What would it take... (High Council redux)

[gnome]

I know Firaxis has better things to do than mess with a feature that doesn't actually affect the game much... but I know there's plenty of us out there that loved this little gimmick in Civ 2.

The original movies are out there... is it even possible to bring back the council as a mod of some kind? I don't know enough about mod code to even speculate.

I could see using the ancient advisors for Ancient & Classical, the medieval ones for Medieval and Renaissance, and the modern ones for Industrial and beyond.

 

[CyberChrist]

It is definetly doable, but wouldn't the original animations prove a tad tiny on screen these days?

 

[gnome]

I don't know, side by side and maybe double-sized they could be OK...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHfk5VhAvWU

I think the kicker would be if we come up with rules for each quote (the ones that still fit anyway) that may be a little better than how it was implemented in Civ2. There's a lot of useful material in these video clips. Which one each advisor will pick, which advisors will object or agree... and when they might actually request an audience.

 

[gnome]

An example of rules:

Each potential saying is flagged if the associated problem occurs. Then the problems are prioritized to indicate which statement is made.

Ancient Military advisor:

Statement: "Give me more soldiers, noble leader, that they may sheath their swords in the beating hearts of our enemies!"
Problem: Less than two units per city, or a military power gap is perceived
(The first condition is to get him started complaining early. It should be the first thing anyone says in the High Council, just for nostalgia's sake)

Statement: "Our men need better weapons, Lord. Let us put the scroll-heads to work on this excellent pursuit!"
Problem: Military science gap indicated (I can think of a few ways to calculate that)
Response from Science advisor: "That is for his excellency to decide. Visigoth!" (if there is a science gap indicated and general science lags behind military science already)
Response from Trade advisor: "Noble leader, there are matters other than this blunted spear point to attend to." (if an economic gap is also indicated)

Statement: "Give me better ships, your excellency, and watch the seas turn RED with BLOOD!"
Problem: More than half of ships could be upgraded.

Statement: "We need barracks, noble leader. Or would you have our soldiers sleeping on your palace steps?"
Problem: Less than 1 in 5 cities have barracks (going with the idea of city specialization)

Statement: "Would you defend our cities with haystacks, noble leader? Build city walls first, and other improvements later."
Problem: Less than half of cities have city walls.

Statement: "All is well, your excellency and that pleases me mightily!" (laughter)
(used if none of the above problems are indicated)

Statement: "We stand astride the world like a Colossus, noble leader. Send forth our legions so that we may smash every army that would rise against us!"
(used if none of the above problems are indicated and the civilization has the highest power rating among known rivals)

... and so forth. By a "Military gap" or an "economic gap" what I mean is a test to see if the nation is at least middle-of-the-pack in these respects.

Might have to translate Elvis's problems into relating to overall happiness and the availability of luxury resources, since the luxury slider was replaced with the cultural slider.