The Map:

this is the most important issue in any civ game because it effects the game from begining to end...every player interacts with the map on each turn and a realistic map is one of the needs of OC3

my first proposal is for us to use a hex based map instead of a square map like civ/civ2 uses. this would get rid of the unrealistic diagonal moving in civ/civ2 with little disruption of game play. to me a square based map is one of civ2's greatest failures. a hex based map would solve this problem. also a hex map is simple to do and would not present any great programming or hardware issues...but besides just switching to hexes there is another problem present in civ games to date. the maps they represent are not spherical maps...there is no way to cross the poles of the earth and end up on the other side...i do not have a good fix for this yet, but we must make an effort to represent the world in OC3 as a sphere, i am not saying that we should include a spherical map but we should try to simulate a spherical map on a flat surface

however from just a hypotetical stance how hard would it be to represent the world as a true 3D globe with zooming capablities like the globe interface presented by slingshot...could our group overcome the technical challenges presented below?

timespan:

this includes not only when the game runs from but how many turns are in it and how the turns are divided up. i propose that the game start between 4000bce-1000bce and last to 2050ce and that it should take between 500-800 turns...des anyone see problems with this?

what are your thoughts on the map and on the time frame?

maybe these principles could guide us

• is it technically feasable?
  
• could our group make it work?
  
• what would the hardware implications be?
  
• how much time would it take?
  
• how much does it increase gameplay?
  
• does it maintain the spirit of a civ game?
  
• would the idea destroy the gameplay?
  
• never let best be the enemy of good

if it meets all of those criteria then i say lets put it in, if not lets leave it out...

Wow! "Openciv3 discussion thread"! I hope this thread will contain many great and innovative ideas from Apolytoners! Good luck!

Slingshot

Keep up the good work! since I regard you as very active Apolytoner as far as this forum is concerned.

What would you prefer, the current turn based system or simultaneuos turns, as has been suggested in EC3. The pros and cons have been discussed thoroughly, but I think maybe it would be harder to code simultaneuos turns.

-Well, that would mean some of "hexes" would have to be pentagons

I was opposed to the hex idea, before but maybe it would be a good idea in order to set this Civ game apart from the others.

About the map, we should not under any circumstances scrap tiles, they are critcal to all civ games. Terrain should look 3D like in SMAC with Civ 2 looking (but better if we can pull that off) graphics. A spherical world will only come into the picture if we can figure out how to do it well, it should not be put in until late in the game programming process if at all (we can always patch or release future versions).

The current time scale is good enough for me.

Say, has anyone played Age of Wonders? I ask because that game has an option of simo. turns and uses hexes.

if you had a paper map wrapped around a globe of the earth and you took a pair of scissors and cut the paper map off of the globe and then laid it flat what would it look like? would the map laid out flat still be an accurate depiction of a round world?

i know that the earth is larger at the equator so would the map look something like that?

code:

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i think we should use hexes to as victor says, set us apart from other civ games and to make the map a little bit more realistic...we should only use hexes, no hexes and pentagons that is from a simplistic point of veiw

and finally sould we better simulate a spherical world on a flat map? does anyone know how to do that?

Rarely does a player make their moves while looking at the entire world. Therefore, I think the game should take place on a very large globe, one capable of showing almost an entire hemisphere. You wouldn't even really know it was on a globe unless you zoomed to the furthest viewing points.

An abstract of the flat world would always be visible in the upper right corner, as it is now and the shape would be that flattened world shape, I forget the exact name, that all globe abstractions use.

Thus, the game world interface would appear basically the way it appears in Civ 2 -- until you zoomed out to the global views. And a flat, strategic abstraction of the known world would be visible all the time for bigger picture planning. The military strategizes this way every day, I can't see why we couldn't.

i want to use a map that is as easy and natural to play on as the civ2 map, but i hope that we can address these two issues in a simple way...also i though slingshot's spherical map looked awsome!

1. moving one hex at the equator and moving one hex at the one of the poles is not an equal distance

2. you can cross the the poles

one could be fixed in a number of simple ways, movement could require less movement points the further away from the equator you get, or there could be less hexes per row the further away from the equator you get or maybe someother approach that is better than my lackluster suggestions

two is simple. just have certain hexes correspond to other hexes...likeif you are at the south pole and you hit down then you show up at its corresponding hex at the south pole like if we have these hexes

123456789

then moving from hex 9 would put you at hex 4 or something like that

or we could just ignore all of that and have a rectangle hex map

how big should the normal map size be? i recommend that it be fairly large...how does 48 by 96 sound?

The scope
Who are we really in civ? A god? A king?
I think a player is a dynasty or something

then have a rectangle hex map how does 48 by 96 sound for the default size of the map?

as for the question of who the player is

in civ/civ2 i think the player is the spirit of your civilization

this is not a god and its not a government or a dynasty

i am a citizen of the US...when i think back about my history i consider the colonies and the various states under the articles of confederation part of of my history, i even consider the colonies as part of the USA i see the UK as the civilization we broke away from and i see the US as a mixture of almost every civilization on earth but i don't consider the UK as part of the US civ

maybe that helps some

We have so many good ideas, that it makes sense to be able to split them into separate threads. Let future Civ programmers drool, because an OpenCiv thread could really push the envelope!

Maybe our thread moderator could start up an OpenCiv thread. If he won't do it, I would be happy to help.

RE: A globe world. It is definitely possible to make a globe with triangles inscribed on the surface. All triangles would be the same size!

I don't know how well you people program, but I would think making a spherical world is pretty complicated compared to the ordinary Civ style map. But I completely agree that it should have a hexagon map. It is superior to the squares in every way.

I would like a timespan that reached some time into the future, like 2150 or so. This would make the ascent to Alpha happend at a realistic stage.

Could some of you that can program please tell me how much is changeable when the game is complete? Is it possible to change to a spherical world when other game features are already in place? If so we could have the game evolve slowly.

How about sending the code (when done) out to everyone who want to see it. They could then change it as they liked, and then send it back to us (or someone else who is in charge of the project). This would mean that everybody that has a good suggestion can get their idea into the game, making the quality much higher than if it's just the 6 of us doing everything. I think that's how Linux was made, and that turned out good.

Perhabs we could get Dan or Mark to advertise for us by making an OpenCiv3 news on the Civ3 site.

quote: Let's have an OpenCiv v0.01 before we make a v3.0.

I fully agree with that. Once we have a public binary for download, people will only be disappointed if they think it will be more cool than Civ II because of the numbers. It could turn out to be, but a development version will not have all of the intended features, and they will likely be buggy to begin with. Initially the game is going to be primitive no matter how many good ideas we come up with.

quote: I don't know how well you people program, but I would think making a spherical world is pretty complicated compared to the ordinary Civ style map.

It will be easier to make a Civ style map. An isometric view and hexagons will not be a problem. If it should be a spherical world with a 3d look, we are going to need more programmers (of course, we will need more people in any event). Currently, I believe only me and Victor are working on the programming part. There is not too much we can do until we get a few more facts established about how the game should be, but I have started to make a few classes that are not dependent on how the game will be like.

quote: Could some of you that can program please tell me how much is changeable when the game is complete?

If we take care in the design of the program, it should not be too problematic to change it later. I will begin working on a few abstract base classes once there is a more clear description of how the game will be like.

I've been programming a game as a hobby, it uses terrain in hexes with no perspective, and it looks pretty flat.

quote: I think hexes have not been used because when tilted away from the viewer to get perspective, movement, if using the keyboard, looks complicated.

You certainly seem to have a point. I made some test-graphics, and when looking at it, this seemed to be the case.
Perhaps we should decide on another shape?

Is it ok to email you to exchange some thoughts?

If you don't mind starting with someone elses code you should think about doing a Windows port of FreeCiv. If you take this approach you should be able to get a multiplayer Civ clone running on Windows in a short time. This would be a good foundation for all the interesting stuff we've been talking about.

The alternative is to write it from scratch; just to give you an idea of how much work this would take FreeCiv is over 79,000 lines of C code.

quote: I will also be doing some programming. I have good amount of expirience with basic, pascal, and c. ... Is it ok to email you to exchange some thoughts?

Yes, please do, and you may perhaps also be interested in joining the mailinglist. There are a few issues I think needs to be discussed. I will send you an email as well and describe what has been discussed and what has been done so far.

quote: The alternative is to write it from scratch; just to give you an idea of how much work this would take FreeCiv is over 79,000 lines of C code.

We do not have to start entirely from scratch even if we do not use the FreeCiv code. There are quite a lot of free C and C++ libraries on the Net. Personally, I would prefer not to base the game on the FreeCiv code, although we could possibly use certain parts of it.

I would go with a 3D looking hex map. (not reall 3D, just looks that way somehow.) Could someone tell me where the picture of a forest tile was? The map in terms of code should be a flat cylindrical map (the poles impassable). The terrain would look like the SMAC one in terms of elevation and such with a Civ2-like tileset.

Just so you know what you're getting into he's a list of FreeCiv features that you're going to miss out on;

- Generally comparable with Civilization I & II.
- Up to 14 players! Will soon have more.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Internet & LAN multiplayer (TCP/IP)
- Support for a great number of platforms see requirements .
- Premade maps & scenarios!
- 47 units and 44 nations.
- Modpack support!
- Internationalization (i18n)

I'd be amazed if you can find a library on the net to match that feature list.

Victor:
Didn't you post an advanced combat model back at the Firaxis Forum? I remember someone did, and it was really great. If it was you could you please post it here or as an email so we could check it out.

also from a programming stand point what are the most basic foundation areas of the game?

i would assume that the map is the most basic of all the elements...then what would come next? how many civs? or is it something else?

also my opinion about the code is this...if its good code that we can use we should take it from any legal source as long as it doesn't limit what we can do with the game

Also, why don't you trade ICQ numbers or something? It's not that I'm unhappy with you posting in the forum. It's just that I think you'll get heaps more done if you're chatting than posting. Otherwise, it'll take foooor-ever.

quote: I hope you guys know what you're getting yourself in for.

Thanks for reminding us, I think you are the second or third person to do so. I am sure everyone who would like to see it finished sooner could participate.
However, I do not do this just to be able to play the game. I do this for fun and to be able to influence the game. I think some of you tend to forget that not all of us see this as hard work, and that the creation of the game is just as much fun as playing the game should be, if not more. I can only speak for myself, though.

quote: Also, why don't you trade ICQ numbers or something?

There is already a mailinglist, but using ICQ as well would probably help.

The ideas listed here are my vision of how civ3 should work…

The Map: The first thing I would do in starting out would be to use a hex based map. An average map should be 100 hexes wide and 75 hexes tall. Each hex should be of a certain terrain type, for example: desert, tundra, grasslands, etc. Some of the terrain will have special items on it that makes it more productive.

Number of turns: The game should have 600 turns and it should last from the years 3200bce to the year 2050ce. There should be a telescoping time system where turns early in the game represent more years than turns later in the game. There should be a number of ages and each one of these ages should get about the same amount of turns. We could have four ages each with 150 turns. Here are the proposed ages: ancient (3200-550, each turn counts as 25 years) middle (551-1300 each turn counts as five years), renaissance (1301-1900 each turn counts as four years), modern (1901-2050 each turn counts as one year).

Number of players: The game should have up to 32 distinct player slots. 16 of those slots would be reserved for starting civs, and 16 would be the limit on the number of civs you could start the game with. 12 of those slots would be for breakaways, rebellions, splinter groups, and other civs that would start as a result of actions that happen in the game. 4 of those slots would be reserved for barbarians, anarchists, and other groups of uncivilized people.

Cities: Cities should be where all resources are processed, where all people live, and generally the focal point of your empire, as they are in civ2. You will build a facility in your city and it will give your city a benefit. You will build all your units in your cities. You will use all of your resources in cities. Cities should have a radius of 2 so with a hex based map they will have 19 squares to work. Population in the cities should be represented by heads.

Growth Model: The game should abandon civ’s exponential city growth model in favor of a linear one. This alone would solve some of the problems of ICS.

Resources: The games should have four resources: food, minerals, money, and energy. Each tile will produce resources in a given range from 0 to some number below 20.
Food: Each point of population needs food to survive and food is need for a city to grow in size.
Minerals: Minerals are used to build base facilities and units. Also units may need minerals for support.
Money: Money is used to pay upkeep on base facilities, it can be used to complete base facilities and units. Money goes into research, happiness, and surplus.
Energy: Energy is a new concept to the civ genre, but I think it would have significant positive changes. Represented by an energy barrel icon and stored in a global surplus, this resource would have a few uses. First energy barrels would be needed for a city to change minerals into base facilities and units. Second energy barrels would be needed for a unit to carry out any action except for rest. Third, energy barrels would be what determines pollution, the more energy barrels used the greater the pollution. Only so many energy barrels could be stockpiled, and energy barrels would act as a strategic limitation on a civ, forcing it to seek out energy resources to remain competitive, and would also include the concept of real strategic areas into civ.

Base Facilities: Base facilities are structures that improve a city’s statistics. They fall into a number of groups: money increasing buildings, research increasing buildings, happiness increasing buildings, production increasing buildings, military increasing buildings, plus religion+culture increasing buildings. These facilities should have interesting effects not all of them being positive, and should not always operate the same under every governmental choice. I think that OpenCiv3 should start over from scratch here so we can reach a good balance of interesting buildings.

Wonders: Wonders are unique structures that for the most part effect the entire civ, or effect one city in such a way that it effects the entire civ. A good wonder is powerful, but not unbalanced, it is interesting, and it has a noticeable effect on the entire civilization that builds it.

Tile Improvements: Tile improvements are structures placed on the map that increase the productivity of a certain square. I think that we should look at the CtP publics work system and see if it could be adapted and improved upon so we could include it in our game.

Units: Units are built in cities and for the most part represent the military presence of a civilization. I think that we should increase the base movement of infantry to 2 spaces and then balance the movement of the other units accordingly. Moving one space has many disadvantages and it needs some work.

War: Combat between units. One thing that is vital to OpenCiv3 is a stacked combat system. Until I hear a better proposal I think that this is the system we should use for OpenCiv3. Units can be stacked together when a command unit is in the same stack. A certain number of units can be attached to this command unit. The exact number would depend on the era and on the technology level of the civ. Then add up the total amount for both sides (counting all of the bonuses) and then carry out combat. Combat would work like this, the attackers strongest unit would fire first (using the total to see if damage is inflicted) then if damage is inflicted a unit in the defenders stack is random hit. Then the strongest defender goes, then the next strongest attack and so on.

Diplomacy: Diplomacy is one of the key areas to the game. If there is not a wide array of options and realistic behavior for the most part then the game will be disappointing. The diplomacy interface must be smooth and easy to use, otherwise a great diplomacy model could get lost behind the clicks. All efforts in every area of the game must be taken to ensure a great deal of powerful options in an easy to access interface.

Trade: Besides diplomacy, trade is another vital area that needs to have a powerful influence on the game but needs a simple and clean interface that doesn’t create a micromanagement nightmare.

Governments: The SMAC SE system is a fine place to start when we work out our governmental models. The only improvements I can see to do are the following: give the player more options, have the SE models effect more areas of the game, have the different models have more characteristics than just effecting the Social pluses and minuses, have some compatible SE choices give extra benefits that makes the sum of the parts greater than the whole.

Reputation: Reputation needs to mean something. Having a horrible reputation should have dire consequences, while having a history of being a benevolent ruler should have its perks. Civs with bad reputations should become pariahs while civs with an undisputed record of helping others should endear themselves to their people and the world in general.

Civil Strife: Civil strife has to be included in this game if it wants to be a true sequel. Civs must be prone to disintegrating for there to be any excitement left in the game during the modern era. It should be very difficult to integrate newly conquered regions and there should always be the threat of rebellion of some sort.

Modes of Victory: Basically this is an idea to have three maps, one representing religion, one representing economics and culture, and one representing the military and the state. This is a good idea because it would allow a great number of ideas to be put into the game without increasing the complexity of the game too much. It breaks down the game into easily understandable game blocks, and it keeps all of the vital information together while at the same time allowing a far greater civ experience and increasing the excitement and replayablitiy of the game.

Victory Conditions: Goes hand in hand with the new modes of victory idea. You now have a number of different ways to win the game. Convert all of the heads to your nationality either through force or diplomacy, convert them all to your religion, control them all through economic domination, or send the space ship at Alpha Centauri.

Interface: The interface must balance two opposing forces. It must give the user a great deal of powerful choices, but it must also be very simple and efficient, and take few mouse clicks or menus to implement any of a players choices. It must be sleek and powerful. A bad interface would destroy the game

Please look over any errors, this is only the first rough draft.

-Someone remembers I'll go bump it. It is in the Civ3 List forum.

There are things in FreeCiv most people won't know how to program, such as low level communication sockets.

At any rate, I don't see there's anything wrong with improving on FreeCiv or adopting it to our needs. IIRC it is based on the OpenSource philosophy.

Somebody has asked how hard it would be to switch from a rectangular map to a spherical map. I guess the answer is "it depends." That is, it depends on how the underlying data structures are designed.

i re-read the combat summary (ok i did a comprehesive skimming over it) but it looks good...it is a great starting point for a combat system...i really liked the section on seiges...

urban ranger

well if free civ can handle the drastic changes we want and it would be easier to go that route, then kewl use it as the starting point...if not, well then maybe we shouldn't

Ugh, you used that word, "kewl!" Run away!