posted June 18, 1999 12:13                

At last, it is here.

As the first OTHER thread was active, many new threads were created. Therefore, many ideas posted here would fit better in other threads. I will post them in the responding threads and mention them in the OTHER summary, but I might exclude them as they are mentioned in responding summaries.

BOLD CAPITALS mark topics belonging to existing threads.
Bold lower case letters mark sub-topics.
Italics after the posts mark the authors’ signatures.
Bold italics mark my personal comments.

GENERAL IDEAS WHICH WILL REMAIN IN THE OTHER SUMMARY

Population growth
Change the terms of population growth. Many aspects directly relate to Social Engineering.
Factors for population growth:
1) Education - High Education will actually lower population growth.
2) Prosperity- will modify immigration/emigration but not growth
3) Marriage - a social engineering choice
4) Contraception
5) Environmental Awareness
6) Status of women in society
7) State programs - breeding programs and population control. Trachmyr

Food should not be used to "make" new population. Instead, population should grow whenever there is enough food, health and happiness. Captain Action

Time range
The game should cover the period from the first appearance of Homo until about 2020. anachron

The game should go farther-maybe to the year 3000? JT3

You should be able to select what era to start in. NotLikeTea
I would like this issue to be discussed in the General forum. I emailed MarkG to make polls about it.

"Interesting" things
The game should recognise "interesting" things. For example, if a particular unit is very successful, it's home city should throw a "we love our troops" parade. the Octopus

Rural population
Some squares on the world map should be inhabited. The populations will slowly grow and expand to neighbouring squares. If the population in a square grows large enough, a city, and therefore a new civ, is created.

The populated "countryside" squares will belong to the closest city and produce food and resources. People in the city will produce gold and science. Later, people working in factories in the cities would increase production at a linear rate.

Now you can also take move people to 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. You could also move people to other cities, but moving people should cost you some money.

You should also be able to build a road to a square to utilise the resources being produced there.

You can then decide where the production will go, to any city it is connected to by roads.

City sizes in the first parts of the game would remain relatively small, ant they 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 most likely cost some gold or something). The countryside is where most of the people in the world live up until the 20th century.

When you destroy a city, you don’t 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 a city or civilization is destroyed there should be the chance that the civ’s civs techs will be distributed around the world or to any other civs 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, so that new civilizations are constantly popping up.

Civs should 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. Possibility

Nomadic Population
Before cities were constructed, people were more or less nomadic. This needs to be represented in Civ 3. Treat a nomadic population as a mobile city, but not "improvable".

Workforce
Your workforce is handled on a city or regional basis, depending on your "National Government Level" (Independent/Regional/Federal).

Workforce determines not only what you produce/build but how your cities develop as well (A city with Level 8 Industry due to a lot of factory workers is much different than a city with Level 8 religion.)

All other projects utilise PW, from mines to roads to Wonders (which appear on the map)
Other concepts will be included, and I’ll expand on them later (Government, Stockpiles (National vs. Regional) and army production to name a few).

The result will be a highly graphical representation of you NATION, not just cities. Also Micromanagement of city improvement is eased, to allow for more detailed workforce, supply and economy.

One final note, tiles should be reduced in size to allow this to be effective. I suggest 1/4 size at maximum.

Random Event: Charismatic Leader.
Political: if he's in the government, for instance an advisor or Ruler and the government for X turns you get extra Happiness, Growth, or Economics or all of the above. If not in the Government - Government Reform or Revolt
Religious: increased Happiness, but you might also get the Church unhappy.
He can be a Prophet creating a new religion. You then have got the choice of trying to suppress it or accept it.
Scientist: you get an Advance.
Military: Pick one army/stack of units which can do Great Things for X turns. The General might take the government away from you!
Explorer: a part of the map or a Special resourceis revealed. Diodorus Sicilus
What about a Capitalist?

[b]The Demo
Firaxis should think about how a demo should work up front, instead of taking a game engine, crippling it, and forcing us to wait for a huge download. The crippled nature of the SMAC demo was infuriating. If thought about ahead of time, maybe they could give us a better demo. the Octopus

Including X-factors
Epidemics, earthquakes, hurricanes, famines, volcanic activity, cults, alien visitation or artificial intelligence revolt. anachron

Bureaucrats
Large cities should require one or more ”bureaucrat” citizens. Sieve Too

posted June 18, 1999 12:13                

MOVEMENT
Speed up sea transport:
Shipping - Allow sea transport TI:s that scale with technology (sailing ships, modern cargo, and some future hydrofoil-style-thing, for examples). A player builds a ferry/trade route which allows for fast-faster-instant transport from a city/port across the ocean. Then, you just "drive" your units across the ocean, although they could not attack and would have a defensive value of 0 if it got caught there.

Just like a road or RR, they can be pillaged/pirated and destroyed. Sea power units are still needed to protect the routes and power project, as are transports to land equipment in other locations not served by regular trade routes, or if a player is cautious and wants the extra protection that Galleons/Transports provide. Different players could have their routes cross, but I imagine they would be rapidly cut in a war.
My idea is to have some kind of City improvement that allows Sealifts (like Airlifts, but not instant).

Bridges/Tunnels
One-square distances could be bridged or tunnelled. More advanced future-techs allow for longer bridges or under-sea tunnels.

Supply Crawlers like in SMAC are a bad idea. Too much micromanagement, and too little relevance to Civ3/human history. wheathin

Aside on Huge Cities in general: I'd rather see a more developed economic system that could mimic some of these effects, but at least the game should recognise that availability of food hasn't been a determinant of city size for over a thousand years. Cities create demand for food which is almost always met. Food can be interrupted to be sure, resulting in short-term famine and decline, but long-term city growth (even over the "mere" decades of a medieval-period Civ turn) depends more heavily on other factors like employment, social policy, war, disease, peace, and immigration. The demand for food that large cities or burgeoning rural populations create drives agricultural innovations, money economies, and cash-cropping, not vice versa.

UNITS
sell military
It would be nice to be able to sell military units like in the real world. Thue

CIVILIZATIONS
revolts
Revolts should be more common in the early game, under certain governments. When several cities revolt, a new civ will be formed. JamesJKirk

A better Civ seeding algorithm
Drop the first major civ randomly. An invisible circle extends around it. Next civ is randomly dropped, except it can't land inside that circle. Continue process until out of major civs, or all land is taken up by the circles. In that case, reduce the size of the circles until an area pops up. When dropping minor civilizations, reduce the size of the circles even further, and keep dropping till you run out of space.

Don't make it so that starting next to a river and not starting next to a river makes the difference between a civilization's life and death. SnowFire

GAME ATMOSPHERE
Bring back the High Council!
Here are EnochF’s character suggestions for the Ancient, Renaissance, Industrial, Genetic and Diamond ages:
War
A Conan-like man of few words
R Sir Gawain
I Patton-like general who quotes the George C. Scott movie
G Colin Powell like general
D on-the-edge, constantly frustrated sort of Susan Ivanova character
Science
A stereotypical picture of Archimedes
R egoistical Italian reasoner
I Albert Einstein clone, but not an over-the-top impression
G Dana Scully-like geneticist
D super-wired scientist (like Professor Zakharov from SMAC)/supercomputer like HAL
Trade
A shady, vague Arabic trader
R soft-spoken Italian banker
I like the millionaire from Monopoly, but talks like Boss Tweed
G Bill Gates character who urges you to "keep in the fast lane"
D old and weird business guy based on S.R. Hadden from Contact
Diplomacy
A Delphic oracle who gives mildly cryptic advice
R Machiavellian character who urges betrayal, stealing technology, etc.
I optimistic Neville Chamberlain sort of chap
G elderly woman, sort of a mix of Madeline Albright, Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Thatcher
D Comes full circle, a kind of parapsychic, super-wired Delphic oracle
Entertainment
A overweight Nero-looking chap who speaks in ill-rhyming poetry
R court jester who strums on a lute and sings insulting songs
I Elvis!
G cynical pollster like somebody from Clinton's legal team
D sinister Cigarette-Smoking Man

JT3 reminds that profanity should be kept out.

A High Council or something equivalent is a must. It could be combined with some sort of Throne Room.

CITY IMPROVEMENTS AND CITY CONCEPTS

More than one worker on each square. Unknown
Maybe that should be made possible with a certain Wonder, like the Millennium Tower.

Base Support Structures
include ALL of the critical structures of past ages. This structure will AUTO upgrade when you enter a new AGE if you have built all included structures of the previous age. You will be able to found and develop a thriving city, without the need for that city to have been there from the beginning. Trachmyr

Growing cities[/i]
A City should spill out from the middle square of its radius to fill in the other squares. You should lose access to minerals on these squares. UCK

[b]Removing the emphasis on cities
The position of CIV,CtP,SMAC, and other games of this genere, is that the CITY is the center of society, and the primary focus.
Instead, I counter, that it is the network of all human populaces, all structures (mines. roads, barracks, factories, ect.), and how they interact that decide if a nation is to succede or fail. Trachmyr

City improvements which allow certain Tile Improvements
and vice versa. I.e. you could not build fisheries until you had built a harbor. wheathin
Like the Farmlands and the Supermarket, if I got it right.

GRAPHICS

National flags for units
instead of colored shields. And when you create a new game you should be able to customize your flag and edit it throughout the game. What do people think of it? I think it would go a long way towards individualizing each game experience. kmj
The cities should have such flags, instead of one-coloured ones. The units could also have coat-of-arms - different for army, navy and air force.

CtP’s system for roads/rail is ugly. The representation of the transit type from the centre of one square to the centre of another should be uniform, not change abruptly at the square boundary.
wheathin

MANUAL

The Civ III manual should be the same size as the CivII one, with nice and big-font words and easy to read, not like the encyclopedia-like with columns and size 8 font SMAC manual, nor the anorexic CTP forum. Lots of pictures, too! LordStone1

TERRAIN

Altitude
for the terrain. JT

Naming terrain features
The human (or the computer) should name geographical locations. Widowmaker

Take the starting positions of the Civ's into account, so we're likely to get a Nile River in Egypt, or the Andes Mountains near the Incas. the Octopus

Who is the first to discover a region should be the one to name it. kmj[/i]

[b]More emphasis on rivers
*Increase trade depending on the number of cities upstream
*Increase aqueduct, sewage system and power plant effect
*Travel bonus only when entering the river from a city. Crossing the river should take time.
*Armies should be vulnerable when crossing rivers.
*borders should conform to the rivers. russellw

Better resource seed
Something more random, where resources are not evenly ”lined up”. Rathenn

Natural events
What to do about real earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, land creation/destruction, and even continental drift? NotLikeTea

Natural conditions like earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, hurricanes/monsoons and tornados could be incorporated into the game. Floods cause food losses, volcanoes cause population and, perhaps, other losses, earthquakes cause improvement and/or productivity losses.

Volcanoes and flood prone rivers could provide extraordinary production bonuses. Fault lines could be especially rich in super oil/gas fields. Technology and/or improvements could help to get these bonuses or reduce the danger of bad occurences. Bird

alternative reward
Instead of rewards like the Throne Room, a special resource could be found outside a city. [i]Sieve Too

TERRAIN IMPROVEMENT

Terraforming requires micromanagement and is too much sci-fi. At the very least, provide us with some sort of convincing explanation: a "Weather Control" technology would be a nice start. If terraforming is possible it must be appropriately scaled. Changing a swamp into mountain requires more technology and efforts than clearing forests. wheathin

Variety is necessary. In CivII, there are railroads everywhere. A TI should only be useful in certain locations - not in any tile. NotLikeTea

Public works
Many, many posters agree that the Public Works system in CtP is good.

Public works should only be able to build improvments inside the region/city radius.
Settlers would have to do the things outside of the city radius. Mo

Don't link Transport TI to special energy/trade/etc. bonuses. It just provides an incentive to cover every square with railroads/maglevs/whatever. wheathin

You should be able to build PW anywhere inside your borders. In unclaimed territory, maybe use CTP's system of building only next to an established PW. And you shouldn't be able to build in hostile territory. Bell

Walls
One should be able to build Walls across the map. They can be used as roads. They would completely prohibit vehicles/cavalry from crossing unless destroyed... but that may take some time with primitive weapons. Trachmyr
Walls could be both a City and a Terrain Improvement. The same for Fortresses.

Regions
Put a size/population limit on the size of a region, which depends on the government type. In Despotism the largest region possible is one city; as your government gets more effective, the possible size of a region goes up. JT3

posted June 21, 1999 10:11             

AI ministers/governors
The ministers in CIV2 were an amusing interruption of the usual chores (micromanaging cities, micromanaging units, etc.). They didn't really give any useful information, they just complained if you were not doing what they thought should be done. Who is the ruler here?

It would be better if they were able to act upon directives from you (or each other, depending on how much power you grant them) as an extra (micromanagement-reducing) layer between you and the city/regional menus. After they have been given tasks or general directives, they present you with their suggested solution(s) which you may accept/modify/decline.

example:
You have given your diplomacy minister a directive to improve relations with your neighbour.
Diplomacy informs you that your neighbours insist on a special trade relation in which they will buy weapons for food.
The ministers of trade, production and military tries to dissuade you from that course of action, because; you will lose money, your production facilities are already engaged with other orders and it is dangerous to arm your neighbour.
You instruct diplomacy and trade to make the deal anyway, but to delay the weapon shipments. Production are ordered to commence the weapon production and turn them over to military who will use them to make an attack army that can crush this insolent neighbour.

Diplomacy's directives could be shaped like this:
MISSION (to Persians):
x Improve Relations o Provoke War
Get
o Territory o Bases o Passage rights o Technology o Money o Goods o Trade agreement o Prohibition against Slavery/Ethnic/Pollution/Drug/Religion/... o Acceptance of Slavery/Ethnic/Pollution/Drug/Religion/...
Give
o Territory o Bases o Passage rights o Technology x Money (200 gold) o Goods x Trade agreement o Prohibition against Slavery/Ethnic/Pollution/Drug/Religion/... o Acceptance of Slavery/Ethnic/Pollution/Drug/Religion/...
Willingness to achieve mission goal(s) (1-10): 7
Willingness to offer gift(s) (1-10): 5
Who can sign agreement? o Agent x Emperor
Duration of mission? o Immediate o Fixed # of turns x Until an agreement is reached

posted June 27, 1999 17:12                

"Civ2 measures a lot of variables, some of which don't have any apparent effect on gameplay. Literacy, for example. Or life expectancy. Disease, on the other hand, should have immediate effects.

"I sense doubt.

"Well, the way I was thinking about it was this: Imagine how much different the world would be today if the Europeans, in their colonization of the Americas, had not brought with them a host of organisms against which the natives had no natural defense?

"In other words, disease, used effectively in Civ III, could influence the course of empire.

"I sense other people have suggested this before and been properly criticized.

"Okay, then, I'll lay out some guidelines:

"(1) Let's measure disease as a new variable affecting cities in your empire as does corruption, except that distance from the capitol is irrelevant.

"(1a) Base disease is modified by the surrounding terrain. Jungles and swamps would boost base disease. Hills, mountains, plains and oceans would be neutral. Let's say grass and forests give a tiny boost thanks to naturally occurring herbs.

"(2) Upon contact with another civilization, the computer makes a disease comparison. The base number being compared is the percentage of each civilization diseased, averaged out in all cities. If one civ has a substantially lower disease rate than another, they will incur disease penalties from contact with the new civ.

"In the early stages of the game, this won't make much difference (at least not if everything balances out). There's always the chance that you might end up meeting a swamp-ridden foreign civilization early on and catch malaria, but all in all, the big effects will show up when two civilizations come into contact *late* in the game.

"(3) Disease cannot be transmitted by diplomats or by wonders such as Marco Polo or United Nations. (Only mildly unrealistic.)

"(3a) It can, however, be transmitted by caravans. And most *certainly* by military units attacking the cities.

"(3b) There's a tiny, tiny chance that a new plague may emerge from a goodie hut along with whatever gold, technology or helpful natives are there. (That'll make you think twice before disturbing their idyllic, primitive existence.)

"(4) If disease reaches a certain percentage of the population in a city, that city will go into Quarantine. This will immediately sever any trade routes the city may have and decrease the population by 1 per turn until the situation is rectified. Needless to say, any "We Love the Consul" days will be cancelled, and civilization-wide happiness will drop moderately, increasing the chance of Revolt. Quarantined cities left to themselves will eventually become un-quarantined simply because the percentage will drop along with the population.

"(5) Base disease will drop substantially upon the discovery of Medicine, Sanitation, Genetic Engineering and any other medicine-related advances (such as Pharmaceuticals from Call to Power).

"(6) New city improvements can battle disease, but not until roughly the modern age. Thus, Call to Power's hospitals and drug stores can actually have an effect on public health.

"(7) Pollution would, of course, also have a direct bearing on disease. Every square of pollution might boost disease in the city three points, for example. (Potential pollution, or the number of crossbones the city is producing, would have smaller effects.)

"This would eliminate the odd tendency of certain cities to celebrate after the detonation of a nuclear device downtown. Any city nuked would almost inevitably be thrown into Quarantine due to massive pollution and destruction of hospitals.

"If done incorrectly, this system would make the game much less playable. If done correctly, though, with proper balance, one would have to plan against new contingencies: the onset of plagues such as the Black Death, the diseases carried by foreign invaders from far-off lands, even diseases caused by prolonged sieges where cities are cut off from outside supplies.

"Imagine spending three thousand years developing a mighty island civilization in splendid isolation, developing as far as the Industrial Revolution, and then suddenly having half your cities thrown into Quarantine by an enemy invasion from the diseased lands from the war-torn continent to the east. D'oh! And you thought factories were more important than hospitals! Massive pollution already plagued your cities, and the invaders pushed public health over the edge.

"I think this would inspire new strategies and make other strategies obsolete.

"(On the other hand, then there's the new breed of player who builds up his disease as high as possible before going to war...)"

There. At least now it'll be in the official Wish List.

posted June 30, 1999 04:05                

Structures have hit points= to the cost of building them. Certain units (spies/saboteurs, catapults, cannons, sappers, bombers) and random disasters(floods, fires), riots/rebellion, nukes, and actual conquest thru military action would inflict damage upon the structures. You would pay gold or you may allocate a portion of your city's shield production for repairs. Any number of structures can be repaired per turn. Effects would be:

0-49% damage=no effect on structure, 1 gold repairs 2 damage or 1 shield repairs 4

50-99% damage=structure disabled. Gives no benefits to city, x2 repair as above

100%=structure destroyed. Must be rebuilt.

A disabled structure will start functioning again once it has been repaired to the 0-49% range, but cost of repair will stay as 50-99% until completely repaired.

How I see it function in the game:
Spies/saboteurs/sappers: These would inflict random amounts of small damage to one structure at a time, based on the total hp's of the particular building. Sappers would be
limited to city walls. However the successful act of sabotage would prevent the structure from working for, say, 1-3 turns, or 1 turn after the minor damage is repaired.

Catapults/cannons/artillery/howitzer + bombers: Inflict minor amounts of damage to a few structures during bombardment. They may specifically target city walls to do medium amounts of damage, to that structure only. Bombers may specifically target any city building, but may be repulsed by AA fire, fighters, bad weather, etc. Prior to laser targeting their chances of success will be low.

Floods, fires, riots, cause low/medium/high damage to some/many structures depending on the city's preparedness. Fires would be limited by aqueducts, wells, etc.; riots by
police station &/or barracks. You get the idea. This would also be based on each building's total hp's.

Nukes: Depends on power of nuke. All structures take damage, most in the high range, some will be destroyed. The rest would take medium.

Conquest would inflict low/medium damage on most/all structures when the city fell, but rarely will a structure be destroyed when the city is conquered.

low=about 10% damage or 4-7 hp's
medium=about 20-25% damage or 12-17 hp's
high=50-60% damage. Only happens to cities hit with random disaster's that are unprepared, or nuked.

DonDon
Questioned cost (later I halved repair costs), suggested:

· A "free repair" rate, something like 1 shield × city size each turn.
· Add 1 or more to "free repair" for: Con, Bri, Exp, RR, & Aut. (Each effects construction technology)
· Repairing w/o interrupting current construction by setting % rate.
· Pop-up menu (click on improvement) for selling, setting priority for "free" and shield repairs, and buying repairs (set rate in $/turn).
· Allow settlers & engineers in city to repair improvements, 2 & 4 shields/turn added to "free repair" rate.
· Add another special citizen type: construction crew, adds 2 shields to "free repair," 4 after Exp, sorta like a temporary settler or engineer.

David James
Questioned incentives to repair much past 49%, why not be % reductions, liked donDon's ideas.

itokugawa
Liked the idea of structural damage, suggested pay extra $ to lower spy success.
Suggested that some buildings should have more hits based on importance, such as city walls and SDIs.

Theben
I envision a number next to each built structure in the city screen representing the total damage, color-coded like units. Green=0 damage, yellow=1-49%, red=50-99%. You would click on the number and a pop-up window would let you repair the items, w/o limit of how many and how often you can repair. Gold is subtracted from your treasury, shields are counted similar to supported units for that turn.
Replied to David James % reductions don't work for each building type, and you should repair or you risk building's destruction later.
Disagreed with Itokugawa, repairs should be based on cost of building to keep player happy.

donDon
Since most improvements are structures easily damaged by fire perhaps they should not be
made too resistant to destruction. Then you could have aqueduct improve the resistance, representing better fire fighting capability. There could also be an improvement with sewer representing an incremental advance in water control structures. Modern water infrastructure would follow…

posted July 09, 1999 07:16                

In Civ, opoulation growth is a factor of food production. Great! Looking at our world today, the US and Europe must have the highest populations, and China quite low.

What? It's not like that? How odd...

Population grows independantly of food, though it is a factor. In the developed world, people consume far more food than is needed to survive. In the Civ model, we have a low growth rate. In the third world, the population grows despite a lack of food.

Another point: In Civ, population is not a bad thing. In Civ, China would be winning. It would be nice to see the problems of population, as well as the benefits.

posted July 11, 1999 02:11                

CITY GROWTH: There should be 7 city picture sizes (right now there are 4) They should represent factors of ten. For example a newly founded community has 100 population.

P100=Picture 1
P1000=Picture 2
P10000=Picture 3
P100000=Picture 4
P1000000=Picture 5
P10000000=Picture 6
Larger= Picture 7

However, there should NOT be little numbers representing each one. For example, a population 100 city should not be called "1".
It should just be there, with the picture denoting its approximate size. Then, it should tell you the real population (for example, maybe 30,000) when you enter the city screen. Thus, there will be no sudden growth spurt as there is now (when a size 1 city doubles in size overnight ) Each turn, it will increase a small amount.

Then, you can use this for armies. For example, you can set the city to produce phalanxes. If the city has 100 people and your empire has a 5% draft rate, then you should get five phalanx-men a turn from it. If you have a a few million phalanx-men, you're probably going to defeat ten cavalry-men, however superior they are. My model of combat is this: All units still have their attack and defense and hit points and firepower values. For example, the phalanx would be 1-2-1-1-1 However, Hit Points and Firepower would be an assigned value multiplied by the number of men in the unit. For example, a 10000-man phalanx would be 1-2-1-10000-10000. So, while each "round" of combat it wold probably be beaten by a single 8-3-2 Cavalry, it would still end out defeating the cavalry. If it were to defend against a 10000 man 1-1-1 unit, it would still probably win, because it has the higher value (comparing attack to defense) It would be equal to a 2-1-1-10000-10000 unit, and surpassed by a 2-1-1-15000-15000 unit. Therefore, the number of people would be just as important as the type of unit.

Units would each have a "dominant element" For example, the dominant element of a frigate would be wood, and the dominant element of a swordsman would be iron. The special resources will match the possilbe dominant elements. If a city has a special resource in its radius (and it's not already taken), then the city will be counted as a producer of the dominant element. A city in the forest which has access to lots of wood could produce units whose element is wood much more quickly than normal. You can still produce a unit even if you don't have the element, it'll just take longer.

Improvements and Wonders will also have elements, perhaps even multiple ones. A city near Marble or Gold could produce temples quickly, and one with both could even make a Wonder like the Oracle in very little time. Perhaps having a dominant element of something would halve the shield cost to produce it there.

This would lead to a more realistic change in the balance of power through the years. For example, most Stone Age units will have Stone as a dominant element, and cities near it will flourish and become military powers. Once the Bronze Age, occurs though, and most units need bronze, it could very well fall behind to civilizations with more bronze and copper in their territories.

This brings me to another very important point. Trade in Civ2 was pretty bad. I suggest trade in dominant elements. For example, you can right-click on any city you have contact with to open a negotiation totally seperate from normal diplomacy. You can then ask to trade a few of the dominant elements. If the leader agrees (which he probably will, unless he REALLY hates you) both cities will then be counted as producing both dominant elements. Either side can cancel the trade route at any time, and third parties can have as a negotiation option "We wish you to cancel your trade route with the ____" The trade will be represented by little icons that move across the map and don't belong to either civilization. You can attack one of these icons, but it will be a declaration of war on both civs involved. The icon's appearence and rate of movement will change after you discover certain techs.

That's all for now (phew)

posted July 18, 1999 08:33                

1. Effects of starvation: Something which I found most unrealistic in
Civ I and Civ II, is that the consequence of starving your people to
death is to increase the happiness of the city concerned. When a city is
starving, the population should become very unhappy, causing civil
disorder, leading to the collapse of the government in a Democracy.

2. Elections: A realistic, and very effective trade-off for all the
advantages of a Republic or Democracy, is that elections should be held
periodically. Should the player lose the election, he is removed from
office, thus losing the game.

Any comments?

posted July 18, 1999 09:28                

Food has a strong influence on happiness.
All food is pooled and distributed to a nuetral happiness level automatically. (losses to to bad transport can happen)

The happiness neutral level of food corresponds to current slow groth, maybe 2.2 food / person.
Having more than this much food slightly increases happines and hence growth.
having less decreases happines. At a certain level (~1.5 food/ person) starvation begins. Happiness penalties are SEVERE and pop losses are inevitable.

Inventions like contraception will slow growth rate slightly, but they will also allow you to slow it dramatically where popultion has started to outstrip food supply.

This idea allows the modern phenomina of overcrowding. The population will grow well past the point of sustinablility and then begin to collapse, but with riots and probably revolts in long term starving cities.

Aquatducts/ hospitals increase growth
Cities near oceans and on rivers have bosted growth.
cities by mountains and desserts are reduced.

Other ideas:

Surplus food (over 2 / person) is stored in the grannary. The number of turns of spare food gives the happines bonus (and the minimum time for a full siege) Food decays at a rate of 10-20% a turn, to prevent near infanite stores. Modern refrigiration techs/ canning might slow this.

posted July 18, 1999 09:32                

Nomadic Units not only start at higher morale, they have a Reconnaissance ability, represented by a 2-tile vision range. In addition, nomadic horse mounted units have more speed than regular civ mounted units. Assuming a light horseman/horse archer for a regular civilization has a speed of 5, the nomad speed would be 6 (this would also be true of Barbarian cavalry). Nomadic units could be hired by regular civs. The hired units would become the hiring civ's color, retain their nomadic characteristics, and could be used by the hiring civ for any purpose EXCEPT attacking the originating nomads! After X (actual number would vary) turns in foreign service, the nomadic unit would lose its nomad characteristics: the vision range, the extra speed. The cost of hiring the units would be subject to negotiation between players/civs, but would nromally be a per turn fee paid to the nomadic or hiree civ directly every turn. Any turn the fee is not paid the hired unit either reverts to nomad colors or possibly revolts and turns Barbarian.
In addition, there is one Advance peculiar to the Nomads: the Composite Recurved Bow, made from glued sinew, horn, and bone. If ordinary bowmen or horse archers have a Range Factor of 1 and Short Range, the Composite Bowmen (foot or mounted) would have a Range Factor of 2 and Medium Range (Long Range is strictly modern Artillery and Rockets).Only by hiring Nomad (or Barbarian) units with Composite Bows can a 'civilized' state get their benefit.
If a Nomadic civ conquers a city, it can incorporate the city into its civ: the ancient Scythians had several 'settled' cities in the Crimea to produce crops they couldn't raise while roaming. The nomads can also move a Tribal Unit into a city or a suitable city location and 'settle down', turning it into a city (or a bigger city) and becoming a regular civ. Regular Cities that are part of a Nomadic Civ are treated as regular cities in all respects: they can build city-type Improvements and lose their 'automatic' tribal defender unit. Tribal Improvements convert as follows when a Tribe settled down:
Wagon Burgh: is lost
Bazaar: becomes a Market
Shaman's Hut: is lost
Storage Pits: becomes a Granary
The civ as a whole can still form 'nomad' units with nomad characteristics in its Tribal Units, but only regular civ units in its Cities.

posted July 19, 1999 18:08                

In all times city growth wasn't determined by food (except in very ancient times), but by jobs and trade. How else would Athens, Palmyra and Petra have become large cities. Palmyra and Petra are in the desert and Athens hasn't real fertile grounds if you compare with the rest of Europe.

My solution is : Shields and Trade you have more then your city size are too placed in the food storage box. To make it more clear I'll give you an example. A city is of size 2 and is producing a food surplus of 3 and has 3 Shields and 4 Trade.
With my idea the amount of Food put in the Food Storage Box wouldn't be 3, but 6. Don't get me wrong. You are still using that shields and trade for production and tax/science/luxuries.

posted July 20, 1999 16:38                

Great idea. There has been talk of making siege warfare more effective, one idea was to have a redface come up for every occupied tile. Another would be to add a redface for every 2 wheat deficits or something.

"2. Elections: A realistic, and very effective trade-off for all the advantages of a Republic or Democracy, is that elections should be held periodically. Should the player lose the election, he is removed from
office, thus losing the game."

To be honest, my first thought was, what a dumbass idea. But then I thought about how you'd go about having an election "lost." You'd add a political advisor, when in democracy or republic. And he'd let you know how you're doing. The more happy people, the better, the less pollution, the better, the slower the rate of battle losses, the better, and of course, if you lose a city you founded, the people get really upset. He'd let you know how you're doing, and when you get below a certain level for two turns, you lose the election.

posted July 21, 1999 15:14                

Have you ever conquered a really large city while a democrat, and had to deal with just horrendous happiness? you either have to convert half the population into Elvises while you rush build a temple (and maybe even a marketplace the next turn), or hope you have the Statue so that you can go commie the next turn. Not only unrealistic, but also reduces the value of democracy in war, as well as increasing the value of SOL (dramatically) and Mike's and JSB.

posted July 27, 1999 21:52                

I was listening to UN radio at lunch today, and they were discussing the current AIDS epidemic. While only about 1% of industralised population is affected, the percentage is as high as 20% (!!!) in some developing antions. This got me thinking about plagues and epidemics in general.

Plagues should start, randomly, in one city. Said city has a chance of losing a population point every turn that the plague is in existance. In addition, the plage might spread, after the first turn, to cities within, say, 8 squares (this radius of effect may grow with technology, as we become world travellers. AIDS is thought to have originated in Africa. A couple of hundred years ago, it would have never left the continent. Now it's all around the world). The next turn these newly infected cities could infect other neighboring cities.

Effects may be limited. No city could ever lose more than 1/3 of it's original, pre-plague population. No city could be affected for more than 10 turns. Developments in health would reduce the chances of population loss per turn, from 60% early on, to 40% with medicine, to 20% in modern era (or whatever). Aqueducts and sewersystems should also have an effect, both in reducing population loss, and reducing the chances that a plague would originate in that city in the first place.

posted July 27, 1999 22:08                

Plauges could also be started by other empires as an attack. THey would spread to nearby cities (connected by roads/RR) and to more distant cities by trade routes.

Any city with an airport has a chance of being infected if any other city with an airport thta ou are not at war with is also infected.

Hospitals drastically reduce infection chances.

The worst hit areas would be cities with airports but without the rest of modern infrastructure to protect them.

Pop loss would be as a % pop per turn, unitl it has run it's course (I favour a % growth rate, THen the pop rounded to the nearest Pop point number to determine numberof squares worked)

No modern tech/structures would be high dieoff rate, but low chance of being ingfected.

posted July 27, 1999 22:29                

In Colonial times, the inhabitants of New England lived for about 20 to 30 years longer (on average) than the inhabitants of Florida or Georgia. This is because heat and humidity affect the rate at which disease is spread--the hotter it is, the wetter it is, the sicker people get (this is especially true in Swamp or Jungle areas).

In the Terrain section a proposal was made that Heat as well as Moisture should determine the biome in a tile.

So: If the above Terrain proposal is used, then the %chance of a plague hitting a city, spreading to a city, or killing people in a city should be based upon how hot and how damp it is around the city. If this terrain system is not used, then the more swamps and jungles you've got surrounding your city, the more people are going to get plagued or die from plagues.

However: Standing water is the worst breeding ground for disease (so long as it's hot standing water), so swamp and jungle biomes should be the worst plague tiles if the moisture+heat system is used. But, once the jungle is slashed and burned or the swamp is drained, the chance for disease is decreased substantially.

posted August 01, 1999 04:58                

Depending on how the world looked at the begining of the end-game (around 2050-2100) The game could throw in a random event that totally changed the way you won, or tried to.

For example you could have a giant nuclear war in a game with a lot of conventional wars already. One of the AI players would suddenly start to Nuke it's enemies and other civilizations would counter-nuke, ending in one huge nuclear war. Then if the player survived the war and the following nuclear winter the goal for the player would be to either clean up the pollution or surviving by moving to space.

Or in a very polluted world the climate could suddenly start to act strange, with melting icecaps, frequent natural disasters and climate changes. As a result the sea-levels would rise and farm-output would be decreased by 25%-50%. As during the nuclear winter it is also here, for the player to decide how he'll survive.

In a peaceful world, maybe even a world with a lot of research in SETI and such, the game could trigger an alien invasion and the player would have to kick the aliens off the planet, maybe co-operating with the other human nations. I don't want to see alien invasions in every single game that i play maybe just as few as a 5%-10% of the games depending on how the world looks at 2050.

The game shouldn't necesarily end when you have survived/kicked out/colonized other planets, and it should be possible to have multiple events in one game (eg aliens arriving during a nuclear war)

There should be lot of events that could happen, others could be:

Meteor heading for earth (build a bruce willis wonder )

Minor nations rising, increased minor nation/babarian and terrorist activity (in worlds with few big and several very small nations)

Apocalypse, obtain salvation for your entire civilization by converting to the right fate(if the religious identity idea is implemented)

posted August 01, 1999 11:46                

Colonizing is simple. You must have a certain amount of people on Mars. Wonders like the Space Elevator, buildings like Aerospace Complex or units like Space Transport could increase emigration to Mars.

Terraforming will take a bit longer.
1) You need to bring oxygen into the Mars atmosphere. This could be simulated by collecting 200 oxygen points.
Every forest produces 1 oxygen per turn.
2) You need to decrease the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Haven't got an idea how to do that. I am no scientist.
3) You need to warm Mars by 50 degrees. This is necessary to make Mars warm enough for life and also to make ice fluid.
This could be simulated by collecting 500 warmth points.
Every population unit produces 1 warmth point per turn.
*) There should be several city(on Mars called base) improvements speeding up the terraformation. That means Mars should have different unit and building types as earth.

posted August 03, 1999 17:38                

The population of cities are recorded as x.xxx. This allows fractional population points. The fraction has no gameplay effect until it reaches the next number. It allows groth rates to be experesed as an increase per turn. Attacks that hit population centers can now do fractional pop. points of damage. maybe 0.1 or 0.05 per hit.

The purpose of this proposal is to seperate growth from straight food production.
Growth rates can be expressed as a percentage per turn, (eg 2.5%) to give a familiar sort of look. What this means for gameplay terms is that 0.025 pop points are added every year. This gives a groth of 40 turns.

Pop is recorded as fractional points, but it is easy to convert that to a real pop number.
The formula:
Actual pop = 5000 x (pop points + 0.5)^2 - 1250
Follows the civx model exactly for whole numbers, and can give good values for fractional numbers.

Effects on population growth. All numbers are arbitray and should vary depending on SE choices and tech. This system is desigend to be compatable with the idea of villages.

I have made use of a 'happyness rating', which is (#happy - #unhappy) / # total. This gives 0 for all content, 100 for all happy, and -100 for all unhappy. This can be applied to a city, a region, a civ or the entire world.

Base growth: 10%
Happyness : + city happyness / N. N depends on SE.
villages : + 0.2% per village
medicine : + 2%
etc.

Immigration. To take into account people moving around in your civ and between civs.
The advantages of including this is that large unhappy cites will tend to slow down growth or shrink, while your smaller cities will pick up the extra people.

In civ immigration = (city happyness - civ happyness) / Y. Y depends on SE and the overall level of transportation availabble. In cty immigation tends to have larger volume than between civs.

between civs migration = (city happyness - world happyness) / Z. Z depends on SE and transport of all players. For this calcualtion government types can influence the happyness used. democracy might add 10 points, while communism subtarcts 10 points, to reflect that democracies never have had problems with too many people trying to flee from them.

Wonder: Iron curtain. Prevents all between civ emmigration. (for gameplay all cities count as average happyness level)

posted August 08, 1999 07:26                

This thread continues at ../../Forum28/HTML/000185.html?date=07:23

posted August 11, 1999 14:10                

After 3 civlike games that problem still isn't solved. Strange. Unless the designers intentionally want the AI to do that...

posted October 30, 1999 12:43                

Appearance

The game needs to look good to attract new players.

Appearance could be similar to the Railroad Tycoon 2 graphics. Cities would be represented as groups of buildings, which you could zoom in to see, or zoom right out so they are just coloured stars, for arranging
trade etc. As a city grew, and improvements were built, more buildings would be added, not just at the city centre, but also on resource squares being used by that city, as villages.

City resources

In Civ2, roads are not used as roads much, but mostly as a way to boost production of trade goods in the city. Here is a suggestion to give real road building a more realistic role.

Cities could use any resources within a certain travelling time, rather than have a fixed radius. So for example, if you build a railway to a hill with coal from a city, then that city could use those resources, even if
they were say 10 squares away. A basic earth track would allow use of resources within say 2 squares along that track, a better road within 3 squares, and so on. Technologies such as horses, railway, lorry would also increase how far away a city could gather resources. The selection of which of the available resources is used by the city would be done in a similar way to Civ2.

Water could be an essential resource like food. Maybe there could be aqueducts and mains water pipes (like roads and railways) that you could build to transport water to cities. Or squares could provide a certain amount of water in a similar way to food.

Regions

There ought to be some greater benefit to connecting your cities together with a road or rail or air network. Here is suggestion.

Any cities connected by road, rail or air could automatically create trade routes between those cities. You could extend this idea with sea-lanes to link cities across sea as well paerhaps.

Trade

Trade could be linked to the resources actually available to a city. So a city that is using a coal and a grapes square would be able to trade these goods only.

There could be improvements that could be built in a city that would allow the trading of manufactured goods. So the grapes could be turned into wine in a winery (this would require the winemaking technology).

There could be technologies that allow food to be traded (e.g. salting, canning, freezing). There could be a few different types of food (meat, grain, fish, fruit). These would be treated the same for feeding the cities, but would be separate trade items.

The trading interface needs some improvement over Civ2, which requires a lot of work to establish a trade route. It should be possible when you order the building of a new caravan to specify at that time what goods
it should carry, and where to. Then it would all go ahead automatically, unless the target city no longer wanted those goods, in which case a message could pop up asking you to select a new target city.

Trading overseas could be simplified by making caravans automatically turn into boats to cross the sea. This would also make automation the caravan movement easier.

Happiness

Happiness of a city could be linked to the level of tax, the availablity of food, the number of luxury city improvements, the range of different goods available through trade, and the level of employment.

City improvements

There could be new city improvements relating to using resources to create manufactured goods, to trade and to make people happy. These types of city improvements would use up some of the population, so for example if you build a smithy you can then trade iron goods but you would have to take one of your population away from exploiting the resources around the city to work in this. The effect would be to create additional trade goods (orange squiggles in Civ2).

Granaries should not affect growth rate, but should store food that can be used in the event of a crop failure (see acts of nature bit later).

Any people that are not required to gather food or other resources could remain in the city as unemployed (unhappy). They could be turned into entertainers or scientists, but only at a cost. No taxman option, you would have to build places for people to work then get tax from them.

City growth

If there is food and water available, cities should basically increase in population exponentially, not as a factor of the amount of excess food, nor should the rate of growth reduce automatically as the city gets bigger. This growth rate would start quite low in ancient times and be increased by improvements in medicine and hygeine, availability of clean water etc. which would be either technologies (e.g. antibiotics) or city improvements (e.g. hospital). The growth rate could also be reduced by the invention of other technologies (maybe
emancipation of women, environmentalism, planning controls) or maybe in relation to some measure of affluence to reflect the reduced birth rate in richer countries (there is a per capita income in the Civ2 demographics, maybe that could be used). Another factor that might affect growth rate would be employment. Acts of nature would
periodically wipe out some of your population, in an unpredictable way.

Acts of nature

There could be acts of nature such as drought, flood, earthquake, plagues. These were pretty important in history. This would introduce a welcome aspect of randomness into the play. Civ2 tends to be fairly predictable. A plague that wipes out half your population would liven things up a bit!

Religion

There could be religions that have some real effect, just because it is more fun than this worthy social engineering stuff. You could have the option of a general purpose god where building churches, mosques etc. would give some general purpose benefit to the city, perhaps in the form of a reduced risk of acts of nature, or you could have different gods with specific benefits, so that a temple to Pomona would double the output of your fruit square, or a temple to Mars would improve the fighting capabilities of your troops.

Movement

There could be a more realistic movement rate, so that it does not take a huge number of years to just cross from one side of the country to the other. This would also allow the possibility of building a big empire quite quickly. This would need to be linked in with borders and combat arrangments though. A possibility is to give units a large number of movement points (e.g. 30) and allow them to fight as many times as they
like in a turn. However, this would allow you to attack and capture several cities before the other Civ got a chance to move up their troops to defend; which is clearly unsatisfactory. One solution would be, once
you stepped on an occupied square that is within the other Civ's border (i.e. one that is being used by their city, or contains a unit), then movement is done one movement point at a time, and the other Civ can
move their units alternately with yours, to move up and counter your invasion. With Civ2 this would never work, because the Civs are always sending their armies wandering around the place. This is unrealistic and rather irritating because they keep stepping on your resource squares, and getting in the way of your roads. To stop it, make it very expensive to keep an army in the field, costing loads of gold per turn that a unit is not in its home city. This would reflect the situation during most of history where campaigns would only usually last one year.
Going to war on a large scale with professional soldiers was (and is) an extremely costly business. An alternative
might be to handle the response to an invasion automatically, by giving units standing orders. For example a unit could be given orders to defend a city, defend an area around a city, defend a region, etc., which it would do automatically if you are invaded. The problem with this latter approach would be that you wouldn't know how big an army would be invading, which you would like to know before telling your troops to attack them in the field or to go and hide in the nearby walled city or castle. A better if more difficult to implement solution might be an AI "general" that could handle defence and also possibly offence. This would be someone you hire, possibly from a selection with different characteristics, who you could give orders to for example "defend our borders" or " invade civilization X". They would then sort out troop dispositions and respond to any invasions, or carry out an invasion.

Combat

Attacking from shipboard should be possible with any type of infantry, not just marines. I like to play Vikings :-) Seriously though, raiding from the sea was widespread through a long period of history.

There could be a "no nukes" option at game startup! I hate those things!

Units

Military units to cost gold, food, and resources each turn to maintain, so that there would be less of them.

Some basic troops could be available in every city, basically the population defending themselves with primitive weapons. The number should depend on the city size. Maybe there could be an option to improve the quality of these troops by spending a certain amount each turn, to raise them from a pitchfork wielding peasant to something like a militia. This option would be an interesting one, because if there was unhappiness, these could rise up and attack any soldiers in the town in an attempt to overthrow your rule and declare independence. So instead of as in Civ2 soldiers making some unhappy citizens content, these would stay unhappy, but only if the strength of the city population was more than the soldiers in the town they would rise up and attack them. So you could have the option of keeping the peasants weak, not worrying about happiness and controlling them with relatively few soldiers (a feudal approach) or training them up to provide a cheap means of defence, but having to keep them happy.

Decline and fall

One of my few criticisms of Civ2 is that once you get into the lead, it is easy to stay there, and relatively uninteresting. There are some obvious and irritating features in the AI that attempt to redress this - once
you get to "supreme" power, your reputation with all the other Civs is fixed to hostile and they will make war against you. This is just annoying, you are still in no danger of losing, if they do get you back down to "mighty" then they all love you again, and they are unlikely even to achieve that. I
would like it if Civ3 contained some way of reflecting the fact that your empire, however great, will inevitably decline and possibly fall. In other words, internal strife, rebellion, civil war, etc. will happen.

The unhappiness of a city could reflect the likelihood of a rebellion occurring, so that even with one unhappy person there would be a small risk (e.g. 1%), which would increase with each unhappy person up to 100% if everybody is unhappy.

A city that rebels could attack any soldiers in the city and if they killed them the city would declare independence. Once one does
successfully declare independence then that city or region (once cities amalgamate into regions then unhappiness should be calculated on the regional basis) will become a new civilization and can only be captured back by force of arms or the diplomatic means that Civ3 will include (I hope). The risk of rebellion should also reflect whether the city is one you captured from another civ.

You could use spies to smuggle arms to the populations of unhappy cities, so that they would have a bigger chance of overcoming any
soldiers stationed there.

Another interesting possibility would be to allow you to choose governors for cities or regions, who would give some benefit (e.g. one governor might give a 10% happiness bonus, one a 10% production bonus or something), but who also might try and sieze power. You could have generals (also with some benefit) who might attempt the same thing.

Length of turn

Game turn time could be a selectable, and even variable number of years per turn, rather than automatically getting shorter as in Civ2 (leading to annoying occurences such as my spaceship not getting to AC before
another Civ because I forgot that I was still in the 20th century, not the 21st when everything magically gets built twice as fast). Then people could choose the speed according to their preference for ancient or modern era. Or they could set long game turns for a bit while they were waiting for their cities to grow. I think the unit movement distances would have to be adjusted according to the length of turn.

Scoring

There could be scoring each turn, along the lines of the current Civ2 scoring, but relative rather than absolute. So, for example, you would score 50 points if your Civ had 50% of the world population, then 20
points if 20% were very happy, lose 30 points if 30% were unhappy. Then your final score could be either your maximum score at any one time, or your average score during the whole game. This type of continuous scoring would be necessary if the decline and fall idea is included.

Alternatively scoring could be based only on the wonders that you built, or on land area occupied.

Victory

The game could be open ended, so that you can retire at any time, and calculate your score, or there could be some goal to achieve like
launching the spaceship to Alpha Centauri.

There could be winning goals that could be achieved at various eras, not just once science fiction technologies are reached. So have some mega-wonders that require great resources that can be built in each age,
and you win if you build them.

AI assistants

One of the drawbacks of a game like Civ2 is that you have a large number of cities and units to control towards the end of the game.
You could have in the game some AI assistants that you can employ to assist you with certain tasks. You could have a general, or maybe several who are in charge of your rmies, and look after the defence of your empire, allowing you to concentrate on city development and diplomacy. You could have city or region governors, or even an empire
governor who look after the development of your cities, while you handle the military side. You could have assistants that manage your trade, that manage your research, that manage your taxes. All optional, of course. This is a logical development of the council that you can consult in Civ2, but instead of just advising and leaving you to do the micromanagement, they do that for you. You could set a budget that they could spend on doing these things, then leave them to get on with it.

Newspaper

This would be essential once you stopped micromanaging everything, to keep you abreast of what is happening in the world. A sheet that comes up on the whole screen with everything on it that you can scan quickly and pick out bits of interest, rather than a number of individual messages that pop up, or that you have to click on to read.

Artist