RADICAL IDEAS (ver 2.0): Hosted by korn469

[Ecce Homo]

New radical idea:

One year turns throughout the game

Advantages[*]Generally sensible - time has not exactly slowed down during the last centuries[*]More emphasis on ancient history (which is under-represented, in my opinion)[*]In Civ 1/2, turns in the ancient era are at average a few seconds, in the last century several minutes.[*]More sensible movement chronology - a unit does no longer need many centuries to cross a continent.

Problem[*]Extremely long games, with very little action each turn. The game length would increase from 600 to 6000 turns.

Solution[*]The player should just have a few things to take care of each turn. A bit of this could be done by using CtP's systems for trade and terraforming. Unit movement could be made easier with improved GoTo functions.

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The best ideas are those that can be improved.
Ecce Homo

[korn469]

everyone look at Ecce Homo's post. from reading Brian Reynold's post about the LIST, (if you haven't read it yet, please do) it seems that naming your idea, linking it to the past then setting out what problems it solves and what advantages it offers is an excellent way of helping us to debate the merits of ideas. It also in the form that Brian Reynolds said sparked discussion amongst the members of firaxis. Ecce Homo post is an excellent archetype to follow!

korn469

[FinnishGuy]

More points on my idea about per turn scoring (see above):

- It would be a better measure of your success throughout the game.
- In the CIV2 style end-of-game scoring you can "artificially" increase your points by allocating a big portion of your income to luxuries just before the score is recorded. Now OK there's nothing wrong with that, but the situation thus created is not very representative of your civilization's normal state of affairs. Turn by turn scoring would eliminate the need for this trick.

[Fugi the Great]

Fixing the problem of unit becoming obsolete before they are built.

I could never really figure out why it always took so blasted long to "build" a unit, usually several years if not decades, and even centuries in the early years. And why is the "city" building the military unit anyway?
Have a company something like Rockwell, Boeing, Northrup ..., build the hardware. The nation buys the completed hardware and then takes delivery of the new hardware at a fort, base, or port someplace to meet up with the conscripted or volunteer human part. Then have them train a while with the new hardware. I'm thinking something like the nation putting in an order to Acme Armaments for 3,000 tanks, where we would get a certain number of them per year at $1,234,567 each or whatever (depends on how many they can make a year and any incentives you may provide to make them faster), say maybe 500, so in six years we would get all our tanks. Then raise a human army to use those tanks, 5 people per tank plus support and maintenance personnel for each so say 10 people for each, so raise an extra 5,000 people per year for those tanks. Of course the only reason we had a defense contract with Acme was because Rugen International Armaments cost $200,000 more each, though they could have made 1,000 tanks per year, but since we currently are not at war and are trying to pinch every dollar we can, there is no hurry. Of course we could have bought them from a different country even cheaper, but that would mean unemployment at home, and putting money in a rival nations pockets to be used against us in the future. And you probably won't be needing to buy new hardware every year, just pay for the upkeep, and save up for the next batch of new "toys".

Just because your country has 20,000 tanks doesn't mean a blasted thing if you don't have the personnel to use them, and taking 200,000 people out of the civilian world to run the tanks will definitely have a effect on your economy. Ask the leader of Libya, Colonel Gaddafi (any misspelling is not intended as an insult) why he has 4,000 plus tanks in his arsenal but couldn't use a third of them if he tried due to insufficient tank troops in his army.

Flavor Dave - I play on large maps, and I play to win by military conquest. Usually ends up being very long games. 100+ citys may have been a slight exaggeration, but not by much.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Fugi the Great (edited July 16, 1999).]</font>

[Ecce Homo]

Thank you, Korn469! I got the idea from the Firaxis forum, where the ideas are rather few, but well written.

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The best ideas are those that can be improved.
Ecce Homo

[Rusty Nail]

The Princess Factor! A radical suggestion. Historically many civílizations united against their foes by intermarriage - prince weds princess. My suggestion for civ3 is a new, rather expensive unit that first appears in mid-to-late game - the "princess". The princess unit can be used to force a merger of your civilization with any other with which you have an embassy, with you as leader, of course. A condition is that the combined population is less than the largest civ on the map at the time( Otherwise it is too powerful). And you also have to get her to their capital without being killed off. This may not be easy if your opponents ( or your target for that matter) get wind of your plans. This strategy can only be used once for each player, and only for absorbing AI's, not human civ's. The idea is to introduce some interesting new strategies which are consistent with historical events, and to make it a little more difficult for the civ with a big lead that thinks it has won the game already. A merger is roughly equivalent to buying all the AI's cities for the cost of the princess. Therefore the princess is a very dear unit - like your own daughter. The designers may want to make this optional. It might be too powerful, but maybe not. It gives the civs that are behind a chance to recover. It could be a wonder, but I have a feeling that everyone should have a shot at getting a princess. Perhaps the AI's should also be allowed to merge,rather than just be allies against the leading civ.
Comments anyone?

[korn469]

rusty nail

i'm saying this as a poster not a thread manager...i think that the princess unit is a good idea, but i think the way you have your idea set up it would be too powerful. for one thing a princess unit should only work on a monarchy and maybe despotism...definatly not on a republic, and maybe make it something to do in the diplomacy screen...i like the idea of having princesses in the game i just don't think you should be able to buy an entire civ out with one

korn469

[Fugi the Great]

Princess idea - cool.

I'm assuming that the AI players get to do the same thing? Might have to tone it down to a forced non-aggression pact or alliance though, otherwise the player may end up becoming part of an AI country almost instantaneously if he is near the bottom of the totem pole (especially in the beginning). Why only one daughter, why not lots of them (while in the ages of despotism and monarchy), but just not all at the same time? Probably should also slow time down a bit to make this truly usable and semi-realistic.

[loinburger]

Harel: I like that idea. How exactly would you determine the relative powers of civs, though? (money? trade? labs? population? variable?)
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by technophile (edited July 21, 1999).]</font>

[Harel]

I will post this both in social changes and radical changes, as it a truely a fundemntal change to civ. However, it relates to the social change screen.

Big civ vs Small civ

And no, I don't mean another post on minor civs. Not at all. I am talking about the power balance in today world.

Now, the USA, for example span 250 million people and a production value of 9 trillion dollars. My own country, for relevence ( Israel ) has 6 million people and and a total GNP 110 billion dollars.
Now, is the US has a 80 times stronger political, militarical, and scientifcal power? Hardly.
Small countries are often stronger then thier size. In civ II, a civ with 30 cities was 10 times stronger then one with 3 cities ( if not more ). If both players play equally well, atleast.
This isn't true in real life, like I alborate. Taking Israel example again, it's the lead country in several technologies ( rocketery, moleculric biology and aeronotics ) and it's army is extreamly well trained.
While there is no doubt that America can win a war with Israel, a total war such as this would create much more casaulties for the US then what Israel apparant size might suggest.

Monaco produce much more money ( due to trade and tourrism ) then thier size.

Switzerland is a rather small country in popultion, but they have the highest GNP per person in the world. And so on.

Even moderete size countries, such as France, England and germany ( moderete in comparsion with russia and the us ) they posses a great political and industrial which exel thier size.

The point is, that smaller civ can compete, somewhat with thier bigger opponenets.
The way this can be addressed in civ III is having a culmative social modificator.

What do I mean? The "power" model will add, for example +10% for the morale in a US size civ, but a +50% bonus for a civ like Israel. Same thing for science, economy, etc.
In the one region the smaller civ choose to excel, it while get a much bigger bonus from the same modifactor then a mighter civ might get even if she choose the same modifactor.
Either "knowldge" will add a fix +research points ( which, ofcourse will effect a small civ much more then a bigger civ ) or the +% they get will depend upon the total resources.
I do belive this will make civ much more intersting, as conquering smaller civ will be much more diffuclt. Opening the road for the much missed diplomacy, trade and scientific learning. The peacful world which lacks in civ II ( atleast, it doesn't have that much appeal as in the real world ).
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Harel (edited July 21, 1999).]</font>

[Jimmy]

Ideology played a major role in History so I would like to see it play a big role in civ3. To accomplish this, I suggest that each citizen be associated with a SE choice to represent the ideology of your population. It could be done by putting the SE choice in parenthesis underneath the citizen icon like the production is in parenthesis under the city in SMAC.
If a majority of citizens in a city have the same SE choice as you have in your screen then you would have a "We love the ... day" (or golden age for SMACers). When drone riots do occur, they would demand that you change your SE choices to match theirs. If sufficient amount of your cities were in a drone riots then you would risk a real "civil war". If you still refused to change SE choices, then those rioting cities would make their own civ. Some of the military units in the city would change sides.
The SE choice of a citizen would influence when it becomes a "drone". For example, citizens with the "power" choice would become drones if you losed a city in battle. "Wealth" citizens would become drones if taxes were too high. "democracy" citizens would become drones if you were a tyranny. "Green" citizens would become drones if there were too much pollution etc...
Your psych rating would slowly influence citizens toward your SE choices. This would work faster under a communist system than a democracy.
You could also influence (to a small degree) the SE choices of other civs, by sending a spy to a foreign city and telling to "convert" existing drones to a specific SE choice. It would only influnce existing drones. So, a city with no drones would have no effect.

The benefits of this system would be IMO:
- a new important concept: ideology as a force in history.
- deeper gameplay: real revolutions and civil wars.
- more strategies: SE choices would not be so easily changed constantly. You could influence other civs ideologically, maybe successfully start a revolution (in History, civs did play big roles in other civ's civil wars or revolutions).

[dinoman2]

I think that the 'princess' idea is waaay to powerful. It should be an automatic alliance, instead of 'merging' the civilizations. it would be more difficult to achieve a conquer victory now, because other civilizations would keep on getting an alliance with you. However, it should definitely be only possible with monarchy.

On a similar note, it would be neat if like every 40 or 50 years, you would 'die' and a new leader would come in. Then eventually he would die, and so on. Each leader would have their one advantages and disadvantages. For example, one would be a millitary genius and would give your units morale advantages, another one would be a brilliant economist and would encourage the growth of economy and trade, etc. It would add a touch of realism to the game, and also you could try to change your society to encourage a particular leader type.

Also, I will be SEVERELY dissapointed if the game doesn't continue in to the future. To not do this would be a step down from ctp, and then your getting pretty low indeed. And the more space colonization and the like that can be fit into the game, the better.

Oh well, just my two cents worth.

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"Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will"
-Mikhail Bakunin

[korn469]

jimmy

instead of writing their social engineering choice under the person (because it'd be impossible to do when you had a large city) you could make a different citizen icon for each of the SE choices...for example, power people could wear camo, wealth could wear tuxedos or something like that, but good idea!

dinoman2

i already have the leader dies every so often in the summary so don't worry they know about it

korn469

[Xin Yu]

Wonders, after expired, may become a tourist attraction and give you a percentage of each civ's annual income, provided that you pay a maintainance cost. Your choice.

There should be some wonder/city impovements which have NEGATIVE effects. For example, a foreign missioner can convert your temple to produce unhappy citizens, the effect will last for a period even if you sell the temple; however if you don't have the temple, you don't have the negative effect. Another example, the marketplace can be converted to black market and eat your income.

[korn469]

Xin Yu

when you say negative effects are you talking about effects like the genejack factory in SMAC or is your idea different? can you please explain it a little more.

korn469

[Fugi the Great]

I think he was talking about a city improvement that gets subverted by the enemy, and instead of the improvement helping you to make citizens happier or get more money, it would do the exact opposite what it was built for, making citizens unhappier or taking money from your treasury. Somewhat like what they did in CTP where you could file a injunction, sue the city, set up corporate branches, using televangelists, subnural ads, clerics. I'm assuming that there will be some way to get rid of the "bad" city influence like they did in CTP. The Genejack improvement(if improvement you want to call it) of SMAC is more of a negative effect that is permanent until it is sold off, and you bring the negative effects to your city all by yourself.

[ember]

Divorcing resource gathering from cities.

My idea is basically that TI villages, all size 1, farm and mine. (size 2 might give a 50-75% increase, for late game). THese goods are all automatically sent to a nearby host city(you choose which) or region. The city only gathers resources from it's square, but all the extra population is in the form of labourers, traders, and scientists.

Cities are hadled mostly as now.
Villages are TI's. Vilage improvments are also TI's. adding advanced farms, or silos, or a bettermines are all TI's.
By this model, a farmer would have to support ~twice as many pop as in CIV2.
All Food and natural resouces are 'made' in terrain squares.
All industry and trade are 'made' in cities, by citizens.


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"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[Gordon the Whale]

This is a biasic summary of the continued thread on Villages, which was ember's idea first. It got a fair bit of discussion in the Economy thread, but was respectfully asked to leave by the threadmaster. I think it makes a good balance between fugi the Great's system and the Civx system. Here are the basic components as I see them (anybody else who contributed on that thread, please correct me.)

1) Villages are the primary method of gathering resources. They are the only place to put "average" people, i.e. not specialists. However, they exist externally to the city, on the surrounding squares. They gather the materials from the square they sit on and nowhere else.

2) Cities contain only specialists. These include scientists, entertainers, and workers. (Maybe also merchants?) Workers produce Industry, which is used to process the resources harvested in the countryside.

3) Villages contain the agrarian population. If they are destroyed by an invading army, so is the population contained.

4) The food production from a tile must be approximately twice that in CivX, because Specialists (i.e. city dwellers) are now necessary from the beginning, and must be supported.

5) Villages would be built by a "Public Works" type system, rather than by a unit. They could be autobuilt by the AI or queued by the player.

I believe that is the basic idea, upon which all in favor of the idea at all are agreed. (Again, correct me) Here are additional suggestions:

1) Villages don't count toward the maximum people in the city from Aqueducts, etc.

2) Villages don't count towards any particular city, but are shared within a region. Obviously, this would require regions.

3) Villages are divided into at least two types, mining and farming. Each type will act differently, producing either more food or more resources. A farming village on a forest square could become a logging village.

4) Villages may increase in size beyond 1. When they do so, their maximum production increases, but with diminishing returns (size 2 doesn't produce double what size 1 does.)

5) The second point of size (and any more) may be of a different type, i.e., a size 1 farming village becomes a size 2 farming/mining village.

6) When a village reaches a certain size (3? 4?), it becomes a city on its own.

7) Villages must be built in a square adjacent to either the city or another village.

8) The maximum distance from the main city would be dependant upon the technology level, or perhaps whether it is linked by road, railroad, etc.


Now here are some I have come up with that are new:

1) Allow the farmers/miners/loggers to come into the city in times of war. The villages could still be destroyed, but those are quicker to build than population. The population would be saved, but the extra people in the city would contribute to disease, and you wouldn't be getting any resources from the land.

2) What about Ocean squares? It doesn't make sense to build Villages in the Ocean. 2 options I see, which could work in conjunction: Cities with Harbors may make Fisherman specialists, which each allow one Ocean square to be harvested, and coastal Villages would have the option to be a Fishing Village, which uses none of it's own square, but harvests out of an ocean square. Under idea 5, this could be combined with a mining or farming village.

3) As an extension of idea 6 above: This is the ONLY way to make a new city until the discovery of a certain advance, which allows settlers. A Settled City (Colony) starts its own region, while Grown Cities belong to the same region as the Village they grow from. This would take the necessity of production away from expansion, since one wouldn't need to necessarily build cities with settlers. There would also have to be a way to split regions… Maybe by building a provincial capital, you would get to select the borders of a new region.

I also posted to Terrain and TI.

[Gordon the Whale]

As to the complaints about construction dictated by the government being unrealistic and undying leaders, I offer this solution:

Go find the box you bought Civilization in. (I hope you didn't pirate it! Those boys deserve to be rich!) Civilization II would work. Even Call to Power. Now, what is the biggest word on that box? It isn't emperor, it isn't dynasty. It isn't government. What is it? Well, it's Civilization. To me, this implies that I'm not playing a leader, a government, or a dynasty. I am playing a Civilization. I'd like to see the entire concept of the "leader" thrown out. I am the Civilization. To anybody that says, "How can you play a civilization? That's not realistic," I would suggest that you go buy yourself a nice flight simulator, or indeed, stop playing computer games entirely and go do something real. You'll find that more realistic. But I find that viewing civilization as playing a civilization, rather than a leader or a government, makes it much more realistic and enjoyable. (It also helps to realize the scale of the map, assume cities to be city-states, and realize that units are armies.) The amount of controll you are given is much more realistic. To those who don't want to manage city production, I say, "Go buy a war game." Civilization is a civilization game, and if you remember that, I think everyone will be much happier. At the same time, I think Firaxis needs to make that more clear by dropping the pretense of having a "leader."

Fugi: I'm impressed. You're the only person I've ever seen who consistantly makes longer posts then me. Congrats.

[ember]

Gordon, I have a couple clarifications and extensions to add.

1) resources and food are generated in villages, any 'trade' or 'idustry' produced in them is used by the villages to support themselves. Only extra food and reosurces are shiped out.

2) cities produce all useable trade and industry. Varisu specialist types, the normals +laboureres to start and more types later.

3) villages are constructed without resource cost. It takes the same time as a unit fortifying to move or create a village. All expenses of this are covered by the resources not generated during the move. This allows you to ship the villagers back in to your cities.

4) costal villages. Put the icon for the village on the shore, but in the costal square. The pop is counted as being there, and can be killed by bombard capable ships. Oil platforms actually house their pop in the open ocean, this is the only time that deep ocean squares are harvested up to modern times. ( I don't see why you can harvest from deep ocean squares, when your treiems can't even go there...)

5) no need to deferentiate vilage types. Use regular tile improvments, like farms and mines.

6) settlers could be used to start remote villages without using them up (colonies on nearrby islands, etc. Still a distance limit, and only costal to start.

Other points:

a) terrain types that cities becomes even more imoprtant. they don't generate resources, but different terrain types would give growth and trade bonuses, espicially river, and costal.

b) I have proposed that food affects happiness, which affects gowth, not directly.
This removes the potential cheese of puting next to all your citizens on farms to boost growth. It would work a bit, but with highly diminishing returns...

c) At the start only one city per region, but as tech advances you get to select which ones go in. Regions would then split the villages according to the closest city. You could move the border if you wanted, but there is a max # of squares within the border depending on tech.

d) I think that vilalges should never be able to grow into cities without direct intevention ( a setler, which represents an infusion of infrastructure) spontanteous cities would be bad, because you would suddenly have a shift in available resources and loss of stratigc control.

That's all for now...

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"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[MBrazier]

Re: Xin Yu's "negative effects"

Over on the RELIGION topic, I suggested something very like Xin Yu's example. Here's a quotation from the RELIGION summary, giving the bare bones of the idea:

"Each populated tile would have its religion, and in end of turns each would try to convert others... Missionary units would try to convert tiles they are walking on. For every N (N being parameter set at config file) tiles converted to state religion one citizen would become content, and temples and cathedrals would lower N locally. On the other hand, for every N tiles unconverted one citizen becomes unhappy."

In other words, you would pick one religion as a state religion; citizens belonging to that religion would then become a little happier, and citizens who didn't would become a little unhappier. Temples, cathedrals, and similar improvements would intensify both these effects. And missionaries (a special non-attacking unit) would wander over the map preaching to, and hopefully converting, any citizens they met.

You will see at once that this would create a neat subversive tactic: sending missionaries into enemy territory to convert the other civilization's people from its state cult to yours. The enemy's temples slowly change from riot-suppressors into riot-generators as the religious balance shifts.

I wonder, is it possible to build other systems with the same sort of disadvantage? That is, a wonder/improvement with mainly good effects, but which also makes you vulnerable to a savvy opponent?

[korn469]

originally i must say that i was totally against all the various ideas of housing people in squares outside the city. however, with the last couple of post you have proved your case and changed my mind. you now have one more convert for the village idea. i don't think the idea is fully worked out yet but i think it's getting there.

first off i have a few questions i'd like to see clarified.

1.when you build a village with public works does this automatically add a point of population to your civ?

2. is there a limit to how many people can be brought into the city? lets say you have 15 village sqaures in your region and your city has a population of eight people, an army invades. can you suddenly bring in all 15 people?

3. how is unhappinessy handled in the villages?

hmm that's all i can think of for now.

here's a list of specialist that you can have in your city, the first name is their ancient name the second is their modern name. like in SMAC a certain technology upgrades the specialist. some of the specailists have subsets of specialists.

1. artisan/laborer: these specialist process minerals. starting off each of these specialist can only process 2 minerals. later on after the discovery of the assembly line or something, each one of these can process 4 minerals. if you have only 2 artisans then your city can only use 4 minerals on production, even if your mining villages are sending more minerals than that to your city.

modifers: process 2 minerals

2. merchant/trader: these specialist generate money and they allow your city to open trade routes. your city cannot engage in trade with other cities until you have at least one merchant specailist in it. the maximum number of trade routes are limited by the number of merchants in your city.

modifers:+4 to economy, establish tade routes

3. wise men/scientist: self-explanitory. these specialist allow you to discover new technologies. the more you have the quicker you research.

modifers: +4 to labs

4. actors/entertainers: these specialists make your citizens happy.

modifers: +4 to pysch

ok now these specialist are less conventional but would add to the game.

5. military specialists: these specialist represents the military-industrial complex of your empire. they represent soldiers, support, and the people making weapons. it takes money to support them, working for the army is a good job, and military research speeds weapons research. units are no longer supported by sheilds but instead by support points. each unit requires from zero (guerillas) to three (stealth bombers) support points. each city generates a small amount of support points (1 point for five people in a city) after that you have to have military specialists to generate more support points (your level of support in social engineering determine how many support points each military specialist generates)

modifers: -2 to economy, +1 pysch, 2 labs (+2 if researching war tech, -2 if researching peace tech) + support points (depends on your level of support)

6. official/buerocrats: these are the representatives of the government. they collect taxes and help to assimilate the population into your civ, and keep them loyal. however too many of these can be a burden on the people and make them very upset.

modifers: +2 economy, 1 psych (+1 pysch if you have two or less in your city, -1 pysch if you have more than two in your city) helps to assimilate people into your empire

7. priest/clergy: these represent your religious organization. these priest convert your population to your religion and in general make people happy.

modifers: +3 pysch +1 economy -1 research, converts people to your religion

8. philosphers/philosphers: these people look for the meaning of life and man's place in it. they seek for each person to find their place in society. however they look at the consequences of all actions and they are conscientious objectors.

modifers: +2 pysch +2 research -1 support point

so what do you think?

korn469
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited July 30, 1999).]</font>

[Jon Miller]

nice ideas on both villages and specialists, like the idea of laborers (maybe you can stockpile resources?)

don't see why philosphers are so good, I think that they where just an ancient cross between wisemen and preists (there have been more recent ones too, no argument, but they where like social sceintists and social priests), beauroctrats should take down corruption or something, maybe even certain se choices would demand certain levels of beauractrats for every 5 citizens

Jon Miller

[korn469]

Jon Miller

well i just came up with most of the specialist ideas today after i read the village idea thread. it is just a rough idea but iu think we can work it out. and the thing with philospheres is that i wanted to come up with around 10 different kinds of specialists. each one will have some kind of special ability (hence the term specialist). and they will provide positives and negatives, where they are balanced. so that you wouldn't just have one kind of specialist in everyone of your cities in every game you play.

the idea about stockpiling minerals is a good one. maybe you can only stockpile a certain amount, but you could have some kind of base facility to increase your storage ability.

i like the idea of beurocrats taking down corruption and making your people less likely to revolt. each specialist needs some kind of special ability. i have a challenge for everyone, come up with a balanced specialist type with some neat special ability. keep the discussion going and lets refine these ideas. they are really good. i really hope firaxis listens to the village idea.

korn469

ps do you like saving private ryan?

[Jon Miller]

hmm, Private Ryan was cool

wisemen were ancient religious leaders as well

we could have artists (mucisians, sculptorists, paintists, ect.): they would get better by certain technologies

such as classical music, maybe others (technology in arts)

different techs would give different powers to the artist special unit

most of the pluses would be in luxuries with maybe a similar minus to philophers in being pacifists (with certain technologies)

we could even have rock&roll be a tech (or electric guitar)

Jon Miller

[ember]

korn465: Here are some clerificattions for the village system as I see it. As always if anyone puts in a better idea, i'm willing to change.

To your questions.
1. NO. You can set the city/region to autobuild villages. Normally this would be about half of your pop. points in the city, half out, but it requires growth to make new villages. Under this system you would need twice the number of pop. points as with civX, so growth should be twice as fast.

2. There doesn't need to be a limit. You just have to have the infrastructure to deal with all the overcrowding and some way to get food and resources from elsewhere...
It would probably be easier to tell you villagers to pack up and move to a new location than into the city. In the late game (after UN built?) killing villages would be a minor atrocity. You can still pilage the mines and farms, etc. without penalty.

3. Unhappiness doesn't seem to much of an issue to me. Beacue the number of pop points in the cities will be the same as before, the happiness sytem can be the same.

On your ideas for labourers, I see idustry somewhat differently.
Labour is not directly related to resources for making units/structures. Labour represents the number of man-years needed to build things. Resources represent the physical material needed.
A legion and a musketter take the same amount of resources (iron, etc.) to build, but it takes much more work to build the muskets and assemble the unit, than a legion.
Some units only require one type. Spy's and other special units only require labour.
Labourer's (the specialists) are still good, they would just add much more industry than anyother city dweller.

I would also add some later types to your list, like the middle class for modern times, the middle class is overall more productive than any other type before, but is generalized (produces a bit of everything, rather than just idustry or trade). These would repalce earlier generalist types, like sefs or peasents.

A lot of the concept of speciallists is sort of silly. A whole pop point doesn't become scientists, only a few do, the rest are regular citizens. Maybe of your citydwellers only half the citizens after the 4th can specialize.

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[korn469]

ember

you lost me again
i don't see how your system works.

1. Under this system you would need twice the number of pop points as with civX...
Unhappiness doesn't seem to much of an issue to me. Because the number of pop points in the cities will be the same as before, the happiness sytem can be the same

you said that there needs to be about twice the people than in civ2. however you said that happiness really doesn't matter for villages since you have the same number of people in your city. on transcend in SMAC after your first person everyone is unhappy. in the village system if you have a city size 4, that means you have 4 villagers in the fields who are happy. and then only three in the city who aren't happy. that needs to be addressed. there needs to be some system for making the villagers happy.

2. The city only gathers resources from it's square, but all the extra population is in the form of labourers, traders, and scientists...
A lot of the concept of speciallists is sort of silly. A whole pop point doesn't become scientists, only a few do, the rest are regular citizens. Maybe of your city dwellers only half the citizens after the 4th can specialize

are villages a terrain improvement? if they are why have people live in them? what is the advantage over the current tile/city system? if you have to have a point of population living in the villages then what do the people in the cities do if they aren't specialist? the villages harvest the land and the city workers harvest the land? i thought that the idea was for all the people living in the city to represent specialized labor. in your system you have people living on the land working it, and what you are saying is that you have people living in cities working the land. it offers no advantages and only more micromanagement.

those are some ideas that contridict each other and they make the system hard to understand.

i'm not sure if i understand your industry system. tell me if this is right. it takes 10 shields to make a legion and it requires 10 industry. it takes 10 sheilds and 20 industry to build a musketeer. a artisan/laborer generates industry right? if that's how it works it an ok idea. but there still needs to be some wayto limit the number of resources a city can process in a turn. maybe you have to build factories or something to increase the amount of resources you city can process.

for this system to work it needs to be fairly simple. it needs to reduce micromanagement not add to it. it needs to address and solve the problem of ICS, and help to curtail an early cheese rush. it needs to add to strategy and give flexable paths to victory.

korn469

[DarthVeda]

I couldn't figure out where else to put this but...

How about having a tab-feature for the powergraph. The user could select which feature he or she wanted to examine. There would be an OVERALL, a MILITARY, a MONEY/INFRASTRUCTURE, and a TECH tab. Each one would rate the abilities of each nation.

The military tab would not only take in to account the number of units, but also their tech level.

[itokugawa]

About scoring:
every round adds some points to the total score. So the final score does not depend only on the final result (spaceship is included in the score only if you win the space race).

Factors to calculate score:
All demographics except these which lead to calculating twice the same things (i.e. family size affects the future of population so it should not be included).

At the end of the game also should be included points for city improvements (you cannot sell so easily the useless universities to buy spaceship), reputation, foreign affairs (war, peace, ceace fire, alliance, hostile, enthousiastic, cordial etc.).

Finally, Babylonian civilisation now does not exist. Nevertheless hanging gardens belong to it and we remember also Hammurabi's laws. The "score" of Babylonians in human civilisation is definetely far from 0.

[itokugawa]

Also I believe that attack must not be something easy. Germans in WWII were much more powerful than British in air but they didn't destroy all british military units by bombardment and then captured London with paratroopers. On the contrary they couldn't land in England.

It is totaly unacceptable by me that units can disembark ships and attack at the same round. When a unit disembarks from a ship it should have no more moves (as in Civ1). The exception of marines should remain but their power should be reduced by 50% when they make amphibious ansault. Similarly paratropers must finish their move after paradrop and do not be able to capture cities with paradrop.

At last, every army is vulnerable when disembarks from ships as well as a paratrooper during paradrop.