What about migrants

[Kobra]

What do you think of this idea : settlers and workers could settle in foreign countries (except if you are in war with it). This could improve your relations with it or increase the number of your foreign "citizen" in order to colonize your neighbors (Like Chinese settling in Russia or Central Asia ).
This could cause demographic, cultural and religious issues.
What's your opinion ?

 

[Hyronymus]

If enhancing your relation with other countries is the only benefit I say no. As soon as you find yourself in war with the country your settlers left for the citizens in your homecountry will get upset etc. But more important, it's not realistic at all.

 

[Gogf]

Absolutely not!

You can settle in other civilizations' territories now, but it is a declaration of war, as it should be. What would you say if [insert nation X here] suddenly declared it owned your state/province, and your government let them take it?

 

[Nooble]

I think he means making the settlers and workers join your ally's cities.

 

[mhIdA]

I agree with a migration system, it's happen all the time and it's realistic.
If Civ A and civ B start a war and there are migrants of civ A in Civ b cities certainly be a problem, like japanese in US in WW2, but that isn't a way to reject this idea.
Migrants of modern times are the equivalent of barbs and nomads of ancient times as see it to be included in game.
The diplomatic implications to game will be very intersting. See jewish, armenia and chinese diaspora and so one. How they help fatherland in time crisis or like chinese increse the chinese economic boom. Barbs latelly contribute to fall of Rome. And nomads come from Central Asia change history in Middle East and Europe.
A unit named migrant who appear if a city are poor or in starvation could easily join to cities of other civ where it as in peace, not a settler or worker which could caused a war neither in their territory.
This allow multinational cities without war. Allow the civ A see city X of civ B if that is populated by 1/3 of their citzens, and so one.

 

[Kobra]

The idea was not to invade foreign countries by force, but to change the rates of nationalities in a city. For example, Russian created Vladivostok but it's too far from Moscow to become a big city. You're the chinese, you got plenty of settlers but you can't expand your empire anymore because of Russians, Mongols, Japanese and Indians. The idea : send your extra-settlers or extra-workers to Vladivostok. The city still remain a Russian one, but if its level is 6, there will be 1 Russian and 5 Chinese. Do the same thing in all Russian regions near your country and future wars against Russia could be easier because a large part of Russia's citizen would be Chinese. Creating cells in Russian cities would be more easy, rioting too.
But it could also help your country to increase trade with Russia, instead of declaring war. This way could help your allies : for example in middle ages, Russia used German settlers to colonize the Volga.
Settling in foreign country is a good thing if you use it wisely, because it could bring you an ally for war, for trade or simply to declare the peace.

 

[dh_epic]

If migration happens, I figure it should happen automatically.

 

[Elrohir]

No way! The AI already settles around my Empire with useless tundra and desert colonies (That never, ever get beyond size 2, because the AI is too stupid to build harbors or irrigate) I don't need them invading with settlers and stealing my land.

It should stay the same as it is now, if you want to plant a settler in my land, you'd better have a good army to back 'em up.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

No way! The AI already settles around my Empire with useless tundra and desert colonies (That never, ever get beyond size 2, because the AI is too stupid to build harbors or irrigate) I don't need them invading with settlers and stealing my land.

It should stay the same as it is now, if you want to plant a settler in my land, you'd better have a good army to back 'em up.

You are entitled to your opinion but:

1. Immigration/emigration is necessary for realism, and a good way to show the culture-spreading model.

2. If you believe those desert and tundra cities are useless, think again. In fact, you are a complete idiot...because the AI is planning to have oil in those squares. Sometimes, the AI has a good strategy. This is one of them. If you see that the AI is rushing to send settlers to a desert or tundra, you'd better follow, because they already know where all the resources are. You might just get lucky.

 

[dh_epic]

Migrants definitely have something to do with culture spreading. Emmigration is to missionaries as ethnicity is to culture, if that makes any sense.

But the forces at work are different. I don't think people should pump out settlers on purpose to ship their refugees to another nation. No, people should freely flow to nations that are living better than other nations. It should be largely automatic.

 

[sealman]

You are entitled to your opinion but:

1. Immigration/emigration is necessary for realism, and a good way to show the culture-spreading model.

2. If you believe those desert and tundra cities are useless, think again. In fact, you are a complete idiot...because the AI is planning to have oil in those squares. Sometimes, the AI has a good strategy. This is one of them. If you see that the AI is rushing to send settlers to a desert or tundra, you'd better follow, because they already know where all the resources are. You might just get lucky.

#1 - I have no opinion on.

#2 - Not always, sometimes they just put a city there because the land is available. Oh, and no reason to call Elrohir an idiot because he does not like this idea.

 

[Mewtarthio]

While I agree that migration is important, I disagree that the player should control it. How many times in history has anyone said, "Okay, there are some Russian cities near our border, so let's get everyone out of the home and form a mass migration to dilute their culture!" If they hated Russian culture, they'd stay as far away from Russia as possible. Instead, Migrants should automatically move to your empire for a number of factors, such as culture ratios, gold ratios, food ratios, etc. You could prevent migration if you wanted to, of course... to a point.

 

[Kobra]

I agree some migrations should be natural (like independant cities creation because of disease or unhappiness in your empire or moving to foreign cities). But unnatural migration does exist. What about Scottish, Welsh & English settling in Ireland ? What about Chinese moving to Central Asia or Russian Manchuria (Vladivostok) ? What about french colonization in Algeria ? Great Britain used to be specialised in moving-populations. I think you should control a part of migrations.

 

[Chazbagel]

Is this game going to be so in depth, that we have a new citizen called the "lawn mower" which makes one unhappy citizen content? We can only go so far..

 

[Lockesdonkey]

Migrants definitely have something to do with culture spreading. Emmigration is to missionaries as ethnicity is to culture, if that makes any sense.

But the forces at work are different. I don't think people should pump out settlers on purpose to ship their refugees to another nation. No, people should freely flow to nations that are living better than other nations. It should be largely automatic.

Sorry if I made myself unclear, but here I agree with you, and that model is the one I thought of, but obviously we were thinking along the same lines and you beat me to it. What I meant in my original post was that some sort of immigration/emigration model would be good, and could possibly represent in some way the culture-spreading model; since the immigrats would retain their culture, it could enrich the culture of their new home (think all those Italian immigrants to the United States, with their contributions to American food. The Eastern European Jews with their contribution to American language, literature and law. Etc., etc., etc.)