it could be real time with you being in the group or city where your person is (when you die you go to the heir in your bloodline, people have nonseable stats that give stuff like charisma and other things) and for you to command anything you have to send out messangers, which take time to get there

they games real time aspect would be slow enough that we would not have time management as a major factor

the scale would be such that if the player left with the players troops the player could see them all the way and command them in battle (a reason to keep fallen bloodlines arround)

you could still send messangers in the field

a player in the world would not have to be a civ ruler

in a republic they could have political power

they could be like the pope

they could get rich and have economical power

the cities by the way and land would be real simulaated

they could become generals and governors

and of course they can rebel

I am no longer loony but here is a radical idea

cut out with approximating everything

make everything linear like it really is

techs, cities, units, time (turns)

if you use linear cities, modern cities would produce so much more that of course you could do more (and learn more) in less time than ancient ones

make it so that if nothing happens arround you (nothing that you have a governor set to handle ir anything) it just speeds you by so that you do not have to press enter for so man turns early in the game

wow these forums have been quiet recently (and the smac forums have actually picked up a little)

Jimmy - Alright, another REAL population guy!

Colonization/Migration

“How to simulate the migration of the ‘barbarian’ people at the end of the Roman Empire?” I asked myself. Cause they were in Civ2 terms some kind of settlers with a big attack and defense.
There should be a unit that represents some migrating people. Good, simply 4-2-1, settlers, one could say. But that would be an expensive unit. But the fact is that migration was unorganized and didn’t require 40 shields. It was instantaneous. In fact, there was never an organized migration of 10000 people, or just 10000 people saying “let’s found another city”.
So I began thinking about something else…

In Civ3 the Terrain Improver/Former could be deleted, well, now I suggest the City Founder unit would also loose much of it’s use until late in the game when planned colonization exists.
I am against automatic city building by the AI as some people suggest. What I suggest is you can point a tile where people may found a city. It may be any square 1) on a continent where there is already a city of yours and 2) not next to another city. All the rest is automatic with a migration system. People will move to that spot gradually if conditions are good.

I think there isn’t a migration system yet, except one based on happiness. I would let it play a much larger part in the game.
The automatic migration system would try to find a balance between labor and resources in a city.
This is to represent unemployment. If there is more labor(people) than resources(work) there is unemployment. And no work means that people migrate to parts where there is more work to do.
If there are more resources(work) than labor(people) there is work available and people migrate to other already existing cities with more resources or they will move to a spot you chose as a new city.
So cities built in large grasslands tracks will not be big cities since there would be large emigration out of the agricultural area without work.
Small cities will always have more resources than labor since they always have N+1 worked squares, where N is the size of the city. But to both solve the ICS problem AND the possible problem that large cities would not be possible since ALL the people would go to new cities, I came up with this.
The city square normally produces the amount of food if the square is irrigated, the amount of minerals with a limit of at least one and one trade if a road would normally produce trade.
I would add the following. If a city reaches two population, it gets for free 20 labor and 20 trade (don’t forget I use the x10 system). If a city reaches size 3, it produces an extra 30 labor and 30 trade in the city square. And so on… The extra bonuses are because in Civ2 a city with size 1 had 10000 people, a city with size 2 30000 and 3 60000… So of course the second population ‘unit’ produces double as much as the first, the thirth triple… or otherwise told the second pop unit produces 20 labor, the thirth 30. And of course a large city means more trade for the same reason; there are more people.
This would solve the ICS problem, since large cities are MUCH bigger production and trade centers as many small ones. I hope I have persuaded guys who would want to reduce the city square production to 0 food, shields and trade. I think my solution solves the ICS problem better since 0-0-0 city square production makes small cities produce too less trade and resources in the beginning and therefore seriously reduces migration to the newly built city.
And because the extra labor is balanced with the extra trade, automatic migration out of a city because there is a large population (much labor in my system) and too less resources compared with the population is impossible. So migration would be totally dependent of the resources of the surrounding terrain, as in reality.
This will represent more accurately the flow of people and the growth of cities in history. In CivX that was represented totally wrong with excess food since most big cities now and in the old days were mostly the big trade cities and some/most of them are were in half desert like terrain.
That would mean a lot more trade, so the game economical system could need some rebalancing. But don’t forget that people have suggested much more uses for gold eg troop support, religion, and if you read on, I suggest gold I also needed for colonization/migration.
So, let me define resources. Although in the Economy/Trade thread it is usually referred to as the replacement of shields, for this case I also count trade as resources.
So the biggest cities will be as in reality the economical cities.
But if you would some trade cities on a Civ2 map, they would have a lack of food eg Palmyra, Petra, Bokhara… So there is need for a general ‘food box’ for the entire empire. I don’t know sure, but I thought it existed in CTP. After all the food is ‘collected’, it becomes distributed over the empire as needed. Perhaps the efficiency of food transport (your SE Corruption/Bureaucracy rate)would also have to do something with how well food is distributed.
For example in a Federal structure with a Bureaucracy bonus food transport would be better than in the Confederate structure. Or if the above isn’t accepted, I insist that food trade routes are automatic and unlimited, so you don’t have to build a 50 shield caravan.

But of course the state has to say something too in migration. However before people are willing to move, they have to be paid a lot. So if you would want to speed up the growth of new cities or if you would want to move people to a food producing area with no other resources (eg a large Grassland track) you would have to pay them. I suggest per population unit 400 (x10!) gold (the price of a settlers in shields).

Population also x10?

I have a suggestion. It isn’t necessary for my migration model to work, but it would make it more precise since migration per 10000 is kinda rude and sudden. If population is also multiplied by 10, the migration model could be more precise. Migration could be more slowly, which is better.
Then you would have to pay only 40 gold for one pop unit.
Popx10 would make it impossible to have a population box as in all civlike games.
I suggest a simple box with the following information.
Happy : 20
Content : 70 + -
Unhappy : 10
Taxmen : 0 + -
Scientists : 0 +-
Entertainers : 0 + -
Rest : 0
So you would have a simple box showing the amount of people that have which happiness level or job.
The +’s and –’s are to switch eg a normal content citizen to an entertainer. For example if you would want to switch a content citizen (you can only make content citizens a special citizen (= taxmen, scientists, entertainers) and only happy citizens special if there aren’t any content ones. Unhappy people you could never makes special) to an entertainer, you click the minus of content. Then there appears automatically 1 (or perhaps 10?) in the Rest. Then click the +.of entertainer.

Recuitment

Doing pop x10 would also make a recruitment system possible, since if you keep the normal pop system, the mobilization of even one pop unit would mean a lot of Riflemen units = unbalancing and unrealistic. If it’s used, then you should not build Musketeers or Riflemen, but Muskets, Spears, Bows or Rifles. They could be stored and don’t require support. Then, in times of war, people could be mobilized, = one population unit disappears from the cities. You could mobilize people as far as you have guns, spears or any weapon in stock. Of course, if the units are killed, they can’t return to the normal city population after the war. This would simulate the loss of population in wars. However conscripted units would have the worst possible morale/experience. If you have Draft or Civil Duty as your SE Army choice, the experience could be a bit higher.

Settlers/Unit Workshop

Settlers should still exist, but they shouldn’t have the same use. First of all, you shouldn’t able to build them for reasons I have already explained. You could only get them if you click the “Migrate” button. Then your city would disband and in that process all buildings in the city would of course also be disbanded. Per 10 population units in the popx10 system, you should get one settlers. You should also be able to give the settlers any weapons you have in stock, eg spears, guns… basically creating something like armed nomads, as Diodorus wants to represents with his Tribe/Nomad ideas he presented several times in the Civilizations thread I think. That Settlers units would follow the same rules as Diodorus presented in his Nomad posts.
So the German population migration can be represented. If horses can also be built on the same way as spears and guns, you could even simulate people like the Huns or Mongols.
What I am suggesting is that in a city every item can be built: shields, chain mail, swords, guns, horses, or in later areas tanks. Then in the unit workshop you could create your army with the available weapons. So in a city you only built equipment, but to form a real army, you have to mobilize a population unit.
That means in peace time you can maintain a small army and in war recruit more units in a short time.
As I said before, mobilized units would have a bad experience/morale level.
To give them better experience, they should stay 3 turns in a city with a Barracks and then they would get 2 experience upgrades. Later in the game there could be a similar building, called Military Academy.

Oversea Colonization

Colonization oversea should require a unit I think. Some Sea Unit looking like a boat of Colombus. It should have a large movement range. And it should be able to move on land. If it moves on land it founds a coastal city. That way you expand oversea. More realistic.

Upgrading units

Upgrading units would be simplier. Just move them in a city, go to the unit workshop and change the item, you would want to change. Upgrading reduces the experience level with one.

Population Growth

As you might have guessed, I totally disagree food production has anything to do with pop growth. Food only is needed to feed the people.
Came up with the following. Not worked out in details, since I am no social historian.
But everybody can guess that population growth is dependent of two factors : the # children a family has and how long people live.
The # of children would be dependent on how many food there are produced since in earlier times children were assumed as working forces(child labor). So the more children a farmer has, the easier for him, the more free working forces he has and the less people he has to employ and pay.
So pop growth still has to do something with food, but indirectly. It should also be affected by your SE Growth or Urbanization factor. The eg Socialism Value would increase the number of children.

With the techology advance of Industrialization also the # of shields/resources would affect your pop growth. Means that suddenly two factors affect pop growth. That could simulate the fast pop growth around the same time of the Industrial Revolution.

The second thing affecting pop growth is how long people live. That should be affected by some techs like Medicine. In general the life expectancy would increase over time if medicine betters. It should also be determined by your SE Environment factor. Living in a polluted country should decrease your life expectancy.

Wow, are you still reading this? As you have read, what I am suggesting solves some problems like ICS plus it also includes some ideas of others like recruitment, nomads, migration…
It could be a real improvement for Civ3.

A few points.
Hitorically all major cities are on major rivers or the ocean. Or both.

The village system allows you to have early cities only on these squares and have all the food and resources brought in from the inland and fishing villages.

Happyness can be seen as how much people want to live in a city... In this case it is the biggest factor in immegration/emmigration. Up unitl recently unemployment has not been an issue. Everyone could have some work, even if that was as a labourer or in the fields.

A river/costal city square would give a bonsu to trade and a bonsu to growth, making these very attractive spots for cities.
No food or resources are gathered from theses squares so the resouce formula is N + M, where N is the labour/trade from N city pop, and M is the food/resources from M village pop.

One unit of labour does not neccisarily 'work one unit of resources' It depends on what you are building.
Ancient units are an even mix, modern units require more labour than ancient.
NAval units require more resources than land.
Improvments require lot's of resources.
Spy's, etc. require only labour.

I have proposed 'fractional pop points'.
These would allow a city to grow and recruit as you describe, but keep the simplicity of having less than 200 specialists to keep track of...

I believe that a straight recruitment system is needlesly complicated, but if you build units as normal and if the unit is killed have a certain amount of pop removed from it's home city. The nation as a whole should provide for the support, but the home city would take the pop hit. Max units suppoted = 2-5 x pop. Play balance decides this.

To upraged units I agree, move them in a city, say upgrade, x gold and y turns later They are the next class of unit better.

Many people have put forth their ideas for diplomacy in this thread, and I have helped. However, I believe that I would like to try and post down my entire thoughts on how treaties should work. I apologize if this has already appeared.

let us start out with the war between the Russian Empire and the Republic of Wisconsin(I always add them to the game, so sue me :P). The war progress, with neither side able to take each other's capital, but Wisconsin is deffiantly on top. In Desperation Russia sends a message whihc reports that they would be willing to discuss a treaty.

Wisconsin ,war weary, and with unhappiness due to this, agrees to this. Immediatly they go to the 'Treaty Screen'. This would be the screen which would allow you to set the peramiters of the treaty. They would be divided into 4 catagories

Government:
Economic:
Social:
Politicle:

GOVERNMENT:

The Government header more or less speaks for itself. This would impose on the other nation the government of the winner's choice. Waisconsin could demand that Russia becomes a Republic, Monarcy ect.

ECONOMIC:

Once again this is rather self explanitory. This is where Wisconsin could demand a certian monetary exchange to Russia, forcing them to pay tribute either per turn, or in one lump sum.

SOCIAL:

This one is a bit more intersting. Under this catagory one can set certian permaiters dealing with the people in the other Empire. For instance, Wisconsin could ahve a large minority of Chinese in their Empire who are on good terms with the government. They could demand that all Chinese under Russian government are sent into Wisconsin. Like wise they could also say that certian nationalities, such as the Romans should be opressed.

Tarrifs could also be demanded, as could differant building resrictions in cities.

POLITICLE:

This might prove to be the most intersting of catagories, and the easiest way to contain another nation if need be. It would be under here where you owuld demand the status of protectorate from another nation, as well as cut up their empire and take certian cities away.

Those are, however, the most common things. Other options would be available as well. For instance, you could demand that a nation take up alliances with other nations.

the most intersting option, in my opinion, could be the creating of other nations. In this area one would be able to create new nations, giving them names, leaders, and politicle stances. They could either be based on a prior ethnic group(in which case a majority of the people in this nation must be of the ethniticity choosen or atleast contain a few of thier cities)

One could also create a ficticiouse nation such as the Philonthroper Republic. All people owuld hodl their old ethnic ID, but would devleope into that nationality after a while.

Each nation you create, you would be able to set up it's boardres, government, it's leaders and it's relations with other nations.

Now, you might ask yourself why you would wish to do such a thing, and not jsut annex the entire nation. First of all, you may feel that you don't ahve the streangth to hold on to the rest of it, and you wish for your enemy to be strong enough to resist OHER nations. Also you might only have wanted to free a religion or ethnic group. Finally, heaving to strict of a treaty might very well destroy your relations with other nations.

Like a WALKING CITY a _nomad tribe_ unit gathers food&shield&trade from the tile it is currently on (occasionally preventing a local city to use this tile). It must move every turn or will get _no_ resources (e.g. fortified in emergency). The first/only population point of the _nomad tribe_ unit reaps _all_ food&shields&trade points from the occupied tile according to the current government type -- Nothing is subtracted as maintenance for the unit itself! Further pop. points reap additionally (shields+1 & trade+1) per pop. point, but _no_ food from the occupied tile. Thereafter this tile is exhausted for "pop. points"-number of turns (yield=0), symbolized by a pollution-like icon. So the multiple _nomad tribe_ units leave temporary traces behind them, happy hunting -- this also prevents them from occupying the same (special resource or self-improved) tiles "too soon" again (for example on automated patrol routes).
Every _nomad tribe_ unit has a name (reference for the supported units), a short list of TRIBE IMPROVEMENTS and a food & production box, which are displayed, when it becomes the active unit. _nomad tribe_ units can't improve terrain with roads, irrigation, mines etc. and cannot produce wonders; they can produce units and some mobile(!) equivalents to city improvements:
Chieftain's Hut - requires warrior code, equiv. to Palace
Sacred Grove - requires ceremonial burial, equiv. to Temple
Shaman's Hut - requires map making, equiv. to Library
Bazaar - requires currency, equiv. to Market Place
Wagon Burgh - requires wheel, equiv. to City Walls, but not as strong.
When a _nomad tribe_ unit founds a city, the tribe improvements are changed into their city equivalents(??).

_nomad tribe_ units may gain advances through the collection of TRADE POINTS, just like regular cities. Every civ gets 1 tradepoint per turn for free (to lessen the advantage for starting with the _nomad tribe_ unit near river tiles). Once the "settling" advance is acquired, they may found cities.

With the appropriate civilization advance a _nomad tribe_ unit can build the tribe improvements mentioned above and units (warriors, horsemen, settlers, diplomats etc.) by emptying a full PRODUCTION BOX. 1 military unit per population point of the _nomad tribe_ unit is free of support in despotism (&monarchy?). Further units are supported from the _nomad tribe_ unit's production box with 1 shield per turn (or 1 food, if the prod. box is empty (and disbanded, if the food box is empty too)). Settlers need 1 shield & 1 food support.
The MILITARY UNITS produced by a _nomad tribe_ unit are some of the regular types, except higher Morale/Experience than ordinary units and mounted types have slightly better mobility. The units it can produce should be limited to infantry and mounted, so no vehicles. Maybe they could not build units requiring beyond a certain Production cost, which would be a quick way to prohibit them from building things they never built, like Musketeers, Catapults, Cannon, etc?

When its FOOD BOX becomes full, 1 _nomad tribe_ unit _may_ split in 2 new, independend _nomad tribe_ units with their own, empty (and scaled up) food boxes, dividing the content of the old unit's production box into their own, independend production boxes as well as dividing supported units of the old unit between the 2 new units; tribe improvements remain together at 1 (the bigger) new unit.
Alternatively to the split the _nomad tribe_ unit _may_ accumulate, ie. clear & scale up its full food box and increase the pop. points by one.
To provide one mechanism towards building cities (and to escape the general "exponential growth" problem!), the food box is enlarged on every split or accumulation (e.g. 10, 10, 20, 30, 50 etc. food). This numbers should play-balance a variety of starting strategies between the following extremes:
(mongolian) EXPANSIONIST, explore continent for goodie huts & weak civs, develop asap horseback riding, wheel etc., conquer cities and/or plunder their irrigated & mined tiles with swarms of simple _nomad tribe_ units. [Overrun your inert enemies behind their fences while your own population base is highly flexible: suitable distributed moving targets between nowhere and everywhere. Hurry up, your advantage is diminishing, conquer enough cities with your superior (in terms of mobility & morale/experience) horseXXXX units before your wild & free life is finally doomed by the advance of gunpowder...]
(chinese) PERFECTIONIST, explore neighbourhood for a good city location, develop asap the advance "settling", build city, irrigation, granary, phalanx etc. [Improve your cities & agriculture, dig in and build up city walls, defend tenacious every of your precious improvements. Grow fast, grow faster than you loose power to your nasty enemies in the dark ages. And hold on tight, your time will come, to throw them back and finally destroy them and prosper peacefully...]
As long as _nomad tribe_ units want to grow, they would avoid desert, glacier & mountain (0 food) and prefer grassland, special resources & irrigated tiles (2+ food), mainly mixed with forest & plains (1 food), and so gaining approx. 1.5 food per turn (net).
[With the FOODBOX-SIZES 10, 10, 20, 30, 50, 80, 130.. & approx. 1.5 food per turn gathered by a _nomad tribe_ unit, it would need 7, 7, 13, 20, 33, 53, 87.. turns to fill them. I.e. during the first 7, 13, 27, 47, 80, 133, 220.. turns there would be max. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64.. _nomad tribe_ units (of course if not accumulated or killed or used for cities).]

Another mechanism towards building cities and balance between the splitting or accumulating of _nomad tribe_ units is provided by UNHAPPINESS (riot factor): Unhappiness/Inefficiency from distance translates into rebellion after a time unless serious steps are taken to avoid it. Own rioting (redhead) _nomad tribe_ units on the circumference of the empire turn into barbarian (redflag) _nomad tribe_ units after a couple of turns (10?) and split off from the starting civ.
[Early-game BARBARIANS should have more options than just attack anything that moves: provide trading partners, info about other civs they contact, middle-men for tech transfers. Variety in Barbarians comes both from giving them a range of attitudes and mentioned interactions, but also some diplomatic exchange as well: You can buy off barbarians into not attacking you, joining you, attacking someone else, etc. Trading a lot with them would make them like you more (or, occasionally, lust after what you've got and raid you if you don't keep some military force around. And they should rely a lot on the way nomadic civs worked, by raids or hiring themselves out as mercenaries or try to join your empire but settling in the borders... There should be many barbarian tribes, but barbarians of the same tribe should land near each other. If barbarians stay too long without being attacked, then they should found thier own cities and become a small city-state. Finally the threat to civs also change over time and/or technology: barbarians to peasant rebellions to religious fanatics and terrorists.]

Goodie huts can result in a _nomad tribe_ unit.

Questions:
_nomad tribe_ units are really weak and probably can't survive a heavy battle (they can fortify, but that would prevent them from gathering food). Should ZONES OF CONTROL apply to them?

I think cities should be able to produce _nomad tribe_ units (kind of supply crawlers). When such a unit is created in a city, the number of citizens is reduced by 1. Number of shields required to produce a _nomad tribe_ unit?20? How about the initial foodbox-size of the _nomad tribe_ unit?80?

Taking the resources from a tile improvement is just 'living off the land'. If a _nomad tribe_ unit destroys a (foreign) improvement (pillage it), should it get a one-time bonus depending on the improvement? How big should this bonus be?
On the other hand, they might get peaceful bonuses in diffusing Tech and in Trade, because they tend to contact a lot of Civilizations informally in their wandering. Each time a _nomad tribe_ unit trades with a city, it increases the chance of gaining a technological advance, as does wandering through a populated area. How can this be modelled in more detail and terms of game effect?

SETTLERS, PUBLIC WORKS and ENGINEERS

While I don't want to enter the Public Works/Terraformer/Settlers debate I would like to say that all three have their attractions, and certain individuals style and likes/dislikes influence their opinions of each method. So, why not allow all three methods to be available? The Civ settler/engineer is a really useful unit in the early game, your city will produce one, it will irrigate/mine one or two squares and then build a road off to where it finally decides to build the next city, possibly exploring on the way. This formula is then repeated as required. SMAC's implementaton of the former/colony pod forces the strategic decision of founding a new base or improving existing ones, the support costs acting as a natural break on the quantity of formers that could be produced. Formers also have the advantage of being emergency defenders/perimeter defences too. The public works concept with pure settlers has the advantage of being an excellent model of the civilization working together, wealth produced at the core of the empire can be used to improve the periphery quickly and efficiently. It also can significant speed up gameplay by reducing micromanagement in the later stages of the game.

However, each of these methods have their drawbacks. In all cases, the settler function seems to become redundant about half way through the game. By this stage, the space near you is pretty much taken by your own and opposing cities, if you want more lebensraum you go capture it. And in any case the time it takes to build a city up to any reasonable production level means there is little benefit in founding new cities int the 'new worlds' past a certain point. Only if settler units can be used to shift population from one city to another do they have any use. In Civ (and SMAC?) this can only be done to bring a city to a certain size, in CTP I've yet to work out how this can be done. And the build cost is fairly high for simple population transfer. The terraformer facility suffers in the end from there generally being far to many of them to manage without wasting a lot of time each go, so for me at least by the time the end game comes round and I'm in planet conquer mode I just don't bother. Public works allow the tactic of massive improvements to a city in one hit, suddenly everywhere is mines, farms etc. Also, in order to avoid resource wasteage in the early game (there is precious little to go round, why waste any), you should be altering the PW percentage every turn, rush buying when the job is almost complete and maxing public works for one turn.

In effect, terraformers give the player a challenge to resolve during the early game but too much micro-management towards the end, public works are sort of the opposite.

So, why can't all of these types co-exist within the game, as time progresses. Initially, the settler/engineer does the work, these early descisons of what to improve and where to build are absolutely crucial to sucess or failure. But these boys can only develop to a fairly primitive level, public works expenditure is needed to improve these squares further. Now the ability to fund public works only comes with the governments above despotism where presumably your civilization has developed from local tribes to a city state conglomerate. There is probably a case for limiting the total percentage a given government can assign to public works as well. However, if public works are applied to an unimproved square, they are significantly more expensive. This simulates the experts laying the groundwork, public works being considered gradual maintenance and improvement over time. It also will have the effect of limiting just how much improvement can be done to a single city at one time, but it may be that absolute limits may also need to be applied (i.e. only 3 squares in any city radius can be improved at any time, upgrading a square losses ALL resource from that square etc.). Public works improvements also take time as would settler improvments. But, settlers and public works can be combined together to produce improvements in a more cost effective manner.

Utimately perhaps, the longer you apply your settler/public works bugdet the more productive the square becomes. For example, say that 'farming' a square takes 5 turns, costs 50 and improves production by 10. So each turn production is increased by two and the PW budget is decreased by 10. So partial/interrupted improvments become allowed.

Settlers however carry a relativly high resource drain on the city/civ that supports them, and contain a population point. Their prime function really is to found new cities, the terraform ability is there to allow a civilization/city to kickstart. As the civilization progresses, a new unit becomes available, say with the advance of engineering. These are civil engineers(!), and are to all purposes the SMAC terraformers. These are cheaper and cost less to support than settlers, but cannot found cities. They can however construct certain terrain improvements that are not available through public work, I'm thinking here of maybe fortifications, bridges, tunnels, airfields etc. etc. When these improvements first become available civil enginers must build them, with probably some public work investment too, but after some time or another advance, they can be built by public works alone. There might even be some form of evolution with these engineers as well, you need a different type of engineer to build forts from airfields. I always used to love my 'combat engineers' in civ II, the guys who went in and built the road/railroad/fortess combiniation that let me get next to a city without the risk of one hit destroying me. Not possible in CTP, not required in SMAC.

Around about this time also, a 'migrant' unit could be produced. This simply allows a population point to be moved from one city to another, but does not have the capacity to form a new city. However, this would not be without disadvantage to both the producing and recieving city. In addition to the resource cost to build (which need not be that high), there is also a support cost that is much higher in terms of food especially, than that of a population point in a city. The purpose of this is primarily to discourage players from stockpiling migrants to overcome say happiness or resource shortfalls. To the recieving city, perhaps a happiness hit (immigration invariably causes discontent, on both sides) for a time and possibly a resource hit as well to simulate the additional infrastructure needed. This will discourage the player from dumping 20 migrants into a new city all in one hit.

This migrant unit would allow rapid growth and development of new or conquered areas at some cost to the established center, therby allowing colonization in the later game. After all, founding a new city after 1800 in pointless in CIV and CTP, but look at all the great cities of the USA, and how big were they in civ terms in 1800?

As the game progresses further and spreads into the colonization of undersea, space or, who knows, Alpha Centauri, the settler/engineer makes a re-appearance. Radically more expensive, and only able to work in its designated realm these bring us back to the management technique of the first few turns. But then, when you first expand to the sea bed, or space, or AC then you want to micromanage these ventures, but the main civ should be fairly autopilot, i.e. public works. These units should found new cities at sizes greater than 1, probably 3 so that again they can be kick started. They perhaps also come with a package of improvements ready built. There could also be the option of a 'super settler' for land use, allowing effective very late game colonization to the last bits of the world.

WINNING the GAME of CIV III

CIV, CTP and SMAC are all won either by conquering the entire planet (or thereabouts) or by building some massive special project (Spaceship, trancendance etc, Alien life). Perhaps CIV III needs a different ending?

So, try this for size. Your task is to unite the world to face the Alien Invasion! Diplomatically, militarily or by means of special projects you bring the planet under your control. At some point, perhaps semi random based on progress in the game, the aliens invade. If you are not in charge of the all the world, some of the civs will ally with you, some will ally with them. If you are the stongest, perhaps you get the weakest etc.

Anyway, the Aliens invade, you don't know where, or in what strength. They might come with primarily naval, air, ampibious or ground troops, or they could be balanced. But they will be tough. They will have super units. And they will be aggressive. Defeat them you win, or face extinction.

This has sort of been done before, in Colonization, with the War of Independence. But there you could choose the time, and predict the place. But with this, you would be forced to keep them in the back of your mind, and be forced to maintain a balanced defence against the possibility during the late game. Because you won't know where and when (well vaugely) they're gonna come.

The year is 1999. Two years ago world scientists discovered a mile wide asteroid heading for Earth, set to crash into the earth in 2028, which will destroy civilization as we know it. At first they thought it was going to hit, then they thought it would miss us by a comfortable margin, but earlier this year, they found an error in the calculations (not really), and found out it will definitely hit the Earth.
Can you successfully get every faction / nation on Earth helping and cooporating to find a way to stop it from hitting or try living through the after effects of the nuclear winter. Do you plan for it hitting and build a ship to carry a small population to a different planet or star, try destroying the asteroid, deflecting the asteroid, or do them all at the same time depending upon the help you are getting and the funds and/or time you have available? You could even have a few fall to Earth even earlier, since there is a record of the sky falling in recorded history. After all, that's where the legend of Dragon came from.
Having large chunks of the heavens fall on densely populated areas earlier in the game may not really be fair, it might even make you not want to finish the game, but if you could maybe have them fall in remote areas, where the effects can be felt world wide may be fair. Of course if you have a large one fall early on wiping out civilization, then the reminents will have to just start over, trying to rebuild from scratch, and maybe even relearn the old technologies. Maybe in a game like that there should be NO time limit, since it may keep on happening over and over again. Of course with a game with no time limit, where there is the possiblity that your civilization gets wiped out, then we should be scoring every turn like some else has already suggested.
Maybe even have the colony of humans that got away help to try rebuild the shattered cities.

So How about research culture like tech(But
With lux+trade).

learning culture can do the following things
1.make people happy
2.help trade
3.affect SE
4.speical troops

Rater than being the one and only place for resource gatering, as per CivX, cities will only be a node where things happen in the beginning.
I was thinking something like this:
The Village are the first in the line gatering resources from the tiles they are placed on.
Cities gather resources from Villages within 3 tiles, and house smaller upgrades like Marketplace and Temple. Cities may not be placed less than 4 tiles apart.
Strongholds become avilable from Feudalism, gather resources from Cities inside an 8 tile radius and construct regional improvements like the Bank and Cathedral. Cities may not be upgraded to a Stronghold if less than 14 tiles from another stronghold.
The Capitol (not the same as a Place) is heralded by the advent of the Railroad and can potetially pool all of a nations resources, as long as a chain of cities can be traced to the Capitol, liked with Railroad and no more than 8 tiles apart. No two Capitols may be linked to each other.
Capitols are places of commerce and as such are the places to build Stock Exchance and Research Lab.

This would naturally require a ratio of resource spending for each Node, with categories including, but not limited to, Military, Infrastructure, Expansion and Public Works.

Revolt would be handled on the highest level possible, making it possible for entire nations to break off in one fell swoop.
This would explain USAs independecy as a whole (London couldn't trace a chain to America, making it nessecary to build another Capitol. Is this "theory" historically acurate?)

Wonders would be built in specific tiles and Nodes inside a radius would contribute to their completion.

Synopsis: The nomad tribe unit represents a Tribal Group with many of the characteristics of a city plus the ability to move. It can have multiple population points, gathers food&shields&trade and can build some "tribe improvements" & slightly superior horse-based units, but has no military value on its own. Potential growth problems are countered by scaling down their ability to reproduce and the risc to lose permanent unhappy (rioting) nomad tribe units spontaneously to the barbarians...

Description: As first part of the "sweep of time" trilogy, civilizations could start a bit earlier without the knowledge of agriculture, as nomadic civs: tribes of hunter/gatherers. (The traditional start with the advances "settling", irrigation, mining and road building should be included as one of the accelerated startup options). The nomad-tribe-based civs have advantages in the beginning; once their city-based opponents get gunpowder, they start to seriously hurt. By then, though, most of them will (to survive) have conquered a few enemy cities and settled down, as they did historically.
This proposal (V990909) for an implementation of nomadic civilizations is based on one new special unit, the NOMAD TRIBE UNIT (all other units remaining the same). When a game starts from the very beginning (8000BC?), every civ gets one weak nomad tribe unit (0a, 1d, 1m, 1h, 1f) with 1 population point. Nomad tribe units can have multiple pop. points (limited by happiness) and are generated by splitting 1 unit into 2 units and removed by founding a city with them or adding to a city their population point{s} (like settlers). While exploring the environs they live off the land and have no home city, i.e. need never food or shield support.

Like a WALKING CITY a nomad tribe unit gathers food&shields&trade from the tile it is currently on (occasionally preventing a local city to use this tile). It must move every turn or will get no resources (e.g. fortified in emergency). The first/only population point of the nomad tribe unit reaps all food&shields&trade points from the occupied tile according to the current government type -- Nothing is subtracted as maintenance for the unit itself! Further pop. points reap additionally (shields+1 & trade+1) per pop. point, but no food from the occupied tile. Thereafter this tile is exhausted for "pop. points"-number of turns (yield=0), symbolized by a pollution-like icon. So the multiple nomad tribe units leave temporary traces behind them, happy hunting -- this also prevents them from occupying the same (special resource or own improved) tiles "too soon" again (for example on automated patrol routes).
Every nomad tribe unit has a name (reference for the supported units), a short list of TRIBE IMPROVEMENTS and a food & production box, which are displayed, when it becomes the active unit. Nomad tribe units can't improve terrain with roads, irrigation, mines etc. and cannot produce wonders; they can produce units and some mobile(!) equivalents to city improvements:
Chieftain's Hut - requires warrior code, equiv. to Palace
Sacred Grove - requires ceremonial burial, equiv. to Temple
Shaman's Hut - requires map making, equiv. to Library
Bazaar - requires currency, equiv. to Market Place
Wagon Burgh - requires wheel, equiv. to City Walls, but not as strong.
When a nomad tribe unit founds a city, the tribe improvements are changed into their city equivalents(??).

Nomad tribe units may gain advances through the collection of TRADE POINTS, just like regular cities. Every civ gets 1 tradepoint per turn for free (to lessen the advantage for starting with the nomad tribe unit near river tiles). Once the "settling" advance is acquired, they may found cities.

With the appropriate civilization advance a nomad tribe unit can build the tribe improvements mentioned above and units (warriors, horsemen, settlers, diplomats etc.) by emptying a full PRODUCTION BOX. 1 military unit per population point of the nomad tribe unit is free of support in despotism (&monarchy?). Further units are supported from the nomad tribe unit's production box with 1 shield per turn (or 1 food, if the prod. box is empty (and disbanded, if the food box is empty too)). Settlers need 1 shield & 1 food support.
The MILITARY UNITS produced by a nomad tribe unit are some of the regular types, except higher Morale/Experience than ordinary units and mounted types have slightly better mobility. The units it can produce should be limited to infantry and mounted, so no vehicles. Maybe they could not build units requiring beyond a certain Production cost, which would be a quick way to prohibit them from building things they never built, like Musketeers, Catapults, Cannon, etc?

When its FOOD BOX becomes full, 1 nomad tribe unit may split in 2 new, independend nomad tribe units with their own, empty (and scaled up) food boxes, dividing the content of the old unit's production box into their own, independend production boxes as well as dividing supported units of the old unit between the 2 new units; tribe improvements remain together at 1 (the bigger) new unit.
Alternatively to the split the nomad tribe unit may accumulate, i.e. clear & scale up its full food box and increase the pop. points by one.
To provide one mechanism towards building cities (and to escape the general "exponential growth" problem!), the food box is enlarged on every split or accumulation (e.g. 10, 10, 20, 30, 50 etc. food). This numbers should play-balance a variety of starting strategies between the following extremes:
(mongolian) EXPANSIONIST, explore continent for goodie huts & weak civs, develop asap horseback riding, wheel etc., conquer cities and/or plunder their irrigated & mined tiles with swarms of simple nomad tribe units. {Overrun your inert enemies behind their fences while your own population base is highly flexible: suitable distributed moving targets between nowhere and everywhere. Hurry up, your advantage is diminishing, conquer enough cities with your superior horseXXXX units before your wild & free life is finally doomed by the advance of gunpowder...}
(chinese) PERFECTIONIST, explore neighbourhood for a good city location, develop asap the advance "settling", build city, irrigation, granary, phalanx etc. {Improve your cities & agriculture, dig in and build up city walls, defend tenacious every of your precious improvements. Grow fast, grow faster than you lose power to your nasty enemies in the dark ages. And hold on tight, your time will come, to throw them back and finally destroy them and prosper peacefully...}
As long as nomad tribe units want to grow, they would avoid desert, glacier & mountain (0 food) and prefer grassland, special resources & irrigated tiles (2+ food), mainly mixed with forest & plains (1 food), and so gaining approx. 1.5 food per turn (net).
{With the FOODBOX-SIZES 10, 10, 20, 30, 50, 80, 130.. & approx. 1.5 food per turn gathered by a nomad tribe unit, it would need 7, 7, 13, 20, 33, 53, 87.. turns to fill them. I.e. during the first 7, 13, 27, 47, 80, 133, 220.. turns there would be max. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64.. nomad tribe units (of course if not accumulated or killed or used for cities).}

Another mechanism towards building cities and balance between the splitting or accumulating of nomad tribe units is provided by UNHAPPINESS (riot factor): Unhappiness/Inefficiency from distance translates into rebellion after a time unless serious steps are taken to avoid it. Own rioting (redhead) nomad tribe units on the circumference of the empire turn into barbarian (redshield) nomad tribe units after a couple of turns (10?, fix or with increasing 'chance' to happen?) and split off from its civ.
{Early-game BARBARIANS should have more options than just attack anything that moves: provide trading partners, info about other civs they contact, middle-men for tech transfers. Variety in Barbarians comes both from giving them a range of attitudes and mentioned interactions, but also some diplomatic exchange as well: You can buy off barbarians into not attacking you, joining you, attacking someone else, etc. Trading a lot with them would make them like you more (or, occasionally, lust after what you've got and raid you if you don't keep some military force around. And they should rely a lot on the way nomadic civs worked, by raids or hiring themselves out as mercenaries or try to join your empire but settling in the borders... There should be different barbarian tribes, but barbarians of the same tribe should land near each other. If barbarians stay too long without being attacked, then they should found their own cities and become a small city-state. Finally the threat to civs also change over time and/or technology: barbarians to peasant rebellions to religious fanatics and terrorists.}

Goodie huts can result in a nomad tribe unit.

Questions:
Nomad tribe units are really weak and probably can't survive a battle (they can fortify, but that would prevent them from gathering food). Should zones of control apply to them?

I think cities should also be able to produce nomad tribe units (kind of supply crawlers). When such a unit is created in a city, the number of citizens is reduced by 1. So in later stages of the game the nomad tribe unit can be used to migrate pop. points between cities. Number of shields required to produce a nomad tribe unit?20? How about the initial foodbox-size of the nomad tribe unit?80?

Should there be a (variable, dependent on number of turns or advances?) latency time for a nomad tribe unit between the build-command (b-key) and the actual foundation of the city (for play balance, e.g. to increase or decrease 'migration' in modern times)? 5-10 turns?

Taking the resources from a tile improvement is just 'living off the land'. If a nomad tribe unit destroys a (foreign) improvement (pillage it), should it get a one-time bonus depending on the improvement? How big should this bonus be?
On the other hand, they might get peaceful bonuses in diffusing Tech and in Trade, because they tend to contact a lot of Civilizations informally in their wandering. Each time a nomad tribe unit trades with a city, it increases the chance of gaining a technological advance, as does wandering through a populated area. How can this be modelled in more detail and terms of game effect?

Once the UN is built, there will be a UN pseudo-civ, somewhat like the barbarians, not under the control of a specific AI, they act under orders from the general assembly, and are considered "bad" to kill. But then again if you're doing bad enough stuff to get UN troops sent to your place, you probably won't care.

Radical Ideas Summary V2.0

Once again the Radical Ideas thread was one of the most popular and most inspiring in the project. Since those who hope Civ 3 is just a small step forward have less to worry about , this summary is dedicated to those who feel Civ 3 ought not to be “Civ 2.5.” A cursory glance through the Radical Ideas thread reveals, ironically, a very serious effort on the part of some seriously dedicated civ fans to make the game truer to history, deeper strategically, and much more fun..

NOTE: Each of the following ideas are presented first in the context of Civ 2, then in terms of how they will benefit Civ 3, and finally as a summary of the discussion they inspired. Enjoy! -- Raingoon

1. AI
2. Barbarian Units
3. City Models
4. Diplomacy
5. Dynasties
6. Gameplay Issues
7. Interface
8. ICS Problem
9. Maps
10. Multiplayer
11. Population & Migration
12. Religion
13. Research
14. Settlers vs. Public Works
15. Victory/Defeat Conditions
16. Turn Length
17. Scoring
18. Tribes and Nomads
19. Culture
20. Units
21. Wonders & Improvements

1. AI

1.1) Separate AI Files

In the context of Civ 2: AI files are no longer integrated into any other files.

New Benefits: This allows easy updates to the AI only, without affecting the rest of the game.

Discussion: None needed.

1.2) Variable AI Entities

In the context of Civ 2: Like governors in SMAC, there should be AI entities who are generals and/or civic administrators, and they should be variable as to their abilities.

New Benefits: Assuming SE choices, some would allow you to choose the AI you wanted for a certain task, and what level of power it had, and some would impose limitations on you. These AIs could also be programmable by gamers. The effect would be to give the player the ability to instruct their military AI or civil administrator AI to accomplish certain tasks – how they accomplished the tasks would depend on the quality of the AI. For example, “…You would give an AI an instruction like… ‘use these troops to take these cities’ (or you might be limited to: ‘use these troops to attack this enemy’ or ‘use troops (and the AI picks the troops) to attck this enemy’ or a variety of other ones (affected by SE setting)…” The AIs would be available in “bins” to the players and the computer players – with the better AIs available to the computer player on the higher difficulty levels.

Discussion: See the SE thread for further thoughts.

2. Barbarian Units

2.1) Trade with Barbarians

In the context of Civ2: Barbarian units were an underused game element, where as history suggests their role was much greater.

New Benefits: Trading with barbarrians who pass your way (and you dissuade from attacking) could include being able to hire them to attack another civilization. In addition to the trade increasing your economy, this would add a realistic group of mercenaries to the game.

Discussion: “…Each barbarrian group would have an aggression factor, the ones that are more aggresive would not trade and would cost more to hire… Maybe even each group would have an aggression factor towards each civilization and would be cheaper to hire against some than others and would deal with some more and not others.”

3. City Models

3.1) The “Town Center Model”

In the context of Civ 2: Settlers would not found cities, but rather “town centers;” citizens would now be actual units on the map which the player would send to an empty square to build city improvements on adjacent squares within the town radius. Citizen units could be stacked to build faster and would not dissapear after completing their task. Further, you could send the citizen to a tile that already had an improvement and tell it to work there, which would give you the benefits of that improvement -- again, stacking to increase output. A citizen unit could be made into a military unit, a diplomat, or a settler. City walls would literally surround the city radius.

New Benefits: Fist, the visual satisfaction of seeing cities on the main map. Second, enhanced interface showing a city’s current needs instantly, and which cities are small, which are growing fast. Third, only when the town center is captured would the city be considered captured – thus street to street fighting is introduced.

Discussion: Some prefer less graphics on the terrain, as in Civ 2.

3.2) The “No City” Model

In the context of Civ 2: Some wish that cities were done away with all together, leaving squares/hexes to represent population, though not in the abstract (i.e., size 1 or 2) but literally by the millions of population per hex. In this case, groups of hexes form to create a city, with a nucleus hex representing the actual “city” and smaller “towns” springing up around it.

New Benefits: Advocates of having population counted per hex argue that in Civ 2 cities can take up 21 squares, which is equal to 459,515 square miles relative to the actual earth. This means a city, in Earth terms, a Civ 2 city is 5 times larger than the entire area of the current U.K. In this model, it would be proportionate. Additionally, you wouldn’t have to look for the perfect area to build a city, people can live almost anywhere. There would be no more jumping from city to city telling it what to build. The “mayor” could handle that.

Discussion: Hexes would have population limits; when a hex exceeded its limit, the population would migrate to neighboring hexes. Forts would supplant city walls, and invasion would mean population deaths per hex as the army advanced. Further, hexes might have two or three different types of "people" in it, the people of your empire, any “native” people, and maybe slaves from a conquered nation. Food grown in hexes is pooled as a nation and distributed everywhere. Any surplus can now be stockpiled and traded to other civilizations for money or other goods your nation might need. In general, the only things you should have to worry about are diplomacy, defense, setting policy, keeping the military up to date, starting a war if it is in the nation’s best interest, and expansion of the empire. In general, this model attempts to take a step back and have the player define certain perameters, but none so unrealistic as determining what food rations the population eats, what buildings they elect to build, etc. Instead, the cities grow more on their own, across groups of hexes, a la Sim City.

Alternative viewpoints state that Civ3 should not be Sim City 4000.

3.3.) The Production Sphere

In the context of Civ 2: A city gleaned resources from squares up to a distance of 3 units away on the X/Y axis. The production sphere would add another dimension -- the Z axis.

New Benefits: A lot more squares to exploit. True floating cities that can harvest squares above the ground. In effect, exploitable “cubes.”

Discussion: “…Sure, you can't build a farm in mid-air, at least not until you've reached the NanoTech age, and you can't build a mine at the Earth's core, at least not until you've developed some pretty good heat sinks... and think of the defense!”

3.4) The Village Model

In the context of Civ 2: Villages function as terrain improvers, by either farming or mining. They are all size 1, though size 2 might be possible late in the game, increasing productivity. Food and Mined resources are automatically sent to a nearby host city, whose population either gathers resources from it's own square, or processes the resources the villages send them (all population in a city not gathering from its own square are either labourers, traders, or scientists). Otherwise, cities function the same as in Civ 2.
New Benefits: “City radius is no longer used. You can use every square in your territory if you desire, and keep the cities in logical places, like on the coast and river junctions, where cities historically thrived.” Rural population is represented and strategically important (to capture or defend). Makes the logical split between resources and industry easier to manage.

Further, the villages belong to a region and send food straight to it. Cities in the region receive it as needed. Infrastructue is still placed in individual cities, but the industry is calculated centrally, to ease micromanagement. Regions are likewise good for reducing micromanagment, and the overall model more accurately shows the rural/urban population shift brought about by better agriculture.

Discussion: Villages are the only place to put non-specialists. These would work the village squares, gathering materials from the square they were on and nowhere else. Cities contain only specialists -- labourers produce industry, which is used to process the resources harvested in the countryside. “…Villages would be built by a "public works" type system, rather than by a unit. They could be autobuilt by the AI or queued by the player… Villages don't count towards any particular city, but are shared within a region. …The maximum distance from the main city would be dependant upon the technology level, or whether it is linked by road, railroad, etc.” It was suggested that you can transfer villagers along a clear road, so if the enemy blocks off your road, the only place you can put the villagers is in the city – which would have a maxium capacity beyond which negative effects begin to be felt.

In times of war, villagers come into the city.

Ocean square villages would spawn fishing villages, and oil platforms later.

“…I have proposed that food affects happiness, which affects gowth (as opposed to directly affecting growth). This removes the potential cheese of putting all your citizens on farms to boost growth…”

At the start only one city per region. As techs advance, you can choose which region your cities go in but there would be a max # of squares within region borders depending on your tech level. It was suggested that all villagers be content – “if villagers' happiness is affected, it should only be by famine.” Others question if villages are terrain improvements, why have people live in them at all? -- “It offers no advantages and only more micromanagement.”

Some thought settlers building villages (as opposed to the AI) represents a problem, as it amounts to getting free population. “Regardless of that,” they said, “the settlers should now take 2 population to build... One for the new city they will make, and one for the village next to it (that will spawn).” Out of this debate a clearer idea emerged: “Use a setler to 'flag' a square, and the next available villager will move there… to build a village, all that is needed is a pop point (from the city).”

Additionally, villages can be moved by click and drag. Same, perhaps, with population moving from city to city, limited to one unit a turn, and perhaps only then when connected by roads.

In terms of implentation, the village comes first. You would start the game with a handful of villages and can choose 1 to become your first city. Population is added only when a city has a whole pop point to send to the countyside. Any growth from the villages is added to the city as a small boost.

3.4.1) Villages Becoming Cities.

In the context of Civ 2: Distinct from CivX, when villages reach a certain size, they become cities. This is the only way to make a new city until the discovery of an advance which allows settlers.

New Benefits: Clearly defined regions. A “settled” city starts its own region, while normally grown cities belong to the same region as the village they grew out of. This would take the necessity of production away from expansion, since one wouldn't need to necessarily build cities with settlers. Building a provincial capital would allow you to select the borders of that capital’s new region.

Discussion: To limit ICS, make it so that the square a city is on does not produce any resources or food. Some think villages should never be able to grow into cities without direct intervention -- spontaneous city growth would lead to a loss of strategic control.

3.4.2) List of Possible City Specialists Under “The Village Model”
[LIST}

Excellent job raingoon!

Thanks subspace!

Radegast2-after a reread your post, I actually liked it, and it made sense. Each game I played (Civ2/TOT/CTP/SMAC), I always wished I could have something from a different game. When you start in CTP, when you don't many public works, it would have been nice to have your settlers or Terraformers to do it. As the empire grows, you have an army of terraformers in CIV2/SMAC/TOT that get next thing to boring to control and it would have been nice to offload this to Civilian contractors in the form of Public Works so you don't have to keep moving those slow moving terraformer units around. Being able to include both types of improving tiles in the game would be great.

Excellent job raingoon!

Thanks subspace!

Radegast2-after a reread your post, I actually liked it, and it made sense. Each game I played (Civ2/TOT/CTP/SMAC), I always wished I could have something from a different game. When you start in CTP, when you don't many public works, it would have been nice to have your settlers or Terraformers to do it. As the empire grows, you have an army of terraformers in CIV2/SMAC/TOT that get next thing to boring to control and it would have been nice to offload this to Civilian contractors in the form of Public Works so you don't have to keep moving those slow moving terraformer units around. Being able to include both types of improving tiles in the game would be great.

I red your very interesting proposal, but I want to go a step further on barbarian subject: change them into a proper faction!
If you mix your proposal about nomadic model, tribe model, ability to trade, offer military help and so on, you can see it can be better served by proper faction with special Social Engineering (like in SMAC model). Best of all you can finally play as barbarian faction
I think that CIV barbarian (and SMAC mindworms) are quite annoying, not enough realistic (I mean coherent) as now, where they appear from nowhere, without appropriate origin and target.
They can have some special ability/morale to diffentiate them (like SMAC factions) but this will be enough. It will also become more appropriate on modern time, where "barbarian" concept is unrealistic to said the last.
It will work better if total number of civilizations (factions) in large map should be increased to add more, may be added some decade later (a potential increased difficult level for human player, too) to better portrait their historical later appearance.
In real world they end growing assimilating/assimilated by other civs.

How about haveing cultures represented like a tech....being researched by using lux points. Civs can also learn cultures from trade. different civs would have a diffenrent sets of cultures it can research.

Cultures in turn should affect happyness ,SE and trade and whole lot of other stuff.

2. Villages - would those complicate the game way too much?

Each city has tenure 1 when it is established or conquered. Each turn the tenure increase by 1. More difficult to bribe as tenure increases.

Each city has a 'loyalty' index. Increases when celebrating, decreases when riot, farmine. Loyalty decides the chance of successful bribing. In a scale of 1-100, cities loyalty higher than 80 cannot be bribed.