In Civ2, the model was leader = civ = player, you picked a civ and then were set up as one of two possible leaders for that civ. It really didn't matter which leader you were, it's just a name. It also mattered little civ you picked except that you knew which ever set you picked from couldn't be used by the computer. SMAC took an other approach, you pick the leader with a known set of special characteristics and role play that to success (or not). Some fundamentals for Civ3:

· Civs & leaders should have strengths and weaknesses so it matters which you pick
· There should be a wide set of choices to choose from
· There should be a way to custom design your own civ or leader or both

But the heart of the question is whether leader and civ are the same or not, and if not, which does the player pick? For the sake of discussion, let's assume that once I've picked one (either the civ or the leader) that this will be a constant for the game (interesting to consider the alternative however). If we pick a leader and build a civilization, that's a lot like SMAC and I have trouble with the idea of a leader with a 6000+ year life span. The alternative is that we separate leaders from the civ, then as the player I choose a civilization/tribe. Now the player is not tied to one historical leader, we avoid the silliness of having Abraham Lincoln in 4000BC who will survive 6000+ years.

I suggest the player picks the civ and leaders are separate from both. Doing this does a several interesting things. One is that we can have some basic characteristics assigned at the civilization level, perhaps determined partially by the starting position (starting on a island would get you advantages in the early sea techs for example). The basic civilization characteristics probably should be something like the "personalities" in SMAC-things that give "flavor" to the game. They give real advantages/disadvantages but they are also things that can be compensated for or get less important over time. The real power in splitting leaders and civs is that it gives a second way to add strengths and weaknesses to a civ. And it will let (force?) leaders come and go more naturally. The idea of splitting this up can be an important way to make Civ3 very different from Civ2 but still lets it be enough like Civ2 to keep it marketable within the family of products. It opens a lot of interesting possibilities, some which are:

· Include a historical pool of leaders with the game. Characteristics of each leader provide advantages and disadvantages to the civ that uses them.
· Allow player-designed leaders and civs. Create a set of characteristics, advantages and disadvantages and let the player choose among them to tailor the personality of the leader and/or the civ they start with.
· Succession of leadership. An important force in history not represented at all in Civ2, SMAC, or most games of the genre, but now it must be dealt with. Obvious interaction with the type of government in place (succession in a monarchy is different from a democracy). Some interaction with other social choices. How much should this be under player control? Could we let the players choose their leader(s) from a pool that are made available (the business managers in Railroad Tycoon II come to mind)?

· How long a life span should leaders have? Changing them at realistic rates will be confusing and take a lot of the fun out of the game by either taking too much control away from the player or forcing yet another type of micromanagement. Not often enough will be too static. Does it vary with time period? In any case, these should be parameters in one of the controlling text files.
· Should we allow for the sudden, unexpected death of a leader? assassination?
· How about having a new leader to come to power within an AI civ which would change it's role? This allows for evolution of opposition-a Hitler-type leader comes to power and suddenly my next door neighbor becomes an aggressive, militaristic civ! Or the evil kingdom to the north has its king replaced with a Republic headed by a pacifist leader?
· Should the game allow a human controlled civ to have a new leader arise resulting in political conflict, civil war or peaceable division of the civ?
· What are the functions we allow leaders to have? What factors within the civilization are influenced by the leader-military, diplomacy, economic, political, religious? does this vary by leader, time period or by government type? Must balance their influence carefully to avoid creating a game-breaker situation.
· How about having of multiple leaders for a civ? Adopt a Colonization-like cabinet of leaders that would individually come and go but could be acquired / hired /earned to gain specific benefits? Or use the Civ2 High Council approach with a leader in each of area of expertise but now these are functioning, replaceable leaders with benefits and penalties in each slot? Maybe we should make this a characteristic of the government type (Anarchy has none, Monarchy has one, Republic has several)?
· Despite the controversy that might result from including certain leaders or how some would be evaluated for advantages/disadvantages I think the leader pool should be historical. But if so, is the availability of a particular leader restricted to a specified year range, technology level, event or...? If the pool is not historical, then how is it built?

This way you can have bonuses that set your civilization apart not because they are intrinsically that way, but because over time you've molded them into that form. If you make this a property of the population itself, rather than the civilization, a foreign power could obtain some of this bonus by capturing some of your cities.

Varying leaders over time fits right into this idea quite well. Different leaders have abilities to influence the sentiments in different ways, and so you would want to change leaders in order to get a particular movement in the sentiments, however changing leaders could be a problem depending on the circumstances, government type, and sentiments of the people.

Selecting a new leader could be done from a pool of candidates that are appropriate to the era and social conditions of your civilization, however, the pool might be limited. For instance if you're in a monarchy you might have a "safe" heir that you could pick without any problem except that he's a fairly weak leader, and you might have the option of another lord, but choosing him will probably mean civil war.

I think that if leaders are used in the game you simply have to have forced changes in leadership. Sometimes the best way to end a war is to have the enemy leader assasinated, and sometimes a particular leader in your civ may become too unpopular to where your people force a change.

Leaders also work very well with my idea of limited control for the player (see the radical ideas or miscellaneous threads.) The potential leaders not running the civilization can be the personalities for the governors of individual cities.

I think we need to separate the discussion into "civs as played by the human" and "civs as played by the AI". The civ personalities, as I'm thinking of them, really have to be there so the AI knows how to handle that civ--a more sophisticated version of what Civ2 does but something less dominating that the faction personalities in SMAC. These character settings should strongly influence how an AI civ behaves but not completely determine it to leave room for the influence of leaders. These basic personalities should have some impact on, but not control how a human player would play to leave room for leaders and the human to play the way he/she wants to.

How about this... the game comes with a set of preconfigured civilizations with historical names and "personalities". You can play with these, let the game randomize them or you can create your own civs complete with names & personalities. These "personalities" would be combinations of something like the Civ2 traits of expansionist/perfectionist and agressive/cautious. Might want to add a few (but only a few) here to, for instance, create AI civs that are nomadic vs city-based or similar things. All of these are _primarily_ there to influence the AI so the civs will react differently to each other and to the human. They need to have goals and motivations and then follow them fairly consistently. But they're also strongly influenced by whatever leader(s) are in place so will change over time and be less predictable.

The human player will have to take these into account at first but in the long run can ignore most of these things or they can compensate for the "natural" tendencies. Perhaps this is where we allow the human-controlled civ to evolve. Say I start with the Mongols who have a set of characteristics that include a nomadic, militaristic, expansionist personality. At first, I turn this to my advantage and overrun a few neighbors. Later, I choose (or get randomly or??) a strong "builder, perfectionist" leader. A couple centuries later the Mongols are no longer nomadic and the Empire of the Khans is scattered with well developed cities and my nomadic, expansionist personality traits have shifted to neutral or even builder & perfectionist. But my neighbors still remember and still fear my strong military.

Although I think there would be a lot of people who would agree with you, so I'd suggest leaving it as an option, either starting with a preset "historical" base sentiment, random base sentiment, or set it yourself.

I guess they way I look at it, populations have a certain sort of inertia. They tend to continue to think and behave in the same manner unless acted on by an outside force. In the beginning of the game you have a very small population so it doesn't have much inertia, changing the sentiments of the people isn't very difficult, in fact you could almost mandate that "Now we will be conquerors!" and most people are fine with it.

Later in the game when you're dealing with large numbers of people, it's more difficult to override that inertia, and the inertia isn't linear. It's more like a ball rolling through a hilly, bumpy environment: meaning that things change without you doing anything. For example you build the sentiment of the people to be very expansionistic and militaristic, then you go out conquering and have great success. Then even though you haven't changed your policies, you start losing your attack bonuses because your people start thinking that they're naturally superior to your enemies and that they don't have to "work as hard" to win.

Leaders fit into this by having an ability to influence the "rolling ball" in certain directions better than others. Having Churchill leading won't automatically give you a defense bonus, but he has the ability to decrease the "fear of the Germans" better than other leaders, and coupled with a few military successes, your population gets a defensive bonus or at least eliminates the defensive penalty "fear of the Germans" was giving it.

Other leaders might have the ability to "not affect the ball" as a special ability. Normally in a democracy people dislike their leaders taking a strong hand in their economy, but if it's F.D.R. then it's ok.

For me, personally, I can live with it either way, but for the game I think should matter a lot whether I've just encountered the Mongols or the Chinese and it should matter on turn 1. If Civ3 is to continue to have the kind of historical flavor that the others have had, then the Civs we play can't be entirely generic. The sort of stereotypical AI "personalities" used in Civ2 make the game more familar because you quickly learn what to expect from the Mongols and it sorta fits with most people's perception of them. I think it will be important to keep that at least as far as how it will influence the AI's playing of a civ. I find that having strong, well-defined personalities for the factions adds a lot to SMAC -- I have to learn how to play quite differently depending on which faction I picked. This adds to my fun in the game as does having AI opponents who have agendas of their own and a reasonably consistent pseudo-personality. It lets the AI be more fun because it creates lots of opportunities for cooperation and conflict. It's the fun parts I want to get in here, the mechanisms of getting there are less important to me.

And there's more than one way to get there. I had been thinking of "base character + leader + evolution" as what would determine the character of a civ at any point in time. Attaching personality characteristics to the civ choice is one way but a reasonable (and perhaps simpler) alternative would be to replace the civ-based personalities with leader-based personalities (and associated advantages & disadvantages) for a "leader + evolution" model. Here it wouldn't be important that it was the Mongols, what would be important was that the Khans were in charge, which with the historical setting would always be the case. That way the Mongols would could start with that nomadic, expansionist, militaristic "personality" we'd expect and I think might be important for how people will react to the game.

But we also have now create the option to name our own civ with options for a "random leader" choice and "player picks" choice. Now I could play the "Totem Tribe" and either choose Genghis or get him assigned to me randomly depending on my choices. And, of course, we should then have the ability to create new leaders or at least rename the historical pool for scenario creation.

However there is a way we could both be happy (if Sid & Brian cooperate.) Go with the evolution + leader model but have an option to switch between random leaders or "historical leaders" meaning that the pool you could choose from would be based strictly on your society (plus a random factor) or based on the leaders of the particular civilization you were playing.

The way I'd really like to see it work is that at the beginning of the game there are about 100 civilizations that each have just one city, and there's really nothing to differentiate them. The first part of the game is mostly focused on conquering or absorbing your neighbors and then when a threshold is reached, maybe having five cities, you get a civilization "name" and perhaps civilization specific leaders.

A civ's "personality" includes both attitudes like expansionist vs. builder and agressive vs. passive and its strengths and weaknesses in areas like technology research, military, and economy.

The sources for these factors are many but can be grouped into three areas:

-- base characteristics
-- the character of the leader modifies these characteristics and adds more
-- the civ's character evolves over time modifying some characteristics

In simple terms these could be viewed as additive with a set of characteristics, strengths and weaknesses being evaluated.

The base characteristics are mainly driven by the civs starting circumstances (geography, climate, proximity to other civs). These are important early on but will, over time be the least important.

Leaders will be a powerful modifier to most of the personality characteristics both at the beginning and thru the entire game. Leaders will change over time.

More on topic for this thread would be my thought on having a hundred or so civs at the beginning of the game rather than just the "sacred seven" or however many you choose to start with. If it's too much of a pain to flesh out 100 different civs and have them all in use at once, then they could all be "totem tribes" until they reach a threshold like 5 cities whereupon they get a "name."

This way there would be no difference between major and minor civilizations since everything runs the same way. No particular civilization is special. This still leaves the problem of keeping minor civilizations around throughout the course of the game rather than getting swallowed up. The only thing this takes is making large civilizations unstable enough that they collapse or split off often enough to continue to create new civilizations. It ought to be very difficult to maintain an empire that outgrows your communication technology. This changes the focus from constant expansion because bigger is not always better.

Another interesting topic for this thread is the question, "What is a civilization?" In the previous games a civ is a collection of cities and units. SMAC extended this definition to cover land not directly within the working radius of cities, but didn't do much with it.

I'd like the Civ III answer to the question to be "a group of people strongly affiliated with a specific national culture" or to be more flip, "all the people who raise their hands when you say, 'All <nationality>, raise your hands.'"

This would mean that each population unit is tracked for the strength of its affiliation with a particular nation as well as perhaps religion and ethnicity (to cover the three areas people feel strongly enough about to go to war over), and you would have to deal with the various types and try to keep them happy. Affiliations change over time based on circumstance, and the longer a population unit is in your empire, the more they affiliate with you.

Look at the types of things we'd get to play with then:

Empires united under a stong leader that later fracture -- USSR

Cultures that refuse to be assimilated no matter how long they're part of one and then attempt to flock to a civilization that forms of that culture -- Jews

Cultures that have to spend large amounts of resources trying to keep their populace -- East Germany

Prosperous cultures dealing with the influx of immigrants from less prosperous cultures.

Cultures dealing with slavery

Cultures dealing with the aftereffects of slavery

But you've picked on up a couple really important issues.

This still leaves the problem of keeping minor civilizations around throughout the course of the game rather than getting swallowed up. The only thing this takes is making large civilizations unstable enough that they collapse or split off often enough to continue to create new civilizations.

Agree 100%. That's what I meant in a post in another thread--there are many, many sources of instability in a society. In the real world civs came and went, joined and divided, expanded and disappeared. And that's what Civ3 should have, too. At the game's start the map gets seeded with a few starting civs. As long as there's sufficient open area on the map, there's a random chance a new civ springs up there. These starting civs are generally fragile especially at first but as time goes on a few will get a strong leader and prosper -- maybe that means expand, maybe not. Some may prosper and expand rapidly despite weak leaders simply because they've got an unusual abundance of food, or enough valuable resources to buy peace with their neighbors. Civs that come into contact will interact -- war, trade, a pact, merge, etc. Weak civs in contact with a strong or wealthy one may join the other one in whole or in part. Especially early on, many civs will adopt a nomadic lifestyle (when geography and climate permit), low population "cities" but a fair number of them. A civ that's successfully attacked may surrender to its attacker and be absorbed (residual discontent??), it might be wiped out, or it might just pick up and move to an unoccupied area giving up its prior territory. A civ may wither and die without being attacked, especially as a result of disease or famine. Civs that leave an area or die out should leave artifacts and evidence that they were there. Over time, a few of the other civs will become well organized and stronger.

In other words, even tho' the human player isn't involved with most of it, there should be lots of activity all over the map and that activity will become apparent once we've got the ability to explore outside the areas near our own borders (which should be harder but more rewarding). That way when we go exploring we can expect to encounter lots of "natives" at various levels of organization, wealth and technology.

Your comment:

It ought to be very difficult to maintain an empire that outgrows your communication technology. This changes the focus from constant expansion because bigger is not always better.

is also right on target, I think. There needs to be a much stronger relationship between the size of the empire and that branch of the technology tree. There are those that have made a good case that the Roman Empire's success was more due to roads and bridges than legions.

This is an example of the wet blanket I have tried to avoid throwing on this conversation. I know it is easy to be too P.C., but I think Civ III should avoid much more characterisation of relgions/ethnicities/nations/leaders than did Civ II. Its just too easy to be put off. While that may seem silly now, it may not if Civ III describes an important part of your identity in a way you find offensive.

I think attitudes based on situation and course of the game make more sense.

There is a good discussion of this topic in the General section.

2)As to WHICH civilizations to use, use them all. The civilizations are really only there for their names, anyways. Let there be a big list of civilizations, big and small. Military significance in the modern world does NOT define a civilization. Have more African and American civilizations.

3) Make there be a switch at the beginning of each game to randomize AI personalities, and have each AI's personality type depend upon their current government type. A despot will make war, a Democracy will trade, etc. That belong in a different thread, maybe...

3)In any case, distribute a big list of civilizations with the game, and allow the user to add their own. Let there be lots of civilizations in any given game, but make it optional, so old-timers can play the old-time way. To take care of colors, use actual flags instead of colors. There are currently 7 colors. Add black, maybe, to make 8. With a 2-color flag, that's 36 possibilities. (since the difference between a red and white flag and a white and red flag is minimal.) If you want more than 32 civilizations, use 3-color flags. That's 120 civilizations... you don't need more than that. (incidentally, using just the 7 base colors makes for 28 2-color flags or 84 3-color flags; still enough, I think)

4) Do make religions, but don't use real world ones, as there would be discontent among the real-world citizens playing the game. Make them up. Religions affect that proportion of your civilization that adheres to them, and can vastly affect your relationship with a theocracy of that particular religion. You persecute religions you don't like, to try and get rid of them (causes war with other civilization, but RAISES the morale of your unaffected cities and those citizens of other religions within affected cities... Maybe make this depend upon your government/value system. Religious persecution wouldn't go well in America today, but 50 years ago in Germany...) Allow new religions to spring up occasionally. Each type will have a certain appeal to given social classes at certain times, and have this somehow related to it's particular statistics. A religion that causes a reduction in production, for instance, might be attractive to overworked laborors in a heavy production city...

5) Perhaps allow civilization-wide philosophies on top of the religions. This would be player controlled, but would have a lot of lag, where the effects of one blend into another over a period of maybe 50 turns. Make it easier to use it along with a revolution, maybe. These might give some kind of modification to how your citizens like a given government type, and give bonuses/reductions to other areas. They could be somehow merged with the suggestion of characteristics derived from the starting position.

I think that it would be really neat to have long lasting alliances. You could have free flow of knowledge between the two or more civs. Maby you could declare some advances as top secret to keep them from being shared, but otherwise have free trade and knowledge. I dont have any problems with longstanding rivalries either, but you should not have to be paranoid of every other civ.

Another neat idea would be world organizations that actually play a part in diplomacy, like the UN, Nato, and the Warsaw Pact.

Oh, and the other thing that really anoys me is that people always get upset in a democracy if troops leave their cities. This is fine to a small degree, but if another civ takes over your capital, people get upset that you are trying to take it back.

These are just a few things that I found annoying with Civ2...

1. Pick as many civilizations I want (I agree that 100 civs may be too many, but up to a reasonable number that the system can handle, like up to 20 or so, is good).

2. Pick exactly which civilizations I want to play against or with. Also, place them exactly where I want them to be. I hate the way the system allows me to only choose from ITS SELECTION of countries. Why can't I choose and/or name them all? For example, if I want to play a world with all the civilizations mentioned above AND Americans, Arabs, Brazilians, Italians, Swedes, Koreans, Thai, Portuguese, Mexicans, Iranians, etc, then I should be able to do so and place them where I want them to be (where they really are!) THERE IS WAY TOO MUCH EMPHASIS ON ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS! I want to choose ALL the civilizations and will want MODERN civs. Also, I hate it when an ai civ is restarted it is placed in an odd place (like Germans in South America!) I always have to go and destroy them because this is not what I want.

3. Give each civilization a personality following this chart:

Mercantilist or Free Trade
Expansionary or Perfectionist
Territorial or Exploratory
Militaristic or Economic

For example, I (not you) would make the English as Free Trade, Expansionary, Exploratory, and Economic. While, the Japanese would be Mercantilist, Perfectionist, Exploratory, and Economic. By note: I agree that economics should be more important (esp. trade should be made easier by trading resources like in Imperialism II at a certain point rather than "caravans", etc. forever). Also, some countries should be more focused on trade than war. In MY world (not yours or the real one), the Russians would want to expand and fight wars to do so, while the Indians would want to stay in their peninsula and trade.

Maybe everytime the form of government changes, the ruler should be renamed.

Also, I think the list of governments should be simple like this:

Despotism
Monarchy
Republic
Democracy

"Free trade" means that a country views trade as beneficial to all, no matter how much it exports or imports. Even if a neighboring country is selling more to a country than buying from it, a free trade country thinks any increase in trade is good for all.

All societies (esp. island civ's like the English and Japanese) should explore and colonize new continents. I think it's so bizarre that the Japanese on a realistic map prefer to colonize North America or Australia than Siberia or Southeast Asia. Also, I had to connect Iceland, Greenland, and Canada closer together for the English to start colonizing North America better. Unfortunately, creating a string of islands from Spain to Latin America did not work.

***A BIG WISH for me would be a scenario where it reflects the world at around 1914 when the English, French, Italians, and Japanese all had colonies all over the world.
Or better yet, a modern world divided on ethnic lines like the following:

English- control the British Isles, Canada, some of Carribbean, Guyana, South Africa, East Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, some of Persian Gulf, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and South Asia.

French- control France, Belgium, Switzerland, North Africa, most of West Africa, Central Africa, some of Carribbean, French Guiana, Polynesia, Syria, Lebanon, Indochina, and New Caledonia.

Germans- control Germany, Austria, Tanzania, Southwest Africa, and some Pacific islands.

Russians- control Russia and surrounding areas.

Chinese- control China, Tibet, and Mongolia.

Japanese- control Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.

Spanish- control Spain, most of Latin America, the Philippines, and Morocco.

Portuguese- control Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, and Macao.

Italians- control Italy, Libya, and Somalia.

Dutch- control Netherlands, Suriname, and Indonesia.

Americans- control America.

*Other areas are independent (separately, not together) or distributed accordingly:

Scandinavia- goes to Germans.
Eastern Europe goes to Russia.

Iran- goes to English.

Iraq- goes to French.

Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus- go to English.

Greenland- goes to Germans.

Thailand- goes to English.

etc.

I know this is a specific request, but something that would please me very much. Thanks!

up this goes.
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I like gordon's ideas with the flags, and no one could have said it better with the leaders idea, imho.

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Q Cubed
Renaissance Q • Q-of-all-trades
Thread Discussion Facilitator for Wonders

- At the begining of the game, you can rule a tribe, selected in terms of race and territory: caucasian, african, asian,... There could be, p.e. more than 1 caucasian or african tribe giving it a custom or historical name.

- When your tribe grows you achieve the concept of Kingdom (or republic), like egyptians, asirians, romans, greeks,... you can choose one of this names when you create your first kingdom, depending of the race, territory, technology, economy and wonders that you have. P.e. if you create a kingdom of white people around a river with strong agriculture excedents and a culture very influenced by religion (and maybe if you have build some wonder related to them), you can choose the egyptians or babilonians.
New civs with diferent names can be founded by fusion or split of the current civs.

- When your society achieves a "renaceiment" status (like the european countries of the XVI century), the concept of nation is implemented, so you can redefine the name of your civ again. The romans could pass to italians and so on (I know, this is not historical).

You can change your civ name also when you share a civ with other human/AI players (if multiplayer civs implemented), and you declare indepence, or when you join an empire or create a federation with other players. P.e. american civilization can be created when a group of cities in a diferent continent declare independence.

The idea is diferent stages of civilizations: tribe, kingdom, nation.

Alfonso:
I like your different stages of civilizations: tribe, kingdom, nation. It would surely help those, who have problems with "babylonian AEGIS-cruisers" or "american legions"...
I would even more like to see some game effects connected to this concept: borders for kingdoms, influence of nationalism on recruitment...

all:
I would also like to present my 'pet' improvement: _Nomad Tribe_ units, they are the population base of Nomadic Civilizations as cities are the population base of Settled Civilizations.
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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 (V990826) for an implementation of nomadic civilizations is based on one new special unit, the _NOMAD TRIBE_ UNIT (all other units remaining the same). The _nomad tribe_ unit as population base represents a Tribal Group with many of the characteristics of a city plus the ability to move.
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, ie. need never food or shield support.

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 "further 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 equivalents to city improvements:
Chieftain's Hut - equivalent to Palace
Sacred Grove - equivalent to Temple
Shaman's Hut - equivalent to Library
Bazaar - equivalent to Market Place
Wagon Burgh - equivalent to City Walls, but not as strong.

_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:
(chinese) PERFECTIONIST, explore neighbourhood for a good city location, develop asap the advance "settling", build city, irrigation, granary, phalanx etc.
(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.
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?

Should there be a latency time for a _nomad tribe_ unit between the build-command (b-key) and the actual foundation of the city? 10 turns?

I like your idea of NOMAD TRIBES. I think is historically realistic, cause even in the last century (or even in this) many small civs were still nomads (mind most of the north american, africa and amazonas area native tribes. And this way the game should begin earlier (even earlier than 8000 BC, with "a lot of years-turns") and be deeply expanded (I also would like it to finish later). At the begining of the game, all civs would have a nomad units, that could only found a city and become sedentary after the discovery of AGRICULTURE/FARMING. Like passing from despotism to monarchy, the pass from nomad tribe to sedentary tribe has advantages (more trade units, more efficient production,...) and disadvantages (more maintenance costs), so it would require that your civ grows enough in people and society complexity to be good decision.
As it would expand the game i would suggest some new features:

-TECHNOLOGIES

AGRICULTURE/FARMING to allow you to settle in a territory founding cities.
STONE WORKS to allow you tools production
ANIMAL TAMING to increase food production and allow horseback riding and others
TRIBAL RITES allows sacred grove
HATCHERY allows shaman hut
EXCHANGE allow primary trade forms with other civs
CAVE PAINTINGS allows HIEROGRAPHY or WRITING

-WONDERS OF THE WORLD

STONEHENGE
MACHU PICHU
and other sacred places constructed by human, should increase happiness of prestige of your civ.

And some huts should countain Wonders of the World, that should benefit the tribe that is near it (but they wont be there so much, cause nomad tribes waste the resources of the land and make the land unuseful for some years, so they must move to other territory to survive):
ELEPHANTS CEMENTERY extra trade resources
KING SOLOMON MINES extra shields
AYES ROCK extra happiness / multiplies rites effect

-GOVERMENTS I think that the nomad tribes should have an unique kind of primitive goverment, but distinctions beetween "tribal assembly" and "despotism style gov." could be done.

CITY IMPROVEMENTS AND PRODUCTION

The city improvements that obilo posted are ok. But I think that they should not be lost when the tribe moves. There should be no food "production", only storage of the food they recolect and this recolection should waste the land, so they might move for new recolections. The recolection would be a diferent command (maybe the "sentry" command) to allow you to decide were to recolect, cause p.e. for political interest you should not want to recolect in a neighbour (nomad or settled) territory.

TERRITORY

Another point is that even being nomads they should had some kind of "territory", so they could declare war if this territory and its resources are used for other civs. When they interact with advanced settle unit, the territory could be some kind of "reserve" (like the natives of North America), and the advanced civ should be slowly (of quickly) decreasing the territory of the reserve and finally conquering the nomad civ.

SETTLERS AND TRIBES

Sometimes, when a settler unit lose its conection to they city that supplies it (mind a revolt, or if the city is lost or has a shortcut of food), it can become a nomad tribe, independent from any city.

STAGES OF CIVILIZATION

Now would be:

NOMAD TRIBE as the primitive form of human societies

SETTLED TRIBE economically more efficient, but politicaly primitive, whith despotic goverments.

KINGDOM as the territory expands, some "legitimated" people (the kings) and their possesions determine the diferent "countries". A country is defined as all territories ruled by the same king (or senate in the case of Rome and others).

NATION people now dont feel the need to obey a king or oligarchy (senate), they feel free and they tend to join with other cities with the same ideology/race or with hight trade relations, so the concept of modern nation becomes, with a lot of nationalism movements that divides (american revolution, austrian-hungary division,...) or joins (germany and italy unifications,...) the old kingdoms.

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 so, at least if you are at war with them, cause they should be attacked to pass by their territory.

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?

-The cost (for the same population) must be lower than settlers, and storage capability must be also lower than cities, but maybe it could be increased with some kind of storage facility of "hut".

Should there be a latency time for a _nomad tribe_ unit between the build-command (b-key) and the actual foundation of the city? 10 turns?

- I dont think so, as far as turns in this stages represents several years, far enought to build a 10000 people city.

Taking the resources from a tile improvement is just 'living off the land'. If a _nomad tribe_ unit destroys the improvement (pillage it), should it get a one-time bonus depending on the improvement? How big should this bonus be?

- I think that city improvements shouldn´t be destroyed when the city moves. P.e. in the shaman hut, the main element is not the hut, is the shaman, and he keeps working while the tribe is moving.

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?

I like your idea of NOMAD TRIBES. I think is historically realistic, cause even in the last century (or even in this) many small civs were still nomads (mind most of the north american, africa and amazonas area native tribes. And this way the game should begin earlier (even earlier than 8000 BC, with "a lot of years-turns") and be deeply expanded (I also would like it to finish later). At the begining of the game, all civs would have a nomad units, that could only found a city and become sedentary after the discovery of AGRICULTURE/FARMING. Like passing from despotism to monarchy, the pass from nomad tribe to sedentary tribe has advantages (more trade units, more efficient production,...) and disadvantages (more maintenance costs), so it would require that your civ grows enough in people and society complexity to be good decision.
As it would expand the game i would suggest some new features:

-TECHNOLOGIES

AGRICULTURE/FARMING to allow you to settle in a territory founding cities.
STONE WORKS to allow you tools production
ANIMAL TAMING to increase food production and allow horseback riding and others
TRIBAL RITES allows sacred grove
HATCHERY allows shaman hut
EXCHANGE allow primary trade forms with other civs
CAVE PAINTINGS allows HIEROGRAPHY or WRITING

-WONDERS OF THE WORLD

STONEHENGE
MACHU PICHU
and other sacred places constructed by human, should increase happiness of prestige of your civ.

And some huts should countain Wonders of the World, that should benefit the tribe that is near it (but they wont be there so much, cause nomad tribes waste the resources of the land and make the land unuseful for some years, so they must move to other territory to survive):
ELEPHANTS CEMENTERY extra trade resources
KING SOLOMON MINES extra shields
AYES ROCK extra happiness / multiplies rites effect

-GOVERMENTS I think that the nomad tribes should have an unique kind of primitive goverment, but distinctions beetween "tribal assembly" and "despotism style gov." could be done.

CITY IMPROVEMENTS AND PRODUCTION

The city improvements that obilo posted are ok. But I think that they should not be lost when the tribe moves. There should be no food "production", only storage of the food they recolect and this recolection should waste the land, so they might move for new recolections. The recolection would be a diferent command (maybe the "sentry" command) to allow you to decide were to recolect, cause p.e. for political interest you should not want to recolect in a neighbour (nomad or settled) territory.

TERRITORY

Another point is that even being nomads they should had some kind of "territory", so they could declare war if this territory and its resources are used for other civs. When they interact with advanced settle unit, the territory could be some kind of "reserve" (like the natives of North America), and the advanced civ should be slowly (of quickly) decreasing the territory of the reserve and finally conquering the nomad civ.

SETTLERS AND TRIBES

Sometimes, when a settler unit lose its conection to they city that supplies it (mind a revolt, or if the city is lost or has a shortcut of food), it can become a nomad tribe, independent from any city.

STAGES OF CIVILIZATION

Now would be:

NOMAD TRIBE as the primitive form of human societies

SETTLED TRIBE economically more efficient, but politicaly primitive, whith despotic goverments.

KINGDOM as the territory expands, some "legitimated" people (the kings) and their possesions determine the diferent "countries". A country is defined as all territories ruled by the same king (or senate in the case of Rome and others).

NATION people now dont feel the need to obey a king or oligarchy (senate), they feel free and they tend to join with other cities with the same ideology/race or with hight trade relations, so the concept of modern nation becomes, with a lot of nationalism movements that divides (american revolution, austrian-hungary division,...) or joins (germany and italy unifications,...) the old kingdoms.

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 so, at least if you are at war with them, cause they should be attacked to pass by their territory.

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?

-The cost (for the same population) must be lower than settlers, and storage capability must be also lower than cities, but maybe it could be increased with some kind of storage facility of "hut".

Should there be a latency time for a _nomad tribe_ unit between the build-command (b-key) and the actual foundation of the city? 10 turns?

- I dont think so, as far as turns in this stages represents several years, far enought to build a 10000 people city.

Taking the resources from a tile improvement is just 'living off the land'. If a _nomad tribe_ unit destroys the improvement (pillage it), should it get a one-time bonus depending on the improvement? How big should this bonus be?

- I think that city improvements shouldn´t be destroyed when the city moves. P.e. in the shaman hut, the main element is not the hut, is the shaman, and he keeps working while the tribe is moving.

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?

Alfonso:
~The _tribe_ improvements ... should not be lost when the tribe moves.
~ ...in the shaman hut, the main element is not the hut, is the shaman, and he keeps working while the tribe is moving.
Though I've not written it explicitly, it was never intended to destroy the _tribe_ improvements by moving; they can be sold by the player -- and lost when a multiple tribe is conquered by another civ?
The context of the bonus for destroying _tile_ improvements are improvements of _foreign_ cities: Shall there be a bonus for destroying them?

~...this recolection should waste the land, so they might move for new recolections.
They must move every turn or will get _no_ resources... Thereafter this tile is exhausted for "pop. points"-number of turns (yield=0).

~NOMAD TRIBE...SETTLED TRIBE...KINGDOM...NATION...
Can you please give more details how this concept shall work?

Instead of have to choose the name of a civilization of any time (so that means babylonians and americans living at the same time), my idea is that you can choose (or not) 3 diferent names for your civ during the game, according to 3 models of society:

TRIBE= people from the same race. P.e. you can select the "saxons" tribe.

KINGDOM= possesions of a power man (king) or an oligarchy (senate, at the roman style). P.e. if you were the "saxons", when your civ achieves the kingdom status, the game will ask you for a new name, you could choose "english", "germans", "scots", ...