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The_Aussie_Lurker
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Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
May 2001
time: 05:18
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I think people might have misunderstood me. I support the removal of the CURRENT corruption model, and replacing it with something slightly more 'abstract'.
Corruption and crime could (and SHOULD) be based on a greater variety of factors-such as:
(a) happiness
(b) overcrowding
(c) poverty
(d) hunger
(e) RELATIVE distance from the capital, as determined by tech level.
(f) overreliance on luxuries
(g) underemployment
(h) government type and SE factors
(i) lack of connection to the rest of the nation via appropriate infrastructure.
However, rather than directly impacting on shields and commerce-as it currently does. Instead it would have a role on the 'stability' of the city-which, in turn, plays a role in revolts, uprisings and secessions. Crime/corruption can also reduce happiness which, in turn, can result in reduced shield and income production!
Therefore, with this model, you would do away with the hopelessly ineffective border cities which result from the current corruption model, and would instead have to only worry about significant corruption issues if you fail to adequately develop your cities, both physically and economically (and whether built or captured) within a reasonable space of time!
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
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The_Aussie_Lurker
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Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
May 2001
time: 05:18
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To give you an example of what I am getting at:
Say you build a new city around 15 hexes away from the capital. Now, this city will have corruption/crime issues as a result of its isolation and distance from the capital, but these two factors alone would, at MOST, only account for a loss of around 10-20% of the shields the city produces (So, a city with only 4 shields would only lose ONE of its shields-and then only under extreme circumstances). Connecting this city to the trade network will immediately reduce initial corruption, and increasing the wealth and productive output (as well as improvements which generate happiness and culture) will reduce this still further.
In my model, in fact, it is older and more established cities which have more to lose from corruption than newer ones. As a city increases its access to luxuries, becomes more overpopulated, and has fewer people 'effectively' employed, the greater corruption will effect it! Also, as these cities are more productive at this point, a % decline in income and shields will be more detrimental than for the smaller, starting cities!
Hope that all made sense.
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
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diablovision
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Los Angeles, CA
Apr 2004
time: 05:18
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I think part of the solution is to allow cities to grow larger--much larger. I think up to 100. For example. Consider a city like Denver. Population: about 550,000. Pretty big, and pretty productive. But consider Los Angeles. Population: about 15,000,000. Thats a factor of 30 larger! For the same distribution of scale in Civ3, LA would have to be population 30+ and Denver 1!
Cities should be able to grow much larger, and draw food from all over the nation, not just in their area. That would making an efficient road system much more important.
Also, I think that citizens should get more productive as the city size grows, making having big cities (as opposed to lots of smaller ones) far more important. Also, small nations could have a few super-big cities and be competitive with nations that have lots of smaller cities.
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diablovision
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Los Angeles, CA
Apr 2004
time: 05:18
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Trip, perhaps it was a bad example. I used the numbers from the US census--550,000 for Denver county; I didn't check but assumed that this county contains most of Denver. As for LA, your numbers are off; since those only count LA county. If you include Orange, Ventura, and the others then you quickly get to 15 million.
If you don't like Denver as an example, use another. There are plenty of 500,000 person cities in the US that would correspond to some Civ3 city.
My point still remains valid--if LA is 15 million, and it corresponds to 30+ pop, then a pop of 1 is about 500,000. It's a bit unreasonable to think that a just-founded city of a fledgling civilization is half a million people, don't you think?
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Donegeal
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Apolyton's Resident Law Enforcement Officer. Founder of the Glory of War, Champions of Apolyton!
Jul 2002
time: 05:18
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quote:
Originally posted by Trip
The power of civs in reality is based upon their resources. Included in those resources are things like food, minerals and people. The more resources you have the stronger you are. In Civ, the "land" resource is one of the most powerful because you can derive all other resources from it.
To bring Civ back towards the way reality works, it would require a model based more upon population than land area. By extension, having more land should not automatically mean more population.
The way to encourage larger cities is to make them more powerful. Give them higher support bonuses (Conquests started this, but it should be taken many steps further), perhaps give a bonus to production and commerce as a city's size increases... and so on. The key is to make building UP more important than building OUT. That's how you make a civ like Germany or Japan stronger than Russia. |
Nice post Trip.
quote:
Originally posted by diablovision
I think part of the solution is to allow cities to grow larger--much larger. I think up to 100. For example. Consider a city like Denver. Population: about 550,000. Pretty big, and pretty productive. But consider Los Angeles. Population: about 15,000,000. Thats a factor of 30 larger! For the same distribution of scale in Civ3, LA would have to be population 30+ and Denver 1!
Cities should be able to grow much larger, and draw food from all over the nation, not just in their area. That would making an efficient road system much more important.
Also, I think that citizens should get more productive as the city size grows, making having big cities (as opposed to lots of smaller ones) far more important. Also, small nations could have a few super-big cities and be competitive with nations that have lots of smaller cities. |
Ok, what can there be that combines the desire to make cities grow UP in both production and commerce, increase the size limits (or reflect actual populations better) and make the citizen more productive (to continue with the urge of making bigger cities)?
I know!
From this Link to The List.
quote:
Originally posted by Donegeal
[On the discussion about using a hexgrid]
However, since most Civ players aren't going to space their cities 6 hexs apart to take advantage of the additonal hex ring, I would also like to see the worker job of "Build Suburb" added. As I stated in another thread, the action would consume the worker and place a "town" graphic on the grid. Now if the "Build Suburb" action was limited to the inner ring of hexs surrounding the actual city, we would get a fine graphical representation of "Urban Sprawl". Now to fix the actual population explosion problem I mentioned at the on set of this post, I would have the "Build Suburb" action add two food to the tile it is built on (now I know that building a suburb on farm land does NOT increase the food gained from that farm, but the added food will reflect a higher population in the city it is attached to to better represent the population explosion).
(Posted by donegeal)
1.3.2 - Worker builds suburbs
I have also be wanting a good way to deal with Urban Sprawl/Suburbs. Currently, for astetic reasons, I use the Urban Sprawl graphic for rail roads. Looks good, but then you get the Urban Sprawl everywhere. I have been wanting a "Suburb" tile improvement. The graphic would be similar to a "town". Suburbs would only be allowed to be built in the inner eight squares surrounding the actual city (maybe even giving cities the ability to build naval/costal things even if they are one tile back of the coast) and only on flat terrain (Grassland, Plains, Desert). Have a suburb add one or two of each food/shield/commerce (added food to show that the city is now larger population wise, added shield to show that there is infact more than one city working to complete something, and added commerce for all the extra trade that goes on). Building a Suburb comsumes the worker. |
Ok, where it says "hexgrid" imagine it as a square grid now.
The concept does not nessacarily mean that it prevents large empires, but it would certianly encourage large cities. Remember, all the values can be changed (or modded). Like require a city to reach size 21 before suburbs could be built. Or have it double the shields and commerce of the tile. Yes, even have it add food to the tile (Someone thought that adding food was a dumb idea, and I agree because suburbs don't add food to a tile, they add population to a city which could most easily be shown be increasing the food).
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The_Aussie_Lurker
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Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
May 2001
time: 05:18
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You see, though, that is why I believe my model for corruption would work so well. In it, a brand new city, even one which is quite distant from the main empire, will have a base 'corruption' value-to represent 'lawlessness'-yet will have a shield and income output almost equivalent to that of a starting city built in the 'core' of your nation. In these 'frontier cities', your biggest initial problem would be stability (if you are close to a strong neighbouring empire and/or the population of the city are unhappy) and the effects of corruption on the movement of shields and food to and from the city. A large captured city, OTOH, is going to have a much more significant corruption problem, relative to the brand new city I mentioned above-largely because corruption would be calculated on a % basis-which will hurt the captured 25 shield city more than the new-built 5 shield city!
So, it still partially limits expansionism via colonisation, whilst REALLY putting a break on expansionism via war!
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
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diablovision
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Los Angeles, CA
Apr 2004
time: 05:18
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I think corruption tries to balance power by capping power. I think this is the wrong way to go. There needs to be a better mechanism. For example, I think that it is completely reasonable that a large empire can be fully productive. If it is balanced against another large empire then that is totally fine with me. Limiting it by saying, basically "empires won't be bigger than X" is a cheap way out, IMO.
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diablovision
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Los Angeles, CA
Apr 2004
time: 05:18
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quote:
Originally posted by Trifna
1- A large empire is not fully productive. And the point here is not to cap power but to get something coherent and strategically better.
2- Wether it is balanced or not with another one, the effect is the same. And in a game, there is not always such a power balance situation.
3- It is not a cheap way out to keep empires small, but the opposite: trying to make this coherent instead of letting it go, and getting better strategy like this.
And of course, it is to be represented in an easily managed way englobing the whole thing. |
1. This may be true in newly-conquered empires and ancient empires such as Rome and the Ottomans, but I think this is a separate issue from large countries such as China, US, and Russia. Perhaps corruption should decay over time, or as technology improves?
3. What can you do--there is always a strategy in being more powerful. It is a bit heavy handed, I think, to essentially cap the power a nation may have. My point was that the game should be scalable over the power level of countries, rather than limiting the power range to a narrow spectrum. For example a game with 16 weak nations or 5 powerful nations should be equally enjoyable (depending on your personality I suppose).
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kolpo
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I think that the most easy and simple solution is giving nations like japan traits that reduce there ability to expand but at the same time allow there limit number of cities to become more powerfull.
An Examples could be:
micro management trait: Empires with this trait try to manage all details of there empire. As a result does it take them longer to make new cities(settles needs much longer to build) and shall they improve there land at a slower speed. But this micro management improves the efficienty of there cities and terrain improvements allowing them to produce more food/trade.
city state trait: this empire is completely build arround 1 or a few gigantic cities who have a great amount of autonomy. The huge amount of autonomy of the cities makes there population very happy and let your cities develop there own culture and science increasing the effect of both. But people love there own city so much that it is very hard to convince them to form a new city.
It is simple and it is somewhat realistic so that might be a solution for this problem.
Last edited by kolpo on 27-12-2004 at 19:09
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Shogun Gunner
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Potomac Falls, Virginia
Oct 2000
time: 00:18
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Lots of interesting ideas in this thread. What strikes me is the great assortment of ideas addressing the "Territory = Victory" issue. I believe this illustrates how difficult it is to design and code a game like Civ.
First, there is not unanimous agreement in this thread about this victory condition. I would agree its not the best measure of the greatness of a civilization However, who can deny that if you do control 66% of the land, the game is essentially over. A reversal of this inevitability would be nice, but like a runaway train, at a certain point, your civ fate is determined and unalterable. 
Second, it has yet to happen on our earth where one government has controlled 66% of the planet surface. The ones who have come the closest: Romans ~ 30%; WW2 Axis ~ 50%; Today's America ~ 15% (these percentages are gross estimates) didn't "win the game".
Third, it is assumed that this victory condition is granted because of the assumed ability of the civ to project power if it's that large. This is something that can't be addressed in the programming unilaterally. If you want more sophistication in the game's victory conditions, then you will need more granularity and nuance in all the other aspects of the game.
3a The diplomacy model first comes to mind as needing a major overhaul. A player should be able to leverage international diplomacy to achieve goals. Really close to impossible in Civ3. 
3b Military units are too vanilla. My tank unit is just like your tank unit. My jet plane is identical to your jet plane. I have four riflemen, you have two which means I'll probably win a battle.  Forcing "combined arms" helps somewhat - as does the unit experience feature (I like both ideas), but what I really think would help would be more uniqueness of the military you build. Shipbuilding is a great example of this -- no two nation's ships are the same. Specific technology advances, civ abilities, and/or resource investment should allow you to build a altered military unit from the vanilla- based on your decisions and civ's abilities.
3c Resources are all or nothing. Either I have coal, or I don't. This binary approach is bad, but becomes devasting when combined with the lackluster diplomacy model. A much better approach would be to spread out a resource to a greater number of locations, but assign a value to each location which produces the resource, which would represent the quantity of the resource at that one spot. You can store, use or sell whatever you can extract from the earth. In addition to shields (factory production time) you would need to deliver a certain quantity of a key resource to complete a unit. This "budget" of resources would go far in reversing the automatic large territory = victory equation.
In conclusion, if the above mentioned points are addressed in cIV, then it becomes more possible to run a self-sufficient, defendable civ on a small geographical location -- and still have an opportunity to win.
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petermarkab
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I've never been happy about a territorial victory. It just doesn't sit right that a player can build an empire covering two-fifths of the globe and that empire obeys his every whim.
Corruption doesn't work as a limiting factor and as Solver said stops the game from being fun.
I like what has been said about empire stability and ethnic factors, and I'd like to expand the idea to include minor civs, but more as an abstraction rather than an expansion of the current barbarian model.
Minor Civilisations should represent an ethnic patchwork quilt on the map, overlapped by actual Civs, but not visible to the player. Think of them as being blobs of cultural and ethnic identity embedded all over the map.
When the player or computer civ expands into unclaimed territory, their cities adopt an identity as they grow, based on - The intrinsic cultural and ethnic identity of the people in that particular "blob"
- The owner civ's cultural identity
- The effort by the player to build culturally in that city
- Political factors such as distance from capital, proximity to rival civs
- and Physical factors which determine the industries of the city. eg. farming, factory production, port city
If the player expands a lot, he will have a diverse mulit-ethnic empire which could be very powerful militarily, commercially and diplomatically, but would require enormous skill to placate ethnic tensions and cultural rivalry. He would have to build temples, collisseums, jousting arenas, and eighty-thousand seater stadia to entertain the masses. To placate the revolutionaries, he would devolve power to the regions, create regiments indentified with each ethnic group and erect dozens of monuments of himself to remind his people who ruled over them. And if all this didn't work (where would the money come from?) he might have to use force to suppress any rebellions.
Of course, all his efforts may fail and part of his empire splits off to form a new nation. Maybe this happens on many occasions pruning a once vast and mighty empire to an under-developed stump!!
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petermarkab
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Alternatively if a player chooses to concentrate on a smaller empire, he may find he holds less power in the world arena to start with, but his empire remains stable and managable and his people content.
quote:
Originally posted by Trip
The key is to make building UP more important than building OUT. That's how you make a civ like Germany or Japan stronger than Russia. |
I like this idea a lot. It neatly summarises what I've said about ethnicity. While Japan was (still is) a highly homogenous society and developed imperialistically through pressures exerted by the major powers at the time, and Germany after humiliation in WWI needed to reassert themselves on the world stage, both powers required strong unifying leadership which developed an overwhelming sense of superiority in their nations.
Aussie, I like your ideas about terrain improvements requiring maintenance. No maintenance and the transport network deteriorates, a poor transport network means less control over your empire, and less control means more unrest!
I don't agree with your assertion that corruption and crime be determined by relative distance from the capital. Rather it should be dictated by the happiness of the population which is derived from ethnic factors detailed above.
Last edited by petermarkab on 30-12-2004 at 19:15
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05-12-2004 21:47
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