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Originally posted by technophile on 07-17-1999 03:57 PM
I consider the effects a war has on a population's happiness to be "Support".

Problem: Democracies are terrible for war. This means that a despot can go invading you with an inferior army and not fear severe reprisals until you manage to change governments. What a pain. While some may argue that the benefits of a democracy outweigh this disadvantage, I disagree. I think that democracies SHOULD receive severe happiness penalties if attacking a rival civilization, but SHOULD NOT receive happiness penalties, or should receive a lesser happiness penalty, if the rival civilization struck the first blow.

Example: WW II. After Pearl Harbor the majority of Americans were pissed off enough to not give the government a "happiness penalty". There were still plenty of unhappy people, but this was mostly due to the fact that there was a war and not due to the fact that the AMerican government was involved with it.
HOWEVER:
The Vietnam War eventually got the American people so riled up that some historians actually think that he civil unrest may have eventually started a revolution. The doves began to outnumber the hawks and the government was severely criticized. Much unhappiness was caused, not because there was a war, but because the US government was involved with it.

Solution: As a Democracy/Republic:
If a rival civilization declares war on you, your citizens do not become as unhappy as they normally would while your military units are away from their home bases. However, as soon as the war ends, you had better get those units home as soon as possible.
If a rival civilization attacks you, you citizens will not become as unhappy as they normally would while your military units are away from their home bases. Your Senate will not accept peace until the rival civilization has paid for its crimes against your civilization.
The more a rival civilization differs from your own in social engineering choices, the less unhappy your citizens will be while you are at war with that civilization and the less willing your Senate will be to make peace.
If a rival civilization commits atrocities against you, your citizens will demand vengeance (will not become unhappy AT ALL while your units are away from home) and, depending on the circumstances, your Senate might not make peace ever--it will demand that the rival civilization be eradicated completely.

A democracy is more opposed to war than the other government choices, but if you ruffle its citizens' fur enough it will bite back. I think that Civ III should reflect this.

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Proposal for a New Energy Model for Civ 3
It works like this. Energy resources, depicted as BARRELS, would be distinct from production resources, which would remain SHIELDS. Energy could be derived from coal, oil, or uranium, depending on your current level of technology. Production resources would be derived from the same resources as they always were. The difference being that now the player has the choice of saying how much coal or oil is converted to shields and how much is converted to barrels. Uranium would only be used for energy. For example: Coal depoits might produce barrels at a one to one barrel ratio, oil fields three barrels to the same one, and uranium five barrels to one. The lower the ratio, the more frequently occurring the resource will be throughout the world.

Energy barrels would be stored and controlled globally -- that is, not locally in any one city, but rather in a "STOCKPILE" that would represent the energy reserves of your entire civ. On the game map, there would now be COAL DEPOSITS, OIL FIELDS, and URANIUM DEPOSITS, distinct from any of the previous seeded resources. These new tiles would be capable of producing moderate (coal) to heavy (oil) to HUGE (uranium) amounts of barrels. Another idea might be to vary the amount a player is able to extract by the current level of technology they possess, in addition to the type of resource from which it was originally derived. These geological sites would be seeded proportionately around the map, but not so abundantly that the search for them and the ownership of them wouldn't be extremely competitive.

So, assuming a new Production/Energy relationship, leave the production side with its shields, for now. For the purposes of this model production stays the same. On the new energy side, I've already described where the energy barrels would come from. Now I'll try to suggest where they would go.

Barrels would go to, at your discretion, Trade, Unit Supply, and Transportation.

First, Trade. Very simple. You have two options -- either convert barrels to trade arrows that feed your trade stream (on which your science, tax and luxuries still depend), or trade barrels directly through diplomatic negotiations with another civ -- by the barrel. The latter would add a new layer to diplomacy, and the former a greatly simplified trade stream feature. I.e., where before trade arrows were counted and adjusted per individual tile, now you could create huge masses of trade arrows simply by adjusting a slider in your ENERGY STOCKPILE screen. Great, huh?

Secondly, unit supply. Pre-modern units would require what they have always required to build and maintain -- shields. But to build modern units would require not only shields, but barrels as well. Additionally, maintaining these units now would require ONLY barrels. "Maintaining," in the case of modern units, means supplied via a supply line. Thus, the strategic trade-off of a powerful modern army is its dependency on its supply of energy to make it run. I'll leave it for another model to decide which units need supply lines and which don't, and what the rules of supply lines might be. Suffice to say, your ENERGY STOCKPILE were empty, and your last tank across the world was dependent on 1 barrel per turn coming from your last oil field, losing possession of that field would cut off your tank's supply. On the next turn that tank would find itself reduced to the defensive equivalent of a phalanx. The turn after that its attack would be that of a militia. And it wouldn't move. Cool, huh?

Lastly, Transportation -- the building, using, and maintenance of a transportation infrastructure -- also consumes your energy barrels. This excludes pre-modern roads. Movement along these roads is a function of the unit and its own supply of energy, if needed. It DOES mean, however, that barrels would be needed to fund the upgrading of MODERN roads (increased trade and movement benefits), ALL rails, and travel by rail. As in pre-modern roads, unit travel by air and sea would be a function of those units' supply.

So, there is now a direct link between your railroad infrastructure and your available energy. How would railroads work? When traveling by rail, the unit(s) are assumed to be traveling by train. Their normal supply cost, if any, doesn't count while that unit is moving on a train (along a railroad). Instead, there is an energy cost for operating that train. And whether there are one, two or ten units on the train, the cost is the same. No longer can a player willy-nilly build railroads to their heart's content and cross their continent 10 times in a turn without an opportunity cost somewhere else. Of course they can if they want, IF they got the gas, and IF they choose to spend it that way. But the availabity of resources found on the game map, and the cost of processing them into barrels, SHOULD require a great deal of strategic skill to maneuver oneself into such a position that he could afford to waste valuable energy going sightseeing on his railroad. Too, railroads will have to be planned carefully and economically. Your ability to begin construction projects would be dependent completely on your energy stockpile. So, to be clear: when a tank is moving across grassy plains from Kansas City to Los Angeles, it is expending 1 barrel per its maximum movement, 3 squares, over that terrain. But when that tank moves onto a railroad, the train it is on consumes, say, 10 barrels per tile, but there remains no limit to its maximum movement, save the player's energy reserves (btw, numbers herein don't represent anything more than my own crude guesses at ratios). Needless to say, railroads would not function if there were not enough fuel in the stockpile.

To offset this choice, MODERN ROADS, or HIGHWAYS, could be introduced to the game. This would offer a medium alternative between pre-modern roads and rail, wherein there would be a "highway maintenence" cost added to a unit's normal movement supply cost. It would be FAR less than rail travel, but the distance traveled per turn, though greater than normal, would be limited. Certain technology upgrades would be linked to an increased ability to move, or a decreased barrel cost to move the same distance -- i.e., future train travel might cost much less after the discovery of Atomic Power (allowing for URANIUM MINES), and subsequently Fusion might allow for a sharp decreases in the cost of rail travel. A player presumably would have to have at least one Uranium mine feeding his energy stockpile to get this effect.

I believe this model will enhance other areas of the game as well. Already I can see how it would effectively eliminate the problem known as "I.C.S.", or "Infinite City Sleaze," that strategy of overwhelming opponents with innumerable small cities. Players who have over-expanded their empire in earlier centuries will find the energy demands of modern military units and transportation to be cost prohibitive over such great distances. Unless they have the barrels they will find, as the cost of infrastructure and defense rises, their borders will shrink rapidly as more balanced nations take them over. The wise player will thus never build beyond their projected ability to support the energy demands of their infrastructure. This solution has the virtue of imposing the new economics of the game world as a cure for I.C.S., rather than creating false penalties. I believe the ONLY reason players were able to get away with I.C.S. in the past is because ENERGY was not modeled in the game.

In summary, energy is in fact, as we know, the currency of not only war, but peace. All infrastructure depends on it. It is distinct from, though married to, production. I hope this leads to some useful discussions here, and with the Civ 3 design team.

P.S. -- One further idea from discussions elsewhere (at Sidgames) is a "geologist" unit that searches for resources once the tech is found, a la Imperialism. For oil, there would be a sort of drilling ship that could be built to survey the seas.

Just a note, though: if a (gas guzzler par excellance) tank unit consumes 1 barrel moving 3 tiles, moving a tank unit by rail 3 tiles might consume only a tenth of a barrel. Just loading the tanks on flatbed trucks would be two or three times more efficient in fuel use, minimum. If railroads were less fuel efficient than trucking there would be none left in the West, period.

Being one to choose fun over realism, I'd say that many supply lines models are really complicated and just add to much complication. I think the current system should simply be modified where the one resource cost to maintain a unit changes based on that units distance from a friendly/allied city, if it engages that turn, if it is in enemy territory, if its fortified on a hard to reach territory like a mountain or something.
Here's my idea
Unit.. Cost to City
Unit Exists +1 shield
Unit Engaged in Combat +1 shield
Unit 5*x squares from friend +x shields
Unit in Enemy Territory +1 shield
Unit sentryed(inactive) -1 shield
Unit fortified in fort? -1 shield (cause dependance on lands near to fort)
Every 5 units from a city +1 food, +1 gold/trade?

Where does this idea belong, Econ? Probably. I'd toyed with presenting an alternate shield use model myself, but gave up as it was too far-reaching. Basically, I would propose that units would cost far more to support, but far less to produce. Preindustrial unit would only cost 2-3 times as much as the support req, while motorized units 4 times as much. A city could actually produce more than one in a turn (limited to two, or one more than produced on the previous turn), but could easily "outproduce" its ability to support those units. The support would, in essence, model the human as well as physical resources required.

First, resources. Resource tiles should produce a fixed number of resources per turn.. For example, a bare iron ore rock could produce 1 iron ore, 2 if connected by road, 3 if a mine is built on it, 4 if the mine is connected by road. Rail and ship should not increase the rate of production though, beyond that of road. For this to work, and be realistic, the 'shield' concept should be done away with. Units will require specific resources (eg. phalanx : 20 bronze, knight : 20 gold, 40 iron, tank : 60 steel, 30 diesel)..

IVANMV had an ingenious idea: the resources are spread unevenly thruout the world. Certain countries get more oil, some get more iron, some more uranium etc.. This will make imports and exports very important. If you do not have the resources you need, say, to finish a nuke (200 uranium, perhaps), you will have to trade to get it.. You could buy it, or exchange it for a price set by the supplier.. If he has a monopoly, he could set the price at 4000 food or something like that. Other countries might set their engineers on building several steel mills. They could then import/mine iron ore, send it to their steel mill, and then export the finished steel at a much higher rate.

Some of the production that each city gets (say, 33% or 50%) goes into the national treasury. This way, parts of your empire don't need to starve while other parts produce excess food.

An important improvement to the infrastructure engine would be totally revamped rail, sea and air routes. These routes would be point-to-point, rather than just to anywhere or nowhere. So, engineers will not be able to build railway tracks wherever they feel like. The tracks will HAVE to run between 'stations' and/or cities. Units will be able to move, in one turn, only as many stations (in any direction) as there are within x no. of spaces, the x being given by the prevalent train technology. This also prevents unlimited movement. For units to use rail, the must embark and disembark only at stations of cities. They are prohibited from using foreigners stations & rail unless the foreigner is an ally, or they pay a fee. If the foreigner is someone with whom you are at war, even that wouldn't be allowed.
Apart from units, resources also use stations and railway lines. A station can be built near a mine that is outside the city radius, and the resources (4 per turn?) are sent to specified city. Perhaps 2 resources go into the national treasury. Also, and engineer can build an oil refinery and a station next to it. Then oil from an oil well can come thru a station and rail to the refinery, which produces diesel from the incoming oil. Track from this station can take the diesel to a city, a port, or a foreign station (for possible export).
The stations could have 'station radii' or catchment areas, specific to their size/status/technology.

Shipping routes can be operated similarly. Port can be built on the coast, preferably on a railway line next to a station (for access to the 'hinterland'), and ships, built at cities or the port, carry goods and passengers to other domestic or international ports, or to offshore establishments (like oil rigs and such). So, from a port, you can build an oil tanker using funds from the national treasury, set up a circuit to and from an oil rig, and make it bring back 2? 4? oil each time it returns (which of course depends on distance). This oil is then taken to an oil refinery (by ship or rail) or exported to another port. Passenger ships also operate between ports, enhancing tourism, migration etc.
You should be able to build port improvements in he port out of the national treasury, like customs houses, immigration control etc., which yield trade, tourism and other benefits.

Airports can also be built by engineers, outside cities. These should also be improvable, with air force or passenger facilities, missile silos, SAM sites etc. Perhaps, if corporations are implemented, the would offer to pay you a fee for their airlines to ply between your airport and another.. Again, tourism benefit. Cargo planes could also fly.

Seeing that rail is so important, they must be relatively expensive to build, requiring funds from the treasury as well as time.

For those fearing too much complexity, the system should be largely automated and intelligent. It should know what to take where, with only minimal input from the user. The user could perhaps control everything from a revamped Trade screen, with special emphasis on imports and exports. From here, tax rates of different commodities could be set. For example, to stimulate the steel industry, iron ore could be made tax free; to increase public health, tobacco could be heavily taxed. For simplicity and manageability, the total number of resources should be kept small, perhaps only to iron, steel, uranium, gold, oil, diesel, bronze(?), food, luxury items(spices?), tobacco (or liquor), electronics.
For those who would rather manage their trade themselves and concentrate less on war, there could be different levels of automation, from almost complete, to minimal.

I've been keeping a very low profile.
Got burned out from the List, then got caught up in MOO3 forums, found out how time consuming those MPOGs are, then had some troubling personal conflicts to occupy my attention… I've popped in to check things once a month or so but hadn't posted.