c177# WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE AT THE BOTTOM OF MY SHOE?

[Grumbold]

I agree, provided you moved to a model of one unit of population/tile worked harvesting say 10/20/30 food rather than 1/2/3 food. Then the point of population representing 200,000 people could eat 20 food to support itself and a unit of 20,000 could eat 1 bushel. At the moment you would need to have support costs of fractional bushels of grain which is just messy and horrible.

I am a fan of the higher movement point system but constrained by supply limits. Balanced well, it could be a positive step. Unfortunately it needs to move to the Civ 4 or Alt Civ board to get a fair hearing anytime in the foreseeable future.

[korn469]

Grumbold says that the problem with using bushels to model the cost of military units is that each bushel supports a different number of people in different eras.

i don't think that is a problem that needs to be worried about, because if you think about it...the first settler represents 10,000 people, and once you found a city it works one tile...if you had a city that represented 5 million people one head works one tile...so basically forget about the messed up total population figures...they don't really mean much...if you did go by them then different cities would pay different support cost based on their size, and that could get really confusing and would also be open to abuse...like if you home a stealth bomber to a size one city it might only take one food, where if it was at a size 10 city it would take six food or something strange like that

i think though that gold from the civ's treasury might be quite possibly the best simple idea to go with...personally i like gold, oil, and shields...but hey i am all for a pure gold system also...that means if your country is broke you can't have the largest army every

instead of supply limits how about once a unit is so far from a base that it takes like 5 or 10% damage everytime it moves...this is so no carivals circumnaviate the globe by 1 A.D.

[Recurve]

Originally posted by Zealot
Gee Recurve, your brain really need a vacation! It's been seven days, and you still didn't post your oppinion!

I've been thinking about this problem DAY AND NIGHT for over a week!!! You obviously don't appreciate the complexity of logistics.

Must get back to thinking.

[Miznia]

Hi. This is my first msg on Apolyton.

I think it would take an awful lot to make Civ realistic in military matters. I don't think I'd like such a game, actually. Here are a few thoughts of mine, though.

I do, like that other guy Chevin, absolutely, completely hate the way happiness works in Civ. It's like one more chore to handle without any room for strategy. I think the whole idea of unhappiness resulting from population growth should be taken out. Most the time I find myself rejoicing when I get a Civil Disorder msg because it means I got another dude.

I don't know what I'd like in its place. The Luxury component of Trade just doesn't seem like a good idea to me, but without it, it wouldn't really be Civ, I suppose. I'm happy with the Senate blocking your actions, and I'd enjoy having happy people get some kind of productivity bonus (Liberty Bells!), but I think that your people should just by and large be very content.

However, something that I think would go a long way, would be if conquered cities (built by a different civ) were very unproductive, or occasionally went Barbarian on you if unoccupied, that sort of thing. Perhaps eventually they could be assimilated into your civ, but until that point, it could serve as a "speed bump" in warmongering games. Civ3 will have something like that, won't it?

Better alliances with the computer players are a must. You should have to make/help a friend now and then, rather than always picking your own fights, in which case the computers should gang up on you. ...I started playing Civ1 a couple of days ago, after like an 8 year break, and it was pretty stunning and clear to me how useless (but dangerous) other players are, except when conquered. It's like they're Martians or something. The sooner you assimilate them, the better.

I think you get way too many units free of maintenance. Enough said...

And lastly, I think something like morale should be in the game. Unit loss could spontaneously cause a random dude to go unhappy.

Miznia

[Mech Assassin]

I think, the conquered city should be happy, if the old ruler made their being worse than the new. They should go unhappy and such, if you don't treat them well.

On the diplomacy topic, I think, you should be able to make a whole lot more complex plans with comp that SMAC type "attack this city with all forces" type. Planning the assaults with allied chiefs should be more like, you plan an assault route by choosing the routes (not only the target, but the route to the target. The target could be some land square or a city. Then, you could order them to hold some position or something, IE. order your allies and move your own forces to hold the surrounding area of a city and therefore make the forces there and the population in it to starve. Also, when the way to a city is blocked, I think, the trade routes, that possibly are there shouldn't work anymore (maybe the world map could show, what routes the trade trucks are using and if enemy blocks the way, you must destroy the blocking force in order to gain from the routes again)), your allies should use to send their forces and if your ally agrees (I think, it should ponder the possible problems, like force losses) in that, it would really use the way to use AI allies and attacking against enemies. AI should also suggest strategies, not only you.

[Cookie Monster]

I agree with Miznia's statements regarding happiness.

WRT cities becoming crowded I think that when a city reaches a certain pop level than it should spread out and occupy another tile much like real cities do.

One thing I've noticed that in the past civ type games when you verbally threaten someone they usually laugh at you (I'm talking the AI opponents here). It seems that no matter how mighty you are militarily they just ignore you until you actually inflict damage upon them. I'd like to see the AI take human threats a little more seriously. I'm not saying that they should cave into your demands all the time. Just when the situation looks bad for the AI.

[Miznia]

Mech Assassin,
I haven't been around here very long, but what do you mean by a civ treating a city better or worse...? I'm not sure what that would mean. I think if you conquer Bordeaux from France, the Bordeauvians should be unhappy. If you liberate your own people, they should be happy. There should be no (big) change if you're Britain, say, and you conquer Qingdao from France. Is it this last case where you think the city's treatment should be taken into account?

Another thing: If you liberate an ally's city, you should be forced to hand it over. At least by war's end.

Miznia

[Mech Assassin]

Well, think about this. During WW2, SU citizen had very bad livingconditions. They were actually happy when the German invaders came in. However, as the German forces forced them to work and so on, they thought that SU was better and started to rebel. Would the Germans have treated them well, they would gladly became part of Germany. This is what I'm after. If some cities have a very bad ruler and then some Solomon the Wise comes and frees them, I bet they wouldn't rebel.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

HI Guys,

I agree 100% with MechAssassin. I think how a cities populace responds to an invader should depend on several factors: a) cultural strength, b) distance from original capital and c) current living conditions. If all 3 of these are bad (as they were with SU in WWII-remember that many of the Western-most cities were in "Sattelite" states!) Then the population would most likely treat the conquorer as a liberator. After this point, however, the way the new owner treats the city should determine the possibility of revolt. Of course, under these conditions, it might be possible for a rebelling city to simply become "neutral" (ie. independant of both Civs).

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker

[Miznia]

That'd require a more complicated kind of game than I was picturing, I think. Trying to imagine. Do you picture, say, an "hours of work per week" slider with which you could get more produce than usual from your people?

Another complicated thing I see is that it would be tricky/tedious for the German-controlling player to specify how hard he's going to work his newly conqueren Soviets.

Not sure about cultural strength. That's something in Civ3, right? I think I read that. Hard for me to imagine how that should work. I thought it was just to serve as an "ICS" check?

I don't think I like the "distance from original capital" criteria... Surely the western-most satellites would (given an equal standard of living, say) prefer to be ruled by Russia than by Germany...? And as far as seeing the conqueror as a liberator, wouldn't we have to make sure that the conquered cities go unhappy, once it becomes clear that they aren't going to be liberated?

Just thoughts.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Miznia,

Actually what I had in mind was a system used in "Birth of the Federation". You could basically build structures on a planet which utilized forced labour, like labour farms, labour camps and forced labour mines. These gave the planet much higher outputs in production, resources and food, but at a cost of happiness. I think you should be able to build these things in your cities (I also think that you should be able to enslave part of the population of a captured city and move them to one of your own cities-but thats another story!)
Basically to deal with the impacts of unhappiness you can either garrison more troops in that city, impose martial law or build other punitive structures in that city (like gulags and concentration camps). Note that none of these options should be able to reduce unhappiness, simply reduce the impact of it!
Distance from the capital should be a factor, but not as big as overall happiness and culture.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Mech Assassin]

Culture could also be a factor. If the city has more happy citizens in he new hands, they treat the new ruler as a liberator. If the city has equal or less happy citizens than with the previous ruler, they'd treat him as a conqueror.

With conqueror, unhappiness would rise and if you leave the city without military forces, it'll either declare independent (if the former was had too few happy citizens also) or join to former, if the former was a good leader. Of course, if they're under good rule for long time, they'd turn to normal citizens.

With liberator, they'd be just like your normal citizen, except for few turns even more effective (they gladly help their new master, but when the years pass, they'll eventually calm down and act as normal ones).