders don't clip due to culture. I suppose borrowing a bit of how it works with vassals. That's an idea too.

Another thought I had about the diplomacy feature. It might be much easier to just use the espionage system for diplomacy instead of creating a new GPP section. We could have one central pool of "diplo-points" and the player could assign them to the individual foreign powers in the espionage/diplo screen. Then those points could be spent for the various functions I had outlined above.
 
This is a great scenario! Just exactly what I've been looking for in a Civ4 scenario. Plus is works great, no bugs! But I did notice that none of the factions have starting techs active at the start of the game.

good work on the historical leaders too!
 
The Shadowrun universe has some interesting ideas about a restructured North America. However they used magic to make their alternate version of our world.
 
This is a great scenario! Just exactly what I've been looking for in a Civ4 scenario. Plus is works great, no bugs! But I did notice that none of the factions have starting techs active at the start of the game.

good work on the historical leaders too!

Thanks!

This is just a preliminary scenario btw. Pre-Beta, if you will. There is a lot more work to do. I haven't had much time to work on it lately, and I still have no idea how to do some of the more complicated scripting. But at the very least I hope to get the map set up properly and get some units and buildings added.

I haven't done anything with the starting techs either because I hope to create a new tech tree as well, so that needs to happen first.
 
wow the idea seems awesome maybe culture should be completely replaced by diplo-points and a city's cultural borders depend on the DPs that it has accumulated and you can choose which city to take the DPs from possibly shrinking its borders. you could also implement the fort expansion idea. maybe the world powers could be implemented as corporations and the country's embassy or trading post (corporation building) could make units by spending DPs and also trade recources and/or money for other recources. and maybe you could spend the amount of DPs and/or gold your enemy spends on that country to stop that country from trading with them. i think that would work well combining DPs with culture but could it be coded? good luck i would help if i could mod.:goodjob:
 
Interesting idea with the corporations. I was kinda thinking of using real corporations from the day, but maybe that'd be a good idea.

There is a lot of work yet to do and I'm just really new at modding, so it is going to take me a while. Hopefully I'll put a bit more work into this soon. But any help at all is really needed.
 
I'd really like to help as much as I can, but I can't promies that I'll be much more than an idea thinker or a beta tester. I don't have much experience with modding, but other than that I'd be happy to do anything you need help with. I have plenty of free time and have been looking for an "up-and-coming" scenario/mod to get involved with. I'm downloading what you have, and will play it soon, after I do my yardwork.

PS - All I get upon download is a Word Document.
 
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