posted May 20, 1999 12:39                

First things first. Just what the heck are "Radical Ideas"? According to WWWebster Dictionary, "radical" is "tending or disposed to make extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions". Translating into Civ term, you can see what I mean from my original post in the official SMAC forum:

I see this thread as a "meta" discussion that doesn't fit into any of the categories. So here we go.

Some Civ/SMAC veterans have expressed concerns about the necessity of Civ3. Well, if Firaxis' idea of Civ3 is yet another Civ clone with evolutionary changes here and there, those concerns are indeed valid. We've seen enough clones, even if they are good ones. However, I'd like see some ideas that would make Civ3 so different, so improved, so wonderful, that it would, err, it would define the computer gaming for the 21st century (well, at least the first half ).

First off, think about the big picture. Last year, the gaming industry surpassed the movie industry in revenues for the first time. We're talking about big business here, bigger than Hollywood! Next year, we'll see 1GHz CPU's, machines with gigabytes of memories, and millions of people connected to the net with cable modems, xDSL's or even faster pipes. It's a brave new world out there. The possibilities are endless.

Think big. Think different. Think.

Then, how is this different from the "OTHER" thread? I knew you'd ask. I'd like to quote CyberShy on that:

I disagree that "New Ideas" and "Other" are the same. New ideas is about concepts that's never thought about (like me semi-turn idea, in example) while other is more about all current civ-topics that don't really fit in any of the other treads.

Of course most of our topics will be correlated with other threads, so a spirit of cooperation is called for. Which should be for all the threads, but especially true in this group.

Hopefully I've made it clear what this thread is all about. Now on to the real stuff.

Currently one of the most important ongoing discussions is about the Open Source Extensible AI, which I shall call OSExAI (pronounced "Oh, Sexy!" ). The idea is for Civ3, the AI portion should be open souce, extensible by users. Bingman has suggested to use Python as the scripting language. I proposed the interface between the game engine and AI should be event-driven. mindlace further fleshed out the idea, and suggested the scripts can be used for human player automation. Note: Please continue this conversation in the AI thread. Thank you.

Some other ideas from the old thread seemed to have been picked up by other groups, so I won't mention them here. Things unique to us:

* Natural resouces should play a much bigger role (colonization?)

* More historical texture, e.g. leader appear from time to time

* Abondon the city model of civilizations

* "Factions" implimented in your various government choices especially later in the game, i.e. I WANT YOU TO FEEL how YOUR PEOPLE FEELS and "live with them"

* the game should be a SLOW REAL TIME SIMULATION with the option to be a TBS

* there should be the rise and fall of multiple civilizations in the course of a game, e.g. new civilizations come into existence half way through the game

Whew! That's about it for now. If I missed anyone, feel free to repost your idea here.

posted May 20, 1999 12:41             

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 13:00                

I love that idea! It's just like Philippine after WWII. The US asked them to vote to join US or not. They voted no.

posted May 20, 1999 13:02                

Migratory Plagues - as in The Black Plague, or the 1918 Flu.

Earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, cometary bombardment (remember Sodom & Gomorrah?), locusts, drought, crop failure (potato famine).

posted May 20, 1999 13:06                

Great opening! I'd like to throw this out to everybody as an inaugural RADICAL question:

How about a public alpha/beta for Civ3?

The main idea, of course, is that rather than relying on a small group of in-house Firaxis people to take the game to higher levels, WE--the eventual source of the money--would be testing the game from VERY early on. This would provide Firaxis priceless feedback before it's too late to make huge changes.

For example, one of the reasons SMAC failed to appeal to more people (or at first sight, anyway) is that "simple" things like color schemes and ability to easily understand the technology, for example, were a result of the in-house testing: The Firaxis team simply got used to their own design and were unable to view the game as a gamer would the day he brings it home. And by the time the game was released (or with the beta testers), it was too late (or too painful) to hear: Hey, the graphics totally blow; and what the hell is a Singularity Engine?

By then, there was nothing for Firaxis and us to do but hope we'd just learn to like it. After giving the game a second and third chance, I finally did like it. But many didn't. Civ3 should be brilliant from day one. No stinkin' "S.O.S." patches. No "user configuration" crash b.s. Just a rock solid game. That, to me, means going public with the game very early on.

Thoughts?

------------------
CIV3 DEVELOPMENT LIST COORDINATOR

posted May 20, 1999 13:21                

kmj: I'm not sure of the best way. Some other ideas have popped up already here. Maybe they could offer a bunch of us forum nuts the chance. (Yin)

posted May 20, 1999 13:42                

I love the tribes into cities/Rise and fall of Empires idea, Possibility. Combined with Revolution (OTHER) and Reigons (CITY INTERFACE), it could be fantastic.

it could let megalopoli happen- if cities actually expanded into adjacent squares, in late game you could have the Californiburbia or the East Coast Sprawl routine... nice & cpunk.

i wonder if you could go so far as to be citizen based, where cities are just the area where units pop out?

Maybe cities come when you stack citizens/workers, and at least one gets turned into a specialist... that seems to be historically true...

Imagine: map view, 'citizens' button on, normal units hidden from view... those nice little faces stacked on top of the 3d squares... the top citizens being specialists... high population densities (cities) would just be high elevations from a distance... (see what I'm saying?) pissed citizens would be on the very top, little red beacons of anger.

Maybe improvements in a reigon would just have an area of effect, like SimCity- plop 'em down on any sqare within a reigon(and they'd even have a cool little icon).'psych', 'econ', 'research' and 'production' would each have their own buttons, showing areas of effect and intensity...

Units can only be built once you have agalmated enough citizens to form a city (city=stack with at least one specialist)
The range of squares that the city draws resources from is equivalent to the number of citizens in the central square (would require retooling of resource breakdown, esp. food- but would explain why large, ancient cities (rome) were primarily concerned with redistributing grain).
If squares adjacent to the first square get specialists, they join the 'city'...

in the 'units' view, cities are 3d objects that cover as many squares as above...

it could be incredible. It could also lend itself to a Pseudo-real-time strategy, because your growth would be more organic.

posted May 20, 1999 13:46                

Excuse me if I meander a bit below, I'm just writing it down as it comes to me.
The very idea of the CITY producing a military unit is fine in the early to middle game, but in later times, countries BUY military hardware from companys, and TRAIN people at military bases sometimes far away from a city, and no one wants to live near a nuclear missile silo. In the later years, it does not make any sense for citys to BUILD units, all they should do is provide tax money to PAY for all the neat toys needed to build an empire.

As much as I like these Civ games, I really don't know if I want more of the same thing, just better graphics and the need for a faster computer to run it. Be brave and different. I wonder if what I am proposing would actually work. Abandon the city concept all together (Did I read that right?), this is a country/nation not just a collection of citys. The units would be bought by the country, and trained at the capital in the beginning of the game and would in later centurys be moved to military bases for this training (do you really want the military controlling your capital in a democracy? - veteren units). Each square on the map has a population 0-XXXX? and the population of this square will grow depending on what you do to the square. People would then move to the nearby squares when the population gets too high or if there is an incentive to move there to E X P A N D your empire. Your country size is now measured in squares (or hexs), the size depends upon what your military or government could control, some areas could leave the empire if not controlled for a while. Giving away or selling squares to another country would now be possible (Lousiana Purchase). Border could make small adjustments now instead of the huge adjustments you get now when you take over a city. Each square would have a movement factor, and if it was enemy territory, it may slow units down and DAMAGE them for being in them (partisans). Each square has a native population that may or may not wish to join you. You may even have to kill all people of a certain nationality/race in the square to make it peaceful (ethnic cleansing).

All military units would now belong to the country and not to the city that created them, no more citys in revolt for an army away from home (depending on your government and length of war). I could never understand why the America, which is supposedly a democracy would not be able to have the navy it does in real life in Civ 1 or 2, if you would have tried this the cities would be revolting left and right, and what about all our troops in Europe and the 1/2 million we had in Desert Storm - our country understands why we send our military overseas (to keep the wars away from home - civs should also understand this).

You would build the unit - army corp of engineers - to build the roads/railways that makes up your empire. Squares would even start to develope themselves, after all there ARE people living there. Would need trade treaties with other nations, and maybe have a little black market trading going on near the border if trading is illegal.

Factorys would pop into existance (random number possibly) and show up on the map, this is where you military hardware is built. If and/or when you get into war, this area would definitly have to be protected, factories may or may not be able to rebuild (incentive by the government?). Purchasing hardware may be the best for the cheapest price, or not quite so good just to keep them in business ($150.00 toilet seats). When you buy the hardware, it could be sold to other countrys for a profit so that those not quite so technologically advanced nations could get some toys to play with too, eventhough they may not be able to repair what breaks. Could also buy units from other nations, or maybe a license to produce the same unit in my country as in another ally's country. Possible even try competing on the open market for who gets to sell the most.
Would have areas on the map where you would drill for oil, mine for gold, mine uranium... Would not be able to move your military hardware unless you have processed fuel to run them on (the battle for control of oil). Would need processed nuclear materal to build nukes (could be stolen by spy network). Just stealing the technology to build nukes does not mean you can build them, do you have the materials to build them and the means to do it? Pollution may now be a little harder to deal with, maybe have government sponsored incentives to stop polluting or relocate to a less pollution concentrated area.

Have a spy network, not just a SPY unit, with something like the CIA or KGB giving you information as to what they THINK the other nations are upto and have them try to do things to the other nations (steal secrets, steal plans for prototypes, kill leaders, steal plutonium, destroy facilities, cause revolts, plant diseases, plant bombs, bribe officals, kill other spys, infiltrate other spy networks). Would have real airspace, territorial waters (1 square? - depends on how big of a map we get). Airplanes would be tracked by radar stations and AWACS planes, shot at by SAMS and intercepted by fighters automatically. A multilevel or 3d game where aircraft and/or missiles could fly over enemy units to a distant target (possibility of being shot down). Submarines could remain hidden and pass directly below other enemy ships unless detected by sonar, spy satellites could pass overhead showing enemy troop movements.

Be able to design your own special units, and make it so we could do the IMPOSSIBLE units (flying aircraft carriers, submergable Carriers both aircraft and land units). Think of the WHAT IFs! More treaties, cooperation between nations (UN) to get certain projects complete (fix ozone problem). Make it that a warmonger can't just run away with it all with out a lot of penaltys, after all this is a Civilization. Be able to have a REAL population, none of this one unit equal 10,000 people bit. The people necessary to build the armies are taken directly from the population, population is still the same just less people working to pay their taxes.

Some INVENTIONS would be invented by accident when the time is right sometimes long time before they actually have a use for it - it has happened alot. Instead of knowing what you are going to invent, randomise the wording for the next advancment or use blind research. Be able to research several differents areas at the same time. Some discoverys (bronze/ironworking) will slowly expand outwards from where they are invented (traders in information on the border). Building new units from new technology would be by prototype, and several years of TESTING. Just because we know how to make gunpowder doesn't mean we know how to build musketeers. Country can not ask for a certain tech if they don't really know we have it, that's what spys are for. Military is paid a salary, (bribe to stay in military), which may help limit military size.

A truly round planet with poles on both sides (they expand and may melt but not as bad as SMAC) but be able to convert this to a flat map for some scenarios (cannot change after game starts). Should also be able to easily convert the flat map to a space scenario (B5, Star Wars, MOO3). Space only goes out to near earth orbit (satellites, maybe a few space colonies). Maybe several more numbers of units if going 2D, or a unit editor if going 3D (there are alot of artists out there). How about real missile silos, and missiles that would be targeted at certain areas of the map, that would be automatically launched if another enemies weapon hits (or even accidently triggered if an asteroid falls to earth. Actually build SDI. Slow time down, alot of the games we play, the unit that is being built is outdated before it is even built. The Peloponnesion War lasted 27 years, but this is only a single turn in Civ 1 or 2, thats not even enough time to get from one city to another and build additional units to replace the ones that get slaughtered. Most battles/wars were fought aver a period of weeks or months not decades. WWIII is supposed to only take 2 weeks, yet in Civ 1 or 2 this also may be several years. I am not saying we should go week by week or month by month, that would get boring, just a little slower so we can get units up to the front before they are obsolete.

The computer hardware alone may be a bit high to use this program, but I think this would be the most realistic Civ game ever made and if done properly, would be the ultimate CIV game and people will upgrade their hardware to play it. If it is just going to be more eye appealing graphics then it isn't going to sell nearly as well.

--just my one and a half cents worth

posted May 20, 1999 13:53                

yin:

it would also give the Firaxis coders a very early read on how the game engine would work [more importantly, NOT work] on some PC configurations.

It's done in all sorts of industries. set out an early version of the product to a "focus group" .. turn 'em loose on it.. harvest their reactions.

....

RE: OSxAI

yin: Is there any indication from Firaxis that they would consider doing an Open AI interface? If not, no matter how much *we* might think it would set the world afire, the whold discussion is a waste.

Druid--No indication of anything yet. I do know, however, that Firaxis is a young company that is willing to take some risks. If we can argue our case well enough, we've got a shot. I've got some good arguments just waiting to go...(Yin).

rong: (a) [or more precisely, bingmann]... I've been in the programming biz for more years than I care to think about. What the *bleep* is Python?

(b) There would have to be two major parts to the OSxAI discussion.

(b1) What the scripts should be. The logic of the scripts would change as new users developed them, that's the whole idea, but the game needs a ~good~solid~ set of scripts out of the box. Many players wont want to develop new ones.

(b2) The event driven [I think that's the right idea too!] AI engine itself. What the events would have to be, how to interface them, sort priorities, what parameters to require of the script author.

posted May 20, 1999 14:05                

I understand your points, but note that there are a WHOLE LOT of people who think the game takes way too long as it is. THEY are making suggestions to speed it up.

Your comment: "I think this would be the most realistic Civ game ever" gets to the heart of ths issue.

There is a game that could turn out to be CivSim .. a realistic Civ Simulation ..
there is CivGame .. emphasis on the playability for humans, sacrificing realism.

posted May 20, 1999 14:21                

I like the general idea, but we need to think more how it would work. How about they charge people for it? Microsoft is charging for their W2K Beta. I know M$ is not a good example, but this could work out. Let's say they charge $10 for obtaining the alpha/beta. When the final game comes out, you pay another $10. If you don't want to play with beta software, you can wait for the final version for $40 - $50. Any other thoughts?

OSxAI

I guess we'd better use this name. OSExAI is just too obnoxious. For a historical perspective on the original "ExAI" idea, you can read the gameai.com archive.

A little reminder

It'll greatly help all of us if you can sum up your idea in 10 words or less (ok, maybe 20, but not more than that). You can explain your idea to your heart's content, but at the beginning or in the end, please give a short summary. Thanks!

"OSxAI" and "Open Alpha/Beta" are good examples.

Think of it this way. If you can't explain it in 20 words or less to us civ die hard fans, how are they supposed to explain it in the game manual to new players who has never seen civ before?

posted May 20, 1999 15:03                

-----------
How about abandoning the squares? Instead you could use tiles the size of a pixel. This would allow for:
-Unrestricted free movement
-More realistic cities, with circular ressourse zones and varying size.
-The possibility of making the world a sphere(You can't do it with squares, as it is impossible to map them onto a sphere without warping them)

In any event I think it would be nice if the size of squares were decreased (making the cities and city-zones larger, making units move faster). I think that would make it possible to have far more possibilities for game development (It would require efficient automatication however).

posted May 20, 1999 15:12             

"Your battleships are in American waters! Remove them now or they will be destroyed!"

posted May 20, 1999 15:23                

Sefl Evolving States!

I like the idea of a natural self-evolution of an empire that you as a leader would encourage with your decisions but not actually create --something like SimCity. As a leader one would encourage growth by obtaining new lands for your citizens to expand through exploration and conquering. Great idea!

Cities?!

Yes, instead of cities, why not change each map to regions (based on the amount of squares in each) that have multimple cities within them. No more micromanaging cities! This way you can have a real monarchy with Dukes and Counts ruling each region and you as King must rely on them to support your decisions. This would work equally well once the Republic and Democratic models come in. Some governments are more centralized than others so one must be careful which one he chooses. This would be great for the introduction of charismatic characters once in a while that gives your civ a mild special bonus.

Economic Self-Evolution

Encourage the growth and development of land rather than directly developing it, again reducing micromanagement. Totalitarian governments would have to directly interveen in order to develop the lands, whereas, more liberal ones could offer some of the natural resources to private investment so that the lands develop automatically at no cost and no administration. Much more efficient, but part of the production goes to the company. There are alot of possibilities here, such as foreign investment and foreign companies buying land and taking a portion of the income that helps a rival, just as in real life.

Real Domestic Politics

Appointing too many politicians from one region to influencial posts premotes jealousy and hatred among other reagions.

Minorities

All nations have minorities and they are a very powerful force in any civilization and I can't believe they've been ignored. They could play a vital role in domestic policy making, especially in democratic countries.

posted May 20, 1999 15:34                

Can I be a Token Radical guy? I had Radical in my Sig. file before this thread was here .

The open alpha/beta is a great idea. Its easy for any group of a few people to get slowly led down the garden path...

I think the extensible AI idea is good too, but I don't think Firaxis will ever support it. To put in all the right hooks and triggers to do allow someone else to do Good AI would take more work IMO than the Whole Amount of Time they seem to put into AI.

posted May 20, 1999 16:08                

Over use of resources should eliminate the.When was the last time you hunted a dodo?

The fact that you have a resourse in your possesion should mean that any unit using that resource builds 50% faster.

Tank cost(in shields)without oil-50

Tank cost in city with oil-25
oil drums owned 10

This comes out to: if you have 10 oil tanks would 50% faster for the next 10 turns. If you have 10 steel also the result is 75% faster for the next ten turns half of a half added.

------------------
"War does not determine who is right,It determines who is left."
-Crusher-

posted May 20, 1999 17:01                

But in looking at CIV III this way then the idea of a "nation"or "empire" as a collection of powerful provinces and urban areas "city states" for the ancient and middle period is still realistic.

mindlace, I love the idea of the terrain having an inherant population that can be managed into cities. I would like to see cities be created in any one of three ways:

Normal Civ:
Colonists from an existing city "Go West" to find their fame and fortune.
City as selected Military/Regional center:
When you as the leader of your people see a square/hex/pixel area/ that is just so strategically significant you can build a city there with the inherant population of the square/area.
City self creates as a result of Population pressures:
A square/hex/ collection of pixels reach a population threshhold and a city is born.

With the final method "neutral" or non-faction cities can generate and grow as well as cities within an empire. Colonists would be used to "peacefully" expand into areas outside your territory. Or to speed the growth of an area within your territory.

Your territorial borders in the early game are not set as specifice distance from your cities (as in SMAC) but as the Sphere of Influence (SoI) of your military and/or economy. Thus a small city with a weak economy and no military will have a small SoI, while a Large powerful city with a strong - dominant economy with a weak military would still have a larger SoI.

Then once the technology of "The Nation State" is discovered the setup changes. Borders will become less fluid, and can become fixed by diplomatic agreement between factions. You can claim territory as manifest destiny. But if you have a poor reputation then the intrinsic population of that area could refuse to recognize you as there leader and revolt against becoming part of your empire.

One other idea mentioned is that of Civilizations emerging through out the time line. I like this. How about taking it one step further, as a player you can choose to start at any point in the time line. The computer will randomly set the existing Civilazations (some strong and some weak) you can choose to be at the tech level of the advanced civ's slightly behind them or way behind them. This would add a degree of difficulty. You could choose to be an emerging Aztec empire when some other powers were on the verge of the industrial revolution. Or you could choose to be the American civilization in 1776.

Summary:
1) Tiles have inherant population
2) 3 ways to create a city: Colony pod, selection of a site within empire, and self growth of inherant pop crosses city threshold.
3) The Nation State technology to be discovered and modeled after existing nations.
4) Allowing the not only AI civ's to start during the game, but also allow the player to choose where in the timeline/tech tree to start.

posted May 20, 1999 17:16                

A system of post-republic government management. Instead of slogging through city-by-city management, the game would give you the option to switch to National management, at which point there would be some fairly major (and hopefully positive) changes that would make the late game much more playable, enjoyable and even addictive:

* No more endless strings of messages appearing on the screen each turn (so-and-so built a library, so-and-so needs an aqueduct, so-and-so is celebrating, etc.)
* Instead, at the end of each turn, you would speak to a group of advisors who would summarize things for you ("These cities are reaching their population limit, Comrade. Shall we add an aqueduct to their built queue?" "These cities request new building orders, Comrade.")
* You would also have the option to add a city improvement (or military unit) to the build queues of every city in your civilization
* You could set national minimum wage, begin a system of rationing, declare martial law, or (with the permission of the senate, where appropriate) establish all sorts of national standards. (Maybe even a standard build queue for all newly founded cities).

posted May 20, 1999 17:50                

You know, I am waiting on one seriously original idea on any of these threads. I've seen all these suggestions so far elsewhere and elsewhen. Oh well, I suppose Firaxis wants us to feel involved. (And no, I don't think my ideas are any more original than the others posted. Many are from other games, computer or board, or wherever...)

City Production Radi

People per square. Hate it. Seriously. That situation does not take into account say... the colonization of the USA. There were lots of people per tile already, but England and France sent over their own colonization forces. Most of the Native Americans DIED... not assimilated, nor displaced. They died. What I would prefer to see is a production radius around the City based on Tech and current improvements BUILT (and supported) in the city (ala Destiny, a Civ clone put out by I-Magic I think). Say in the stone age, 1 square (walking, you know). When you master Horsemanship, you can build a Stables, which permits you to build Horse based units (Mounted Infantry (they dismount to fight), Mounted Scouts, Lt Chariots, whatever) AND you gain +1 Tile radius for resource usage. This continues throughout the tech trees with certain advances obsoleting other facilities or their effects (cars and modern farm equipment replace the horse and oxen, yeilding +2 Tile radius utilization, regional highway transit network add +1 utilization (and consume +2 Work Units and +2 Energy and +1 Minerals to maintain), the Special Projects: Super Highway Transit System adds yet another tile to the usable radius yeilding 4 tiles out from the City).

Special Projects

Reusable Special Projects... Wonders are Unique Special Projects which can only be built ONCE and confer some special bonus onto the World, or at least your Nation. A Special Project is a great project or undertaking on a national scale, but can be done multiple times and by any nation possessing the qualifications. Example: The Hover Dam WONDER confers a hydro-electrical plant onto every city for the possessing NATION. It also confers a +50% bonus to build Continental Hydro-Electrical Plant (CHEP) Special Project as well as enabling all nations to now build the CHEP. The Hoover builder gets the build bonus for CHEPs due to the pride and engineering know-how in dam building that his nation possesses.

Canals

Once you have the requisite terraforming options, you can build CANALS (river roads) just like roads. Naval units can traverse canals, and land units can cross them. The act as rivers for encouraging trade/energy.

The Rise and Fall of new Civilizations

There are no such thing as "Goody huts that are free city". Rather, all those free cities start out as minor nations, just as the player does. In addition, as a featured random event a NEW CITY-NATION is sometimes generated. This represents: Radical Religious movements that migrate from other nations to a point that is considered Holy or simply far enough away from their former nation to pratice an "outlaw" ritual or religion. (Example, Monotheism is discovered ... the Cities of Aries founded by devote Arian priests refusing to give up their ways and going to someplace they can continue their calling); Shipwrecked/Lost military expedition - It was not unusual for officers or career men to take along wifes and children, depending on culture in question if they expected to be away for a long time. Also, many armies had a nomadic "liberty city" of followers that followed along (hence, camp followers) that provided all the services an individual in the army could want. Often family travelled with this van; a rich old "noble" leader "retiring"/expelled from the nation's elite and taking a small "servant" staff of a few hundered and their families to live a life of peace in their remaining years... yada yada yada. This would tend to lead to the occasional minor nation gaining strength or becoming a vassal state of a Major Nation. I'd also like to see far flung colonies occasionally break away and become their own nation. A nasty random event could also be a Civil War where a significant portion of the nation breaks away, due to whatever reason.

Overlapping Resource Usage

When allied/same nation cities try to use the same square, they SPLIT the resources derived.

Utilizing Tech Required Resources

I would like to be able to buy or lease the rights to harvest the resources of other nations that they either can't due to lack of tech, or have no cities/towns to process the tile for.

Buying Land - I second this. I suggested it elsewhere, and think it a wondrous idea.

------------------
-Darkstar
(Knight Errant Of Spam)

posted May 20, 1999 17:51                

Similar to terraforming/PW, you can build additions to your city in surronding tiles... some examples:

Suburbs: Reduces overcrowding (+happy/+health)
Industrial: Give % bonus to industry, + pollute
Port/Airport: For truely massive facilities
Military Bases: have you seen the size of 'em
Reaserch Campus/University: ditto
Theme parks: Disney would need 5+ tiles!

posted May 20, 1999 18:28                

In the system I was suggesting then the English or French Civ would send colonists to this new land with some inherant population, the native population adds some small benefit to the cities by supplying some resources.

To model the aspects that you mention we could A) introduce disease, B) have inherant population not help an incoming civilization without the use of slavery, indentured servitude (slight differance) or a tech discovery of enlightened interaction which would cause the empire to treat the inherant pop as equals.

Inherant pop that is near your empire's territory would be more willing to become members of your empire, areas further away would be less willing. There could also be factors for the absolute differance between tech levels of the Civ and the non-civ populous. When close the peoples would work together, when further apart there would be a greater chance for hostility and contempt.

Or this could be handled through Social engineering settings the closer these are the more likely, etc.,.... Inherant pop's could hve social agendas with differant map areas having differant agendas.

I think there is a lot that could be done with this.

Trach. - other countries could then view genetic engineering as an atrocity.

Darkstar(r) I can see food resources being forced to be close to the city, but if there are "mineral" resources that I am mining 3 tiles away and am forcing my people to haul back to the city by whatever means, then that should still be usable.

posted May 20, 1999 19:35             

Thinking along the lines of incorportaing neutrals into your empire and if they didnt join, they would be pushed outside of your borders, where they would start to build up and then be more likely to form there own city. Also, maybe if you were a freindly democracy, you would be morelikely to have these natives freely join your empire where as if you were a ruthless dictatorship, they would be more likely to not join your empire. Of course if you were ruthless enough you could easily go and kill the people natives in the squares as I stated in my original message. This kind of action would have repercussions though, becoming an atrocity later on in the game.

What I said is almost exactly what you want Darkstarr.

posted May 21, 1999 01:26                

Seriously, being near does NOT traditionally lead to understanding. It leads to stronger racism, hate, discrimination, burnings, hangings, tortures, and all the Dark side. That is because people only get to see a small portion, and unless educated tend to focus on the differences. That is how racial hatreds get started... Black against Brown, Lowlander against Highlander, yadda yadda yada. People focus on you taking their stuff, of not sharing your stuff, and that you got gal/guy and they don't. And you aren't a REAL person as you are not one of them, so therefore you aren't a Human, deserving of Human respect. And therefore they can and WILL do as they please. You can't truly hate what you don't know, you have to have a handle to make it real to you. But heathens and demons pretending to be Human is EASY to hate. You have to Humanize them to prevent that, and few belief systems ever did that as implemented by the leaders. Remember that the Irish were considered lower than any one Ethnic group in social standing, and they certainly did not have a soul, and so therefore wasn't human. This wasn't long ago in the USA. Human literature is FULL of nations and people considering their neighbors to be less than human. Native peoples would be no different, nor would the Emigrants or Colonists.

Goob... if that ore vien is 3 tiles away, and the city hasn't the tech or infrastructure to reach it, build a new outpost beside it to work it or a supply crawler to carry the goodies back.

Another thing I want to see though... a real Hydrology and Meteorlogical system! Go to Maxis and get their code for weather modelling from SimEarth or SimLife. Those ran on 286s and 386s, and require little computational power. As it uses cellular automata as well, it fits into the phase resolution approach. Yeah! Tag an interface to display the wind directions and rainfall and you have a matching kick butt system to help in terraforming those lands up and down.

-Darkstar

------------------
-Darkstar
(Knight Errant Of Spam)

posted May 21, 1999 01:40             

I must say I far prefer his idea for city-setup than any I've seen. (i.e. workers in a square, they get X production with X number of people, as they get bigger they get more, when they overflow into the next square, it grows in size and adds in another tile) this would lose the city-radius idea, and make for a neat graphic/macromanagement ideal.

Building walls about a city would put the walls about the workers, and then, to conquer a city, you need to break throug hthe walls and kill the troops. The civillians that are left alive (as some would likely die) are usurped and may be ceded or whatever.

Interesting. But would make city-building and whatnot a pain in the butt.

posted May 21, 1999 07:45                

POPULATION:
Intrinsic population wouldn't be on every square... they'd be spread out, like it was, I guess. you'd just have to stack 'em to get cities.

Maybe resource limits (like Arid, Moist, Wet) are limits on the number of people that can do that thing:
1 person farming for Arid, 2 for Moist, 3 for wet... improvements would do the same sort of thing for research, econ, and production- 'on' a factory would allow, say 5 citizens as 'workers', nearby (light industry) 3, farther 2 (cottage industry), and no production booster, 1.

So as your tech improved you could have _more_ specialists, not just different specialists, same as it was.

You would still have production boosts over time.

posted May 21, 1999 07:55                

DO AWAY WITH WONDERS!

posted May 21, 1999 08:29                

One thing that is good about this idea of self-evolving populations that grow and spill over onto the adjacent tile is that it allows cities to grow as an organic city, which is a great idea and a very realistic model.

posted May 21, 1999 09:44                

Hex grid for the map: NYET. I like the direct mapping of movement to the cursor pad. Makes game play faster and easier.

Indigenous People per Square: I like the idea. Pop/sq grow or shrink on their own. If they get big enuf, they make an outpost, or eventually a city. If you build your own town/city there, they come and join eventually. They could be *better* workers for local food production, worse for industrial production.

posted May 21, 1999 12:59                

I think a good way to represent the stresses of war or large military build ups on a civilization would be to have military units take a population point off of a city in your Empire. Not only would you have to support the army financially, but it would also place stress on production by physically subtracting a person from the civilization.

I think that the only way that could work is if city sizes where larger, or if every square actually represented a larger number of people ...let's say 3. So for every 3 army units, you would loose one person from a square.

As technology grows, this would change and be even greater. Modern naval units, for example, would need upwards of 9 people, especially if you had an aircraft carrier.

It would make it much more difficult to wage war in Democracies because every loss in war would be devestating in terms of loss of life, and thus create unhappyness.

A differentation between a volunteer army and a conscripted one could be made here. A volunteer army is more expensive and doesn't detract from your labour force, but you need a pool of volunteers, and it causes much less unhappyness.

posted May 21, 1999 13:42                

We have "western Civilization" as a Greco-Roman descendent. There is the "oriental" civilization, and we could say there is an Arab Civ and an African one. Whatever Civ's existed in the new world were consumed and spat out, by the "western" civilization. Is that what we are modeling? If so then lets throw the concepts of borders back out and a lot of the other suggestions.

If we are going to be truly radical then we should start at the beginning and choose the founding model that we think CIV III should be based on. What is it in the scope of Historical events that we want to cover? How do we want to cover this?

I know I would like a game that reflects the birth, growth, militaristic expansion and maintenance of empires, throughout history as ideas and knowledge slowly weave there way through time. And since history has shown that All empires fall, I want to go through the death throws of empires as well, I want to try and hold on to the Roman Empire as the Goths roll over it.

What if we could change Civ III (almost) entirely?

At the beginning of the game you can choose first from one of 4 or 5 basic Civilization Cultures, each one has there own version of a the tech tree. Then you would choose to portray a individual fledgling empire within that Cultural group. For example, I could choose the Western Culture group, as opposed to the Oriental, Meso-American, African, Arab, and Oceanic groups. From the Western Culture I would choose the Greeks. Who really would be no differant from the Romans but would be significantly differant from the Chinese who have a differant Tech tree set-up.
Now, I build and expand my Hellanic civilization and defend it from barbarians and Romans and Persians, and maybe at my height I take over all of the Mediterranean world, and head off towards the Orient. My military might is unparalleled, my tech unmatched, but I still do not have the tech and science and communications to manage an empire this size for long, at some point my empire starts to decay from within and civil war breaks out, and as I am dealing with internal strife the Germanic tribes or Goths ride in form the north, and Sub-Saharan kingdom comes bounding up from the south and my great civilsation is torn asunder. End of the game,... I think not.

Because I had reached such glorious heights, and the Hellanic civ had lasted as long as it did with the knowledge we had uncovered important even to the Goths and Africans, the influence of the Greeks live on...

And a new fledgling kingdom emerges in one of the fringe (or core) cites of the old Hellanic Civilization. I guide this new kingdom, that is determined to preserve the heritage of the Greeks, and we rise from the ashes of the fallen empire. Whatever knowledge of the Greeks that my "people" have lost can most likely be found in the libraries and colleges of some of the old great Greek cities, or they have been carted off to neighboring cities, or some may be lost and completely forgotten will have to be reresearched.
If I am a good and wise leader I can again build an empire an carry it out of the dark ages, maybe I'll fall again and will form a new empire based on the remenants of this one. Always working towards the goal of... (Fill in the victory conditions).

My suggestion is to make CIV III a type of open ended campaign game. You set the world and Civilization parameters at the beginning, and whenever your empire falls (The AI will be designed not to out smart the player, but to be near to overwhelming, after certain triggers are met.) during the game you will have the option to continue as a new empire forged in the ashes of the old one, carrying on the ideals of the of your overall Civilization.
Empires starting throughout the game would not be starting from scratch you would have one of the cities of the old empire (maybe slightly war damaged decayed a little) you would have a good deal of the researched techs, some would be lost to you but available in other cities to be conquered, and some may have to be reresearched. The starting strength of your subsequent empires is based on how big you previous one became and how well and long you withstood the barbarian hordes, jealous enemies, and opposing religious foes. Victory in the campaign will be when your chosen Civilization is the dominant one on globe (cooperative/diplomatic) the only one (conquering/economic) or the first to reach and control space.

Remember that having a "empire" brought down is not a defeat as long as you can continue climing the tree of knowledge (Tech Tree). With this idea it would be a built in challenge that your empires can be overwhelmed, a very skilled and lucky player could overcome this and continue with their original empire, the challenge would be to overcome all the adversity. All the major AI factions would go through a similar rise and fall cycle as well.

This idea really just emerged as I was writing a differant post for this thread. I abandoned that and wrote this instead.

Obviously I would be interested in comments, (Darkstar(r), Rong, anyone?)

posted May 21, 1999 14:23                

Civ3 Lite would be a simpler, conceptual implementation like Risk / Diplomacy with perhaps a bit more meat to it, while Civ3 Full Flavor would be our beloved high complexity version.

Properly implemented, this could provide a lot of new grist for the multiplayer mill, bring a rash of new adherents to the Civ conventicle, and give us a fun new Civ outlet: quickplay gaming.

Civ3 Lite would be a distilled version of Civ Full Flavor, with the speed of play and excitement of Risk. As for advances & trade, perhaps a crossbreeding of AH's Advanced Civilization and SSI's Imperialism. Maybe even a trading card concept a la Magic or Risk's army cards.

posted May 21, 1999 16:23                

This is the necessary answer to the conflict between demand for greater realism (i.e. complexity)and the demand for a playable game (i.e. simplicity).

At any turn during gameplay, the player would have the option to change his perspective within the civilization. For instance, he would have three choices:

1. To be the absolute ruler of his civilization, which is currently availble in Civ/Civ II.
2. To be the mayor of a specific city.
3. To be the admiral/general of a partricular military effort.

By default, the player would be the absolute ruler, and set the general practices of gorvernment to his taste. In this mode, he enact all the complex, sweeping changes that are only done at the central government level. (Set tax/interest rates, science endowments, religous tolerance, field of study, governement type, start/end war, issue military goals....) All else would be automatically decided: city build queues, troop movements, tactics, etc. In a developed civ, this would give the cities a mind of their own, simulating a realistic state of cooperative competition between local and national government. (Can anyone say "Republic"?)

Later, as he wanted specific changes to occur in a particular city, he would yield national power to AI, which would make no sweeping changes, and try to conform to his set guidlines. (I.E. Wars would not be started by the player's CIV, though funds may be diverted to necessities like happiness.) Switching to the perspective of mayor allows more precise control, i.e. specific build options, like a settler rather than a temple.

Also, when a particularly crucial battle occurs, the player could become the closest general and follow orders, such as "conquer city X", while controling specific tactics, like requisitioning more troops, directing movement, timing the strike, seiging, etc. (Certainly the battle engine must become more complex at this level and take into account elevation, terrain type (i.e. swamps are harder to march on than desserts), morale, hunger, fatigue, etc.)

A system like this (and I know it needs work) will add an exciting and radical new dimension to gameplay, and allow for a more intuitive realism. For instance, there is cooperation and competition between cities and their central government that requires a more complex thinking to overcome.

Example:
If a player needs to build up his military and strengthen a particular city's economy, he can cause the central government to make a general offer to buy arms at a set price. On the next turn, acting as the mayor of the city, he can lower his tax rate on arms producers, causing companies to move or found themselves locally, making that city uniquely qualified to produce arms, and take government cash.

Likewise, the military, when given general orders by central government, will obey, but be commanded by mediocre generals who have average chances of success. A player could consider more complicated factors and simply employ superior tactics.

Strategy would be enhanced by allowing the player to take only one role per turn (or year) so if he wanted have his superior skills excercised on the battlefield or in a single city, his central government would suffer mediocrity.

Such a game would require a much quicker engine than Activision provided for CIV:CTP and also an AI with a little variety FOR PETE'S SAKE! Additionally, there should be a huge amount of creative time in development, so it would never be possible to build every wonder, improvement, and unit in a game, as is routinely done in CTP, Civ, & Civ II. There should be a more than numerical reasons to build Storm Marines rather a War Walker. Perhaps rather than making people happy with generic improvements, a city depressed by loss of slaves will be MUCH happier only when city walls are built or troops are trained to protect them.

***And if you don't like a really complex game....there should simply be a starting option for a unified CIV, which would provide a similar interface to the one available now, so that all of you "Give me the same game with better graphics" types can be happy.

P.S. Firaxis, if you're looking for a desginer, I'm available.

posted May 21, 1999 16:37                

Lets say we go with the every space has a population idea, and hexs since you could now make a truly round globe. In what order does the computer figure out the population growths and emigration out of the hexs and immigration into hexes?
_ _ _
/A\_/B\_/C\_/
\_/D\_/E\_/F\
/G\_/H\_/I\_/
\_/J\_/K\_/M\
/ \_/ \_/ \_/

Example:
All hexes above belong to the same empire, somewhere in the center of it, so you don't have to worry about any borders with an enemy. Hexes A, B, C, have normal growth but no emmigration from hex. Hex A is just about ready to send out people due to major unemployment, lack of food, or just getting close to its maximum limits. Computer now gets to hex D which has a huge population with large growth and now has emmigration due to major overcrowding.

Questions:
Is emmigration from hex D in all directions equally or a percentage of population goes to each surrounding hex based on what the population is already in that hex they are moving into? If emmigration is now to hex A because it is less overcrowded than hex D, does the computer now have to refigure hex A's population growth and emmigration all over again or do they just move in automatically putting the population into a minor overcrowding condition with the computer worrying about it next time through? Does hex D only send people to surrounding hexes only if it will not put them into an overcrowding condition, eventhough hex D is still has a major overcrowding condition, possibly forcing the Emperor to step in to uproot several thousand people and move them elsewhere?

Its questions like these that will have to be answered before we can convince everyone else in the other threads to think differently, not more of the same.

Its amazing how crappy graphics get when you change fonts, oh well at least its close.

posted May 21, 1999 17:34                

Possibility and others - The more I have thought about it, the more I think you are just wanting more information of what is essientially already there. As the City is merely the City Center, and its production radii considered to be its suburbs... the question becomes when does the number of people in a square equal that Civ Hamlet? 10,000 = 1 pop is the initial figure, but its not a linear thing by far... Poss, you are right in that you are providing for a mechanism for something I would like to see in the game as well. New Cities and nations popping up. But if there is people in the squares, then that should raise SPYING, and wipe out Fog of War. While I have always figured that there was people living in the wild squares near my cities (since barbarians and rebels pop up in them) they were insignificant then. My main concern is the amount of micromanagement that would be needed to move and encourage people to be in certain TILES so that I can get them to stripmine or borehole or what not. And how do you deal with commuters? There ARE people that commute a tile or two's distance NOW in the US (and probably elsewhere) to work. If people have to be in the square to work it... but as far as handling it computationally, it would be a Cellular Automata sequence. You calculate out what each cell WILL do, disregarding what its neighbors are resolving to due, and update your map. So people emmigrate out of tile A, into tile D as people from tile D emmigrate to the other tiles.

Druid2 - I don't get one whisker of a dead cat you are unmoved. But History has shown us that is how things work. The Dark Side has to be FOUGHT with the Light of Truth and Humanization or else people's natural tendency to rationalize their selfish desires will rule. In most cases, the indigenous people are destroyed by the self-righteous and greedy. Fact of history. Take it up with the Creator of the Universe when you meet It in person.

Goob - Very Neato idea. But WHY would your empire collapse? In gamish terms. And would you really find that REPLAYABLY fascinating?

And I really like the building suburbs and whatnot on the tiles idea. But aren't we giving Civ an Acsendancy look then? Not that that is a bad thing...

------------------
-Darkstar
(Knight Errant Of Spam)

posted May 21, 1999 17:54                

Civilizations should vary depending on the map, terrain and surroundings. This is one of those things that has never been adequately modeled in games, and is long overdue. For instance, if your first 2 cities/regions/settled areas are all inland, you will not get the Advance leading to ship building to research. Icons on the map should be more numerous and specific to civ development: Examples:
1. Horses and Elephants are not general in the world in 4000 BC: an icon should indicate if you have horses nearby. If there are Units available requiring either Horses or Elephants, you can't build them regardless of your Tech until you get access to the animals (trading with the 'Barbarians' should be much more likely - once you've shown you can whip 'em, they should be willing to trade resources from the Blank Lands and even Tech they've picked up from other civs)
2. Tin, Copper, and Iron are all required for certain Very Significant early Advances (Bronze and Iron Working) but are not available everywhere. They need to be found and exploited, or traded for with those who have the icons in their territory - or them trader-type 'barbarians' (let's call them Natives, it's a more general term for what should be a wider set of possible interactions)
3. Icons on the map should change over time- the horse spreads over the landscape (unless you're an isolated continent) and civs look for, and find different things as time goes on - there should be no icon for Oil on the map until someone needs it, and then it should be required for certain units to function.
4. There should be more civ changing of the landscape. I've touched on this before, but cities will deforest the area around them in the ancient world, and exhaust the soil, at least temporarily, and generally go through some serious changes in the relationship with the landscape: none of which is modeled now...

posted May 21, 1999 19:32                

---------- REGIONS ---------------

The map during generation will be composed of many regions. Natural terrain features (Mountains, Rivers, DEEP oceans, homoginous terrain) will form boundries, and maxinum size will be limited. Each CIV begins the game with control of 1 Region, and NOMADIC population within that region.
--Regions can be named. If more than 1 civ has control of a region, more than 1 name is allowed.
--Regions can be contested if more than 1 CIV has population within that region. Internal borders are drawn out from SETTLEMENTS. You have no acess to any resouces outside of this border unless you are allied.
--Nomads may be "squatters", working tiles within another nations borders... but do not help "claim land"
--Islands within an Archepeligo will often be combined into regions, providing that DEEP ocean does not seperate the islands.

-------------- PUBLIC WORKS --------------

The concept of Public Works from CtP will be greatly expanded. In fact PW will be used for City Improvements, Terraforming, Exploitation (building mines, farms, ect.) and construction of military units. A percentage of your population will be designated "BUILDERS". It is these builders that provide PW.
--- PW is the most crucial element to improving a region.
--- PW is NOT pooled, instead, it must all be allocated, exported (see below), or lost.
--- Projects using PW can be given priorities via the PRODUCTION SCREEN. Priorities are generalized: Defence, Transit, Habitation, Exploitation, Production (goods), Military, Terraforming and Wonders. Catagories can share priority settings, spliting available PW between them.
--- Providing enough PW is generated, ALL projects can be finished in 1 turn

----------- SETTLEMENTS --------------

Settlements are crucial for regional growth and success, while it is possible to have a large nomadic population, settlements must be built and enhanced in order for a region to prosper.
--- Settlements are built using PW. In order to build a Settlement, simply choose "New Settlement" from the PW menu, and click on an unused tile. Soon, people will move in.
--- Settlement provide shelter for populations, thus increasing the population capacity of that region.
--- Settlements provide an aera for PROFESSIONALS (merchants, scientists, ect.)
to effeciently work their occupation.
--- Settlements can be improved through expenditure of PW:
----- New technology can be implemented (similar to building city improvements)
----- General fields within that city can be improved (Industry, Housing, Commernce, Entertainment). Each area has a level associated with it, as the level increases, so does the capacity to employ workers in that field. Housing allows a population to expand or to increase in density.
--- A queue list can be created for each city, as well as default allocation of unused PW (i.e., 20% of unused PW goes to Housing, 30% goes to Industry in THIS settlement)
--- Settlements can be named
--- As settlement increase in levels of various fields, that settlement will grow and occupy additional tiles. If a settlement lacks room to grow, no further increases in fields will be allowed.

--- TRANSIT/DEFENCE/EXPLOITATION/TERRAFORM ---

A varity of transit structures (roads, rail, ect.), Defence Structures (Bases, Walls, ect.), and exploitation structures (Mines, farms, ect.) can be built using PW.
--- To build simply choose the item wanted from the PW menu and click on an empty tile.
--- Transit helps units move quicker, it also allows you to use tiles within the region more efficently by reducing the effective distance tiles are from settlements. Transport of resouces are greatly aided by the presence of transit.
--- Defence structures give you places to train troops. Some Defence structures allows for better defence of the region (forts, walls, ect. )
--- Exploitation Structues allow a larger population of workers to harvest resouces from terrain tiles. Resouces are also FINITE (altough some are self-replenshing, like forests).
--- Terraforming allows alteration of basic terrain similar to Ctp

---------- WONDERS OF THE WORLD ---------
Also created via PW, many wonders however are actually place on the map. Choose location just like any other PW project.

---------- NOMADIC POPULATION ----------
At game start, and at other times, a portion or all of your population may be NOMADIC. Nomadic population is indicated by an Icon depicting wandering citizens.
--- Nomadic populations must have 50 people, or the entire population of the region... whicever is less. (NOTE: 1 person signifies only 1 Person)
--- Nomadic populations have a max. of 300, if they grow beyond this point, the population will split.
--- You may have more than one NOMAD per region
--- Nomads act like mobile cities! However they are VERY inefficent, and can not make use of EXPLOITATION STRUCTURES. They can however construct those Structures, and Build new SETTLEMENTS (not enhance), build WONDERS, TERRAFORM, build DEFENCES and TRANSIT.
--- As Goverment evolves from Nomadic to City-State to Regional to Confederacy to Federal (see below), nomads become less and less prevalent.
--- Nomads are created by UNEMPLOYMENT, a percent of unemployed individuals will become nomads:
----- Goverment: Nomadic, all Unemployed are Nomads
----- Goverment: City-State, 25% of Unemployed past 100
----- Goverment: Regional, 10% of Unemployed past 250 (but taken on a regional level)
----- Goverment: Confederacy, 5% of Unemployed past 500 (again, on a regional level)
----- Goverment: Federal, 1% of Unemployed past 1000 (on regional level, remember a min of 50 means at least 6000 unemployed for the first NOMAD)

----------- WORKFORCE --------------
Workforce is divided into three main aeras: Agriculture, Labor and Proffesional. In the WORKFORCE SCREEN, you can adjust the percentage of population within the three groups by use of a slider. These 3 groups are further divided into sub-catagories:
---AGRICULTURE
-----Hunters
-----Gatherers
-----Fiherers
-----Wheat Farmers
-----Produce Farmers
-----Livestock Farmers
-----Dairy Farmers
---LABOR
-----Lumberjacks
-----Trappers
-----Stone Quarrieries
-----Copper/Tin Miners
-----Iron Miners
-----Bauxite Miners
-----Coal Miners
-----Oil Drillers
-----Precious Resource Miners
-----Radioactives Miners
-----Builders
---PROFFESIONAL
-----Entertainers
-----Clergy
-----Scientists
-----Merchants
-----Teachers
-----Doctors
-----Philosophers
-----Administators
-----Media
-----Police
-----Fire Fighters

Furthermore, each area has an Unemployed %. Each sub-type can have it's own percentage set. Each sub-type also have a maxinum allowed, based upon resouces available within the region and any exploitation structures built. Numbers are color-coded to quickly determine when an area is reaching capacity.

Workforce is set on a city level in Nomadic and City-State Goverments, all others set WORKFORCE on a regional level.

------------- STOCKPILES --------------

Resouces are stockpiled to be used in various PW projects and the production of GOODS and Military. Stockpiles are City-Based in Maomadic and City-State Goverments, but can be moved with a cost of REVENUE (REVENUE is the same as GOLD, but better named). In Regional and Conferate Goverments, Stockpiles are Regional... you can move them from region to region also at a cost of REVENUE. In Confederate and Federal Goverments, a National Stockpile is used. Confederacy must move goods to that stockpile, wile Federal goverments AUTOMATICALLY move resources to national stockpiles (There are NO regional stockpiles). Any region can use this national stock.

----------- Happiness, Health, ect. --------

As goverment leans more toward the Federal end, These status level begin to become more universal:
---Nomadic&City-State: Each populations Happiness, Health, Education and Prosperity are unique and un-modified by the rest of the nation.
---Regional: These Staus level apply to each region, not to each Settlement.
---Confederacy: Regional levels are affected by national average; (Regional*2 + National)/3
---Federal: as above but more pronounced; (Regional + National*2)/3

------------- Exporting PW -------------

Public Works can be exported to other regions
--- In a nomadic goverment, no exportation is allowed and all PW projects are 2x cost
--- In a city-State Goverment, no exportation, and all PW projects EXCEPT improving that settlement are 2x cost.
--- In a regional Goverment, PW project cost normal, but exporting PW is not possible.
--- In A Conderacy, Pw may be exported. If so selected, a region will export and unused PW to a national pool that can be used by any other region set to import on that turn. However, any exported PW loses half it's value, and importing cities can import a max. of 1 PW for every 2 PW they produce. If multiple regions are set to import, the PW is divided equally.
--- In a Federal Goverment, PW exporting/Importing works the same as for a confederacy, except that the full PW (not half) goes to the National pool. And importing cities need only produce 1 PW per PW imported.

--------- ADMINISTRATORS -----------
The more towards FEDERAl a goverment is, the higher the ineffeciency will be. Administators are used to reduce this ineffciency, Federal Goverments will need a large number of Administrators, while NOMDIC goverments don't need any.

------------ NOMADIC GOVERMENTS ---------
Besides all listed advantages/Disadvantages of a nomadic goverment, here are a few more:
--- Can't improve Settlement... since they are Tempoary
--- Nomadic populations can employ more PROFESSIONALS than under other goverments
--- Nomadic Populations can have a larger stockpile than under other goverments
--- Settlements have a greatly reduced stockpile, and employment opportunities for Professionals than under other goverments.
--- Settlements can't be enhanced, although Technology can be implemented.
--- May not take advantage of any Expoltation Structure built.