The best of all worlds...

[Harlan]

Hi,
Locutus emailed me and asked if I'd provide some feedback to this latest project. I no longer play CTP2 or Civ3 (though I look forward to restarting the latter if/when it gets properly patched to allow scenario creation amongst other things). But I'll dig my foot in here a bit...

I just read B Reynolds' essay. Great stuff, all true. One point I want to make is in regards to natural disasters, and how that clashes with that essay. Personally, I like natural disasters, and miss them since Civ1. I don't know how natural disasters has been coded since I left CTP2. But here's how I would do it.

1. The effect shouldn't be so great that the player would want to reload the game. Don't whack a city more than 1/4th or less on any given turn.

2. A key reason people don't like natural disasters is a sense of helplessness. Every disaster needs a preventive remedy (though some may not come till later in the game).

3. I'd recommend having less in the way of short one turn disaster effects, and more small per turn but long term effects. For instance, a drought nibbles at the food supply for some turns, or disease hits an area, giving say, a 25% chance of a 1 pop reduction in a city for 10 turns or so. The nice thing about this is it gives the player a chance to respond, thus mollifying points 1 and 2. Hate your city's population going down? Then rush buy whatever the cure is, rather than just reloading. This also makes natural disasters into a strategic decision - do you spend limited resources on this new problem, or let it pass to deal with other stuff.

It would also be potentially interesting to have a text box announce when a disaster has been successfully averted. Say you have an Aquaduct in a city that the die roll says should get a flood - you get a text message saying disaster averted in City X. This can give a positive sense of accomplishment to disaster management over time.

Anyways, moving onto religions. I saw some of the above posts on this subject, and I think people are getting way too detailed. Also, its a very sensitive topic, so Locutus I don't think you want to go down the road of making this or that religion militaristic, scientific, or whatever.

Here's how I'd do it. Culture is a very cool idea in Civ3. Perhaps religion could serve a similar function here. At some point, have the player have to pick a religion as a tech, and the getting of one means the other branches are closed off. Stick with the major well known ones like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism rather than getting theoretical with moonworship, Teotlism and the like. All the above have a billion or so followers and these games are primarily based on what was successful in the real world, after all (plus you get a lot of good real world wonders and such to use, instead of having to make stuff up for Teotlism in the 20th century and the like). I wouldn't go over 4 or so choices - if 4 could be well implemented, that would be a great accomplishment.

Now that you have your religion, what does it mean? You now have access to exclusive wonders, improvements, units etc that only other civs with your same religion can build. For the sake of simplicity, once you have your religion, there's no changing.

Beyond the time period when major religions must be chosen, have a majority of wonders tie in to one of the religions, even if there's not much of a connection except culturally. So Taj Mahal can only be built by the Hindus, Eiffel Tower by the Christians. Obviously this means many Christian wonders would have to go, and more from the other 3 would need to be included.

Naturally, civs sharing the same religion should be better disposed towards each other. Additionally, attacking civs of the same religion costs big in diplomatic reputation for all civs (you're seen as stabbing a friend in the back). But attacking civs of any other religions actually boosts your reputation amongst other civs with your same religion, no effect on other civs.

However, if you conquer a city from a civ with a different religion, the religion specific buildings and wonders are automatically destroyed. So you probably get a very unhappy city. Whereas if you conquer a civ with the same religion as you, these survive. So there should be a balance of choices between the two, making both options attractive in their own way. This would present interesting choices to the human player depending on people's styles, but also ensure the AI can't make a "wrong" choice here, since there are advantages to either.

This could also be connected to gvmt type: under some gvmts you'd be punished more heavily for attacking you co-religionists (for instance Democracy). So the choice of what religion to have and what government to have should be based on the strategic situation around you. You also get the interesting choice of choosing a religion quickly to start getting the benefits right away, or waiting to see what the other civs choose. For instance, you find out that none of the other civs have chosen Hinduism, so you choose that, and clean up on the wonders it has.

Just throwing ideas out here - no idea how much of this is implementable.

I'll continue on another post on some other ideas in a minute. But I also want to state for the record that I'm extremely bummed out I was never able to complete my Alexander scenario due to the stacking bug. I'm happy to see a new post about that today - I pray to the civ-Gods that this gets fixed!

[Harlan]

I totally agree with Brian Reynolds that possibly THE biggest problem with these games is the game getting boring cos you're too far behind or far ahead.

This reminds me of an idea I floated around a while back (don't know if anyone still remembers it), that I think would do wonders for this problem. Basically, its the Golden Age idea of Civ3, except on steriods.

Let's look at history for a minute. Civs have tended to plod along in their own way until suddenly, a huge expansion would happen and completely transform the landscape. But these expansions would almost never last. Look at Alexander, Cyrus, Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Hitler, etc etc... Lots of "flash in the pan" empires that didn't last long.

What would be GREAT is if this could be in the game, and the AI smart enough to use it. If this were the case, the game would never be truly lost or won until the game was actually over. You'd never know if that tiny neighbor of yours would suddenly up and throw a Napoleon at you, or that you could come back from being down and out.

The Civ3 concept of Golden Ages and leaders was great, but doesn't go far enough, in my opinion. In CTP2 terms, I would imagine a combination of a huge military boost (all units suddenly double strength or something) and a huge happiness boost, basically unlimited happiness for that time. To compensate for AI stupidity, I'd assume the advantages for AI Golden Ages would be greater than for the human. Because of the happiness, you could go on a conquest rampage, and keep your conquests, but only as long as the Golden Age lasted. When it was over, suddenly you'd lose most of them (assuming unhappiness through distance, conquest, and number of cities is properly implemented). Note that the AI should also be forced to be at war with at least one civ for the duration of the Golden Age.

So if these conquests would be mostly ephemeral, what would be the point? Mainly shake things up, so victory or loss is never a certain thing. Let's say you're a small civ next to a huge advanced one. Suddenly a small civ on the other side of that huge civ goes psycho, and a wave of conquest passes over most of it. It ends up with most if not all of the same cities as before the conquest wave, but now its seriously messed up and exhausted, giving a new chance for you and other civs that had fallen behind.

When you go ballistic, you could be smart about it, and strategically target areas/civs you most want weakened. Even though you know you'll lose them later, the surge will serve a good purpose. Being able to completely wipe out enemies instead of just leaving them small and weak would suddenly become very key.

I had originally thought that each civ should get one such Golden Age. But actually, if it could be calculated to be random, and based on inverse strength, so much the better. Perhaps it could be tied in to government type. So peaceful and advanced types like Democracy have a very low chance of such a surge, whereas "backwards" one like Monarchy have more. So if you've fallen behind late in the game, you go for Fascism and hope to catch up by messing up those in the lead. Lots of strategy potential and interesting decisions to be made if this were part of the game.

Using this as a feedback loop makes total sense logically and historically, too: civs that know they're losing resort to desparate measures and civs already in the lead are less likely to take risks. Look at the rise of Fascist states for instance - it mainly occurred in countries that felt they'd lost out in the colonial divying up of the world.

That's all for now. Locutus, I may have some other specific comments on your ideas later.

[Locutus]

child of Thor,
I posted right before you deliberately, just to annoy you
I think you're idea of making religion pretty much worthless in modern times is a good one, that makes sense.
Re: 'Great Sky Road', that would be the Nazca lines in Peru. I considered those as a wonder but eventually dismissed it because I already had enough American wonders. It's a good candidate though (I'm sure the wonder list will be revised once or twice, they may make it in yet).

I think one could roughly say Sunworship = Teotlism, Natureworship = Shamanism and Moonworship = Semitism or Paganism, so my system is really only a more elaborate version of yours.

I have my doubts about having mythological figures and such in the game. Civilization is a game of history after all, not a game of mythology and other forms of 'fantasy'. Religion-specific units should certainly exist, but I'm more thinking about Crusaders and Samurai than about Ra's and Zeuses...

Archeology as you propose it would hard to implement. In reality, wonders loose their value over time and in the end the only long-term effect would be tourism. This can easily be added if we want to, but is not a major thing.

Master_Darque:
Re: mass conversion forces religion change. I don't think the AI would deal with that very well.

Ben et al,
The idea of one Cleric per religion is nice, but is there an added value? What can a Shamanistic Cleric do that a Semitic Cleric can't? As far as graphics go, I've always thought that the CtP2 Cleric sort of resembles a Celtic druid, so it could be used as Paganist Cleric; the CtP1 Cleric can serve as Semitic cleric, the Aztec AoE unit as Teotlist; some Samurai could serve as Shamanist; that only leaves the Hindu unit, something I'm sure we could work out if need be.

Making something Civ-specific is easy, but if you only want the Americans to be able to build NORAD, only the Romans to be able to build Via Appia, etc, you could have 1 unique wonder per civ and one generic wonder: there are 64 wonders with 63 civs (excluding barbarians). So making something specific to Muslim civs can easily be done but making it specific to the Arabs would make you run into limits really soon.

Lou,
I understood Cradle's AI *did* use fortresses. If it doesn't, we'd better disable the healing ability of fortresses... (should be easy enough to do)

Harlan,
Thanks a ton for your feedback, it's very useful Good to see an vet like you return to these forums as well, even if it's just for a day (or two)

Re: natural disasters. As it is natural disasters are still a bit simple in setup. They IMHO definitely need tweaking and I agree 100% with what you propose, that's exactly the sort of thing I always wanted to see myself as well (including the message that a disaster was averted).

Onto religion: I agree religion is a sensitive subject and we should be careful; but I also want religions to have tangible effects and be more than just a name with a wonder associated with it. I very soon decided against using warlike as property for religions as pretty much all religions (except maybe Zen Buddhism) were engaged in some pretty fanatic warfare at some point in history and it could easily be seen as offensive to declare a certain religion warlike. As it is, I just want all religions to have a slight advantage in one of the primary 'resources' of the game: Food, Production, Gold (Trade), Science beakers, Happiness. Hinduistic (Trade: trade routes from Eurafrica to Far Asia) and Teotlistic (Food: built large cities in mountains, jungles and deserts) civs IRL actually excelled in their 'resource', other ones are pretty close calls IMHO and were assigned more or less at random. I think/hope this distribution isn't offensive to anyone, being good at collecting a certain resource doesn't make a religion good or evil in any way, AFAICS.

I agree that we should stick to major religions but to have 3 Semitic religions and no American ones would be unrealistic as well IMHO. Most Meso-American/Andean religions are very similar (although I'm by no means an expert I think one could compare the various versions with the various branches of Christianity or Hinduism) and dominated a huge huge landmass for at least 2500 years before Christianity arrived (around 1200 BC the Olmec arrived, around 1500 AD Christianity - not even mentioning much older civs such as Caral here). This IMHO makes them important enough to include in the game in some form. In what form exactly is what I'm still trying to figure out; I agree Teotlism is perhaps a little theoretical but I don't have any better ideas at this point.

The problem with religions that dominate the world today (like Christianity, Islam and Buddhism) is that most of them didn't exist until well into the game (roughly ranging from 500 BC to 500 AD while the games starts in 4000 BC) while religion should, as child of Thor pointed out, be more important as you go further back in time. I'd prefer to get rid of theoretical civs like Shamanism or Paganism as well but that leaves a big void if you care for historical accuracy in this religion concept. I agree the number of choices should be limited to half a dozen or so at most, that's why I originally only thought about 2 or 3. My last proposal has 5 major civs, still acceptable IMHO (although they have 2 smaller branches each, which I'm not entirely happy with).

How about this list of religions?
- Christianity
- Islam
- Buddhism
- Hinduism
- Generic Far Asian Civ (encompases Confusionism, Taoism, Shinto, etc; name TBD)
- Generic Pre-Colombian American Civ (from Caral to Anasazi; name TBD - Teotlism?)
- Generic Ancient Mediterranean Civ (from Carthage/Rome to Babylon/Persia; name TBD)

That's 7 civs representing almost the entire planet. The only problem is that the first 3 are 3500-4500 years too young. Any ideas on how to deal with this (from anyone) would be most welcome...

I think not being able to change a religion is a good plan, for simplicity's sake indeed.

Harlan, shame on you! Surely the Taj Mahal should be a Muslim wonder? It was built by the Central Asian Muslim conquerors of northern India. Such nitpicking aside, I like the idea of tying most wonders into religions. I also very much like the diplomatic and government proposals you make, that's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

One possible addition though: what about not destroying wonders but keeping (some of) them intact? In real history, the capture of Jerusalem really pissed off the divided Christians of Europe and actually got them to (more or less) form alliances and organize some coordinated invasions to try and capture it back, something which popularly became known as the Crusades (perhaps you've heard of it? ). Of course, in reality the Crusades were an ugly mess and in the end it had little to do with cooperation or even capturing back Jerusalem, but the idea would be interesting to implement in CtP2 as well: if a holy site (e.g. Jerusalem) is captured by a rival religion (e.g. Arabs), regard of all civs of the builder religion of the holy site (e.g. Christians) for that conqueror will drop considerably, possibly war is declared automatically. What do you (all) think?

Just throwing ideas out here - no idea how much of this is implementable.

I think the ideas proposed so far are quite implementable. Some would require a lot of SLIC work, but it can be done.

Re: Alexander. Keep an eye on your mail and player1's thread. I'm a little tired today so I don't know if I'll respond today but I certainly will tomorrow or (at the latest) the day after that.

I very much like your idea of 'Super Golden Ages'. It's not exactly the first time you mentioned it but that doesn't make me like it less What I don't like as much is implementing it, that could prove very hard or even impossible to do and/or an incredible amount of work. If a civ all of a sudden conquers twice as many cities as it can ordinarily maintain and then looses it's super abilities again, half the cities will revolt (as planned). However, all these cities will revolt to the same (new) civ, not back to their original owner. So after such a Super Golden Age, you would end up with 2 very powerful civs and the rest of the Civs would probably be out of the game, either destroyed altogether or too small to be of significance. You could try to give back cities to their original owner through SLIC (a lot of work but probably not impossible) but that still leaves a big problem with military: the other civs will have their old cities back again but not enough military units to defend them (those were all destroyed in the attack), so the old super civ can quite easily conquer many of the cities back again, albeit a bit slower this time.

Maybe that with an awful lot of balancing it might be possible to implement a feature like this - if we can really get it to work it would truly be incredibly cool - but I'd say it shouldn't have a very high priority, not even for an ambitious mod like this. Personally, I'd first want to implement everything mentioned so far and only when all that is (more or less) done, I'd be willing to have a look at such a feature. This because there's a considable risk of failing and you'd probably be spending humungous amounts of time on it while neglecting other parts of the game that can be improved in much less time. But of course I'd love to hear what others have to say about it, maybe I'm all wrong...

I can hardly keep my eyes open now, so I guess this is a good time to quit

[Master_Darque]

You could try to give back cities to their original owner through SLIC (a lot of work but probably not impossible) but that still leaves a big problem with military: the other civs will have their old cities back again but not enough military units to defend them (those were all destroyed in the attack), so the old super civ can quite easily conquer many of the cities back again, albeit a bit slower this time.

How about adding a militia unit to the city when it is given back to the original civ?

[Peter Triggs]

Hi, Harlan

Long time, no see.

But I also want to state for the record that I'm extremely bummed out I was never able to complete my Alexander scenario due to the stacking bug. I'm happy to see a new post about that today - I pray to the civ-Gods that this gets fixed!

Just had a look in the Alex aidata folder to see what strategy the Persians were using and was a bit surprised to find that Tony Evans hadn't given them a customized one (like he did with the civs in the WW2 scenario). Instead he used the usual MILITARIST_DEFAULT one for the Persians and I think all the other AIcivs. But as things were later to turn out, it was these original strategies that turned everyone off: they're too defensive. The AI armies tend to just sit there waiting for you to attack them and this just might be the source of the problem you've been having. So, here's an attachment where I cut and pasted the goals and forced matching segments from Dave's Cradle mod into MILITARIST_DEFAULT. This should make the Persians more agressive but there's an awful lot of foreign units behind them and that will have a counteracting effect. Anyway, it can't hurt to put it in the scenario's aidata folder and see what happens.

Another possibility might be to add something like the FrenzyAI code to the scenario. For the long term, I think that would be better than writing a handler that just deals with the stacking thing.

[Immortal Wombat]

Re: natural disasters. As it is natural disasters are still a bit simple in setup. They IMHO definitely need tweaking and I agree 100% with what you propose, that's exactly the sort of thing I always wanted to see myself as well (including the message that a disaster was averted).

The avertion message is already included for plagues, but stopping the rest is rather more difficult, how many cities have survived being drowned in lava?

I would like to see floods, droughts etc. but that would mean buildings, and I wanted to make the original code not dependant on other modifications, ie. just a SLIC mod.

Btw, I have figured out the tile improvement thing, see this thread assuming its still online. The terrain improvements use a lot more IDs than TileEdit shows them using somehow... (although that doesn't explain the 38-60 results ) Anyway, I'll look some more at it. What chance I had that thread saved

[child of Thor]

God it really is 3:00am! and i've messed up my 'Quote' - i've done it ok before? this is my third re-edit and i give up

[QUOTE] originaly posted by Locutus
I think you're idea of making religion pretty much worthless in modern times is a good one, that makes sense.
[QUOTE]

But it should be aimed specifically at the most industrial(Productive) civ's, after all we live in modern times but apart from the 'First world'(USA/Europe et all) the rest of the world IS very religious.And maybe there is a direct link between material prosperity and how much people need religion?

[QUOTE]
Re: 'Great Sky Road', that would be the Nazca lines in Peru.[QUOTE]

doh! Yeah Nazca lines, i do know that! I just liked the idea that they were built by people who didn't have the ability to actually see them, so when aeroplanes and spaceflight came along the wonder happened again alot later to a differnt pepole.

[QUOTE]
I think one could roughly say Sunworship = Teotlism, Natureworship = Shamanism and Moonworship = Semitism or Paganism, so my system is really only a more elaborate version of yours.[QUOTE]

Yep you've got the proper names for them and i don't share some people's misgiving's over tackling religion. I think we are all able to see(as 'industrial' not very religous people - hope I don't offend!) that none of the mentioned religions is better or worse than another.This is a game we're talking about and i'd hope that eveyone can see that. And we are trying to add depth and flavour to it, it just happens that 'religion' should be a bigger part in a game of this type. I am sure we will try hard not to bias one over another, I think this was one of your complaints that CTP(and CIV)games tend to be 'Euro-centric' and this is a mod to impart address that imbalance.

[QUOTE]
I have my doubts about having mythological figures and such in the game. Civilization is a game of history after all, not a game of mythology and other forms of 'fantasy'.[QUOTE]

Maybe my example's were poor ,could easily have been 'Goliath' or some such. But i was trying to cover the very start of the game from 4000bc-3500bc and we really know very little about the individual's of these times - that's why the names would be provided by the player. 'King Arthur', 'Herecules', they are all just myth but still these archytypes have come from somewhere to perform what ever outrageous deeds they are credited with and are still part of our cultural 'identity' now.So really i was just thinking it could be a good vehicle from which the player could identify himself more easily with his early civ. Still i'm not on a mission to convert you all to 'Thor' and these are just idea's to help provide somekind of inspiration when you are trying to SLIC it all

[QUOTE]
Archeology as you propose it would hard to implement.[QUOTE]

OK, again i was just getting carried away.

[QUOTE]
Ben et al,
The idea of one Cleric per religion is nice, but is there an added value?[QUOTE]

If someone wants to do it and it doesn't adversely effect the game...why not??

[QUOTE]
making something Civ-specific is easy, but if you only want the Americans to be able to build NORAD, only the Romans to be able to build Via Appia, etc, you could have 1 unique wonder per civ and one generic wonder: there are 64 wonders with 63 civs (excluding barbarians). So making something specific to Muslim civs can easily be done but making it specific to the Arabs would make you run into limits really soon.
[QUOTE]

The more i think about this the more it alarms me! I don't want to be forced to play the same civ all the time because i want to build Stonehenge. I like the IDEA of civ specificness but i'm sure the actuality of it would detract something from the game in the long run(and i want to play this game for the rest of my life) . So i'm glad of the 64 wonders limit maybe?It would be hellish to game balance properly...wouldn't it?

[QUOTE]
I very soon decided against using warlike as property for religions as pretty much all religions (except maybe Zen Buddhism)
[QUOTE]

hmmm....i thought Zen Buddhism was created by and for the Samurai warrior class out of Buddhism?I could be wrong(what? me never! ).

[QUOTE]
I agree that we should stick to major religions but to have 3 Semitic religions and no American ones would be unrealistic..........I agree Teotlism is perhaps a little theoretical but I don't have any better ideas at this point.
[QUOTE]

Exactly - that's the point of the 'religion' discussion. We are trying to fill in 3000 years approx of the game before the big 3 even existed!And Teotlism is better than nothing!

[QUOTE]
How about this list of religions?
- Christianity
- Islam
- Buddhism
- Hinduism
- Generic Far Asian Civ (encompases Confusionism, Taoism, Shinto, etc; name TBD)
- Generic Pre-Colombian American Civ (from Caral to Anasazi; name TBD - Teotlism?)
- Generic Ancient Mediterranean Civ (from Carthage/Rome to Babylon/Persia; name TBD)
[QUOTE]

I think it looks great so far....and as to the first three well just keep them in their place untill the relevent time in the game(if this is possible).I'd be happy as 'Generic Ancient Mediterranean Civ' untill i discoverd Christianity circa 30bc...just

Locutus, i like the religious wonders causing strife...maybe i'll just go and take back that large 'runestone' sitting in my local church

[Locutus]

Master_Darque,
That would be a start but 1 unit a city isn't enough and creating a whole army out of thin air isn't very realistic either. Like I said, with a lot of effort and balancing it might be possible to eventually find some sort of solution but I'm not willing to invest so much in this particular idea right now.

Ben, vulcano eruptions can be predicted, allowing for people to evacuate in time. This will not prevent but certainly greatly reduce the damage caused by an eruption. Similar things for many other disasters. Fires can be reduced by Aquaducts, floods by city walls, etc.

As far as other and long-term random events, you don't necessarily need buildings. Terraforming terrain and placing/removing tile improvements can help a lot as well.

Child of Thor,
I agree, religion should only be worthless to civs that have modern techs, that's what I assumed in the first place.

As far as heros/gods go, as little as we know about them now, there's no reason to assume they actually had magical or divine powers. The core of many religious/mythological stories is true but there are gross exaggerations and stuff. These figures never really existed to the best of our knowledge, so I myself don't like modelling them in CtP2 either. Adding flavour is good, but not if it's gets unrealistic IMHO. The idea itself is nice and welcome of course, just not the sort of thing I'm very fond of.

I thought about the Cleric unit per religion thing: it might only be a visual thing but it *does* help you in identifying yourself with your religion, so it might not be such a bad idea after all.

I don't know if a limit of 64 wonders is a good thing, but yes, having too many wonders and having too much civ-specific stuff is indeed a bad idea (less is more) and it would indeed be a living hell to balance.

I guess we could allow someone to be of some other sort of religion until Buddhism and Islam can be invented but how would this work in practice? Why would anyone want to switch to Christianity if he's already an 'Olymian'? What added value does Christianity offer? What is the disadvantage, why would someone NOT want to switch religion? What happens to old religious wonders and city improvements when you switch religion? Should this change the diplomatic relationships between civs in any way? Etc, etc, etc... more food for thought...

[child of Thor]

Locutus,
I’ve been having a good think about your points on religion, why change – what benefits to be had from changing etc.
I think Master Darks point on relating religion to government type might be the best way game wise of defining the different religions era’s. So I can think of two ways to implement this:

1.For the early forms of religion you can only enact early forms of government e.g. if Olympian then the most advanced form of government you can enact is Republic. This kind of thing or

2.As you have suggested giving certain religion’s science/production/gold attributes then just give the early religions less of an advantage in this – this might give the player more freedom to play through as whatever religion he likes, he’ll just have to take the percentage loss?

On a more real world thought, I guess it was writing that spelt the end of the older religions? Christianity/Judaism had the bible, Islam had the Koran, Hinduism had the Bhagavad-Gita. A written text from your particular god must have been a very powerful symbol of proof, especially in a world of illiteracy.
Just another thought on happiness, from the few texts that exist from early history the world seems a very hard place to live in, especially as a normal guy. Slavery, disease, oppression. A lot of people were led and ruled by fear – the Aztecs/Mayan sacrifice’s for example. A lot of the archaeological evidence from northern Europe does show a very harsh law/religion was used to control people’s lives. So maybe when the ‘big three/four’ religions came along with a more humane outlook then that was what the people wanted to relate to. Not that their lives actually improved but they had an idea that their suffering would be reversed in the afterlife?

[Locutus]

Child of Thor,
I very much like both ideas, perhaps a combination of the two would be best: early governments give early religions a bigger bonus, later governments give later religions a bigger bonus. The later governments will give early religions a smaller bonus whereas later religions either don't exist or give smaller bonuses (boni?) for early religions. Of course, balancing everything won't be easy but I'd say it's worth the effort.

About writing, pretty much all religions mentioned in this thread had some form of writing so they would all qualify as 'new' religions. The really old and 'primitive' religions simply aren't modeled in this game.

The idea of making the newer religions more humane would work well, I suppose, that could serve to explain why the newer religions have better attributes.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Locutus
Child of Thor,
I very much like both ideas, perhaps a combination of the two would be best: early governments give early religions a bigger bonus, later governments give later religions a bigger bonus. The later governments will give early religions a smaller bonus whereas later religions either don't exist or give smaller bonuses (boni?) for early religions. Of course, balancing everything won't be easy but I'd say it's worth the effort.

About writing, pretty much all religions mentioned in this thread had some form of writing so they would all qualify as 'new' religions. The really old and 'primitive' religions simply aren't modeled in this game.

The idea of making the newer religions more humane would work well, I suppose, that could serve to explain why the newer religions have better attributes.

Yeah that would make sense in balancing out how and why the player wants to 'up-grade' his civs religion, not forgetting to take into account the modern civ's(most productive?) slide into un-religion.What's your thoughts on how best to model that aspect? would it be Age related, tech-tree related,wealth/productivity or maybe wonder related.A combination of these?
I'm not quite sure how you would model this 'humane' aspect for the newer relgion's? maybe just in the civilopedia write-up?
Anyway i'm glad your still thinking of doing this - i'm sure it will add to the games atmosphere, and at least it will give the player something else to think about and take into account, lets hope the new diplo-slic will be able to handle it too!

[Master_Darque]

Yeah that would make sense in balancing out how and why the player wants to 'up-grade' his civs religion, not forgetting to take into account the modern civ's(most productive?) slide into un-religion.What's your thoughts on how best to model that aspect? would it be Age related, tech-tree related,wealth/productivity or maybe wonder related.A combination of these?

I think it should be age related.

I'm not quite sure how you would model this 'humane' aspect for the newer relgion's? maybe just in the civilopedia write-up?

How about a happiness bonus as the religion is more humane? Less oppresion does mean that the civ is happier doesn't it?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by child of Thor
Yeah that would make sense in balancing out how and why the player wants to 'up-grade' his civs religion, not forgetting to take into account the modern civ's(most productive?) slide into un-religion.What's your thoughts on how best to model that aspect? would it be Age related, tech-tree related,wealth/productivity or maybe wonder related.A combination of these?

Tech-related, I think. As you get to modern times the importance of religion declines. But if you make it Age related, the first player to hit the modern age has a huge advantage over the others: religious advantages will cease to exist for all while (s)he is already far ahead with more buildings/wonders/etc available to fight negative effects of unreligion. If you make it tech-related, the more advanced civs will have to fight unreligion while the less advanced civs still have the advantages of religion.

I'm not quite sure how you would model this 'humane' aspect for the newer relgion's? maybe just in the civilopedia write-up?

Just like with governments, if you ask me: more modern govs are more humane and therefore have happier and more productive citizens. So partly this is for the GL, partly it shows up in terms of happiness.

Anyway i'm glad your still thinking of doing this - i'm sure it will add to the games atmosphere, and at least it will give the player something else to think about and take into account, lets hope the new diplo-slic will be able to handle it too!

Don't worry. I don't have time yet to make this mod right now, but I WILL do so in the future. Meanwhile, we'll have plenty of time for brainstorming and such...

[Immortal Wombat]

BUMP.

As a side note, getting the BEST of all worlds - I wrote some thoughts on tech trees here

[SMIFFGIG]

Hey, this is one of the best threads on the forum, if this mod could be made and the ideas that ppl have posted be implemented. This game will be superb, ill certainly (TRY) to lend a hand.

I know this thread hasnt been updated in a while but please someone tell me, there is a huge underground project going on and its just we havent been updated in a while. . . . .. Please

I would hate to think this idea of a mod has been abandoned.






P.S. Civ 3 is total S@*T, and it didnt even come with as much as a CD case, which would have been handy if one of my other music cd cases broke.

[Locutus]

Funny timing, SMIFFGIG's...
No, don't worry, this mod is still alive, but until a few days ago dormant. Just a few days ago I found some time to work on my list of civs again and I've also make some major revisions to my unit/buildings/wonders lists and the advance tree. Unfortunately most of these ideas are in my head and not on paper (or rather, in a file), so I can't share them with you at the moment.

I've taken a lot of ideas discussed in this forum in the past few months and included them in my 'mental' design doc, but I still haven't gotten around to implementing any of it yet.


There is currently one thing I would like everyone's feedback on, I planned to post a seperate thread on this but I might as well post it here now: I need suggestions for city improvements and governments. I think I was to do some major revisions to the current buildings list and I want to add a bunch of extra governments (although these ideas are far from final yet). Especially ideas on more non-Westerncentric buildings/governements are welcome as my list is currently still too Western-centric IMHO...

Here's a list of buildings and governments I came up with myself. This is a result of copy-pasting and some brainstorming, a lot of these might not make it into the game but I at the moment I just need as many ideas as possible (selection of the best ones comes later) so I could very much use suggestions:

GOVERNMENTS:
Ancient: Tyranny, Dynasty, City State, Oligarchy, Monarchy
Classical: Ancient Republic, Tribunal Empire, Dictatorship, Democracy
Medieval: Shogunate, Caliphate, Monarchy, Theocracy, Khanate
Renaissance: Colonial Empire, Sultanate, Confederation, Republic
Industrial: Constitutional Monarchy, Federal Republic, ???, ???
Modern: Parliamentary Democracy, Fascism, Communism, ???
Information: Fundamentalism, Corporate Republic, Technocracy, Socialism
Genetic: Virtual Democracy, Ecotopia, ???, ???

CITY IMPROVEMENTS:
Happiness: Temple (Anc), Theatre (Cla), Mosque/Cathedral (Med), Concert Hall (Ren), Public Park (Ind), Movie Palace (Mod), Stadium (Inf), VR Amusement Park (Gen)
Gold: Bazaar (Anc), Agora (Cla), City Clock (Med), Bank (Ren), Brokerage (Ind), Airport (Mod), TV Station (Inf), E-Bank (Gen)
Science: Ziggurat (Anc), Library (Cla), University (Med), Publishing House (Ren), Public School (Ind), Computer Centre (Mod), Research Park (Inf), Orbital Laboratory (Gen)
Production: Work Camp (Anc), Forge (Cla), Mill (Med), ??? (Ren), Factory (Ind), Oil Refinery (Mod), Nuclear Plant (Inf), Fusion Plant (Gen)
Growth: Granary (Anc), Aquaduct (Cla), Hospital (Med), Warehouse (Ren), Food Silo (Ind), Sewer System (Mod), Filtration Plant (Inf), Arcology (Gen)
Defense: City Wall (Anc), Ballista Towers (Cla), Castle (Med), Bastion (Ren), Battlements (Ind), Flak Towers (Mod), Army Base (Inf), Forcefield (Gen)
Crime: Courthouse (Cla), Prison (Ind), Security Monitor (Gen)
Pollution: Public Transport (Ind), Recycling Centre (Mod), Eco-Transit (Inf), Matter Decompiler (Gen)
Other: Harbor (Anc), Barracks (Cla), Capital (Cla), SDI (Inf), Micro-Defense (Gen), Nanite Factory? (Gen), Gaia Computer (Gen), Power Satellite (Gen)

[SMIFFGIG]

Nice to hear it Locutus

I can think of any right now, but dont worry ill work at it


Try looking a SMAC for genetic and diamond age governments if uve run out of ideas, im sure theres some you could use (how about Cyberneticism or something for diamond or genetic where the majority population are cyborgs ? )


Is it just me or have u not included alot of city improvements in the list uve made eg Beef Vat and Body exchange etc and in the government list why is there no diamond era ?

P.S Cant wait to play this mod . .. .. . . . im assuming it will contain many other mods as cradle and MM2 have done eg Goodmod, Diplomod and citymod etc.

[ToonGoon]

Locutus

I am very excited to one day see this mod come to fruition. There are so many great minds working in so many directions I belive an all encomapssing hybrid of all/many of these ideas is fantastic.

I would love to help - if only to add ideas and suggestions....I am rather ignorant of SLIC but I do have a very good artistic side, but this may be unimportant at this point in the game.


Might I suggest "Guild Hall" or something along those lines as a possible Ren. Production improvement.

And, perhaps, a genetopia-type of government, in which efficiency/production and such would be quite high while happiness/loyalty would be low (genetic matching of people with jobs they were gentically suited for but neccessarily happy with).

I've rambled enough....

[Immortal Wombat]

but I do have a very good artistic side, but this may be unimportant at this point in the game.

Time for another desperate appeal methinks...

Units?

[ToonGoon]

An eery ephemeral voice from beyond tells me that units may be needed....

I could look into that. I am somewhat proficient at drawing by hand and (believe it or not) I've been called a wizard in PowerPoint of all things - I made an animated short with it. However, I have not done this sort of graphics work before but I'd love to give it a go - whether you use my stuff or not.

Is there a primer for unit creation around here? I think there used to be one for CIV2. I assume the best bet is the use of PhotoShop. Yes? I can look for a demo copy since I don't have access to any great graphics programs right now.

Any suggested units to start with?

Happy to be aboard!

[Immortal Wombat]

Wow. I'm glad you're willing to give it a go. Making units properly animated is quite tough, so it'll probably take a while, but if you're willing and able, then you'll be loved around here

Photoshop or Painshop Pro are the most commonly used. You'll need to get the spritetool from the database. Though I don't know which one, CtP or CtP2 or the Directory. Its around somewhere I think, and Harlan wrote out a set of instructions about how to do alpha channels and stuff.

Any other questions, especially PSP, we can help you with

Which units?
At the moment, I'm inclined to jump at any excuse to get a couple of fantasy sprites for hex's LOTR scenario, but I don't think a balrog sprite would get much mileage after that...

Locutus'll say a crossbowman for sure. I suppose that's as good as any.

Good luck

[Locutus]

I planned on looking at SMAC and ST games and the like for future stuff but haven't gotten around to it yet. Thanks for the idea anyway. Cyberneticism and Genetopia or similar things are good ideas

Guilds were more a Medieval thing so I'm not sure how much I like that. However, I did actually consider making Mill a Rennaissance building and Guild (or Guild Hall or whatever) a Medieval one. This because mills as power source for production processes arose in Europe only in late Medieval times and drastically increated in importance in the 'proto-industrial' times, even though the invention itself and its application in agriculture was much older (the earliest mill-like applicatons go back as far as ancient Egypt). Your suggestion strengthens my conviction that this may be a good idea...

ToonGoon,
It would indeed be great if you could do some graphics work

Ah yes, my empire for a crossbowman!

[Pedrunn]

Locutus, I know numerous ideas about religion and culture has been dicussed in thei thread but unfortunetly i did not followed. So Could you make a synthesis of the best ideas discussed. I want to see how much can i implement in my religion code.

-Thanks in advance

[Locutus]

Actually, I had already started to write a special chapter about religion for my design doc, to distill useful ideas from this and other threads and to figure out exactly what I want myself. I will publish it when I'm done, which will probably be next week, after my exams (and after my Internet access is (hopefully) restored)...

[Pedrunn]

Not a problem me and mapfi cant wait to see what is in this chapter

[SMIFFGIG]

i cant wait till this mod comes out keep us updated on whats going on ....... plz

[Locutus]

Sure, I will. I made a revised version of the design doc, will post that as soon as the religion chapter is done. For now (at those rare moments when I actually have time) I am dividing my time between thinking out the various concepts of the mod on the one hand and making civ/city name entries on the other hand. The latter may not seem a very important part of the mod, but I thoroughly enjoy doing it and always hate how the existing mod IMNSHO have such poor city lists (not nearly as poor as the original game but as a history-buff I've always thought I could do better ). The idea of making better city lists (and wonders) was born long before the idea of this whole mod, it really started out with 3 files and evolved into a full-flegded mod from there

[Locutus]

BTW, did any of the European guys see 'Pyramids, Mummies and Tombs' on Discovery Channel yesterday or today? It was almost scary how many of the wonders from my wonder list, especially the 'less obvious' ones, were discussed on that show, almost as if the creator had consulted my lists before making that program: Yonaguni, Great Pyramid, Nubian Defuffa, Tower of Babel, Great Wall, Qin's Tomb, Teotihuacan, Chichen Itza, Sun and Moon Pyramids of the Moche, Nan Madol, Borobudur, Angkor Wat, Madurai's Meenakshi, Eiffel Tower. I must be on the right track

[SMIFFGIG]

Lol, no i didnt see it locutus, i havent got sky



Anyway, u talk about city names. Well ive been thinking of an idea for that, which would be very historically accurate.

Example one:

"Instanbul" formely known as "Constantinople" which was formely know as "Byzantine"

London - Londonium etc.

How about abit of SLIC code that through history changes city names on specific years (as where true to real life history)

I dont know the dates in which Instanbul in this case had all these changes of name but ill make them up


4000BC (Byzantines) first city Byzantium (capitol)
1000AD SLIC changes name to Constantinople
1900AD SLIC changes name to Istanbul

I know the dates are wrong, but you get the idea.
This could be used for alot of city names for the civilizations and would add a nice little bit of history to each city (if you know what i mean) and it would be historicaly correct.

Anyway tell me what u think of the idea

P.S.
A nice little Message Box saying "Christ is born" at 0AD would be cool as well (im not religous but i think it would still be significant as a part of history)


SMIFFGIG

smiff-giggany to all whom in which need know

[Locutus]

The city name thing is a good idea but it has been brought up a gazillion times before: it can't be done. SLIC can do a lot, but not this.

The closest thing to it is just to create city lists that are as historically accurate as possible, which is what I'm very busy with right now (and have been for the past months, whenever I had the time and inclination)

Originally posted by SMIFFGIG's A nice little Message Box saying "Christ is born" at 0AD would be cool as well (im not religous but i think it would still be significant as a part of history)

You guys ruining all my surprises I do indeed plan on doing something like that, with messages for other important historic events as well.