That government was kind of game-breakingly overpowered, IMO. Particularly combined with stealing techs when you took enemy cities, and being able to bribe cities with spies; once a Fundamentalist empire got rolling it was next to impossible to stop. I wouldn't mind something generally similar if it were more balanced compared to other governments.
What Would You Change And Why
- Thread starter timerover51
- Start date
That government was kind of game-breakingly overpowered, IMO. Particularly combined with stealing techs when you took enemy cities, and being able to bribe cities with spies; once a Fundamentalist empire got rolling it was next to impossible to stop. I wouldn't mind something generally similar if it were more balanced compared to other governments.
Ansar
Détente avec l'été
Settle on Marshes.
AI knows how to use Military Great Leaders.
...among others...
AI knows how to use Military Great Leaders.
...among others...
I think this is a good idea; like in the ancient times monarchy and republic are even, and probably feudalism too. Then, as you advance, you will need to upgrade to democracy, communism or fascism. I also like the idea of the Constitutional Monarchy, but you can't set a government to democratic or not in the editor. Also, a Constitutional Monarchy is just Civ's monarchy with rules for the monarch; it doesn't have to be like England's government. I think a better name is 'Parliamentary Monarchy' because I assume we're all talking about the British monarchy, right?
ansar said:
And Ansar, you can change the marshes to settleable terrain in the editor.
I really, really like the culture aspect added to Civ 3 but there are a few tweaks that I think would be more reasonable. Also, my suggestion invloves some of the "useless" techs, IOW techs that just don't do anything of themselves. There are far too many, especially in the Middle Ages.
Cathedrals should only give 2 cpt but discovery of Music Theory increases them to 3 cpt.
Minor I know, but more realistic to the game, I think
Colusseums should be a militaristic building and should cost them half price, they should start as 2 cpt, like they do now, but get +1 for discovery of Free Artistry and +1 for the discovery of Electronics (TVs and Football!)
Libraries should start out at 2cpt and get +1 with Printing Press
An even bigger tweak would be to have the culture more tied to the traits for each Civilization. As it is now only the Scientific and Religous are cultural, that is too restrictive. (I'm going to dispense with the IMO because I'm posting this, who else's opinion might it be?) Also, we know that a building doubles in cpt after 1000 years. I like that rule and want to expand on it. I think my best example would be with Zulu. They are militaristic and expansionist. Under my "modification" for Zulu all religous and scientific buildings would be -1 cpt than they already are but any military or expansionist improvement should be +1 after 1000yrs. Imagine a structure that's a 1000 yrs old in your community. Not too many probably, right? So if there is even just a granery that is that old that is going to have cultural significance, it has to. There would be stories and legends about how it was built, why, and other cultural things. This would apply to all the other traits, too. Commercial civs would get culture from very old markets and banks, I doubt there would be any ancient stock exchanges, but maybe. Seafaring would get culture from harbors, Agricultural would overlap expansionist somewhat. My system breaks down a bit for industrious because I can't really say what an industrious improvement is before factories and they would be too late, but I also think the very old courthouses should get +1 culture for everyone. A courthouse, no matter what kind of goverment, is a center of that civilization's cultural identity. So industrious would be lower on the culture that the other traits but it's like that now anyway, I don't think we should artifically designate an improvement industrious so everybody gets one. This would certainly make the Babylonians less the cultural powerhouse, so to speak, and allow other civs more balance in this regard. You'd still be able to ignore culture and kill everyone with troops, so I don't think it would hurt game play.
Cathedrals should only give 2 cpt but discovery of Music Theory increases them to 3 cpt.
Minor I know, but more realistic to the game, I think
Colusseums should be a militaristic building and should cost them half price, they should start as 2 cpt, like they do now, but get +1 for discovery of Free Artistry and +1 for the discovery of Electronics (TVs and Football!)
Libraries should start out at 2cpt and get +1 with Printing Press
An even bigger tweak would be to have the culture more tied to the traits for each Civilization. As it is now only the Scientific and Religous are cultural, that is too restrictive. (I'm going to dispense with the IMO because I'm posting this, who else's opinion might it be?) Also, we know that a building doubles in cpt after 1000 years. I like that rule and want to expand on it. I think my best example would be with Zulu. They are militaristic and expansionist. Under my "modification" for Zulu all religous and scientific buildings would be -1 cpt than they already are but any military or expansionist improvement should be +1 after 1000yrs. Imagine a structure that's a 1000 yrs old in your community. Not too many probably, right? So if there is even just a granery that is that old that is going to have cultural significance, it has to. There would be stories and legends about how it was built, why, and other cultural things. This would apply to all the other traits, too. Commercial civs would get culture from very old markets and banks, I doubt there would be any ancient stock exchanges, but maybe. Seafaring would get culture from harbors, Agricultural would overlap expansionist somewhat. My system breaks down a bit for industrious because I can't really say what an industrious improvement is before factories and they would be too late, but I also think the very old courthouses should get +1 culture for everyone. A courthouse, no matter what kind of goverment, is a center of that civilization's cultural identity. So industrious would be lower on the culture that the other traits but it's like that now anyway, I don't think we should artifically designate an improvement industrious so everybody gets one. This would certainly make the Babylonians less the cultural powerhouse, so to speak, and allow other civs more balance in this regard. You'd still be able to ignore culture and kill everyone with troops, so I don't think it would hurt game play.
Snarkhunter
Prince
Obvious +cpt for industrious would be resources hooked up & mined: get +X cpt for each iron/coal/gold/gem/saltpeter mine you have (& later, for coal, rubber, aluminum, etc.) More indirect would be +X cpt based on number of improved tiles you have, by some proportion. Or perhaps, just proportional to number of mines you have generally, roaded. Sure, it's not the way cpt works now, but that's the point, right?
kk
CommandoBob
AbstractArt
Surely this is just a typo! Negative culture?
Overall, I really like this idea of 'expanded culture'. Wish it were mine.
timerover51
Deity
I would agree with you there, Meisen. Since the game does not allow you to ship surplus food elsewhere, you are pretty much forced to do that, see my Green Revolution thread. I have been boosting shield production in mountains to compensate for such low food production. You could also set game to be located in the mountains, and increase its yields in food. I will have to tinker some with the editor to see if I can add the llama/alpaca to the resource list for Incan scenarios, and have them in the mountains.
What would also be useful is if you could add resources to the terrain during the game as a player. In one of the board games that I use in my summer gaming classes, I allow players to purchase extra resource markers to increase the production factor yield in a given area. That seems to work pretty well. You would have to commit a couple of workers to modify the tile for a set number of turns, and then you receive a resource of your choice depending on how many turns have been worked.
I like these notions in general, though I would be more inclined to think in terms of making a new culture/happiness-producing building with Electronics, a TV Station or something (it would satisfy my take on the world for this to have a corresponding dumbing down effect simulated by some reduction in the science output of that city, but I can see that being a hard sell to people who aren't me)
This is a really neat idea. I generally do not like the notion of traits at all, but I like the thought of this. I am not sure what would count as an expansionist building, though. other than a granary; a possible solution would be to have a few more buildings suiting traits that are currently under-represented.
The other candidate for a sizable industrial culture effect is the Iron Works.
I'd certainly like stronger and more focused means of using culture in general, as I suggested about it making enemy troops defect a couple of pages back. It also occurs to me that barbarian encampments swallowed up by your culture could usefully convert in ways giving you something other than just the gold you'd get from dispersing them; maybe half their units as conscripts ? Or the option of founding a city on their site instead of getting their gold or units ?
I am not convinced the Civ 3 mechanism for inducing culture flips is really optimal; though the only other mechanism that readily comes to mind as easily implemented within the current mechanics is a culture-powered equivalent of Civ 1/2 diplomats/spies or Civ 4 missionaries that carried out a cultural attack on another city, and that would be hard to balance well.
Sorry, let me rephrase that.
I mean temple only 1, library only 2, cathedral only 2, university only 3, colusseum still 2 though, in keeping with the religous and scientifics being one less culture because they are not religous or scientific. Egyptians for example would get full culture from temples and cathedrals but less from libraries and universities because they aren't scientific. I could see people in a religous non scientific not appreciating libraries as much as they do temples.
There are mods that have negative culture improvements; I think a couple of the major ones include such things as internment camps under Fascism, for example, as ways of getting lots of production bonus at the cost of a cultural penalty. While I find that example a bit distasteful myself, the notion of negative culture as a drawback to an improvement with some other benefit seems an interesting direction for flexibility.
I can't say that I would absolutely make this change, but sometimes I think that culture should increase during a Golden Age. To my mind, the term "Golden Age," should include more than just a production bonus, but includes advances in science, great literary achievements and the like.
timerover51
Deity
You can also set pollution to negative values as well. I have been doing this to try and overcome the headache of population pollution. I set the recycling center, mass transit, hospital, and a couple of other buildings to -2 pollution, which seems to work okay. Also helps with building pollution, but those values I can change, the population pollution is part of the programming.
I have not tried to set anything to negative defensive values, but in thinking of it, one possibility would be the Solar Power Plant. That would be highly vulnerable to damage. Not sure what other building would qualify, although the airport would also be vulnerable to a degree.
MAS
Deity
I think a solar plant would be less vulnerable to damage. As long as it is not set up as one big plant with one output line.
Image every roof in a city covered by solar cells, and all are interconnected and cross-feed each home. If a few are destroyed, then it doesn't harm the rest of the city.
Image every roof in a city covered by solar cells, and all are interconnected and cross-feed each home. If a few are destroyed, then it doesn't harm the rest of the city.
Snarkhunter
Prince
If you are treating culture in a Spenglerian sense--and the game definitely trends that way--then there really isn't anything such as negative culture: internment camps would simply be the expression of that culture's values, the working out of that culture's characteristics. I would say on balance no negative culture--except during periods of anarchy and/or disorder. It wouldn't be enough to not get cpt when in disorder; I'd like to see a negative applied during those turns as well.
On a side note, I do find myself wondering if any of the developers knew of Spengler's works.
kk
Snarkhunter
Prince
Don't think you would get enough juice that way. You could just about cover a single family home's needs with that scheme, but larger buildings would likely run a big deficit & require a consolidated plant of some kind, requiring massive amounts of land & a grid connecting it up; the grid is probably the thing most susceptible to damage in the first place, not the panels. Also, your best effort gets you only 12 hrs of operation a day, on average, so you also have to include some sort of power storage mechanism for the off hours, which is easier to centralize & which is in itself a target; all of that should be included when one thinks "solar plant."
And speaking of improvements, how about actually having to build a power grid to get the benefits of any power plant, instead of individual power plants, SimCity style? And of course, making the grid a wartime target
kk
MAS
Deity
You can't shut down the internet by taking down one, or even a couple, of sats. In the same vain, I think it is possible to set up a power distribution network that can't be taken down that easily. They don't do that in RL yet because its a lot more expensive but its not technically impossible.
Snarkhunter
Prince
I dunno; I'm not an electrical engineer, I just study it in physics. But any grid has got to be linearly enormous, and a substantial percentage would need to be defended, even with massive redundancy. Substations & redistribution centers would necessarily be fairly delicate as well. You could even use carbon fiber bombs, keep shorting the grid randomly for weeks afterwards, like they did in Serbia. But it's not really about taking down the whole grid, just chunks of it over time, like pillaging resource tiles, cutting off cities, etc. It would also add a dimension to the air war, force a commitment to flak/fighters--the SBS concluded after WWII that the German power grid would have been relatively easy to attack & would have almost certainly halted German industry had it been.
kk
timerover51
Deity
MAS, if I went into detail on the various ways of taking down a power grid, there are people in Washington, DC that would be very unhappy with me. Unless you set up each power plant as an independent, non-interconnected unit. your power grid is vulnerable. It is not simply more expensive, but more accurately it is technically not feasible as long as you have a grid of interconnected utilities. With respect to the US, it is not possible to take down the entire national power network at one time, as you have regional grids that are not interconnected. You can only transmit power over a certain distance before the resistance losses get too high. However, taking down the grid in European countries would be much easier, as they are not as large, and the distances are smaller.
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Having a player build an electrical grid might be taking micromanagement and development a bit far for a game like civ. Might start looking like "MOO3 does SimCity".Unless it's just another improvement to build in the cities. I don't think that wouldn't add to the micromanagement tedium.
It´s not that difficult for preset scenarios. In SOE we have powerplants as strategic resources that can be taken out by bombing the road/rail connection.
About negative pollution: As far as I remember, negative pollution doesn´t completely avoid population pollution. The only sure way to reach this, is to not allow city-size 3 by setting the value for such a city very high (to 999 or something like that). In my mod pollution is simulated by unhappiness. I don´t like to order hordes of workers to clean up pollution.
Negative culture is a nice thing to make early boosting improvements not too powerful in gameplay. P.e. in my mod the slave market comes with warrior code and gives a boost in production and autoproduced slaves. But if it is built before the city reaches expansion-level 2 (10ctp) the city cannot grow in its borders because of its negative cultural settings.
timerover51
Deity
I am also going to see if it was possible to have more than one improvement that can reduce pollution in the building and population categories. Sometimes those things don't add, like having 2 wonders that give +1 sea movement didn't add when both were owned, I've found out. A good candidate for the people category would be "sewer system", buildable in the early to middle industrial age. Have not thought of the name for an industrial age building pollution reducer, yet.
Thanks.
Based on how things are working for me, the negative pollution values are additive, just like the increase in research values for library and university and the increase in revenue values for the marketplace and bank. I sort of thought that about the +1 sea movement, but the +1 and +2 sea movements DO ADD together, which give a nice bonus. I have the Magellan's Voyage wonder giving a +2 sea movement boost. Oh, and the +1 trade increase per trade producing tile also is additive.
As for the industrial age building pollution reducer, paradoxically, it would be the coal-fired electical power plant. That replace the myriad of individual coal-fired steam plants that had previously supplied power for industry. Since that would not be usable, you might want to consider having a central refuse collection plant. Remember, improper disposal of garbage and waste is still a major pollution problem in developing countries. From the mid 1800s to the early 1900s, simply disposing of the ash left from buring coal and wood in cities for heating and cooking was a major problem, which is why the early garbage collectors were called "dustmen". Coal leaves about 10% of its weight as ash, which is still a major disposal headache for coal power stations now. Depending on the content, the ash can be used to produce cement or as a component of concrete, but the plants still have to pay to have it hauled away.
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