CIVILIZATIONS (ver1.0): hosted by LordStone1

[LordStone1]

Hello all!

It's amazing but we've forgotten about one BIG part about CivIII - namely, the civilizations themselves! Basically, the questions are:

1) How many civilizations should be in the game?
CivII had 7, CTP had 8, and SMAC had 7, and only 7. Now, people playing CTP have been able to jack up the number to..36, I think. Is this a good idea? How many is too much? Where do we draw the line between 'reality' and CPU processing power?

2) Which civilizations?
There were epic debates about this question when CTP was in development, mainly about whether America and Canada deserved to be civilizations. With CTP, a lot of controversial choices were picked, like the Nicaraguans or the Polynesians or the Jamacians. What about now? Do we push for a return to more traditional civilizations (i.e., Romans, Greeks, Babylonians, French, etc.) or be more P.C.?

3)Should the civilizations have special abilities?
With SMAC, each faction started out with a different ability. Gaia's Stepdaughters started out with Centauri Empathy, while the Spartan Federation began with Doctrine: Loyalty. The Peacekeepers could jack up their cities 3 beyond normal limits. Also included was vulnerabilities, like the University's low resistance to probes. None of this was in CTP. Should this be included in the civilizations?

4) Should each civilization have a personality?
In CivII, the Mongols, Sioux, Romans, and the Russians were always the bad guys. You could always depend on the Babylonians and the Japanese (sort of) to be nice to you. Should this be included in CivIII? Or do we actually want to have some tame Mongols?

And whatever else pops up in your mind!

But I realize that this kind of discussion can become very heated. I should know - I participated in those Canada v. America debates. I'll allow little spats but I won't tolerate this turning into a preachy thread completely about why this particular civilization should be not included. Don't make a long post counting the 100 points why America is NOT a civilization. If you want to, take it to the Off-Topic forum!

Otherwise, have fun!

[LordStone1]

For everyone's information, here is a list of all the civilizations that were included in CTP. Those with an asterisk are included in CivII, too. Those CivII tribes that weren't included in CTP are after this list.

<u>CTP</u>
American*
Assyrian
Australian
Brazilian
Canadian
Chinese*
Cuban
Dutch
Egyptian*
English*
Ethiopian
French*
German*
Greek*
Hebrew
Incan
Indian* (as in India)
Indonesian
Irish
Jamaican
Japanese*
Korean
Mayan
Mexican
Mongol*
Native American
Nicaraguan
Nigerian
Persian*
Phoenician
Polynesian
Portuguese
Roman*
Russian*
Scottish
Spanish*
Thai
Turkish
Viking*
Welsh
Zulu*

<u>Civilization II</u>
Babylonian
Aztec (became Mexicans)
Celtic (became Welsh/Scottish?)
Carthaginians
Sioux (became Native Americans)

Okay! Did I leave anything out? I didn't think we needed to include the SMAC factions...right?


[This message has been edited by LordStone1 (edited May 23, 1999).]

[Darkstar]

Hello.

I have to same, The USA has its own culture, making it a civilization. Whether its the best or not is too personal a matter to talk about.

Now, I don't see a reason that they DON'T include EVERY civilization that they will sell CivIII to. While it might be unrealistic to have the Americans, or even the Brits, to start in 10,000 BC, who cares? As a citizen of the USA, I get tickled being able to be a big-wig of my country, and I am sure that many others feel the same way. So, as far as Civilization CHOICES go, I think they should include all that they can! So, there MARKETING should be able to inform them of anywhere they sold product to, and should be included.

While Factions were a lot of fun, I think that including the +Growth, -Research factor for all included civs are going to tick off anyone that thinks they got slighted. That is not something they need, and if they are going to try to cover many bases like CtP, then they won't be able to customize all the AI Nations.

Given a choice between a small number of well differentiated civilizations (ala SMAC) and a large number of similar nations except name and flag (ala CtP), I would suggest they go the way of conservatism... the large mass. Its the safer choice... And they can always deeply customize the various sides in the Sweep of Time game 3...


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-Darkstar
(Knight Errant Of Spam)

[Travathian]

1) I think it was Sid himself, who said for Civ II, that one of the changes was the addition of wonders, but that it always remained 7 wonders of the world per epic. Along these lines, I'd have to say chose 7 civs from each of the major epics in the game. This should give plenty to chose from. As far as playing at one time, I'm going to have to say no more than seven. One of the great things about the game is its moderately low system specs, giving plenty of gamers a chance to play.

2) See #1, otherwise I couldn't care less as long as they are interesting and varied.

3) Yes, civs should have special abilities, I think it helped to make the civs more interesting. Problem comes into play though with Civ, because a number of the civs will be from radically different epics (see #1) so what would you give the Americans? I don't have answer to this dilema =(

4) Hell yes to this one! I loved the different personalities in SMAC, so much better than just CivII. One thing though, if you play a game on Earth, use the standard personalities. But if someone generates a map, then I think they should be randomized. Why you might ask? Simply because of the fact that so much of a civ's culture was based on their homeland and their neighbors that I think on a totally different map, none of the civs would have developed the same as they are now.

[LordStone1]

Epics? As in ages? So, what Trav is proposing is like this:

Ancient
Romans
Greeks
Babylonians
and so on...

Medieval/Renaissance
Britain
France
Holland
Spain
Japan

Modern
America
China
Australia
South Africa
and so on...?

Am I right?


[This message has been edited by LordStone1 (edited May 23, 1999).]

[Travathian]

Amen brother, you got it. Dont ask me to come up with 7 for each one though, cause my brain is fried tonight. But I think Midevil/Ren were seperate in CivII, not sure, what the 4 eras were, been a while since I've played.

[the Octopus]

I never played CtP, but how you could have a Civ game without the Aztecs or Babylonians is beyond me...

A couple ideas in other forums involve "unique individuals" from a civilization (for example, in the Technology thread, someone suggested having famous scientists pop up as random events, giving you small bonuses, e.g. "Pasteur establishes lab in Paris, Paris science output increases for x turns"). This is easy to do for some civilizations, but are some civilizations going to be slighted because they didn't live long enough to establish enough marks in history? I mean, maybe I'm just ignorant, but I don't remember any famous Aztec scientists. I thought that this thread might be an appropriate place to discuss this issue.

For the issue of "character", with each civilization having different plusses and minuses, I think people should take a look at the "inertia" idea presented by SnowFire in the Technology thread (currently #34 in the summary <a href=http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000038.html>in this thread</a>). With this sort of system, you can have civs which are differentiated (because it is difficult to switch), but not have to imply that certain civs are "inherently" better or worse than any other. If the inertia concept was applied to technology and social engineering (and maybe some others) that would probably achieve the effect people are looking for, and not be mired in questions of racism, etc. For example, the Mesopotamian civilizations would probably start with a greater emphasis on agricultural things, while the Phonecians might start with an emphasis on seafaring, or something like that. Maybe this system would be too complex, I don't know.


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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"

[crusher]

Hey!
1.If you used the era idea those that would want to play a civ like Mexico(god knows why) would not have a chance to.
2.Civs should be more spread out.In civ2 if you used historicle starting points there would be 6 civs in europe and one in the whole western hemisphere.

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"War does not determine who is right,It determines who is left."
-Crusher-

[Mo]

Civs should also be able to come into existance through civil wars. If a group of cities are unhappy for over 10 years they will break off and form a seperate country. In Civ II if you captured the capital of a civ there was a chance that the civ would split apart and form 2 civs, I would also keep this option.

[Ecce Homo]

I would not like any other individual properties for civs but the visual ones (city architecture and maybe flags) and the AI strategy (eg aggressive/rational). The game is about writing a new history, not simulating the real one!

[SnowFire]

Octopus beat me to the punch. Instead of having different "bonuses" for different civs, give them different motives, like the "Explore Discover Build Conquer" aspect of SMAC. The Gaians were explore, the Hive was Build and Conquer, etc. So, I think no civ should be "better" than another, but we'd need different technology priorities based on the Civ's inclinations- the British might be strong in Math & Economics, the Greeks might be strong philosophers, etc. Each civ's AI leader would shift their research output to concentrate more on their favored categories.

As for which civs to include, and how to include them, I'm going to steal the major civ/minor civ that Travathian mentioned elsewhere. The game starts off with 6-8 major civilzations and as many minor civs as you say in the settings at the beginning- none, double the number of major civs (the default), or as many as the map can reasonably hold. The major civs have classic "human" personalities to them. The minor civs are only interested in holding a little area for themselves, and will only conciously go to war with other minor civs, and only rarely. If reverses occur, and say the Babylonians, a major civ, start seriously losing a lot of territory and power, their AI may be downgraded to minor civ and the Persians, an unusually strong minor civ, are upgraded to major civ. The minor civs have slightly different diplomacy, as well; instead of conquering them, you can choose to make them a "client state," like Eastern Europe, who then emulates you as best as they can and act as if they have a pact with you. On the other hand, you can so thourghly make friends with them that they are "integrated" into your empire; they still maintain their own military command, but trade flourishes between your empire, your foreign policy acts as one, and your science research is pooled. I'm not sure if that idea would work perfectly, but... in any case, lots of minor civs sprinkled around the map should make for an interesting game. I would take many of CTP's civs and downgrade them to minor civs, while keeping the classic set as major.

Or perhaps this system: Each civ has a probability of being a major civ, and a probability of being a minor civ. It would work on a "point" system, like this:
Civ, major, minor
British: 5,5
Aztecs: 4,4
Dutch: 2,5
Polynesians: 0,2

Let's say we want two major civs and one minor civ. So, if these are our only 4 civs to choose from, we first choose our major civ. 5+4+2=11 beans go into the bag, so Britain has a 5 in 11 chance of being selected, etc. Let's say Britain does get selected. Now we have 4+2=6, you get the picture... then do the same thing when choosing minor nations, except use the "chance of being a minor nation" point system. You put these in text files, so when someone complains "I want the Polynesians to be a major civ!" all they have to do is change the number 0 to 15, and there's a good chance the Polynesians will be a major civ.

Okay, let's try it:

American 6,3
Assyrian 1,3
Australian 0,2
Brazilian 0,1
Canadian 0,2
Chinese 6,6
Cuban 0,2
Dutch 2,5
Egyptian 5,5
English 6,4
Ethiopian 0,3
French 6,4
German 6,4
Greek 6,6
Hebrew 1,4
Incan 1,5
Indian 5,6
Indonesian 0,1
Irish 1,4
Jamaican 0,1
Japanese 5,5
Korean 1,5
Mayan 0,3
Mongol 5,5
Native American 0,4
Nigerian 0,2
Persian 4,5
Phoenician 0,5
Polynesian 0,1
Portuguese 0,3
Roman 6,4
Russian 6,6
Scottish 1,4
Spanish 2,4
Thai 0,2
Turkish 0,4
Viking 0,3
Welsh 1,3
Zulu 3,5
Babylonian 5,5
Aztec 4,5
Carthaginians 2,4

Hopefully this should roughly be my answer to 2- have varying degrees of how much a civilization should be in the game. I hope I didn't offend anyone; that was not my intention. By the way, on a huge map, we're going to need a lot more strictly minor civs, so bring on the Andorrans.

[This message has been edited by SnowFire (edited May 24, 1999).]

[Ecce Homo]

I am a bit critical to the major/minor civ system. What is its purpose?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yah, I really don't care about the major civ/minor civ thing. It is just complicating an already complicated game.

Don't forget to include the Arabs!

And yes, I want to see Civ leaders have a distinct personality, like Isabella of Spain being a total *****, etc.

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Imran Siddiqui
Moderator SG Forums - www.sidgames.com/forums/ ,

"Sir, I would rather be right than be President."

-Henry Clay

[Spartan187]

I like the major/minor civ. idea a lot, except it's not to relevant to this particular thread.

[Mo]

It is relevant because it has to do with the number of civilizations and how they would be integrated into the game. How would your playing be affected if you were to be a minor civ? Would you be forced into treaties or could you just govern like being a major, or would it be considered a loss?
The major civs begining cities should be one larger than the minor civs cities and they should be given an extra settler.

[Eggman]

1) The more civilizatons at the same time, the better. If they can increase it to 16, 32, 64, or whatever number of civilizations and make it possible to finish a turn in a timely fashion, I say go for it. However, there should be an option to play with less for those with slower machines. Unless there is a real problem with the AI in this matter, this is a no brainer. To not have the option to play with at least 32 civs is clearly a step BACKWARDS from CTP.

2) This really shouldn't be a problem. With a competent programmer, it should be possible and easy to choose from hundreds of different civilizations to play with. I say include all civilizations that either (1) deserve it or (2) are fun that we can get a list of 30 city unique cities and some leaders. Personally, as an American, fighting against the Canadians is a real kick. Just make sure the Arabs are in there this time. This has been a glaring omission in every edition of Civ.

3 & 4) Sure. Why not. Just make sure that there is an option to turn it off. And make sure it play balances. Having the Romans or the Chinese or whoever have a major advantage over the others isn't any fun.

I would also like to see the colored-coded shield replaced with a custom flag. The English get the Union Jack, the American gets the Stars and Stripes, etc. It would be a nice touch.

And I really dig the thought of minor civs...

[LordStone1]

Guys, anything with the word "civilization" is relevant to this discussion!

But I'm really intrigued by the idea of minor civilizations. As I recall, "Birth of the Federation", MP's newest game which is coming out in two days, is like a Star Trek Civilization game. But there's also minor civilizations in the game like the Gorn, Breen, Pak'leds, etc (you get the idea).

I think I am going to play that game when it comes out, and we can see how the minor civilizations work out in that game. Personally, I think it's a viable idea although it requires a lot more thinking. This idea deserves more discussion.

As for the special abilities, it may be difficult to come up with a different one for each of the 48 civilizations or whatever. It was easy with just 7 in SMAC, but would it be a good idea on Earth?

A couple ideas in other forums involve "unique individuals" from a civilization (for example, in the Technology thread, someone suggested having famous scientists pop up as random events, giving you small bonuses, e.g. "Pasteur establishes lab in Paris, Paris science output increases for x turns").

That is a very good idea, but why make it specific to a civilization? In your own version of Earth, could Pasteur have lived in China? It seems to me that this kind of event could be turned into a 'random event' like in CivI. Hmm?

I'm all in favor for keeping architectural styles, and I think the addition of flags is a nice idea. But are you suggesting that each unit carry a flag, instead of just being a plain color? It sounds like this should be kept in the Graphics thread. But it's okay if threads overlap!

Oh, and I don't think the issue of how many civilizations are included in the game is really important - it's how many we should play with. But I think we all agree more flexibility in the number of civilizations that can play at one time is needed. We should be able to easily make the number up to 32, if we want to. However, I'd like to put up a warning message if you exceed 10, saying, "Warning: Increasing the number of civilizations could seriously increase the time needed to process...etc"

Oh, and the idea about civilizations merging into one and splitting into two is worthy of discussion. Should we make a list of civilizations and what civilizations can split off from them, to make it more realistic, like "Welsh, Celtic, Irish can split off English" instead of the weird scenario where the Spanish splits off from the Japanese? Or leave it entirely up to randomness?

Let's keep this going! Oh, and suggestions for new civilizations and getting rid of some are welcome. I, for one, think that the Nigerians and Nicaraguans should be deleted in favor of the Mali and the Mayans!

[the Octopus]

"That is a very good idea, but why make it specific to a civilization? In your own version of Earth, could Pasteur have lived in China? It seems to me that this kind of event could be turned into a 'random event' like in CivI."

I think the idea was to have it linked to the civilization you were playing, to draw you into the feeling of really being the "French", or whatever. Having a Chinese Pasteur would sort of ruin the whole thing for me, because I know Pasteur was French. The Chinese should have their own individuals, drawn from Chinese history. Why not kill civ-specific city names while you are at it? If all of the civs become too similar, it sort of ruins the effect, at least that's the way I see it (I can't speak for anybody else). If nothing is civ-specific anymore, you might as well be the Emperor of "Purple", fighting off the "Orange" invaders.


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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"


[This message has been edited by the Octopus (edited May 23, 1999).]

[Trachmyr]

I originally posted the Idea of Major/Minor civs.

REASON: By reducing what these civs do, you reduce the # of algorithims the computer must process, thus allowing a lager CIV count w/o serious degredation to the computer.
The Fact that many CIV played minor roles in history or part of history is just an added plus.

[evil conquerer]

I think that the civilizations should be very different from each other (as in the +1 research, -2 economy, etc.). If all the civilizations are the same, there is no point in choosing one or the other. The fact is that the Babylonians were pacifist and the Mongols were war-like. It's not racist because it doesn't imply that all the people in that civilization are that way. There probably were war-like Babylonians, too. But their foreign policy, overall, was pacifist. If all the civ's are the same, then the names become meaningless and the game loses interest. Nobody called SMAC racist for giving +2 planet to the Gaians or +25% attack to the Believers (ok, that may have offended some ).

[LordStone1]

Okay, so how about lumping together "categories" of civilizations, like one category would be Warlike, begin with Bronze Working, while another, Peaceful, would begin with Alphabet? You see, there's probably going to be 36+ civilizations in the game and it would probably be too time-consuming to assign each a different personality and special ability. This was how personalities worked in CivI/II - the Warlike ones were lumped under "white" and "purple" and so on...

Octopus, I believe it's important to get the feel of the "civ", not just the color. So, do you suggest that some kind of historian be on the team and research and pop in a scientist from each and every civilization in the game? "Let's see who's the brilliant Aztec scientist..." Or how about just plain "A brilliant Scientist has discovered Toilet-Making - now science has been boosted in Teochitchilan for 10 turns" and so on? What do you think?

[Rong]

I think Civ3 should incorporate some of the new research results. One example would be the ideas presented in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393317552/002-0596442-3237655">Guns, Germs, and Steel : The Fates of Human Societies</a>.

[Freddz]

1. As many as they can squeeze in, even though this that not a goal in itself.

2. The classic old ones as a first priority; preferebly have Arabs, and both Sweden(with Karl XII as leader ) and the Vikings in too(I wonder if that's possible in the same game though).

3. No, I don't want them to have special abilities. The people should form and grow special abilities from your government choices instead(if you war a long time your people may grow advantages in war).

4.Personally I would say no, but I would suggest an option for random/nonrandom personalities as in SMAC.

[the Octopus]

LordStone1: "So, do you suggest that some kind of historian be on the team and research and pop in a scientist from each and every civilization in the game?"

Hey, I identified the problem, it's only fair that you have to identify the solution .

Seriously, I don't know what the solution is, that's why I thought it could be discussed in this thread: "Some civilizations don't have easily identifiable historical figures, how do we reconcile that with a desire by some to feature historical figures in random events?".


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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"

[LordStone1]

Actually, I do not think it would be a bad idea to have some kind of unpaid historian to be a de facto member of the CivIII team, to research up on some stuff. I know plenty of people around here who would be good at that. Let's put that on the suggestion list! A historian on the team! Unpaid historian! (yes, I'm serious. You'd get your name pinned to the greatest game of all time, plus talk with BR)

OR (I pulled this off the Radical Ideas thread and changed it a bit) we have world-known historical leaders pop up? Like, Einstein. Surely his reputation transcends his nationality, right? How about Columbus? Confucius? Buddha? Ya know? Just general historial leaders that are more well-known for what they did than their nationality....

[This message has been edited by LordStone1 (edited May 23, 1999).]

[Mo]

Minor civilizations:
1. They shouldn't be able to participate in the united nations or have their powers limited. In the united nations today the important countries are in the security council and have more power in the united nationa than the other one do.
2. They should be able to merge together with another minor civ to form a major civ.
3. They can be integrated into a major civ. The minor one would have some autonomous control over itself. This could last the whole game or could end after 10-20 years.
4. A minor civ shouldn't try and attack a major civ alone unless the major civ is very weak and close to becoming a minor civ.
5. I think that any civilization with nukes should be considered a major civ even if they are geographicaly small or have a low population. This would be realistic since anyone with a nuke can posse a threat to any country no matter what size.

[Ecce Homo]

I still dislike the major/minor civ concept. Trachmyr, it is true that we have to reduce the amount agree that civs' strategies of AI algorithms, but - if there are a lot of civs, most of them will remain small and primitive.

LordStone1, I agree that civs' strategies should differ a lot. Now we have got alternatives aggressive-rational, expansionist-perfectionist and civilized-militaristic.

We could also have liberal-totalitarian, treacherous-faithful and isolationistic-cooperative.

Civs should have no individual properties. The SMAC colonists came from different cultural backgrounds on Earth - I suppose they had got different skills.

About Vikings - a Viking isn't a member of a tribe, but a Scandinavian sailor. Instead of Vikings we should have Swedes, Norwegians, Danes and Finns.

[Travathian]

I'd like to put my vote in for unique civs as far as special abilties, unless some vast improvement is made over the current AI.

[Shining1]

Personally, I like the civII set of civilisations - they give the main races around the world, and give them the name they had at the time they were great. Some I would like to add, however, because they were either forgotten or didn't qualify as 'great nations'.

Dutch
Polynesian
Mexican (as distinct from aztec or incan)

As well, there are two things to add character to Civs that I would like to suggest.

1) Minor techs
This idea would add a bunch of minor technologies, each with a single prereq. They each have a small chance of popping up between the time the main tech is discovered and the next one is found.

If each civilisation has a few of these which ALWAYS occur, it would add character and historical realism to the race. For instance, the english and the longbow, the chinese and 'china' type pottery, the greeks and their rowing cusions (which gave them a technique advantage at sea - info), the japanese and laminated armour, and the polynesians and early nagivation.

This is not to say other races never receive these discoveries, but that each race gets given

2) Historical names.
With the SMAC design workshop likely to be included in CivIII, each race has an oppotunity to receive specific names for certain designs - which should also always appear for that race. For instance, the english had knights, the americans have marines, the greeks had hoplite - adding these names or delving even further into historical information about them would add another level of character to each race - while doing nothing at all to the game balance.

Shining1

[Mo]

I would let the game start out with a lot of civilizations. The smaller ones would either be conquered or would merge with other civs so that after a while the would be less civs but larger ones like in Civ I&II. The idea of allowing two smaller civs to merge has been discussed in the diplomacy thread. I would like that the civs have their own personality, but this personality can change during the game. An event which would cause this would be surrendering in a war( this again was discussed in Diplomacy).