05-04-2004 13:21									#1
	I think of a new Relation System Put an end to popups!

Civ3: Assuming you are Civ x and start with Civ y and z on the same island. So after setteling every free spot you build up your military and conquer y and z so that you get more land and more security in order to develop faster. I think this is boring because you know beforehand that all civs you encounter early on wont make it far (or you die trying). An aggressive island strategy is IMO the best way.
I think to grow it should not be a necessity to kill off your neighbours.


I think Civ needs several types of relation:
A. Mutual
B. Parent-Child (parent helps the child to try to get to A.)
C. Master-Slave (master exploits the slave)


For this to work I propose some kind of "bond" system.
A bond is a common identification and communication level that 2 civs share. It is less than on a leader-leader level, but more on a your people - his/her people level.

There are 2 operations to bonds: Weaken and Strengthen. They do not need to be created as they are automatically there. They cannot be destroyed, because you cannot control them ultimatively.

There are 2 parameters that influence a bond:
1. Distance - stronger bonds with closer civs
2. Thickness - the thicker the stronger

You can control both parameters.
1. Distance
Is the distance between the two cores of the two civs.
A core is a weighted average of all your cities locations. The weight would be the size/development of a city.
Obviously you can control it by building/developing more cities in direction to the border of the civilization you want to strengthen the bond. Or weaken the bond if you place your cities away and try to increase size and development of cities further away.
I say size/development because size would be easy for building up and testing the system, but development would reflect the core location better. Development would be the output of a function that takes size, number and type of buildings/wonders, corruption/crime, productivity,.. .

2. Thickness
Is a percentage that reflects the intensity of a bond.
Once you reach 100% the strongness (the effect) of the bond can only be changed by tweaking the distance.
Thickness is controlled by diplomatic deals.

3. Putting it together:
effect = c/distance * thickness
c...is a constant factor that increases as you research. Certain techs like Flight strongly decrease the effect of distance. Initial value: 1
distance...a number in Z
thickness...a real number [0..1]

This is for simplicity. In a more complex formula you could bring in situations when there is a road connected or when civs are seperated by water and they just researched navigation,...

Now for A, B and C mentioned above:
A. Mutual:
Mutual bonds give equal benefits to both. Both civs regard them as being equal. This is clearly the bond that gives you most benefits. To strengthen it you have to do actions that benefit both civilizations. Giving gifts wont increase the effect but rather turn it into B. A deal where both civs benefit equally strengthens the bond most.

B. Parent-Child:
This gives more benefit to the Child and less to the Parent. The parent Civ regards itself as superior but has no hostility against the child civ. It tries to help the child civ grow to become equal as well so that the relationship might turn into A. One sided helpful actions against the child civ help turn the bond in this way. It can only be turned into A once the Child is able to shell out deals that benefit both civilizations.

C. Master-Slave:
A bond that draws off of the slave and gives to the Master. The Master Civ regards itself superior to the Slave and there is little reason that he wants to change this relation. The slave could only be freed by uprising and batteling the master.
Successful demands and tributes strengthen such a bond. This bond is really destructive to the slave. He/She loses research that the master gains. There is only benefit for the master.


Final notes:
The formular in 3. may not be too correct, but I didnt think it is my job to think out all the details. This is a concept after all. One thing that needs to be reflected for example is the factor introduced in A,B and C which one benefits how much or loses (in the case of M-S).
As of 2. I could ellaborate more on diplomatic deals but I leave this to Firaxis. I just want to say that there should be more than what we have now. Since bonds should reflect relations on people-people level, deals that are not visible to the ppl should have less of an effect. Besides it should be reflected somehow the benefits of a war when 2 vs 1. If one of the two civs take all the cities and leaves most of the fighting to the other then this would likely to turn into C. So the game needs several functions that evaluate the benefits of your actions to other civs.

I'd like to hear your comments.

	05-04-2004 20:58									#2
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Cool an Europa Universalis allegiance system

	05-04-2004 21:01									#3
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

I forgot to mention the bonuses you get when you have a strong bond to a certain civ.

Research:
Faster research because of the free flow of information between civs. The stronger the bond the more flow the faster goes research.
As a side effect technologies that you research and that other research are shared. You do not become it immediately, but after some time.
I think in ancient times when information distribution was quite a burden it takes longer. This is however already reflected by using the bond's strongness. The Distance penalty gets smaller and smaller with developing techs (sea faring (if an ocean splits you), navigation, radio,... and the like).
So maybe in ancient times it takes 20 turns on average until you get the tech or others get it and in modern world it probably takes only 5 turns.

Economy:
Friendly civs have access to some of your resources and you have access to theirs. All your cities try to trade with bonding civ and this gives you additional gold.

Military:
Once you reach a strong bond your military attacks against this civ is weakened. I dont know what new military concepts will be in place in Civ4 but I think there is a way to reflect this somehow.
However an alliance is much easier to get into and your troops could then prob rely on atillery support,... or get mercenaries. However sophisticated this can become.


Bonds probably also need to be effected by general relationship modifiers. Such as despotism vs democracy and the like. I think this can very well be modeled in the thickness.

	06-04-2004 23:30									#4
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hmm I dont know Europa Universalis

	07-04-2004 16:20									#5
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VERY interesting idea Atahualpa.
This would amend stupid AI attitude towards stronger player civs. A sound relationship system would assure that weaker AI civs would behave as humble, sensible and favor seeking towards stronger neighbors as one could realistically expect. Also they won't show their anger of being inferior publicly by cold or hostile attitude in the diplomacy screen but behave more flattering to exploit your being pleased about their servile ..um.. diplomatic beggings.
As it is now that AI leaders are always big mouthed, even if obviously outpowered by far, and like in 'Knights of the coconut', when left with no arms and legs at all they'd offer you a tie (peacy treaty) at most, even if already on the brink of total eradication.

	10-04-2004 15:54									#6
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

bump

	11-04-2004 01:47									#7
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A very good idea - one of the best posted so far here, IMO. This should make it into the official Civ 4 list...

	11-04-2004 04:20									#8
	Got spare money?

Personally, I think that simply to get a good system of allegiances/colonialism would be a good start. Your situation towards another country is the very basics of inter-national diplomacy.

	11-04-2004 23:06									#9
	Remove this text

I would like to mention that the parent-child relationship hardly is somethign else than parent profitting of child. "Parent-child" was exactly what colonialists nations said they were doing. The only really helpful relation to a child nation is when this child nation is offering advantages. It's the only case where a weaker nation tends to attract bigger one's favors.

So I would say that we have 2 nations. Each one is getting more or less advantages from this relation. This is what creates these 3 categories in fact, simply:
- 2 nations and each one getting a share of what is produced by this relationship