One settler

Ok, in Civ 2 I noticed that once in a while a civ would start out with two settlers. With the new larger map that I/we are all hoping for, more settler units should be given in the start of the game. If you start on a small island, than you can quickly build it up with roads, irrigation, and eventually fortresses to make your capital thrive. If you start on a large continent, increase production by creating more than one city (rather than waiting until you "produce settlers". In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing each civ start off with 4 settlers. But with a larger map of course .

Along with this (and I believe this has been discussed before) Settlers should not have to be produced, there should be an easy way to tell your citizens to become settlers and leave the city. They can also do it automatically. And someone mentioned that if you build settlers from a large city, you could lose 100,000 people yet your new city will only have 10,000. This should be fixed. Comments please...

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~~~I am who I am, who I am - but who am I?~~~

[Youngsun]

OrangeSfwr

Settlers should not be produced by
accumulation of sheilds but by overcrowding or some other reasons(lack of food,etc)so I agree with your point up there.

For building infra-structures like a road/irrigation, I wanna see "labourer units" like formers in SMAC. This levies of workers shouldn't be too difficult to mobilise from your city and once mobilised they will consume food just like settlers in Civ2. I really didnt like public work account thing in CTP.

Personally I think settlers should not eat up the food produced by the parent city. Why? just think about it! if you leave long away from your home wouldn't you prepare some provisions for the long journey? Just like that, settlers should carry some food from the city granary. I never heard of some supply wagons constantly supplying settlers from its mother city.

For the exact opposite, military units should consume food and I don't want supply mechanism in the game becomes too complicated so attached one unit of supply wagons for 6 to 7 mil units will do the job. The supply unit don't need to travel all the way to the city and the front but staying with the mil units should be enough.

If the supply wagon unit is destroyed by enemy attack, the friendly invading mil units would starve(this will be represented by reducing hit points by turns)and eventually have to be reatreated. This requires extensive protection for supply units and will add new strategic element.
[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited May 12, 2000).]

I have never played anything other than Civ 1 and 2 so I don't know about any other system. But I always thought it was so stupid to "build" settlers (and any other units, but that's a diff. thread). You should just be able to point, click, and tell some people to go settle. I hate wasting city production on settlers. A laborer unit would be good.

I also agree with your idea that they shouldn't eat food. It does make sense. They should carry food from the granary or something. Any other comments on this?

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~~~I am who I am, who I am - but who am I?~~~

[Youngsun]

sometime ago I posted "Settler unit" should have its own AI to settle wherever the AI think suitable. So many ICS players would be discouraged by having too many settlers during initial stage of the game. Along with village/town/city idea, I think only city-borne setters should be controlled directly.
When I tried ICS, I usually split the city population when it was size 2~3 and if the game define size 2~3 city as village and these village-borne settlers are controlled by AI which might have something different idea than yours so might ruin your long-term imperial plan which makes players to wait and build more bigger size cities with right infra structures.

[The Joker]

I completely agree with Youngsun. Not only should a settler emerge due to overpopulation/food shortage, whatever, it should also have it's own AI so that it would settle wherever it wanted. Not untill some discovery should it be possible to have controlled colonization. If you are using this model the settlers should be more expensive than in previous civs, and it should cause 1 unhappy citizen for 5 turns or so in the city in which you have forced the settler to leave (people dont like to be forced to leave their home city).

[Youngsun]

quote: it should cause 1 unhappy citizen

That can be one of penalties for "forced migration". Good suggestion Joker.

[MidKnight Lament]

Yeah, this idea is interesting. More please.

- MKL

[korn469]

well i think that you should have complete control over your settlers...the AI is horrible and i have little faith that it is going to get better...putting the in SMAC you can put the AI in charge of your settler units and then you watch as they blunder around for turn after turn...sometimes they make a city...other time they just find a square and stop in it...yes civ3 might have better AI but the AI will more than likely be stupid...my suggestion is that when you found a city that it is a colony that will take time to integrate into your empire...during the time that it is a colony it has certain production bonuses but it also has many drawbacks...one of the most important being that it is much more likely than a integrated part of your empire to revolt...

korn469

[Youngsun]

Korn I don't think you really understand what I said about the AI. The AI is stupid/or will be(I hope not)so people will be discouraged to build many AI-contolled settlers during the initial stage of the game that effectively prevents ICS.(don't worry about building the infra we have labourers)

As Joker suggested, we may control settlers with right tech or as I suggested, we may do it with bigger size migration from bigger size cities.

About settlement.
Same tribe,same continent-> direct ruling.
Same tribe,overseas->colony.
Conqured tribe, same continent -> colony.
Conqured tribe, overseas-> colony.

I'm still waiting to see your "David vs Goliath" I know I know you are a busy man.........


[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited May 18, 2000).]

[korn469]

youngsun

quote: Korn I don't think you really understand what I said about the AI. The AI is stupid/or will be(I hope not)so people will be discouraged to build many AI-contolled settlers during the initial stage of the game that effectively prevents ICS.(don't worry about building the infra we have labourers)

if the only way that civ3 can control ICS is through frustration then i don't want to play civ3

when i say colony, you could substitute, perfecture, province, territory, whatever name you want to but the basic thought is that expansion should take time...in SMAC with the cloning vat/planetary transit system/and telpathic matrix+orbitals you can expand like a virus over the entire planet in like twenty turns (and probably increase your population by like 100 in that time) with very little penalty...expanding in my opinion should take some form of assimilation time, even if it is your own bases that you are assimilating

i don't think of you so much as being the president of your civ, but instead i think of you as being the spirit of your civ, and i think that a player should have the ability to control everything but have rules governing their control...

about the david vs. goliath check out my newest thread

korn469

[Youngsun]

quote: if the only way that civ3 can control ICS is through frustration then i don't want to play civ3

and you know well it is not the only way

quote: expanding in my opinion should take some form of assimilation time, even if it is your own bases that you are assimilating

Assimilation.
Expansion by war "yes"
Expansion by settlement "no"

why should I have to assimilate my own people? that's too complicated. assimilating conquered enemy population would be enough.

quote: i don't think of you so much as being the president of your civ, but instead i think of you as being the spirit of your civ, and i think that a player should have the ability to control everything but have rules governing their control...

sticky little spirit stuck on the presidents' neck I rather say so its perception based on what the presidents see/hear.

I will check.

[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited May 18, 2000).]

[S. Kroeze]

I have always found the settler a rather artificial unit. Settlement organized by a government has always been the exception, not the rule. And in 4000BC, when the current CivII starts, almost the entire world was populated, except for some remote islands like Madagascar, Iceland and New Zealand. I still hope CivIII (orCivV) will introduce a rural population, living in villages. As soon as there are sufficient inhabitants in a particular area, small towns will develop, provided they have an agricultural style of living. Further growth should be caused by population growth, but most by migration.

I don't expect a more interesting game as a result of the original proposal of OrangeSfwr. Instead it would accelarate the development of your Civ. My proposal would be to let a particular Civilization start with several small towns -only one of them ruled by you- that are not politically united. So you would be forced to aim for supremacy within your own Civilization before outward expansion became a realistic possibility. This would result in fierce competition from the start, being also more in accordance with historical reality.

Just one example: in Antiquity there never was one united Greek empire. For a short period Mykene acquired a kind of overlordship. Centuries of intense competition and war between the poleis followed, the most important being Athenai, Sparta, Thebai, Korinthos, Miletos and Syrakousai. In the end Philippos and Alexander subjected most Greeks, but they were Macedonians, speaking another language and considered to be barbarians. The Byzantine Empire was the first more or less Greek empire.

[Father Beast]

Korn, nice ideas. I particularly like having to "assimilate" your own population when they found a new city. people founding a new city will feel ownership over what they have sweated over, and feel a bit resentful over some guy in some city far away making decisions about their lives. In fact, that could be the major key to "making it harder for civs to last", of our famed EC3 list.
Orangesfwr, I would like to start the game with a few settlers. that would give me the choice between building up a big city right off, building a lot of little cities, improving the land around my capital in a hurry and then founding a bunch, improving my capital and then joining it for population boom.
I could talk about "building" settlers and other mil units, but that would be for another thread.

Father Beast - talk all you want about "building settlers". That's been discussed in this thread too. (I'm against it by the way. I think there needs to be a change in how you "build" settlers)

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~~~I am who I am, who I am - but who am I?~~~

[Father Beast]

Ok, I'll talk about building settlers.
I kind of agree with orangesfwr, in that it's kind of absurd to "build" a settler unit with a bunch of shields. IMO you "build" city improvements; you train, outfit and comission units like settlers and warriors. Ideally you could have a split production. one side for production of buildings and such, and the other for training of units. the barracks could speed up the training of your units, but it wouldn't cost so much to outfit them until later. clearly it will take some shields to make a battleship, but not many to make the equipment for a phalanx.
the problem comes in with - What the heck does my city produce? if my main production is just for improvements, then pretty soon I'll run out of improvements to build. Unless they drastically change the build menu and drown me in possibilities. Realism aside, I think the play is very well balanced for making me decide between military production and city improvement. Think on that before you suggest any drastic improvement.
Oops, failed to take my own advice on that!

[Urban Ranger]

I agree that building settler units for expansion or colonization is a silly idea. People moved around out of their own accord even in the most despotic countries. Some reason that might drive population movement:

1. Disasters. For example, several years of drought would send people leaving a region.

2. Overpopulation.

3. War.

The computer program should direct these people to either move from settlement A to settlement B or form new settlements. These settlements should start out as villages, then grow into towns and finally cities.

This would cause a problem if the fix city radius is used. So maybe that too needs to be abolished.

[Biddles]

This is just another realism vs. gameplay question. I agree that it is absurd to build a settler unit, but I don't want the AI to create cities. Unless I see an idea that doesn't use AI to create cities, I would support the current system even if it is absurd. The ideas of 'forced relocation' and 'little pockets of population that you take over' sound interesting, and more realistsic, but the systems havent been fully thought out yet.


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- Biddles

"Now that our life-support systems are utilising the new Windows 2027 OS, we don't have to worry about anythi......."
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[Adm.Naismith]

Biddles, I think that S.Kroeze proposal is the most accurate, but it will really change the basement of Civ.

But if you accept the concept of a world with a "background" (sorry, I miss the proper word) of village, I suppose the "new settler" units must simply be a "seed" for town growth (by surrounding villages merging, or population immigration).

The "seed" concept can be

1) a nomadic tribe (a bunch of warrior and a chief) that by diplomacy or force fund a new city (but early populace must come from existing village).

2) a military unit that build some kind of fort (chose the historically appropriate term, please) that became an aggregation point of surrounding population (by force or by diplomacy, or simply because it exist and "barbarian attack" doesn't burn it in a few turns)

So we can simply take the Settler concept and dress it with a different name (not really different gameplay, because no dumb AI decisions are requested), but adding more realism by the way of different city early growth and by immigration concept.

Because you must put some development effort on your cities (to gain more immigration from village), it can also add some difficulty to ICS players.

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant