Version 2.6 discussion

[Complex]

Thanks for the positive feedback re: diversified religion.


Right off the bat, let me say that diseases are an awesome idea.

To be honest, there is some potential to do major renovations of the healthy/unhealthy system. For example, a lot of people don't realize it but most diseases are not created as "human" diseases. In reality, diseases evolve, adapt, and jump from species to species. An excellent example of this is smallpox. Before it killed humans, smallpox was a disease among livestock that evolved to infect humans as a direct correlation to humanity's close daily proximity to their livestock in the ancient age. Simultaneously, this allowed humans to develop antibodies and resistance to the disease, a disease that the native americans were never exposed to because they did not have the domesticated livestock that the Europeans had.

Soooooo, here are some ideas for how to better represent the effects of disease on society:

1) a random event with similar frequency to the "collapsed mine" or "surplus game" events that causes an "outbreak" and creates X in abc city + .5X in surrounding cities.

2) think of diseases spreading along the same lines as religions except that they would be like "temporary" religions. A disease spreads to a city, stays for a random number of turns creating while there and then leaves.

3) Add penalties to livestock resources that gradually decreases over time, being negated by opposing bonuses built into later techs. For example, pig gives +1 (in addition to it's existing bonuses) and as you progress and discover new techs, certain techs gradually reduce the unhealthy effect by fractional amounts until by the industrial/modern era the penalty is all but gone.

4) Using the same mechanic that the new civic system uses to increase or decrease rebelliousness based on civic choices, make a mechanic that incorporates my suggestion in #2 to increase or decrease the chance of a disease spreading based on buildings or lack of buildings within a city.

Example, City A is infected, City B is 8 spaces away to the east, City C is 6 spaces away to the west. City C is geographically closer, but has an aqueduct and doctor's office which B does not. This makes it less likely that the disease will jump to C and more likely it will go to B. There are several buildings and techs that this effect could be added to.

5) Keeping in line with #4, things like population and infected cities connected via trade route could also modify the "infection spread" mechanic.

6) From here, given that we already have things like ammunition and steel resources, we could have a pharmaceutical resource created by a pharmaceutical building or perhaps even a new corp.

7) I've always wondered what it was about my flood plains that made people so unhealthy. Now there is a reason. Instead of a generic vague penalty, flood plains (along with jungle & marsh) can add to the disease penalty when a disease is present in the city but not otherwise. Also, those terrains could increase the likelihood of the nearest city contracting one. After all, it's not really the terrain that makes the people unhealthy, just the byproducts of that terrain.





While we're making suggestions, I've always thought it would be cool to be able to have the option to manually change a city's trade routes. It should be automatic for the most part, but I've always felt that at least the option to select new trade routes should be there.

Also, plz plz plz plz, I would love to see some mechanic for transferring food to a new city. Perhaps like a trade caravan except the unit would give a temp + bonus to a city. Honestly, Las Vegas and Phoenix are not surrounded by lush farmland and yet plenty of people live there!! Why? Because someone had the bright idea to put food on a truck and send it there. Ancient Rome could not grow enough food in Italy alone but they did not starve!! They had the bright idea to put crops on ships from other places and send it back to Italy. Why this mechanic does not exist in Civ has always baffled me.

 

[konradcabral]

To be honest, there is some potential to do major renovations of the healthy/unhealthy system.

Once more I repeat: this is a very good topic!

While we're making suggestions, I've always thought it would be cool to be able to have the option to manually change a city's trade routes. It should be automatic for the most part, but I've always felt that at least the option to select new trade routes should be there.

I gave this idea too.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7439887#post7439887

Post #191

Playing Civ as it is, we don't even know which are our main trade routes, because we don't pay attention.

Also, plz plz plz plz, I would love to see some mechanic for transferring food to a new city. Perhaps like a trade caravan except the unit would give a temp + bonus to a city. Honestly, Las Vegas and Phoenix are not surrounded by lush farmland and yet plenty of people live there!! Why? Because someone had the bright idea to put food on a truck and send it there. Ancient Rome could not grow enough food in Italy alone but they did not starve!! They had the bright idea to put crops on ships from other places and send it back to Italy. Why this mechanic does not exist in Civ has always baffled me.

I also thought about this Civ flaw before, my short comment about it is at the same link (post #188, with the suggestion about Immigration).

How about a unique food counting for the entire nation? This way we could manage how much food give to city A and how much for city B (and which leave to starve! - No food for you!). Obviously, the restrictions to this liberty would be transport techs. Other advantage to this model: specialize cities in food production, even more than we do now.

 

[Complex]

I was unaware those suggestions had already been made, but it's good to hear that I'm not the only one thinking along those lines.

 

[konradcabral]

I was unaware those suggestions had already been made, but it's good to hear that I'm not the only one thinking along those lines.

I think this way too.
And how do you think we could proceed with food distribution system? Do you agree with my last post?

 

[tomekpe]

What is truly make me sad is a fact that Civilization IV mechanic doesn't include connection between number of military units and population size.

I have an idea how to connect these two things. One slice of bread for one unit, except spy, worker, explorer (every non division size units).

In details:

If unit is located in city it needs one slice of bread from nearest city to exist.
If unit is locate in their cultural border it takes one slice from this plot.

If unit is in neutral or enemy land it needs also 1 slice of bread, but from "supply wagon" (additional unit). So you need think about supply if you go for a war.

"Supply wagon" doesn't need food and can take amount of food (5, 10, 15 <-- related to tech era).

If you don't want to build "supply wagon" you have 2 options. You do nothing and your unit lose 1/4 of health per turn or you can order it to take food from terrain (also 1 slice).

What does it change?

1. You or your enemy cannot build units like in RTS games. If you want to declare war you have to secure supply and remember that units also need food.
2. Nation with huge production but small food amount can't build huge army or has to starve their people. (like in history).
3. With this feature we can make sieges more historical accurate
4. You have to provide supply lines for your attacking forces (what is also historical accuracy).

In this mod default food amount per 1 pop is 3. For this change it means that 1 pop = 3 military units. Which is for me better than (1 pop = 2 military units) like in default game.

What do you think about this modification?

 

[c0d5579]

Also, link number of military units garrisoned in a city to happiness, especially in more "liberal" civic setups. This isn't because a population is "under the heel," or something like that, but rather to reflect the difficulties posed in housing troops. Large military concentrations, even in barracks, have disruptive effects on a city. Call it the "Fayettenam" effect, if you will. If those troops are then billeted on the population, as in immediately pre-Revolution America, then you have a revolt on your hands. Say every military unit past two, excluding air units, causes unhappiness.

 

[konradcabral]

What is truly make me sad is a fact that Civilization IV mechanic doesn't include connection between number of military units and population size.

Yup. I totally agree. In fact,this is one of the main reasons because of the scoreboard almost do not change along the eras. One ancient powerful army is still powerful at industrial and future eras, you just need to pay a few coins to update it.

I have an idea how to connect these two things. One slice of bread for one unit, except spy, worker, explorer (every non division size units).

1. Could "Supply wagon" be designed as a "refill unit"?
2. Pillage should only work as a finite supplying.
3. Extend the "Trade block" button that sea units have to terrain ones too. This way, we could simulate a city being totally surrouded being at just one or two tiles, one for each side of the city tile. But cities would endure the food siege depending of its food stocks. Don't know if I made me clear.

 

[tomekpe]

It can be "refill unit"
You build it only with food (workers and settlers also can be build with hammers).

The main problem with this modification can be how to teach AI supply their units.

 

[Big Heb]

This is an interesting idea I thought of, but it would be a complete pain in the butt to code I think. I'm not even sure if it is even possible, but it would add a great dimension to the game along with the naval porting idea and minor civilizations.

Attrition
This expands upon tomekpe's idea, but I got this idea from another strategy game, Rise of Nations. While that game is real time and this is turn-based, the same principle can apply.

Basically, units outside of your cultural borders will gradually lose health very slowly to simulate lack of supplies and needing to hunt and gather to support themselves.

For example, your first Warrior goes out to get a nearby goodie hut. He goes out to get it, and has only a little bit of health left when he returns to the city. This limits exploration to a historically realistic level (few Romans if any set foot in China). It could also be dependent on terrain features as well. Cleared Grasslands and Plains would inflict the least amount of attrition. Forested Grasslands and Plains would inflict a little more. Hills, Marshes, Tundra, Ice and any Jungle tiles will inflict the most.

If you set foot in any enemy cultural borders during peacetime with Open Borders, you would not suffer attrition. If you set foot in any enemy cultural borders after declaring war, attrition will be higher than in unclaimed terrain.

There are many ways to combat attrition.
1. Stay in your cultural borders. Only explore when necessary.

2. Build forts. Staying in fort tiles outside your cultural borders will stop attrition and will make you heal faster. Fortifying in unclaimed tiles without forts will still result in attrition, so this new idea would make building forts in strategic defensive positions better than fortifying in random places to kill barbarians and warring civilizations.

3. Build roads and railroads. Roads will halve attrition and railroads will completely negate it. This makes building a "Silk Road" or transcontinental railroad very effective to get your units unscathed across long distances.

4. Build Supply Wagons. Supply Wagons should be available with Trade and they would provide food and medical supplies for soldiers. If you have a Supply Wagon in the same tile as your soldiers, your soldiers will be immune to attrition. Supply Wagons cannot defend themselves and switch to the enemy like Workers when attacked. In a stack of units, all military units must be killed before attacking the Supply Wagon unless the attacking unit has the Flank ability. Supply Wagons go one tile per turn, so are recommended for simple troops rather than cavalry.

5. Take the March unit upgrade. It will also reduce attrition a little.

6. Take the sea route. Naval units and passengers do not suffer attrition, although I strongly recommend the porting requirement to balance that.

7. Use Scouts and Explorers to explore. Scouts suffer the same amount of attrition as normal military units, but move faster. Explorers are immune to attrition.

 

[c0d5579]

Something similar to Heb's suggestion already exists in Rhye's, as the Russian unique national power - invade Russia and your units start to attrite (yes, real word).

 

[Big Heb]

Something similar to Heb's suggestion already exists in Rhye's, as the Russian unique national power - invade Russia and your units start to attrite (yes, real word).

I remember that, and was a pain in the butt when I tried to blitzkrieg Russia with an army of Panzers as Germany. I'm not sure if zapp can borrow that component from Rhye's though since the mod is coded in a very specific way. But it may be independent from the special coding so it may be possible.

 

[c0d5579]

Point was that it's been done before, so we know it can be done.

 

[Complex]

I'm glad someone raised the issue of army size relative to national size. This has always been one of those things about civ that never made any sense.

I think the "supply wagon" should be a unit that is always constructed with instead of (regardless of civics) and you should need to have 1 supply wagon for every X combat units on a tile.

-Constructing the unit with ensures that the city making the wagon cannot grow during production which simulates food being diverted to military use.

-If the ratio is 5:1 for example than essentially every 6th unit you build has to be a supply wagon. This helps scale back the number of combat units you are able to produce by taking all those extra turns you would normally use to make combat units and putting them toward supplies.

- I agree there must be some mechanism to simulate realistic exploration and over extended supply lines. To achieve this, I propose the following mechanism:

> As mentioned, supply wagons are constructed with , HOWEVER, they have no set number of turns to complete. Think of them like sponges, they sit in the production queue absorbing up to X pieces of the that city's excess per turn until you want them, with a maximum of Y turns before they are full.
> As proposed in this thread, units consume Z units of per turn, regardless of location. When in a city, units consume the city's first. If there is not enough spare in the city, the city starves unless supply wagons are brought in to provide a secondary source of . This gives you an incentive to utilize forts and base your troops there so as not to stagnate your cities' growth. Also, only combat troops consume food, workers, settlers, spies, missionaries, trade caravans, great people, and the wagon itself do not.
>Forts give N per turn every turn. This simulates being able to supply your forts through civilian means and lessens the tedium of constantly making supply wagons just to support defensive troops during long peaceful phases. If for example a fort provides 20 per turn, then you can keep up to 20 units in that fort free of charge so to speak before you will need to keep supply wagons at the fort as well.
>So, let's assume that the absolute max a wagon can absorb is 10 per turn, and the max number of turns it can build for is 10 turns. This would make a maximum of 100 per wagon. Keeping with ratio given above, each wagon supports 5 units lets say. Based on these numbers, a fair per unit, per turn consumption rate might be 1 per turn per unit. Under this example, one fully loaded supply wagon can keep 5 units fed for 20 turns. This would be for a pre-meditated invasion or long range operations, on the other hand for a quick defensive mobilization you could only fill the wagon for 5 turns and get it out the door quickly but at the cost of only being able to support 5 units for 10 turns. Likewise, you could support smaller stacks of less than five units for longer which would come in handy for keeping small pillaging stacks supplied.
>Supply wagons must have a minimum of 2 movement points. They need to be able to keep up with cavalry and armor or else they might severely nerf the effectiveness of either.
> This enforces the idea of supply lines as in order to carry out lengthy operations you will need to constantly pump new wagons out to the front lines. These wagons need to be protected, therefore you must provide a proper rear guard defense.
> As the wagon gives out food, it loses a corresponding percentage of health which CANNOT be healed. When the wagon is out, it is destroyed. Wagons do not lose health or in cities or forts unless they are REQUIRED to in order to prevent starvation.
>I think it is important to stress that units cannot lose health as a result of lack of supplies nor should they be able to regain health from a restoration of fresh supplies. This would be too easily exploitable as such a system negates any incentive to build medic units if the supply unit you NEED to have anyway also gives missing health back. Instead, units without proper supply become "fatigued". This is a condition that is set at the individual unit level and causes a negative variable to be applied against that units combat odds. This multiplier increases with each turn. For instance, one turn without supply might be -10% chance to win, while 5 turns without supply might be -50% chance to win and so on. Using these numbers, after ten turns without supply, the unit is little more than a skeleton and has no chance of winning since it would be facing a -100% chance to win. Once proper supplies are restored, the counter immediately resets to 0 and the unit is at full fighting capacity.
> You could also incorporate upgrades similar to the settler -> colonist -> pioneer progression and make better, more efficient supply wagons to keep up with technology advancing (obv D-Day was not run with horse drawn supply wagons). These more advanced types could either hold more food or support more units per "wagon".




ALSO - Supply wagons should have a dual purpose. Something between a trade caravan's "trade mission" and a Civ III worker's "join city" ability. I'm thinking it should have a mission button like "deliver food" which allows it to xfer however much is on-board to whatever city it is currently in. The unit is "absorbed" into the city and the city receives the equivalent bonus. The city then can burn through that food to grow faster for several turns, or with despotism, produce units faster for several turns.


I know some of this is probably a major pain from a coding perspective but I think it would be worth looking into. Let me know what you think.

 

[konradcabral]

I liked the idea of wagons supplying units out of the cities, not the cities itself. Otherwise, won't us pass all the time managing the food and wagons?
The cities must be fed automatically by roads, railroads and ships. The better idea that crosses my mind for an automatic food system is a single number of slices of bread for all the empire.

 

[Complex]

Yes but the way I'm suggesting it the cities don't need wagons, the units based in the city need the wagons. Hence the incentive to use forts to base your units. I suppose you could take it a step further too and allow a certain number of units per city free of charge just to handle a basic garrison and whatnot...

My issue with having a single source of for the whole empire is that that in and of itself could become a micro-management nightmare as you try to balance a single bank of food amongst all of your cities to ensure optimal growth. I think a lot of people would have trouble finding that optimal balance and their cities might not grow as well as under the local food system where you can tweak each city to fill a specific need.

Also, implementing a single food bank for the entire empire would be such a radical departure from the base mechanics of the game, I'm not sure how it could be implemented. As it stands now, the game is essentially built around the concept of manipulating cities via their tiles worked and using those manipulations to produce whatever the society needs at the time. With a single food bank, if you change the tiles in one city to dramatically favor over , you cause the entire civ to lose food as a whole which might disrupt the food supply of a city halfway across the world without you even realizing it.

The system I was advocating ensures that you can use forts (and cities if you include the last line of the first paragraph) to maintain an adequate defensive force during peace time without placing too heavy a strain on your growth while also ensuring that large offensives must be properly supplied and inhibiting excessive unit production. Also, the secondary "food delivery" mission gives you the flexibility to stimulate extra growth during peaceful phases and also helps builders using a whip system by allowing them to quickly grow back cities recently whipped.

 

[konradcabral]

Yup, I got it.

So, until now, three major proposals were made at this thread, and most of posts agreed with it:

- Religious Civics System: would provide more uniqueness to religions, and a possibility of "schism" them.
-Disease Mechanism: would give more unhealthy to the game, allowing the addition of more resources. Beyond that, would be a scoreboard-changing factor and a subtle war weapon.
- Unit Feeding: would bring more reality to the wars, armies and long sieges. Also, would allow the quick transfer of food among different cities.

Can we start to discuss the real possibility of implement these changes?

 

[jm_dracolich]

Hmmm wow I really like that unit supply idea
it would make things a lot better, and difficult.

some issues I guess that can arise with these changes have to be dealt with though

1. Religion - I really like the idea of having something similar to a civic board for religion, but how would that work when you have more than one religion? Would there just be multiple pages for all the religions, or would you just have one for the most influential one? Can you only change the "civics" when you control the holy city, or can any civ with that religion ultimately change the religion [which would cause a schism I'm guessing.]?

2. Disease - would make for a much more realistic game, but I guess some of the issues would be the early expansion of some of the diseases which would make them ultimately die out before they're useful as weapons [I'm curious to see how this can be implemented with Bio Warfare ]. By that I mean like as something to diminish the populations of new civs or distant civs, like the Native Americans via Columbus and the other explorers. It could mostly be solved with game testing though I think, if the idea is ever implemented...

3. Unit Supply - Fantastic idea, would greatly decrease one sided wars, and would make it historically accurate. I like the idea of forts that Complex brought up. The only thing would be that if each fort created 20 , then everyone would build forts instead of farms and create super cities. Obviously, the would only be able to count for units. Other than that, Complex, you seemed to hammer out that issue pretty well.

 

[Big Heb]

Yup, I got it.

So, until now, three major proposals were made at this thread, and most of posts agreed with it:

- Religious Civics System: would provide more uniqueness to religions, and a possibility of "schism" them.

Perhaps this can be expanded into a Culture Civics System to include social philosophy, art style, ETC.?

What is the general opinion on the minor civilizations, attrition, and naval porting ideas?

 

[konradcabral]

Perhaps this can be expanded into a Culture Civics System to include social philosophy, art style, ETC.?

What is the general opinion on the minor civilizations, attrition, and naval porting ideas?

The attrition concept is a good add-on for the game, I guess, and it has relation with the Unit Feeding and Supply Wagon. So, if these two would added, I vote for Attrition to be added together in the same package.

I didn't fully comprehend your idea about MinorCivs. In what cases they would appear and which would be the effects of it in the game?

About naval changes, I agree with that too. But your idea should be necessarily be combined with mine of rising the tiles a ship can travel per turn. Otherwise, they will sink at the middle of the New World discovery travel.

Other thing that has been discussed and settled in this thread is the so-called "double-tap tech prerequisites". This is more a bug-preventing measure than a new concept, but it is also worth of implementing, in my humble opinion.

 

[konradcabral]

Last thing: did you guys read my thread about New City Culture Levels?

The opinions of you guys who are really active at this thread (Complex, Big Heb, jm_dracolich, c0d5579, tomekpe, 0100010) would be very appreciated. Of course other opinions would be welcome too.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=301919