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yin26
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This space reserved for Darkstar.
Apr 1999
time: 14:37
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Boris:
Let me see your take on just one idea --
After securing x number of cities or reaching x# turn [edit: higher government level makes most sense], you switch from a city model to a state model. Effectively, groups of cities now form states and are governed as such. At the most basic level, this allows broad, area-based goals to be set. The southwest is my production area. The north is on war footing, etc. But the trade off for getting rid of a lot of tedious city management is you have new issues to grapple with: your approval as leader is tied to popular vote or other measure of support, and this will vary depending on how you treat each state; if unhappy enough, states rebel into civil war; populations will shift if one state is more appealing than another (if one is always on war footing, population will shift to areas set for high standard of living, for example); governors of states now hold some real power and could be chosen based on a more detailed look at their political and social leanings, so a hard-edged task-master could be set to govern the border states, etc.
At some point, I want to progress from city sweeper to empire statesman. Civ doesn't allow this but it can ... while remaining true to the Civ series, in my opinion.
I could go on, of course, but every time I take these paths, all I hear is "That's UnCivish!" Well, I might be guilty of too quickly hitting the pessimistic button, but I think the far greater danger for this series is the "Don't change much" button that is being liberally, fanatically, mashed by a number of sticky palms around here.
Last edited by yin26 on 27-07-2005 at 00:56
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Hamdinger
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yin26:
Though it wasn't addressed to me, I like the idea you mentioned. Among other things, it helps with the problem of having too much to micromanage later in the game. The beginning of the game could be focused around one city, then progress to a small set of cities, then a set of regions.
I get the impression that Will Wright's new game "Spore" will work something like this, though it is a very different game from Civ.
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Hamdinger
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Would it be "unCivish"? I'm not sure what that means, exactly. It would be a big change, though I think it fits within the concept of the game.
As an aside, does anyone know of any strategy game that has this kind of concept...where the scope of what you can do changes throughout the course of the game? It seems to me that most games just give you more to do as you progress, but don't change fundamentally the types of decisions and actions you make.
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Boris Godunov
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Portland, OR
Aug 2001
time: 00:37
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quote:
Originally posted by yin26
Boris:
At some point, I want to progress from city sweeper to empire statesman. Civ doesn't allow this but it can ... while remaining true to the Civ series, in my opinion.
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While not exact, it seems to me that Civ4 is already moving towards this kind of model.
They've reigned in expansion and instead have developed a model whereby different cities will have different specializations, which seem to me similar to what you said about states. They've also worked to make the governors much more effective in this regard. Ergo, the tedium of managing dozens of cities as you described has already been dealt with.
They've also done away with governments and opted for a SMAC-style national policy screen. These two changes alone will, IMO, constitute a dramatic difference in how the game is played.
Does it mean that cities are still the core of Civ? Yes, but that is how the game goes. Since the first action of Civ is founding a city, it's natural the city unit will be the foundation of the game. Still, they seem to be tweaking the model effectively to make the game much more interesting to play.
I fail to see how Civ4 is going to be any less a dramatic difference than Civ2 was from Civ1. In fact, I think Civ4 might represent the most dramatic difference yet between installations of the franchise. But yes, it will still be Civ, and therefore it's gonna have enough familiar concepts that make it "Civ." But keep calling it Civ 2.7 if you like...just another meaningless bit of whining that doesn't require you to actually explain anything.
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CyberShy
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Delft, The Netherlands
Mar 1999
time: 06:37
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quote:
Originally posted by yin26
Amazing, you almost had a coversation going and went for the troll right at the end.  |
and of course, calling cIV civ 2.7 is not trolling at all 
But what Boris said is true, cities apparantly are more specialized in cIV.
I think that's one of the ways Firaxis tries to fight the "the more cities the better" concept.
But instead of admitting that Firaxis went into a good direction with this you'd rather call Borus a troller because he responds to your "cIV = civ2.7" "serious comment"
civilization 4 has many new things that make it very different from it's precessors
- the combat system is different. no a/d values. Units specialise through promotions. Different units are needed in different terrains. Different units are needed against other different units.
- the resource system is totally new from civ 2 (you call it 2.7, remember) and expanded from civ 3. The idea of needing resources to build improvements, wonders, units, brings a total new dimension to civ. So does the idea of luxerious resources that make people happy. Add the trade of resources to this and you have a complete new idea and concept that makes civ 4 #4 almost by itself
- religion.
- culture
The idea that your citizen are just citizen who're all alike (from civ1 / civ2) is totally gone. Suddenly your citizen belong to cultural groups and to religions. YOu have please different citizen in different ways, mostly on state level (not more micromanagement)
This brings diplomacy on a total new level. This is a total new concept from civ1 / civ2 and the way it's been implemented makes it totally new then in civ3 (for sure with religion added to it)
- social engineering. enough has been said about this. I want to add that the governamental decisions you make even affect your neighbours. Again a total new concept.
- different terrain improvements for different resources is totally new
- the idea of borders is new in civ 3 and further developped in civ 4. This is a huge department from civ1 / civ2. Apparantly for sure since the crossing of borders now is an act of war while in civ3 you had to declare war to someone who crossed your border. A huge improvement from civ3 and a total new concept from civ1 / civ2
- the trade system is totally different from civ1 / civ2 again. The idea behind the resources is a huge new concept.
- the health system is a total new concept, a huge change from the old polution concept. For sure since food can be traded as well!
- diplomacy is in civ3 and civ4 totally different then in civ1/2.
- the new concepts with multiplayer are huge. locked alliances, dedicated game server. pbem games that can be continued real time.
of course civ4 is closer to civ3 then to civ1/2.
Though it's a REALLY HUGE departure from civ1/2.
If you compare it to doom1/2/3 then doom 3 actually is much closer to doom1. in fact just the graphics changed more or less.
I think civ 2 is closer to civ1 then civ4 is to civ3. But most people concider civ2 to be a GREAT seaquel.
civ4 is a sequal, of course the base ideas of the game are alike. Like the sims 2 is very much like the sims, only the graphics are better and the idea has been expanded.
The ideas I mentioned above are not expandations of old concepts. They're totally new. Civ4 has moved more from it's precessors than many, if not most other games.
It goes much further then only fancy graphics.
I think civ4 is to civ3 what civ2 was to civ1.
I think that civ4 is indeed close to civ3. Eventough it comes with enough new concepts to be a worthy sequel.
But naming civ 4 civ 2.7 is a joke in itself.
In civ4 is civ 2.7 then doom 3 = doom 1.3 wait, it's wolfenstein 1.5, gta 3 = gta 1.3, the sims 2 is the sims 1.2, red alert 2 is dune 2.5 and in fact all old 2d platform games are donkey kong 1.7
please stop the sillyness.
CyberShy
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Darkstar
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Huntsville, AL, USA
May 1999
time: 23:37
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The problem is one of scale. How do you scale between a small village and that of a world spanning empire and operate equally good or bad at all levels?
Cities are only important to the Civ model because they are where you turn tile resources into other resources (money, research, production (= units, wonders )). They are supposed to be "economic regions", but the actual regions that a city represents don't grow (they do not scale up and down dynamically). So we are left worrying over tiles to maximize our game play, focused purely at how the local city can use it, regardless of what stage of the game we are at. But there are ways to fix that.
Off the top of my head I can think of a simple system to do so. Programmatically speaking, a bit of cellular automata and a bit of nodal processing and we'd be in business. Each tile is just a simple cell. We check to see if it is validly "connected" to a tile harvestor/processor. If so, we connect it, rinse and repeat. That forms a civilization's resource nodal network. (We can do this for other things then just owned tiles, including proper links between production, trade, etc.) By tracking the major branch points and hubs, the computer could then determine a functional center for a branch, and that would be our regions. Adding and removing nodes (due to cultural influence expanding, being lost, conquering new cities or territories, etc) could all be taken into account trivially, and regions would then automatically expand or split as the game progresses.
That would provide organic growth. Hummm... For instance, trade cities could pop up at cross-roads between major centers or trade terminals (ports) or resource processors (ie, sawmills, factories, steel mills). And those trade cites could then grow into regional centers themselves, if the player invests a lot of his national interest in the region (ie, building a research center, several factories, and an armory).
This means: You can advance from your starting village, to a set of independant city-states, and then to an actual nation compromised of many cities and villages (as well as other tile decorations/resources). You've gone from the "charismatic street sweeper" to the "greatest amoung equals" to "living-god-incarnate emperor". From the player's point of view, it looks like the scale has changed. But to the computer, it's still all the same throughtout. Scale without worry.
Of course, I doubt we will ever see that sort of thing in Civ in the next 6 to 10 years. But if each Civ keeps advancing the game, step by step, then we might reach this kind of gameplay, eventually. But first, we got to get over the city fixation. 
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sophist
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quote:
Originally posted by CyberShy
- different terrain improvements for different resources is totally new
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That's a pretty superficial change.
quote:
Originally posted by CyberShy
- the trade system is totally different from civ1 / civ2 again. The idea behind the resources is a huge new concept.
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Do we know much about the trade system?
quote:
Originally posted by CyberShy
- diplomacy is in civ3 and civ4 totally different then in civ1/2.
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It's an evolution, not a revolution.
quote:
Originally posted by CyberShy
The ideas I mentioned above are not expandations of old concepts. They're totally new. Civ4 has moved more from it's precessors than many, if not most other games.
It goes much further then only fancy graphics.
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I disagree with yin's conclusion, but you're overstating the case. Things aren't that different. They don't need to be substantially different to be better. You'll get a better game out with lots of little improvements and a few big ones than you will with more big ones.
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26-07-2005 22:56
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