Ideas...

[Kyle]

and stealing features from other games.

First, levels of international involvement and relations.

Isolationist: Where a nation pretty much stays away from the other major civs, but interacts/interferes fully with the minor nations (ie the US in the early 20th century).

Regional Power: Big shot in your local area, but not much of anything elsewhere (China in about five years)

Great Power: 19th century Europe. No further explaination should be needed.

Superpower: You reach the level of the US and Soviets during the Cold War

Hyperpower: You reach the level the US currently is at.

The last two can only be obtained near the end of the game. These are more than just diplomatic descriptions, but can be a way a country operates in relation to other nations.

Second, I was playing Imperialism and I was thinking that it would be interesting if the minor nations could attack the other minor nations. Basically, the minor nations shouldn't be benign tracks of land. They should operate forign policy, wars, sabotage, etc.

Third, Emperor of the Fading Suns brought something interesting to the game. The Church was a power, and was fully available for diplomatic overtures. Multiple religions could vie for the dominant sect of most of the nations.


Introduce language as a cultural factor. Have a 0-5 scale where 0 is the language of your original settlers and five is a completly foreign language. As the game goes on and your nation expands, the level of difference will increase and decrease based on assimliation, distance, and makeup of the population. People in a far flung city, that's close to another nation may have a rating of 3 or 4, which would make it easier for that other nation to take it away from you (subversion, conquest, or the city freely leaving).

Increasing literacy and education would maintain the standard language (0-2) (as well as assimilate conquered cities) and would keep cities with your civ. Also, developing the area with more cities would make them less of a far flung city and more a central area.

[Napoleon I]

Kyle:
The language idea is nice, but I am afraid that it will be very difficult to implement and will bog down gameplay. Would languages be related to one another in some way? For example Germans and French should be linguistically closer than the French and the Chinese for example.

Second, I do not quite understand the idea about levels of power. Would the nations status be determined by its characteristics or determined by the player. If it is the former than the nation can already have the limitation of not being able to act like a hyperpower if they are isolationist.

Overall, the summary of ideas was really nice and I completely support the ideas of minor powers. So far the game does a really lousy job of representing them so any additions would be nice.


------------------
Napoleon I

[Kyle]

quote: Originally posted by Napoleon I on 05-20-2000 09:30 PM Kyle: The language idea is nice, but I am afraid that it will be very difficult to implement and will bog down gameplay. Would languages be related to one another in some way? For example Germans and French should be linguistically closer than the French and the Chinese for example. Second, I do not quite understand the idea about levels of power. Would the nations status be determined by its characteristics or determined by the player. If it is the former than the nation can already have the limitation of not being able to act like a hyperpower if they are isolationist. Overall, the summary of ideas was really nice and I completely support the ideas of minor powers. So far the game does a really lousy job of representing them so any additions would be nice.

In regard to language, it would be an adstract thing. 0-1 would be you capital and the cities surrounding it. 2 would represent a distinct dialect. The same language, just little differences. These would be cities that are farther away from the capital, but still in an area that is firmly under control. 3 would be an intermediary level, a sign that a city is growind dissatisfied with your rule and are starting to think as themselves as a seperate people (almost). A level of 4 would make them more vulnerable to subversion, etc, while a 5 would essentially make them culturally different from you, and in turn would become rebellious.

The game could make note of each major civ in the game, and apply a random variable to them to represent their language. In game it would be determined by either proximity to other civs (for cities you create) or ethnic makeup (cities you conquer).


To the other thing, it could be a mixture of player assigned (Isolationist, would need more levels beyond this, like interventionalist, ) and assigned status based on how well you're doing. Sort of a replacement and expansion of the descriptions on the diplomacy menu ("Our power is supreme...."). Come to think of it, these are somewhat present in Civ2, but for Civ3, it would be nice if they were somewhat instituionalized within the game.

[Par4]

I still don't see how different dialects or multiple languages spoken can make a city more vulnerable to subversion or civil war. Here in the west/left coast US a large percentage speaks spanish or is learning to speak spanish but I don't think that is making us more rebellious its simply a cultural change that doesn't have ties to the government. Maybe if the government made english the national language and tried to stop people from speaking spanish but... Care to clarify a little exactly why different languages cause unrest, I mean china has 2 really big dialects that are totally different and a bunch of little dialects but that doesn't make people mad or riot. Government cracking down on foreign languages might though.

------------------
I use this email
(stupid cant use hotmail)
gamma_par4@hotmail.com
Don't ask for golf tips
Your game will get worse

[Kyle]

Language binds a nation together. If the US had large distributions of various languages, the country probably wouldn't have stuck together.

Language is a part of cultural identity, when a group starts speaking something else other than what the majority speaks, they see themselves differntly. That's whey spanish should not be used in governmental papers and such in the US. The English language (strangly enough) holds the US together despite the differences between regions and backgrounds (and of course the common cultural heritage of native born Americans).

It's a simple concept, but if you still don't quite get it, it's the same as a Democracy revolting if you deploy troops. Not something that happens in real life, but in the world of Civilization, it does.

[UltraSonix]

That's what's been missing! Language! Although in Civ2 you could discover writing, there wasn't enough emphasis placed on it. Like Kyle's said, after all, a language defines a culture, and culture is what distinguishes a civ from another.

In Civ3, instead of having just a writing and alphabet tech like in Civ2, there could be phoenetics, spoken language, written language, alphabetic-type language (eg English), or characters-based language (eg Chinese). Each of these historically has had a great impact on the world. eg the alphabet-based language of English allowed for the printing press, which brought knowledge to the masses for the first time.

But unfortunately, I don't know how to implement the language concept other than as extra techs. Kyle's dialect idea above seems to be going a bit over the top.

Suggestions?

------------------
No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...