posted May 19, 1999 11:40             

General features:

Reigons-As time goes by, your cities are collected into groups called regions. These
share resources, food, etc. There is a percentage of production going to whatever project you assign.

Altitude-Altitude for the terrain.

PW-Public Works instead of Formers/Settlers.

More than one worker on a square.

posted May 19, 1999 13:34                

Multiple improvements in one city - a really big city would need many granaries to take care of its large food storage.

posted May 19, 1999 15:32                

In the darkest of ages, cities must be self sufficient. Over time, as you gain infrastructure and government techs, you can begin to incorporate cities into regions. The lower the tech, the closer the cities must be to each other and the lower the number of cities in one region can be.

Cities in a region must be contiguous.

All surplus food and resources above minimal requirements for city survival end up in the region's 'warehouses' where the governor can assign percentages to go back to the cities, and a percentage to keep for trade and a
percentage that goes to the civilisation's capital as 'taxes'. Perhaps this could be done with slider bars for each city in the region management window.

Regions have a 'loyalty-to-empire' factor that varies according to infrastructure compared to other regions, how much in taxes goes to the civ capital compared to other regions and perhaps even the wealth of that region (if a region begins to feel that it is practically supporting the empire, it might decide that it would be better off supporting itself as its own empire).

Trade micromanagement could be reduced by having regions trade instead of cities, which could perhaps allow for a little more complexity in trade ("Alsace seems to produce a lot of iron. Let's allocate 20% of that for export."). This might encourage city specialisation (like in the real world).

Perhaps you could also add a 'regional army' that would be supported from the region's resources as a whole rather than each individual city.

These are just my ideas on how regions could work while being interesting without turning the whole concept into a micromanager's nightmare.

posted May 19, 1999 15:49                

*epidemics (population decrease)
*earthquakes (population decrease, terrain changes, infrastructure destruction)
*hurricanes (island and coastal areas, infrastructure destruction)
*famines (desert areas, population decrease)
*volcanic activity (especially in early stages of the game, population decrease, possible wiping out of cities - volcanoes would appear slightly different from mountains so that settlers who had explored the terrain sufficiently could build elsewhere)
*cults (decrease citizen happiness, could take other random effects - this one could be either a lot of fun or very annoying)
*alien visitation (farfetched, but possibly fun)
*artificial intelligence revolt (ditto, depending on reach of game)

Any others? Comments? How difficult would it be, AI-wise?

2) Another major suggestion I have is to increase the influence of religion on the game. My proposal is to incorporate the spontaneous appearance of prophets and religions among different nations, especially in the early stages of the game. This would be more realistic and fun than the advances like Monotheism and Polytheism, and could possibly influence questions like which happiness-related wonders a nation can build and which nations are likely to ally (though the latter is not entirely accurate, historically). The ruler would not be able to affect which religion appears in his nation initially, though he can, through diplomacy or warfare, introduce a new religion to the people. The increasing influence of science and reason in the later stages would decrease the significance of religion in much the same way as CivII.

I actually think a separate strategy game based on religion and religious history would be very interesting.

3) As to the time period the game should cover - I feel that one of the nice things about the game and the ability to create sequels for it, is that it traces civilization to the present and conceivable future, and no further. Thus, I think the game should cover the period from the first appearance of Homo sapiens (not sure when that was, sorry I've forgotten Anthro 101) until roughly twenty or so years after the game is released.

A

posted May 19, 1999 18:05                

Actually, PW are a pretty good way of modeling how modern infrastructure works.

posted May 19, 1999 21:00                

Base Support Structures... a new city improvement

This Improvement includes ALL of the critical structures of past ages (Ancient, Bronze, Iron, ect.) under a single name and structure.

This would include stuff like: Granaries, Aqueducts, Markets, ect. But NOT barracks and other more specailized or optional structures.

This structure will give all the advantages of included buildings (and replaces those buildings), but at reduced upkeep cost

This structure will AUTO upgrade when you enter a new AGE if you have built all included structures of the previous age. Otherwise you may pay for the diffrence, or build the upgrade (labor required depends on how many structures have been completed).

This structure builds much faster than if building all of the componets. And you can RUSH BUY at no penalty.

The result is, that in the middle and especially the late game, you don't have to fumble about building arhaic structures. You will be able to found and develop a thriving city, without the need for that city to have been there from the beginning. Personally I hate building Granaries in the 1900's.

posted May 19, 1999 21:58                

Also this way you can have more advanced/modern buildings of a former type.
University>Schoolhouse>Modern University
Harbor>Port>Port Facility

posted May 20, 1999 12:22                

"The Ural Mountains", "The Baltic Sea"...etc.

posted May 20, 1999 12:01                

Well, one time I started brainstorming how a hypothetical high council could be added to Call to Power. This is what I came up with. (I know, I know, Civ III will have different ages, different advisors, but it's just a jumping-off point...)

Counsel for War:
Ancient Times: A Conan-like man of few words (most of them things like "crush" and "destroy") who speaks in a passable Schwarzenegger voice
Renaissance: Sir Gawain, not much changed from the military advisor in Civ II
Modern: A Patton-like general who quotes the George C. Scott movie every other line (says "bastard" and "ass" a lot)
Genetic: Sort of a Colin Powell like general who, oddly enough, preaches prudence and caution when necessary (doesn't push war in times of peace)
Diamond: An on-the-edge, constantly frustrated sort of Susan Ivanova character (also doesn't push war in times of peace)

Counsel for Science
Ancient Times: A bedraggled old man like the stereotypical picture of Archimedes, usually speculates about some odd and irrelevant facet of mathematics while he updates you
Renaissance: An egotistical Italian reasoner, rather like Salviati in Galileo's Dialogue, with a tolerable sense of humor
Modern: An Albert Einstein clone, but not an over-the-top impression, just a mild German accent and a thoughtful manner (perhaps a tendency to drop one-liners, as Einstein often did)
Genetic: A sort of Dana Scully-like geneticist who calmly but fervently argues against the War and Entertainment advisors
Diamond: A super-wired scientist (like Professor Zakharov from Alpha Centauri or maybe more like a Trinity/Seven of Nine hybrid cyber ninja) covered in cybernetic enhancements
Or, alternate Diamond: A supercomputer like HAL who gives advice in a calm monotone

Counsel for Trade
Ancient Times: A shady, vaguely Arabic trader with gaudy rings on all fingers, who quotes old sayings like "Do unto others before they do unto you."
Renaissance: A soft-spoken Italian banker rather like Lorenzo de Medici (although soft-spoken and threatening when trade isn't going well)
Modern: Looks and dresses like the millionaire from Monopoly, but talks like Boss Tweed and gives ruthless advice (lowering wages is a common solution to problems)
Genetic: An obvious Bill Gates character who urges you to "keep in the fast lane" and usually makes some thinly-veiled Microsoft joke in the process
Diamond: An old and weird business guy based on S.R. Hadden from Contact (maybe even talks to you from a space station)

Counsel for Diplomacy
Ancient Times: A Delphic oracle who gives mildly cryptic advice (usually a blessing, if she senses you're doing well, or a doomsday speech if she doesn't)
Renaissance: A scheming Machiavellian character who urges betrayal, stealing technology, etc.
Modern: An overly optimistic Neville Chamberlain sort of chap who understates the bad and overstates the good
Genetic: An elderly woman, sort of a mix of Madeline Albright, Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Thatcher, keeps her cool unless you're low on the power graph, when she urges increased espionage
Diamond: Comes full circle, a kind of parapsychic, super-wired Delphic oracle who gives techno-mystic advice

posted May 20, 1999 12:40             

I'd like to see the rise and fall of multiple civilizations in the course of a game. I want see new civilizations come into existence half way through the game.

The idea I have for this is to have people that inhabit the squares. When you start off the game and make your first city and then go off exploring, you will encounter ordinary squares with people on them working the land. Not all squares will have people in them, and if the game is implemented with high-res graphics and 32bit color you will see small little houses on that square. The number of little houses indicative of the population there. With a single square type only supportive of a certain amount of people based on how much food that square can produce and how many people can survive off that food, and that amount will increase with tech and terraforming. In the Stone Age, maybe only 5000 people can live in a single square, but in the present age, that number would be 1,000,000 or even higher.

Now this square that you find with workers on it would not belong to any city or any civ. They would be just neutral inhabitants of the land. There would be relatively few of them in the beginning but as time progresses they will grow, and when they reach the capacity of that square, they spill over to the next square. As these neutral inhabitants expand into several squares, they will eventually form a city. A brand new city will pop in the center of these small clusters of inhabitants, and thus a new civilization will be born. It will have its own color and will become a full fledge computer controlled civ.

For your own civs, you would also have these workers working the land and they would contribute the food and minerals that they work on each square to the city it belongs too. The food produced by all squares in the city would be evenly distributed so you could have as many people in a square as you have people in your city (although all people in one square would not produce enough food from that one square to feed them all). The way food production and resource production in a square would be calculated as follows: For the people that are working the country side, each extra person you have working a square a would only increase the production by #/n where # is the original production of the square and n is the number of citizens already in that square +1. So if a square produces 10 food, 1 person in that square would produce 10 food, 2 people would produce 15 food, 3 people would produce 18.333 food and 4 people would produce 20.833 food, this would limit the amount of workers you could support per city, until a new tech is discovered that would increase that base amount of food production. When you go to the industrial age, and you start to build factories, the number of people you have working them would increase production at a linear rate. For example, your city builds a factory, then each person you move to the city square would increase production for the entire city by +10% for each person in that city square. So you would have to balance production with the amount of food you want to produce. You would also have to consider over crowding and other things that go along with to many people in a small area.

Before the industrial age (and also in the industrial age still and beyond), people working in the city square would produce more money and science, but not produce any food and rescues.

Now you can also take people from your cities and move them too empty squares outside of a city radius, but still within your empire's borders. These people working the empty land would behave like neutral inhabitants, but you can still chose which direction they expand in. Going along with being able to move people around, you can also move people to other cities, but moving people should cost you some money. You would receive NO resources from citizens to empty squares, but eventual you could establish a city there and then already have people there to inhabit that land. You should also be able to build a something to allow that square to utilize the resources being produced there, something like a supply crawler. I would infact just suggest connecting that square to a city with roads (no supply crawler needed, just roads). You can then decide where the production will go, to any city it is connected to by roads. Of course, the further away the city, the less of the actual production you would get. You would lose certain amounts do to corruption and such. City sizes in the first parts of the game would remain relatively small, as they really were up until the industrial age. Cities would have to rely on these squares outside of a city for more food and resources. You would also want to move people to outside squares when your city can not grow any further, when all of the food is being used up and none is left over for growth. You could then move people to empty squares to allow your empire to still grow. Move enough people into a region and you could tell them to make a city (this would mostlikely cost some gold or something). This is a more realistic approach then having everything centered around the city as in the previous games. The countryside is where most of the people in the world live up until the 20th century.

When you destroy a city, you dont necessarily kill all the inhabitants of the city, mainly you would just kill the citizens working in the city square. You would have to pillage the land surrounding the city square to kill the people working that square, and eventual later in the game, doing that kind of an action would be an atrocity. In the real world (the past) when cities were attacked, most of the inhabitants in the city were killed or sold into slavery. Combat should reflect this by usually wiping out the whole city when you take it. But the people that were working in the city, not in the city square, would survive.

When you destroy a city or civilization, there should be the chance that those civs techs will be distributed to the whole world, or to any other civs in a certain radius, becoming common knowledge. I believe that in the ancient past there was a civilization that first discovered iron working (not sure which one) and this civilization was eventually destroyed by other civs that did not posses the knowledge of iron working because that first civ that got it highly protected their iron workers and made sure they never left their empire, but when the civ was crushed, those iron workers were now free to go where ever and the knowledge of iron working quickly spread through out the region to all the empires. When you destroy/conquer huge cities or capitals or finally take over the last remaining city of an empire, there should be a certain percentage chance that that civs techs will become distributed to all the local empires with in a certain radius.

As for civs rising and falling, and rising again, when you destroy enemy civs, and DON’T commit genocide on the remaining people still working the land, they return to a neutral status unless they are inside the borders of another civ. These now newly formed neutrals will continue to grow and expand and will eventual form cities again and thus NEW empires. I would suggest the time it takes for a neutral square to expand and create a city would be 10-20 turns, so that new civilizations are constantly popping up. These new civilizations would start with the techs that have become common knowledge in that area. I would also suggest to firaxis that civs would be able to grow quickly compared to already established civs. I would balance it so that a city's growth was limited by the amount of food it could produce, not whether it had an aqueduct or not. So a few neutrals working the land could expand into a modest size empire in about 50 turns (about 5-7 cities). And cities would hit their max size in population rather quickly. This would lead to lots of new civilizations popping up seemingly out of the middle of nowhere. So an average game would have about atleast 30 civs on the map playing at any one time. If the unfortunate were to happen, if your own civilization were to die, and you were say, had a huge empire like the Romans, then when you were finally wiped out, you would get the chance to watch “your” neutrals reestablish themselves and then you would take back control of that newly built city and start over again. You would have to try and retake your land and to crush all the other new upstart nations created from your empires ruins. After all, in the real world, no single empire lasted the test of time, most only lasted a hundred years at most. Of course in order to make the game playable, you should be able to keep your entire empire for the whole game. But it should also be easy for new empires to become world dominators. The great empires of the British, French, Russian and others of that era weren’t even formed until several centuries after fall of the Roman Empire. The game should be played such that the original civs most likely won’t survive the whole game on a difficulty level the player finds hard.

posted May 20, 1999 21:53                

A cic's population will grow at maximum only if there is enough FOOD, HEALTH, HAPPINESS. This rate can be increased further if immagration is worked in also.

Food is important as it prevents pop loss from starvation and if in abundance improves the HEALTH, if there is too much food it will instead reduce the HEALTH of that city. Having different types of food (for example beef & fish) will improve both HEALTH and HAPPINESS. Cultures around the world often whent to great pains to get foodstuffs from other cultures. As the population rises then the overall supply of food drops and cause drop in the HEALTH and HAPPINESS which then cause a drop in the growth rate.

Health reduces the amount people who die each year, therby increasing the overall growth rate. Having a high HEALTH rating should improve the HAPPINESS of the city.

Happiness is important for MANY reasons. Having a greater HAPPINESS than your neighboors will induce immagrants from their cities into yours. The amount immagrants depens on the # of unhappy people in the neiboring city and the # of happy in yours. The cities that trade population can be even of your own civ! This would negate the need for the building of settlers to transfer population between cities. All one needs to do is adjust one cities HAPPINESS down and the other up and wait a few turns. Of course this could lead to a new strat "pop stealing" . Also happy population units tend to engage in "population growth" more than content and angry people.

posted May 20, 1999 22:32                

Other factors for population growth can be:
1)Education- I think this should be included amonst other population scales like Happiness and Health. High Education will actually lower population growth.
2)Prosperity- Again like Education, this factor should be included. Prosperity actually won't modify growth, but it will modify imigration/emigration
3) Marrige - a social engineering choice, the type (polygamy,polyandromy,Monogamy,open,NONE) will greatly modify growth.
4) Contraception
5) Enviromental Awareness
6) Status of women in society
7) State programs, breeding programs and population control (as used in china), but also state incentives (welfare would qualify for a growth bounus)

posted May 21, 1999 13:14             

Keep 'em coming!

posted May 22, 1999 01:47                

Can we put a lot more emphasis on rivers (especially in the early game)? Rivers
were a big deal in deciding borders,
strategic defense, transportation, trade, etc. It seems like when I play Civ, I just care about if the river is in my city radius and that's about it. There should be a big effect if a city is placed right next to a river (especially at the mouth). Some things:

-Increases trade depending on the number of cities upstream
-Increases aqueduct effect
-Increases sewage system effect
-Increases power plant effect

Armies should only get the travel bonus when entering the river from a city. Otherwise, they should be slowed down when crossing the river. Armies should also be very vulnerable when crossing.

Also, borders should conform to the rivers (see how many US states and countries use a river as a border) and mountains, and the discovering country gets to name the river.

posted May 22, 1999 18:09                

Major/Minor civs was an idea that I posted above.

In short:
Major: as we have in civ right now
Minor: Dosen't expand, dosen't start wars, minimal diplomatic negotiations... result is less taxation on the computer, allowing a larger number of civs in the game.

posted May 24, 1999 03:32                

SNN
NNNNS
NNCNN
SNNNN
NNS

where S=special resource, N=normal square, C=the place where you always put your city.

Anyway, maybe you don't agree but I think it's time for a better resource seed, something more random.