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amjayee
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Jyväskylä, Finland
Oct 1999
time: 07:14
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OK, here goes:
I will start with a brief summary about the turn system. The key elements in the system number 3 are: all players plan their turns simultaneously, in "pause mode". This is called "planning phase". This speeds up multiplayer significantly. In single player mode, AI players plan their turns simultaneously with the human player. When all players have finished the planning, the actual turn starts. All units move simultaneously, and players have limited possibilities to change their orders during the turn.
The idea behind this system is to combine the best parts of real time and turn based games. We would keep the turns, and the turns would work like in civ2; for example, a turn could be one year in game time. Players would have plenty of time to plan things, without the hassle of real time games. Combat would be more fair, since all units move simultaneously, and unit AI could be ordered to react to enemy actions - war starter would not anymore be in unfair advantage, since he could not destroy half of his enemy's army with a surprise attack. Here comes a better explanation of each phase:
1) planning phase
I think we should separate empire management and unit movement. In the beginning of each turn, the players would be presented some statistics of the empire's state, about what things are being produced, how the population stats have changed etc. Then they could change the orders. Empire management includes building orders (usually large queues of orders are used), economy and budget fine-tuning (usually players make long term plans, that are only slightly modified), government and social issues (also these are not needed to change very much during average turns) and diplomacy (both international and domestic).
As I said, most empire-management things the player doesn't need to worry about in most turns, perhaps only fine-tuning. Usually building orders are the main event of this phase.
When all changes are made, player gives orders to his units. Units are not moved tile by tile as in earlier games, since the player is only _planning_ the unit movement. Units are given chains of commands, that work like building queues. The planned actions are shown on the map. For example, when you order a unit to move to a specific location, the unit's path is shown; you can drag and drop the path on the map as you please. If all orders cannot be carried out during the next turn, they will take several turns, of course.
Also you could order a unit or army to hunt down an enemy unit and attack it; in this case, a path would not be shown (since the enemy unit is usually on the move, too), but rather a straight line, and attack symbol, or something. The unit would take the best path it can find. The would be given orders, what to do if the sight to the unit is lost; it could return to location x and stand guard, or try to figure out the most propable destination of the unit and locate it (you could order it to stay in your territory if you like, or order it to return after x turns if no success).
Units and armies could use scouts to extend their field of vision; armies could have special scout units. Depending on the army's scouting capabilities and movement speed, their field of vision would vary.
You could order some units to guard your border, or man the defensive structures, fortification lines etc. you have built. Also you could order some units to garrison in certain fort, and regularly scout the area you show them; this are would the become their field of vision. The enemy could use small sneaking parties and commandos, who would have better chances to cross the area without being noticed.
One of the key ideas is, that you give your units orders, how to react to certain events. If enemy attacks and is won and retreating, your units could pursue them carefully to your border, watching out for ambushes. If enemy airplanes enter your territory, your fighters could scramble to intercept before they penetrate to your mainland, and try to make them turn back; if no success, they are attacked. If nuclear attack is noticed by civ x, you could pre-set the goals for your missiles and strategic bombers. Then, if attack is noticed, you would be asked: nuclear attack noticed by Russians - launch counter-strike? And so on.
Another key idea is the more realistic movement system I have proposed earlier. The units would have two movement properties: deployment range, and operating range. Inside the deployment range they could be deployed freely, outside it deploying would take several turns. Enemy could intercept the units when they are deploying. Inside the operating range, the units could carry out any legal operations freely, like scouting, pillaging land or attacking units. Deploying units, and carrying out time-consuming tasks reduces the "action points" available to the unit, or something, to prevent unlimited actions.
The third key point is better unit ai. They should be capable of responding to surprising situations.
The player could also change the empire management orders when moving units. When planning is finished, the players hit "start turn" button. When all players have done this, the turn starts!
2) Turn execution phase
First, all empire management orders of all civs are made "official". Those orders will affect all the calculations made for this turn. Diplomacy things might become official already during the planning phase. In emergencies, players could change the empire management orders. Also some diplomacy can occur during the execution phase.
When ready, the units are moved. They all move simultaneously according to their speed. In most cases, the units don't encounter enemy units, but if they do, the player could pause the game, or he could set the unit orders so, that in such situation game is automatically paused and he is asked what to do. Usually, the units should be able to solve the situation themselves.
During wars, the players could be given more time to coordinate their unit maneuvers. For example, your scouts could see, that enemy units are approaching city x. You could order your units to move to point y to confront the enemy in a battle. The enemy scouts would see this, and they could choose to confront you, or try to outmaneuver you, or move to another spot, more favorable to them, and make a camp there. All this should be quite smooth, especially since armies are used instead of single units.
Anyway, most wars don't be endless waves of units crashing against each other, but rather they include scouting, patrolling, controlling area, organizing war industry, small clashes between small scouting parties, and then occasional major, decisive battles between large armies. Even WW2 was like this. This is even more true, if the soldiers need to be recruited from your population - you can't waste them in mindless attacks.
All this sounds complex, and I admit it is more complex than the traditional system. But with some thought put into it, the amount of work should be reasonable. And I think this is one of the most decisive changes for the game; we don't have any use for better population, economy and military systems, if the traditional turn system prevents us from using them properly.
I think the game would still remain civ-like, if we use this system. Many of the details of the system can be debated, this is only my view. I just hope you could see the potential in it from my explanation. Too much automation is bad, but we could remove the most tedious tasks of civ2, like moving the units tile by tile, and skimming through every city every turn. For example notice, that we could as well use civ2-like unit movement, but you could draw the path of the unit on the map as you would move it manually; without moving the unit across the continent (or ship across a sea) tile but tile, you would draw the route, and the unit would take the required amount of turns to move there. This is important, if the map will be 40 times larger than in civ2, as planned. Anyway, everything in this text is now open for debate. Please make your comments for it.
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23-07-2000 17:43
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