Thoughts on general Civ3 gameplay - and what Civ4 should do better

[Longasc]

After playing Civ for years now and getting constantly better and trying higher difficulties, I came to some insights that I want to share.

The game itself evolves mainly around the...

STARTING / EXPLORATION PHASE - "The Age of Excitement"

Right. This is probably why cracker's article on the early game is my favorite article of the War Academy.

Every move counts in this phase. You need to apply all your knowledge to

- maximize terrain benefits
- plan the layout of city placement
- trade tech and luxes
- when or if you want at all to start your first war

This phase covers the whole ancient era and often large parts of the Middle Ages.


THE TURNING POINT - The Age of Ascendance

This is often reached through a "golden trade" that brings you on par, ahead or at least close to the leading Civ in technology.

Your Economy is strong enough by now to compete with the AI's insane production boni on Emperor, Demigod and Deity - the higher levels in general.

This phase is often - even if you do not want to go to war - full of wars. The early landgrab is over, and you have already reached your maximum expansion potential. Further expansion is for all Civs only possible by war or culture flip.

Either you go for Space Race, Diplomatic Victory or you will plan your Conquests in this phase.

The Turning point can be reached in the early Middle Ages up to the middle of the Industrial Age. The sooner you get to this point, the better.

Next and final phase...


THE ENDGAME - The Age of Domination

Your Armies, Economy and/or Tech Superiority are unmatched. This phase rarely sees serious enemy AI-Civs. The game is already decided.

Only an enemy diplomatic victory by the UN or Space Race and the possibility of a cultural 20K City Victory on higher difficulties (Babylon is a prime candidate) could stop you.

C3C players who like to go to war will outproduce the enemy with Communism, more peaceful builders will probably stay in Republic or Democracy and be ahead in tech, build the Spaceship and will not trade tech or for high GPT cost, crippling the AI's research capability.

This is the most boring phase of the Civ game. You have lots of units to move, air power becomes a new key element, you have a wide arsenal of weaponry of all types up to nukes.

In the end, you win.


Only in rare occasions, and these are the most exciting games, I had to fight till the very end. This clearly shows how much emphasis Civ puts on your gameplay in the early phase. It does not even hurt to use governors in late stages of the game! You probably have already won.

This would be my personal wish for Civ4: Less emphasis on the early game starting phase, not so much dependency on sheer luck (river, 2 cows vs. Tundra, no luxes) of a good starting position.

Let's think about a way to make Civ4 challenging even after the "catchup"-phase!

 

[Provolution]

You can complicate matters in the late phase with civil wars, terrorism, ecological upheaval, social protest and need for reforms, increased war weariness, immigration.
In fact, the late game can also include 2-3 world wars of very short duration, run in a special timescale. I am tired of wathing decennial slow naval landings.

 

[Spatula]

boni

I've always wondered about the plural of 'bonus'.

 

[dh_epic]

Longasc, this is the best analysis of the topic that I've seen. I definitely experience those three phases of game. And, unfortunately, the first phase is always the most interesting and challenging, with the second phase being less challenging but still highly fun. The last phase is a formality and is largely unfun.

Extend the Age of Excitement

By creating more barriers to expansion, this early expansion and exploration phase can be elongated and become more interesting. Hard obstacles and limits are a no-no. But offering other natural limits that slow the snowball effect can be highly effective without making the player feel boxed in.

- Operational radius of units, especially settlers, to prevent straying too far from your borders
- "Minor Civs" -- barbarians replaced with independent single city-states, placing natural barriers to expansion, as well as new opportunities (even the chance to assimilate barbarians instead of conquering them)

Make Constant War Less Profitable

Once there is no more space to go around, this is when war becomes the most important. And it becomes much too easy after your first major victory. This is because it’s more valuable to declare war on someone else again instead of pausing to rebuild and create a sense of “this is what it means to be a Roman”, instead of just changing the color of the cities you take.

- greater emphasis on quality of life to maintain order
- greater emphasis on cultural assimilation in order to maintain order
- cultural assimilation NOT inevitable – a sense of regionalism is likely to develop should you not successfully assimilate
- secession and civil war are the inevitable consequences of regionalism multiplied by a low quality of life

Make Peace or Non-Conquest More Profitable

There really is no incentive for peace except to take a few turns to restock your troops, or wait for a key tech or window of opportunity that will give you an advantage over your next opponent. To make matters worse, to be a war monger is to make everything easier – it allows you to generate more culture and more wealth. Without destroying the value of war, the idea is to raise the value of peace.

- make culture generation higher in peacetime, when everyone loves you
- make culture generation lower in wartime, when people around the world shun your culture
- give culture bonuses to those who output culture internationally, instead of those who isolate themselves
- give huge economic bonuses to those who trade internationally, instead of those who isolate themselves
- use tangible trade routes, so war interferes with trade, and peace becomes a demand in a Globalized economy
- allow economic victory
- allow “heroic” or “historical” or “glory” victory, for constantly thwarting aggressive conquests, and then giving territory back to the oppressed

Make “Perfectionism” or Anti-Expansion More Profitable

Without interfering with the conquest points obtained in expansion, maintaining order in a 5 city Nation should allow you to still be a powerhouse, instead of gripping on for dear life or hoping that nobody will try to invade you as you squeak out a diplomatic or cultural victory.

- quantify resources so larger empires have larger hungers and thus larger challenges
- allow multiple kinds of resources so no one can monopolize a resource, and no one is left in the dark
- allow a 4 or 5 city nation to have the world’s largest economy should they leverage their resources
- give large economic bonuses to empires that are less divided by region, with greater stability
- allow economic victory

Two Kinds of AI

I’ve talked about this before. But the idea is that there should be several civs who exist for strategic purposes – pawns in a chess game that the larger civs manipulate. Whereas there are only 4 “megalomaniacal sociopaths” who fight dirty, the way Civ has been in the past. I had a thread on this before.

- maintain rewards for megalomaniacal, psychotic behavior as in first three in the series
- have 80% of the civs play for “realism” and to generally maintain the status quo, go with the flow
- add mechanisms to the game so the megalomaniacs can manipulate the pawn civs for their victory
- give the AI-megalomaniacs a “catch up” algorithm, so they generally don’t fall too far behind the player, unless they are actively getting stomped by a player

Allow More Divergence in the age of Ascendance

In the current game, there is one or two major technological shifts that determine who will be the leaders for the remainder of the game, and who will be on their heels. By allowing people to really shape their Civ in a direction, you make nation-building more meaningful, and thus more fulfilling than merely following the checkpoints on a huge tech race.

- separate “social” progress from “technical” progress (Nationalism versus Gunpowder, Monotheism versus Engineering)
- let technical shifts remain like a race (the way it is now)
- let social shifts become a series of choices, like “the circle of politics” – do you push “left-wing” or “right-wing”?
- let certain social shifts boost militarism, but interfere with economy, etc. – create tradeoffs
- create unique art assets for each culture, so you can have Asian pyramids, or a Mesoamerican Shakespeare’s theatre

The end result, hopefully, is that when civilizations finally clash, you feel like there’s more at stake than “who gets to put their name on the world”. There’s a genuinely meaningful conflict over a way of life.

Overhaul the Age of Dominance

In the late game, war is basically meaningless with railroads allowing you to bring death to someone else’s doorstep. Tech improvements simply boost your numbers, without air-combat being the only major improvement to game-play. And assuming the Age of Dominance is preceded with the same two ages, outlined by Longasc, there’s no real meaning to the late game. It’s simply a question of whether you will win, or win big.

- simplify or eliminate early game quirks, e.g.: remove worker units from the game
- Hardwire moral progress of the world to certain technological advances
- “enlightened” (1850s) nations cannot participate in slavery or genocide, but can colonize and rule over another nation
- colonized nations eventually win their independence, it’s a question of whether it is done peacefully or violently
- “modern” (1950s) nations can no longer keep territory from other countries, but can (hypocritically) use espionage and diplomacy to control the world
- can turn a pawn nation (with no conquest aspirations of their own) into a puppet vassal should they surrender to you
- can secretly turn a pawn nation (with no conquest aspirations of their own) into a puppet regime using espionage – this will be invisible to your allies and enemies
- puppet regimes contribute to domination victory
- puppet regimes without actual invasion or expansionism turns the modern age into the age of the “cold war”

*****

Anyway, I know that’s a mouthful. And some of those ideas will be more poorly received than others. But if all of those things happened, in my mind, the only thing left for Civ would be either tiny gameplay balancing tweaks, or a huge overhaul where the game is totally different. It would essentially be a “perfect game”, to me. Or “perfect enough”, if there is such a thing.

 

[Trade-peror]

In a thread on the "snowballing" effect of expansion, I argued that oversimplification in Civ allows the player to so easily manipulate forces to his ends that your "three phases" analysis almost inevitably holds true, Longasc, because the phases in fact reflect the progression of player control over the game.

In the first phase, the forces shaping the Civs are not yet in place or fully developed, so these are the most unconstrained years, when any Civ can basically "do what it wants." This exploration is fun for most players.

In the second phase, the forces are in place, but Civs must now struggle to control them. This conflict phase is also fun, for all the action and relative unpredictability of wars and plots.

In the third phase, the human player's civ controls the forces. Almost by definition, other civs are doomed, and the human player not only does not face any more challenges, perhaps the pure game length played thus far already contributes to boredom. Therefore, if anything, the later eras need to be more exciting than the earlier ones to maintain interest.

Thus, I conclude that the fundamental problem in Civ, in that the above third stage is permanent rather than temporary and fluctuating, is that it is not complex enough. In other words, it is currently so easy to "figure everything out" and essentially apply the same formula for success that the game is not exciting for its predictability.

Even so, I am very much against increasing micromanagement, so do not get me wrong. Complexity, however, does not always entail micromanagement. In fact, the root of micromanagement is that some actions in Civ are "free" in gameplay terms, but have gameplay benefits. For example, the reassigning of terrain workers to maximize production or growth is free, except for the cost in the human player's time, and so any competitive human player feels compelled to take advantage of these "free" benefits to remain competitive. A much more streamlined system is one in which every action has appropriate and equal costs and benefits, which would force the player to manually change things only when a definite need arises. It would then be more of a strategic move anyway. Combined with a more informative and convenient interface, this would allow for a micromanagement-free game.

In any case, my general solution to all of these problems is to make Civ more complex by adding more considerations for each course of action. Generically speaking, here is the civ system:

action A ==> effect B ==> effect C

I would much rather it be at least more like

action A ==> effect B ==> effect E
action D ==> effect E ==> effect A
action A + E ==> effect D ==>effect C

In this scenario, it is not so predictable how to get from one effect to another, with combination effects, results leading into the "event pathways" of other actions, and so forth. Basically, it will no longer be possible to assure effect C (victory) by simply performing action A (expansion, with settlers and armies). Instead, there will be many things that can get in the way, that need to be dealt with, and that may change the direction of the player's plans in ways not foreseen. Would this not make for much more interesting gameplay, in which the player must be ready for unexpected, but explainable, events that might occur throughout a game?

My specific suggestions for accomplishing this are in my UET II thread. However, I do hope Civ will eventually turn in the general direction toward complexity and depth of play.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, as always I feel that Longasc, Rhialto, DH and T-P have contributed some incredibly important and fascinating analysis to the civ 'franchise'. The things I want to add to the mix are especially relevent to curtailing the 'warmonger' approach to civving:

1) Frekks idea regarding Rail Capacity Points, especially if extended to roads, gives an immediate economic penalty to waging wars! After all, if you RCP's contribute to your wealth (and cost you money to maintain) then every unit you move cuts into how much money you earn. Combined with the ongoing maintainance cost of roads and rail, this can lead to a massive 'double-whammy effect', forcing the player to much more conservative in the movement of his/her forces.

2) Stack limits and operational ranges would also force players to give greater consideration to both the deployment AND goals of their forces in times of war. Gone would be the "stacks O' death" moving across enemy territory conquering all in their path. Instead, you would need to maintain (and defend) an unblocked line of 'supply' back to your territory (or else limit your wars to capture then consolidate), and spread your forces out more in order to let them fight more effectively!

3) War Weariness shouldn't be a simple 'oh, we've been at war X turns, now I'm unhappy'. Though length of war should be an issue in WW, so should the militarism of your society, the culture group, religion AND government of the enemy, how far from home your forces are fighting AND the ratio of losses to victories! If you also tied increasing unhappiness to declining productivity and wealth, then suddenly long wars become a major economic burden to the nation-doubly so if your units cost elements of your civilian population to build!

4) Espionage should be almost, if not AS powerful as conventional warfare in achieving your aims. Be it spying on your enemy to determine where they are, how big they are, and how advanced/rich they are, or directly attacking the engine of their economy and/or war machine, or even overthrowing their government and/or plunging their nation into civil war-all should be possible without even neccessarily showing your hand! Though the costs of being caught should carry heavy penalties of course!

5) Trade should be both a means to make money (or obtain techs/resources) and a means of extending your cultural influence to other nations. Every unit of goods you trade to another nation should carry a % of your national culture with it, to accumulate in the cities of other nations! The same goes with migrants as well!

6) The value of trade to other nations should, in part, be determined by the distance it is being traded and the rarity of the goods (for the buyer) in the trade. It should also be influenced by your international reputation and your relative economic, cultural and military strength!

Well, anyway, now it is ME who is 'gassing on', and yet I feel I have only barely touched the surface!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

EDIT: Oh and, one last thing, I WISH they would bring back the form of bombardment they had in civ3 vanilla (or something very much like it) That is to say, if you bomb a city, you should have a chance of hitting something other than a garrisoned unit (like people and buildings). The more 'collateral damage' you inflict, the more angry and defiant the people may well be when you finally take the city!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Dr. Broom]

One way to solve many of the problems frequently discussed in these forums such as snow ball effect, over emphasis on expansion, warmongering and late game boredom, is to put less emphasis on territory. The way things are now is basically territory = best military, best technology, best economy, most production, most luxuries and most strategic resources. As any player can see after a few wins, the game is dictated by your economy and your production capacity because having a good economy means your trade and technology level and a high production capacity means you have a powerful military.

So then the best way to go around fixing this is to lessen the effect of territory by getting rid of the current system of tiles producing food, production and wealth and replace it with something like this:

Food: Only resource tiles create, much like it is now but it should be possible to trade it between cities and between nations.

Gold/Money/Wealth: It should be generated by trade, not only with other nations but between cities and also by population paying taxes. Larger populations mean higher income because there are more people trading and more taxpayers.

Production: Have a base amount of production at the start of the game, something like 2 shields per turn in your capital city only and .5 per person in the city. Buildings such as guilds, factories and plants would each double the production of people in the city so that after a guild each person would create 1 shield then after a factory 2 then after a plant 4 shields, etc. Researching techs should also give a bonus separate from the buildings available.

Technology: Technology should be cheaper for smaller nations, the makes sense if you think about it because included is the cost to utilize the technology. So say that you just got the road tech, for a huge country like Russia the costs of building roads across the country are gigantic and will take years to pay by even a wealthy government. In a small country like Monaco it would be so much cheaper, a wealthy individual could pay for the whole thing. Doing this would force large counrtries to either slow down their expansion in order to not fall behind too much in terms of technology or be a very backwards culture.


None of these ideas are perfect as they are and all could be improved and built upon but I think they would provide a lot of depth to the game as they are now. If forum members or hopefully people working on the game improve on them it would make the game truly revolutionary.

 

[Trade-peror]

I agree, Mr. Broom, that overemphasizing territory, or anything (and therefore oversimplifying the game), allows for too much human player control over gameplay forces. To remedy this, however, such undue emphasis must not simply be shifted to a different aspect of the game; instead, including many more factors, and therefore increasing strategic depth by providing more options and things to consider, would prevent any one factor from becoming the prime determinant of a game.

Even so, many of your ideas are similar to my ideas contained in my UET II thread, particularly the one concerning trading to produce wealth. The UET II, while fundamentally based on trading, actually encompasses many other areas, and integrates it all into one giant framework. The sheer enormity of the UET II prevents a player from so easily "figuring out how to beat the game" and allows for almost infinitely many paths to victory, due to the many variables involved.

That is the kind of game that I hope Civ eventually becomes--one in which the paths to victory are as numerous as there are Civ players willing to try something new.

 

[Longasc]

I am not sure, but Civ4 is already in development. Some changes suggested are rather FUNDAMENTAL. I am not sure they would still make it into the game at this point of time.

I will quote Provo, as I feel that the modern age should allow more variety in warfare at least and face new problems.

You can complicate matters in the late phase with civil wars, terrorism, ecological upheaval, social protest and need for reforms, increased war weariness, immigration.
In fact, the late game can also include 2-3 world wars of very short duration, run in a special timescale. I am tired of wathing decennial slow naval landings.

An improved trade system of higher importance and some more factors - like unemployment - could be implemented. As it is a popular topic of discussion in off-topic, I want to combine two concepts: Unemployment and the cost caused by it due to social welfare, health care...

This is a bit difficult, as it might and surely will somehow interfere with the rather abstract luxuries slider. It would also be detrimental to make an easy thing too complex for no good reason, but I got the idea of the

progressive gameplay options

for the different eras - if Civ4 will still have eras. In short, we have espionage only as a late game option in Civ4. It is non-existant in the Ancient and Middle Ages.

How about adding NEW options to trade, treaties... possible player actions in general during the progress of the game?

This is already true today, with some specialist citizens becoming available later in the game, for espionage and so on...

Still, one must be sure not to add too much standardized Micro-Management, but options of selection usually must only be set once and changed as necessary, not like a worker be automated or given a new task at the end of his job every time.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

OK, I would like to show how maintainance costs for improvements-such as RR's and roads, can help to limit the snowball effect. Please note that ALL numbers are for illustrative purposes only!

Assume that we have RCP's (Rail Capacity points), each of which =X gpt. This X is based on the average population and wealth of the cities connected by the rail network. In addition, all RR's cost 1gpt/3 hexes, and grant 1RCP per 6 hexes-and each city costs 5gpt+1 gpt per 2 population points.

So, lets say we have 2 civs-CivA and CivB-the first of which contains 12 cities, a population of 48 and an average wealth of 8. CivB has 6 cities, with a population of 48 and an average wealth of 8.
So, Civ A has a network of RR's covering 60 hexes. This gives a total of 10 RCP's, worth (4*8/10)=3.2gpt each, or 32 gpt. However, this RR capacity COSTS them 20 gpt (60 hexes/3)-for a net gain of 12 gpt.

CivB, OTOH, has only around 20 hexes of Rail connecting its cities, giving just shy of 4 RCP's, worth (8*8/10)=6.4gpt each, or 27 gpt (rounded up). This RR capacity, though, only costs CivB 7gpt, giving a net gain of 20 gpt.

So, as you can see, the smaller, more compact civ is alreadt 8gpt better off, even if the civs cities are of roughly the same wealth. Given that the civ with bigger cities will also probably have wealthier cities, then the difference will probably be greater in real terms! What must also be considered, is that CivA's cities cost it ((12*5)+(24))=84gpt, wheras civB's cities cost it ((6*5)+24))=54gpt. This makes the smaller, more compact civ a further 30gpt better off! Though this does not STOP snowballing completely, it certainly allows the smaller civs to remain competitive economically with the larger, sprawling civs! This will flow in to how much money the former civs have to fund research, unit maintainance, covert operations and good trade deals!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Sirian]

- make culture generation higher in peacetime, when everyone loves you
- make culture generation lower in wartime, when people around the world shun your culture
- give culture bonuses to those who output culture internationally, instead of those who isolate themselves
- give huge economic bonuses to those who trade internationally, instead of those who isolate themselves
- use tangible trade routes, so war interferes with trade, and peace becomes a demand in a Globalized economy
- allow economic victory
- allow “heroic” or “historical” or “glory” victory, for constantly thwarting aggressive conquests, and then giving territory back to the oppressed

Thoughtful, but doomed.

What is peacetime? What is wartime? Player presses a button and declares war on any civ he pleases at any time he pleases. Declared states of war are entirely meaningless in the Civ universe, except as relates to how flawed the rules are. Player may decline to return to a peaceful state. For that matter, the AI may decline as well.

Diplomacy overshadows all of these suggestions and renders them moot. I'm afraid the game will need to be made of much sterner stuff than we've seen before if it is to transcend problems that have always plagued the franchise.


- Sirian

 

[dh_epic]

I don't understand what the problem is with, say, letting culture and trade flow when two nations are at peace, and maybe even peak when the two nations are admirers of one another (or when one nation so desperately fears the other). And at war, trade routes close, and resentment builds, and trade and culture are throttled into isolationism. That's what I mean about wartime and peacetime, even if sometimes those only exist for convenience.

 

[Sirian]

I don't understand what the problem is with, say, letting culture and trade flow when two nations are at peace...

In Civ3, culture is an absolute mechanism, not relative to each civ. Culture is self-contained, not interflowing with neighbors. Culture derives from city improvements and nothing else.

Perhaps if they drop culture entirely, or revise it from the ground up, something like you describe might work. With the Civ3 model, there's no way.

Once again, I'm with you in spirit. I'd be happy to see the game go where you are envisioning. However, getting there is the hard part. The devil's in the details.


Ironically, war is often more a source of culture than Civ3 admits. Wars can bring a nation together. Culture is shared experience, shared perspective, shared education, shared ritual, shared context. Just putting people together in any form generates culture. The question is whether any of that culture will endure. Culture revolves around ideas more than anything else. What are the ideas that a people choose to embrace? Churches and universities are appropriate cultural generators because in these places, people get educated on the particular ideas embraced by a civilization. However, if the ideas do not grow and evolve, if they do not operate as platforms on which to build even more ideas, then the culture will largely be static. That is because the old folks die out, and their ideas and knowledge and perspectives are lost, saving whatever they have recorded or passed on to offspring.

War can devastate a culture by killing off people in large numbers. However, wars can be their own hotbed for ideas and shared experience. War sometimes generates history in greater measure than is lost with the dead and the dying. War can create new values, inventions, lessons, legends. Ideas.

Freedom is the springbed for powerful culture. When ideas flow freely, and are not suppressed, more culture will be generated, in all its forms. Civ3 does not reflect this truth. Will Civ4? I don't know. Probably not. War does not necessarily slow culture. Oppression slows culture.

The notion that culture derives merely from the passage of time is faulty. Truly ancient relics and wonders can provide powerful ties back to ideas of old -- if not the ideas themselves then the history -- but the true spread of culture comes with population growth. The more people who believe in a particular idea, who identify with a particular religion or nationality (and the more conviction the people hold in the ideas) the stronger the culture.


Trying to reflect this by tying it to the Civ war/peace mechanism, which has loopholes big enough through which to sail the Titanic, is a lost cause. They would be giving even MORE power to warmongers, by giving those who prosecute wars a lever to use against any target they choose. Declare war on a target, start hurting his culture.

Culture would have to be reworked completely to lend to the sort of thing you are proposing.


- Sirian

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I don't think that culture should be dropped entirely, Sirrian, but I think that DH (like myself) is operating from the basis of a hope that the culture model will be altered radically! I, for one, hope that culture will have more of a 'flow' to it, where it moves from areas of 'high to low' concentration, much in the way of Osmosis. In order for this passive flow to occur across national borders, though, there must first be an opening of borders between nations! Of course, alongside this passive culture flow would be a semi-active and active flow-with trade an immigration forming the semi-active part, and propaganda and creation of 'cultural enclaves' forming the active part of the model! Of course, in this model, the coming together of a nation in wartime could be easily simulated by the fact that borders close and, therefore, culture from the enemy can no-longer flow across into your nation-even if it is much stronger. By the same token, though, war should generally restrict the amount of culture which flows passively from your state to other nations-even if you are not at war with THEM!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Spatula]

Culture should have more of a flow, as people have said. And culture isn't just a spatial thing - ancient culture has always influenced modern art and architecture.

 

[Trade-peror]

Longasc, I am well aware that my UET II ideas are fundamentally different from Civ, and thus I only hope that they will eventually get into Civ, for I agree that at this point Civ4 will probably not change any more major concepts before its release. Even so, I hope Civ is overall going in that direction.

Anyway, regarding culture, I often hear from others on this forum that culture was a distinguishing feature of Civ3, but I agree there are some problems with the system. Rather than dropping culture or even so radically redefining it, however, I prefer to simply extend the reach of culture to other aspects of the game.

I do have a section on culture in my UET II thread:

Culture

XXVII. Levels of Culture
The levels of culture in a civ depend upon the levels of population organization in the civ. For example, a civ with only villages a few cities would have only some local and mostly national culture, while a civ with villages organized into cities organized into provinces would have local, regional, and national culture. Having more levels of culture, however, does not increase the actual amount of culture in a civ; having more levels simply increases the cultural resilience of components of the civ when threatened by other cultures.

XXVIII. Source of Culture
The fundamental source of all culture is the urban infrastructure of a civ, specifically the City Improvements that generate culture and the Wonders. The placement and concentration of these buildings ultimately determine the cultural patterns of a civ.

XXIX. Culture and Trade
Trade is critical not only for the wealth it produces but also for its ability to spread a civ’s culture to other cultures. When a foreign culture consumes the products of a civ, then the foreign culture becomes more tolerant toward the civ’s culture, a factor that can make cultural domination, diplomatic relations, and even military conquest easier.

XXX. Culture and the Military
Since all units are derived from the population, and all population units have culture, military units also carry the cultures of the population from which they were recruited. When dealing with foreign civs, this usually only involves national cultures, but stationing troops to quell rebellions or resistance in provinces or cities of the same civ can involve exchanges of local and regional culture. In any case, culture spread through the military, unlike trade, does not always increase toleration. Generally, if a military unit’s culture is stronger than that of the culture the unit is occupying or suppressing, then the military unit’s culture will become more tolerable to those conquered. If the occupied population’s culture is stronger, then there will be significant resistance, both militarily and culturally, against the military unit. One important exception to these two rules is when a military unit pillages or otherwise destroys improvements or any part of the population being occupied--in these cases, the victimized population will also resist.

XXXI. Cultural Rebellions
When a portion of a civ is sufficiently overwhelmed by a nearby foreign culture, it will attempt to “flip” over to the foreign culture. To do so, this portion rebels against the civ it is currently part of, and as soon as peace is made between them, the rebellious portion becomes a part of the civ that overwhelmed it culturally.

XXXII. Cultural Adherents and Sympathizers
When a nearby foreign culture is stronger than the culture a Village is originally part of, the Village can become tolerant of that culture, and eventually even become an adherent of that foreign culture. In the case of scattered Villages, these adherents would immediately join the admired culture. However, with Villages part of higher administrative organizations such as cities or provinces, the entire city or province must be overwhelmed for a switch of political allegiance, which would involve a Cultural Rebellion. Even with such non-independent Villages, a cultural “conversion” is still possible. In such a situation, the Village would become a “sympathizer” with the foreign culture that it admires, but would remain under the political control of the original civ. Note, however, that war against the admired foreign culture would spark a rebellion among these sympathizers, and any propaganda efforts on the part of the admired foreign culture are much more effective in areas with many sympathizers. Considering such possibilities, these intercultural elements of the population would significantly influence diplomacy.

XXXIII. Immigration
When immigrants settle, either in a different part of their native civ or in a different civ, they carry their culture with them. Within a civ, a lot of immigration could promote cultural unity, and with foreign civs a lot of immigration could increase the number of sympathizers in that civ.

This approach would not particularly favor either builders or warmongers. Other related posts are in this page in my UET II thread.

 

[dh_epic]

The criticism I've heard of revamping culture into a flow-model of some kind seems to run contrary to a lot of my thinking. In Civ 3, the culture model is inadequate (it is unrealistic, and does nothing to overcome the imbalances with warmongers). The new model is an improvement on Civ 3, but is also inadequate (there are still some real world things it does not model, and it doesn't solve all the warmonger problems either). Thus, culture should be eliminated altogether.

I simply disagree. I believe strongly in iteration. Part of the belief in iteration isn't just the belief that the next version will be better, but it's also that no version will ever be complete or perfect. Not the current version, not the next version, not the version after that. As long as you improve every aspect of the game, you have achieved success as far as new features go.

Still, I maintain that a flow-model of culture would improve the alternatives to a "make war with everybody" strategy. The biggest criticism is that if war diminishes the flow of culture because of xenophobia, then to attack a culture-producer is to hurt them two-fold (one by hurting their culture flow, and two by dominating them militarily).

The model I proposed involved other details -- such as culture producing units (which you "install" into other peoples' cities, like spies or caravans). Another important detail is culture-enabled abilities: if an enemy city is 25% culturally-YOU, then you should be able to leverage it to do something against the will of its owner. Even moreso if the enemy city is 50% culturally-you.

Without going into too many examples, let's say you can send missionaries to other cities, and you can also force enemy cities to "protest" a war against you should they culturally identify with you enough. If someone declares war on you, trying to jeopardize your culture, the first thing you do is take a more aggressive role in "culturing" them. You send missionaries to nearby cities. Then with the newfound cultural respect in their border cities, you throw their cities into resistance (with a chance of secession if the people were already unhappy to begin with, and if secession is something you implement in Civ 4, at least in terms of culture flipping or splitting).

This is essentially what happened with Christian Europe and the barbarian invaders from the north, or China and its northern invaders. They invaders won the battle, but in the end, they became a part of that culture. China and Europe won, the barbarians lost. And in Civ 4, you'd get to play this first hand. Will the barbarians dominate China, or will China culture the barbarians? That's part of the fun.

 

[Sirian]

culture producing units (which you "install" into other peoples' cities, like spies or caravans).

What is the counter? I don't see any mention of a counter.


Games are about what players do.

I've been playing Half Life 2 for the last five days, and I'm struck by its overall simplicity. There are a limited number of weapon types. Your character can carry limited ammunition for each type of weapon. The gameplay is linear in nature, with all scenarios organized on a straight time line, from which player is not able to divulge. Each scenario is varied, interesting, and requires the player to do something different, something interesting or unique. The scenarios are carefully scripted and balanced, and they surely underwent a lot of playtesting to get there.

So what we have in HL2 is a simple gaming concept applied creatively to interesting gaming environments. This is sure to be the top selling game of this Christmas season. Will Civ4 be the top seller for next Christmas? Quite possibly, because Civ has always followed the same principle: simple game applied to complex and varied environments to produce a steady and varied stream of fun experiences that are, overall, well balanced.

What does player do in Civ? He moves units, he fights battles one unit at a time, he places cities on the map, he adds improvements to cities, he grows the cities, he adds a few simple improvements to tiles on the map, and he tries to defend his holdings against the units of rivals, or to overcome their units and conquer their territory. It's really a simple game.

I agree that culture added more to Civ3 than it took away, and I agree that an iterative process for the franchise is a winning move. But in the end, any changes to culture come back to what the player will DO to interact with that system.


Unless there's a counter to being able to send invisible or invulnerable units at another civ, that would open a huge loophole that would dominate the gameplay. And if there is a counter, it would likely involve military units, because that is all Civ really is (units, tiles, and cities) then all we're really talking about here is bringing back the Diplomat unit from the original game and giving it powers that relate to culture.

Others may see it differently, but I would not welcome that.


- Sirian

 

[Spatula]

Within a civ, a lot of immigration could promote cultural unity, and with foreign civs a lot of immigration could increase the number of sympathizers in that civ

I'm having trouble getting my head around the bold bit. Please explain.

 

[Trade-peror]

@dh_epic:

I happen to feel that a UET II-type model such as the one I posted would give builders a significant advantage, now that I consider all of the consequences, and perhaps even too much of one. This is due primarily to the fact that cultural buildings are the ultimate source of culture, and builders would tend to be better at that aspect of the game. In addition, a culturally-dominant country can gain admirers in nearby civs by overwhelming their citizens with superior culture. This turns those citizens into "sympathizers" that will be angered by any hostile action against the admired culture. Note that warmongers would then have to heed the cultural status of their holdings to prevent culture-induced rebellions!

As for "culture-spreading units," my model prefers that culture spread by itself, almost as if through diffusion, into other cultures and gain adherents rather than have manual and directed "cultural attacks." Even so, it is possible for the player to actively infiltrate other cultures by initiating trade agreements and the sale of products to the target civs, and missionaries are also a good idea. Indirectly, the player could even induce immigration into the target civs, and thus plant their own culture into others (because immigrants retain their cultural identities until assimilated or "converted" like any other population unit).


@Sirian:

I currently see Civ as, fundamentally, a war game rather than a builder game. This appears to be what you have mentioned as well (please correct me if I am wrong!), but this bothers me because there are already plenty of war games on the market, but few builder games. If I really wanted to play a war game, why would I not rather play Warcraft, or Praetorians, or Panzer General?


@Spatula:

What I mean by a "sympathizer" is a citizen that admires and adheres to a culture different from the one the citizen owes its political allegiance to. Immigrants that go to a foreign culture still retain the culture they used to be part of, with only a switch of political allegiance to the new country, so they can be considered "sympathetic" to their original culture. When citizens are sympathetic to a culture that is attacked by the culture they owe their political allegiance to, then discontent and unrest may foment and possibly result in a rebellion. Even more interesting, a culture with admirers in many civs could draw upon that to improve the likelihood of getting support from those other civs. An example will make all of this much clearer:

Say Citizen 1 is part of Civ A. Nearby Civ B's culture is so superior, however, that Citizen 1 sympathizes with Civ B. So currently, Citizen 1's political allegiance is still Civ A, but its cultural allegiance is Civ B.

If Civ A declares war on Civ B, then Citizen 1 would become unhappy. If enough other citizens are unhappy for similar reasons, then the affected portion of Civ A may rebel against the central government of Civ A.

If Civ B declares war on Civ A, then Citizen 1 may peacefully submit to a military invasion by Civ B. If Civ B uses propaganda, Citizen 1 will probably revolt against Civ A. If, however, Civ B inflicts personal damage upon Citizen 1 (i.e. pillages the square Citizen 1 lives on) then Citizen 1 will revert its cultural allegiance back to Civ A, and will be prejudiced against Civ B's culture.

Now say Citizen 2 is part of Civ B. If Civ A, which is culturally inferior, invades and occupies an area Citizen 2 is in, Citizen 2 would probably rebel for being subjected to such indignity.

Hopefully that clarifies things a bit. Also, I think I have a post on cultural effects in my UET II thread (probably on page 4), separate from the one I reposted for this thread. Perhaps looking at that could help as well.