OpenCiv3 Discussion thread

[korn469]

well what is the verdict on the map? squares or hexes? and if we do go with hexes how do they look at an angle?

also from a programming stand point what are the most basic foundation areas of the game?

i would assume that the map is the most basic of all the elements...then what would come next? how many civs? or is it something else?

also my opinion about the code is this...if its good code that we can use we should take it from any legal source as long as it doesn't limit what we can do with the game

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The OpenCiv3 website
korn469
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited March 16, 2000).]

[MidKnight Lament]

I hope you guys know what you're getting yourself in for. Professionals are taking over a year to develop Civ3 full time. And I don't mean to sound rude, but it doesn't sound like there's too many pros here. I'll be the first to applaud you for noble intentions, but if you're going to do this you better be prepared to put in an absolute crapload of work.

Also, why don't you trade ICQ numbers or something? It's not that I'm unhappy with you posting in the forum. It's just that I think you'll get heaps more done if you're chatting than posting. Otherwise, it'll take foooor-ever.

- MKL

[JacobH]

quote: I hope you guys know what you're getting yourself in for.

Thanks for reminding us, I think you are the second or third person to do so. I am sure everyone who would like to see it finished sooner could participate.
However, I do not do this just to be able to play the game. I do this for fun and to be able to influence the game. I think some of you tend to forget that not all of us see this as hard work, and that the creation of the game is just as much fun as playing the game should be, if not more. I can only speak for myself, though.

quote: Also, why don't you trade ICQ numbers or something?

There is already a mailinglist, but using ICQ as well would probably help.

Jacob Hammeken

[heardie]

quote: Originally posted by MidKnight Lament on 03-16-2000 05:43 PM Also, why don't you trade ICQ numbers or something? It's not that I'm unhappy with you posting in the forum. It's just that I think you'll get heaps more done if you're chatting than posting. Otherwise, it'll take foooor-ever. - MKL

W have but there is a little problm of tim zone diffrncs thy might b one when I am fast asleep

[korn469]

My General Ideas for OpenCiv3
by
korn469


The ideas listed here are my vision of how civ3 should work…

The Map: The first thing I would do in starting out would be to use a hex based map. An average map should be 100 hexes wide and 75 hexes tall. Each hex should be of a certain terrain type, for example: desert, tundra, grasslands, etc. Some of the terrain will have special items on it that makes it more productive.

Number of turns: The game should have 600 turns and it should last from the years 3200bce to the year 2050ce. There should be a telescoping time system where turns early in the game represent more years than turns later in the game. There should be a number of ages and each one of these ages should get about the same amount of turns. We could have four ages each with 150 turns. Here are the proposed ages: ancient (3200-550, each turn counts as 25 years) middle (551-1300 each turn counts as five years), renaissance (1301-1900 each turn counts as four years), modern (1901-2050 each turn counts as one year).

Number of players: The game should have up to 32 distinct player slots. 16 of those slots would be reserved for starting civs, and 16 would be the limit on the number of civs you could start the game with. 12 of those slots would be for breakaways, rebellions, splinter groups, and other civs that would start as a result of actions that happen in the game. 4 of those slots would be reserved for barbarians, anarchists, and other groups of uncivilized people.

Cities: Cities should be where all resources are processed, where all people live, and generally the focal point of your empire, as they are in civ2. You will build a facility in your city and it will give your city a benefit. You will build all your units in your cities. You will use all of your resources in cities. Cities should have a radius of 2 so with a hex based map they will have 19 squares to work. Population in the cities should be represented by heads.

Growth Model: The game should abandon civ’s exponential city growth model in favor of a linear one. This alone would solve some of the problems of ICS.

Resources: The games should have four resources: food, minerals, money, and energy. Each tile will produce resources in a given range from 0 to some number below 20.
Food: Each point of population needs food to survive and food is need for a city to grow in size.
Minerals: Minerals are used to build base facilities and units. Also units may need minerals for support.
Money: Money is used to pay upkeep on base facilities, it can be used to complete base facilities and units. Money goes into research, happiness, and surplus.
Energy: Energy is a new concept to the civ genre, but I think it would have significant positive changes. Represented by an energy barrel icon and stored in a global surplus, this resource would have a few uses. First energy barrels would be needed for a city to change minerals into base facilities and units. Second energy barrels would be needed for a unit to carry out any action except for rest. Third, energy barrels would be what determines pollution, the more energy barrels used the greater the pollution. Only so many energy barrels could be stockpiled, and energy barrels would act as a strategic limitation on a civ, forcing it to seek out energy resources to remain competitive, and would also include the concept of real strategic areas into civ.

Base Facilities: Base facilities are structures that improve a city’s statistics. They fall into a number of groups: money increasing buildings, research increasing buildings, happiness increasing buildings, production increasing buildings, military increasing buildings, plus religion+culture increasing buildings. These facilities should have interesting effects not all of them being positive, and should not always operate the same under every governmental choice. I think that OpenCiv3 should start over from scratch here so we can reach a good balance of interesting buildings.

Wonders: Wonders are unique structures that for the most part effect the entire civ, or effect one city in such a way that it effects the entire civ. A good wonder is powerful, but not unbalanced, it is interesting, and it has a noticeable effect on the entire civilization that builds it.

Tile Improvements: Tile improvements are structures placed on the map that increase the productivity of a certain square. I think that we should look at the CtP publics work system and see if it could be adapted and improved upon so we could include it in our game.

Units: Units are built in cities and for the most part represent the military presence of a civilization. I think that we should increase the base movement of infantry to 2 spaces and then balance the movement of the other units accordingly. Moving one space has many disadvantages and it needs some work.

War: Combat between units. One thing that is vital to OpenCiv3 is a stacked combat system. Until I hear a better proposal I think that this is the system we should use for OpenCiv3. Units can be stacked together when a command unit is in the same stack. A certain number of units can be attached to this command unit. The exact number would depend on the era and on the technology level of the civ. Then add up the total amount for both sides (counting all of the bonuses) and then carry out combat. Combat would work like this, the attackers strongest unit would fire first (using the total to see if damage is inflicted) then if damage is inflicted a unit in the defenders stack is random hit. Then the strongest defender goes, then the next strongest attack and so on.

Diplomacy: Diplomacy is one of the key areas to the game. If there is not a wide array of options and realistic behavior for the most part then the game will be disappointing. The diplomacy interface must be smooth and easy to use, otherwise a great diplomacy model could get lost behind the clicks. All efforts in every area of the game must be taken to ensure a great deal of powerful options in an easy to access interface.

Trade: Besides diplomacy, trade is another vital area that needs to have a powerful influence on the game but needs a simple and clean interface that doesn’t create a micromanagement nightmare.

Governments: The SMAC SE system is a fine place to start when we work out our governmental models. The only improvements I can see to do are the following: give the player more options, have the SE models effect more areas of the game, have the different models have more characteristics than just effecting the Social pluses and minuses, have some compatible SE choices give extra benefits that makes the sum of the parts greater than the whole.

Reputation: Reputation needs to mean something. Having a horrible reputation should have dire consequences, while having a history of being a benevolent ruler should have its perks. Civs with bad reputations should become pariahs while civs with an undisputed record of helping others should endear themselves to their people and the world in general.

Civil Strife: Civil strife has to be included in this game if it wants to be a true sequel. Civs must be prone to disintegrating for there to be any excitement left in the game during the modern era. It should be very difficult to integrate newly conquered regions and there should always be the threat of rebellion of some sort.

Modes of Victory: Basically this is an idea to have three maps, one representing religion, one representing economics and culture, and one representing the military and the state. This is a good idea because it would allow a great number of ideas to be put into the game without increasing the complexity of the game too much. It breaks down the game into easily understandable game blocks, and it keeps all of the vital information together while at the same time allowing a far greater civ experience and increasing the excitement and replayablitiy of the game.

Victory Conditions: Goes hand in hand with the new modes of victory idea. You now have a number of different ways to win the game. Convert all of the heads to your nationality either through force or diplomacy, convert them all to your religion, control them all through economic domination, or send the space ship at Alpha Centauri.

Interface: The interface must balance two opposing forces. It must give the user a great deal of powerful choices, but it must also be very simple and efficient, and take few mouse clicks or menus to implement any of a players choices. It must be sleek and powerful. A bad interface would destroy the game

Please look over any errors, this is only the first rough draft.


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The OpenCiv3 website
korn469

[Victor Galis]

"Victor:
Didn't you post an advanced combat model back at the Firaxis Forum? I remember someone did, and it was really great. If it was you could you please post it here or as an email so we could check it out."

-Someone remembers I'll go bump it. It is in the Civ3 List forum.

[Victor Galis]

On second thought, I'll just post the link.

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000159.html

[Urban Ranger]

I strongly suggest that we adopt FreeCiv as our starting point. This is exactly what Linus Trovald did. He started with Minix and slowly replaced the code.

There are things in FreeCiv most people won't know how to program, such as low level communication sockets.

At any rate, I don't see there's anything wrong with improving on FreeCiv or adopting it to our needs. IIRC it is based on the OpenSource philosophy.

Somebody has asked how hard it would be to switch from a rectangular map to a spherical map. I guess the answer is "it depends." That is, it depends on how the underlying data structures are designed.

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audentes fortuna juvat

[korn469]

victor

i re-read the combat summary (ok i did a comprehesive skimming over it) but it looks good...it is a great starting point for a combat system...i really liked the section on seiges...

urban ranger

well if free civ can handle the drastic changes we want and it would be easier to go that route, then kewl use it as the starting point...if not, well then maybe we shouldn't

korn469

[Urban Ranger]

korn,

Ugh, you used that word, "kewl!" Run away!

At any rate, it would be better if we don't have to do everything from scratch. I think we can at least reuse parts of freeciv.

[The Joker]

I think the most important thing we could do to OpenCiv3 is to make it changeable. We should always make the code so that it's wasily changed. This will make it possible to improve it as much as we can and want.


Great idea concept, korn!

Here's my comments:

Map: Great. I would LOVE a spherical map at some point, but for now this is fine.

Number of turns: Why should the game start at 3200BC in stead of just 4000BC?? I would like more turns, per year as well as including some point of science fiction, up to 2200AD (I guess we'll need a compromise or a vote on this one). I would like about 1500 turns in the game.

Number of players: I don't know if this is technically doable, but I would like up to and perhabs more than 100 player/AI entities (!!). There could be something like 10 civs at first, another 10-15 coming along the way and then 25-40 for breakaways etc. I would like civs to have civil wars numerous times throughout the game! The rest of the slots would be for the protectorates (which should control themselves and have an agenda, but be limited in their actions due to their semi-indepencance).

Growth model: Of cause. The size of the food growth box (default size 40) would be determined by SE growth rating, improvements, happyness and trade per pop in the city.

Resources: Again with the x10 system. This will make stuff like having an advance giving +10% food output possible.

Energy: It is a must. But I don't think it should be a factor untill inustrialization. Having horses or wood give energy is too wierd. Energy should be used to get factories and other production increasing
improvements to work.

Improvements: Cool. I think the improvements should increase/decrease the SE effects ratings. So a Factory could give +10 pro, which would be added to the national pro level.

Tile improvements: I agree on the PW system. It could propably be improved though.

Units: I agree.

War: I think we should use a modified version of Victors system. Unfortunately I do not have the time to read it at the moment. I think I will do it tomorrow.

Trade: Trade should definately have a huge effect. Most of your income in the later half of the game should come from trade with other civs, which would make atrocities very bad for you. It would also force you to stay nice to at least some civs.

SE: I have and SE system, which is included in The List v2.0. It is pretty complex and of cause horribly unbalanced, but I think it includes most of what we should have in the game and so it could be used as a foundation.

Reputation: I agree.

Civil strife: This is a must. I think using the CIVilians idea could work with a lot of what we want.

The 3 maps: Should be in.

Victory conditions: There should be numerous victory conditions: Make the trip to AC, conquor the world, a diplomatic victory, an economic victory (it should be more complex than SMACs lousy one - having monopoly on numerous goods and/or on the energy market is a good start), a cultural victory and a religious victory. I am not sure how the last 2 would work as I don't think a culture nor a religion should be connected to a certain civ. Religions should be individual, and operate within the civs. You could of cause support/accept/outlaw certain religions, but not control them.

Interface: Of cause!


Victor:

Again I will have to take a look at your model tomorrow.


Urban Ranger:

I think you're right.

Again I think an essential part of the game should be that we should be able to make the map spherical sometime.

[pris]

100+ Civilizations means the Ai will either be 10 times stupider or 10 times slower. IMO neither option is desirable.

It would be good to have an interface similar to SMAC which is, as far as I'm concerned, the best in the genre.

[heardie]

quote: Originally posted by The Joker on 03-19-2000 12:09 PM BTW how many are we working on the project at the moment? And are more people joining?

I think around 7 have exprsseed interest. Anone can participate just see http://members.xoom.com/acchiron/opensource or mail me
youo can join our mailing list at the site also

------------------
-Chiron Creators-
"http://members.xoom.com/acchiron"

[The Joker]

BTW how many are we working on the project at the moment? And are more people joining?

[Youngsun]

Korn

Please add my "corporations" ideas into your general ideas. If you don't like the idea then tell me which part of the idea needs more works,etc. So we can work it out to the possisble compromising point.

[Steve Clark]

If you guys want to see how good hexes can look in 3D - check out this screenshot from Talonsoft's West Front (it is a large load)... http://www.talonsoft.com/pix/west_fr...ere_eglise.GIF

Talonsoft has done more to perfect hexes and what makes it work great is that you can view the map in both 3D (to check out terrain) and 2D (to actually move units).

[korn469]

Failure of the State
by
korn469


The ideas presented here are my ideas for how we should model the decay of a civilization…

Civil Wars: civil wars happen when a group of cities change their allegiance. Listed below are types and causes of civil wars. Though civil wars could happen anytime the chance for a civil war would increase greatly if a civ lost its capital.

• Break-away republics: this type of civil war happens when a group of cities with a similar culture forms a new civ. The effects of this are local to those cities with a similar culture. This process should happen over a very short amount of time, between one and three turns. All units supported by the break-away republics would have a chance of defecting to them, regardless of where they were at the time, and all units supported by the break-away republic inside of their territory would automatically defect to them. All units inside of their territory (only from the civ they are breaking away from, not units from other civs) would have a chance of defecting to them, regardless of where they were supported from. The only exception would be the units supported from the capital.
  
• Colonial Wars: this type of civil war happens when a group of colonies form a new civ. The effects of this are local to the colonies. This process should happen over an extended period of time, with some of the colonies revolting and then as time passes other colonies join them. All units supported by the colonies would automatically defect to them regardless of where they were. Units inside of their territory would have a chance of defecting to the rebels if they were supported from other colonies that didn’t declare independence. Units supported from normal cities would not have a chance to defect to the colonies even if they were inside of colonial territory.
  
• Defections: this type of civil war happen when a city, or group of cities (or colonies) switch allegiance to another civ. This would happen if the cities had a similar culture, or similar social engineering settings, or those cities had a very low nationalism. Also a factor would be the ratio of two civs power and wealth, poor weak cities would be more likely to defect to a strong wealthy civ. This would happen in one turn and would be local to just the cities most like the civ they are defecting to. All units supported by the defectors inside of their territory would automatically switch allegiances to them. Units supported by the defectors, but that were inside of the original civs territory would not switch allegiances, and units outside of both the rebels and the original civs territory would have a chance of defecting to the rebels. All other units inside of their territory (only from the civ they are breaking away from, not units from other civs) would have a chance of defecting to them, regardless of where they were supported from. The only exception would be the units supported from the capital.
  
• Sessionist States: this type of civil war happens when a group of cites with similar ideal settings would declare their independence. There would have to be a great deal of difference between their ideal settings and the rest of the civ’s ideal setting for them to just declare a civil war. However after the capital fell, they would have a great chance of defecting. All of this would happen fairly quickly with all of the cities that are going to defect, defecting over a short period of turns, say less than five. All of this would be localized to the cities with the similar ideal settings. All units supported by the rebels inside of their territory would automatically switch allegiances to them. All units supported by the rebels outside of their territory would have a chance of joining them. All other units inside of their territory (only from the civ they are breaking away from, not units from other civs) would have a small chance (maybe 25%)of defecting to them, regardless of where they were supported from. The only exception would be the units supported from the capital.

Coups: coups happen when your own military units turn against you. Coups are not always violent, and they usually happen fairly quickly, unlike a civil war which can drag on for an extended amount of time. Cities never switch allegiances during a successful coup, but during a less successful coup there might be a few break away cities.

• Ambitious Generals: An ambitious general is when a high morale command unit decides to topple the government. This is very likely to happen where the government isn’t very effective and the people are unhappy and unproductive, the worse the civ is doing the more likely a general is to seize control. Also a better general will be more likely to lead a coup, so if a command unit is green morale they will be less likely to lead a coup than a command unit that has elite morale. All units attached to the command unit will turn against you, the command unit also can effect all of the other command units around it. When a command unit decides to launch a coup, all of the command units close to it does a loyalty check. Basically this should work like psi combat in SMAC on a 1:1 attack defense ratio with no modifiers (except maybe something like polymorphic encryption could act as trance and high morale could act like empath song). If a command unit turns then other command units near it have a chance of turning but the loyalty check is made based on the coup leaders morale. Also if the command unit that launches the coup is based in the capital, the coup has a larger effective radius on recruiting other generals. If the coup manages to capture your king unit then there would be a greater chance of the coup succeeding. The results of this would be one of two things. Either part of your military forces would be hostile towards you (counts as barbarian units) and you would subdue them or the coup would take over. If the coup was successful, then for a few turns the AI would run your cities and then you would play on representing the coup leaders, with the command unit that led the coup becoming your king unit. If the coup is not successful but the renegade general does take over your civ then it is like you have been overran by barbarians.
  
• Failed State: If at anytime you lose half of your civs power bar in less than ten turns there would be a great chance of your entire military structure revolting against you. The less time it took for your power bar to go down the greater the chance of the military replacing your government with a new one. This would happen in one turn and when it happened it would always be successful, but it wouldn’t always happen. Once again the AI would control your civ for a few turn, change social engineering setting and production to what it thought was acceptable. Then after a few (between 3-10) turns you would be in control of your civ again.
  
• Hard Liners: Would work in the same manner as an ambitious general, except it would only happen after you change social engineering settings. The more radical the social engineering changes the greater the chance of a coup. The longer you kept a social engineering setting the greater the chance of a coup. If the coup was successful, then not only would the AI take over for a few turns but it would change the social engineering back to what it was originally and the player couldn’t change it for 25 turns. If the coup is not successful but the renegade general does take over your civ then it is like you have been overran by barbarians.
  
• Rouge Military Units: units should require money for support, and when disbanding a unit it should cost a small amount of money to do so. When military units are not paid then there is a great chance that they will turn into rogue units that act basically like barbarian units. If rogue military units overcome your entire civ, it would be like barbarians overran it and you would not get a second chance.

Popular Uprisings: This is when the people turn against you. Usually not as quick or as organized as a coup or a civil war, this represents the civil strife that constantly tears at your empire.

• Peasant Revolts: this is when unhappy citizens try to seize control of a city. This would happen spontaneously and bad conditions would encourage it. If a peasant revolt happened a number of peasant units would appear in the city and they would fight the military garrison. If the Garrison won the battle the population would go down by one. The size of the peasant army would be based on the size of the city. If the city fell to the peasants it would count as a barbarian city.
  
• Resistance movement: This is when a city, or a group of cities actively support a guerrilla war against your civ. This would only happen spontaneously with unhappy occupied territories, or if your reputation dropped to dangerously low levels with your people. Cities that support the resistance would have a chance of partisans appearing nearby, and the partisans would have an increased chance of carrying out guerilla activity against the city. This could tie up a large number of military units trying to combat the guerrillas.
  
• Revolution: a revolution would occur when great changes tug at your empire, especially if your entire civ had a different ideal setting than what you currently had. It would basically have the same effect as a failed state, except it would not always be successful when it occurred. After a revolution you would not be able to change your social engineering setting for 25 turns.
  
• Student Demonstrations: this would occur in more advanced civs, and would basically be peaceful riots. All production in the city would be cut in half because of student demonstrations. Students would take to the streets in support of a cause, whether it was to end slavery in your civ, or to disband your nuclear arsenal. Only cities with a university would experience student riots. Student demonstrations would end when you appeased the students. If one city had a student demonstration they would quickly spread to all of the other cities with universities. Students would only de4monstrate over socially acceptable causes. Military units would no longer cause a set number of drones, but instead military units outside of your civ could trigger student demonstrations. The more peaceful and democratic your civ is the more likely students will demonstrate. Some causes would be, slavery, war, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, a more democratic form government (ie they want you to change your SE setting), greater education spending, greater health spending, starving cities ect. The students would be your civs conscious. Though marshal law could temporarily end student demonstrations this would hurt your civ's reputations and could lead to resistance movements forming.

[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited March 21, 2000).]

[korn469]

ok that is just the rough draft for my decay model but here are some new concepts associated with it

culture: though i am still determining what this is in civ terms i think that it basically represents a people's simularities
support: although i believe in a global support budget i believe that units should still have a home city representing where they are from and where their loyalties are
defecting: this is when a unit or a city switch sides to another civ
capital: this is your civs headquaters
colonies: when you found a new city it starts out as a colony, and it takes 50 turns to assimilate that colony into your society...colonies are more likely to spontaneously revolt than normal cities
nationalism: this would be a social engineering parameter like growth, it would partially replace the probe rating it would determine how much your people wanna stay part of your civ
ideal settings: this is the social engineering setting, tax rate, ect that the people want...the more you differ from what the people want the more likely bad things are to happen to you
command unit: a noncombatant unit that lets a player form military units into a stack. players form a stack by attaching military units to the command unit. the command unit gives bonuses to the stack.
king unit: a special command unit that you could only have one of at a time. this represents the player on the map. besides having all of the abilities of a command unit, it would also have other abilities like it would make a city happier if it was in it, it would decrease corruption and lower the likely hood of revolt. losing this unit would be a serious setback to your civ, but you could rebuild your king unit.
peasant units: weak military units for the age, representing a peasant army. they would have the special ability that any number of peasant units could be in a stack without a command unit.
reputation: how your civ is veiwed by other civs and its population. carrying out atrocities against your own people could galvanize them against you.
guerilla activity: partisan units should have some of the special abilities of probe team units besides their other abilities. incite riots and carrout sabotage would be the most likely candidates. partisans, though not the toughest military units they would be problem to an occupying army.

korn469

[korn469]

Joker

the reason i picked the game to start at 3200 instead of 4000 was because the math worked out correctly for 600 turns...also i really don't think we should go that far out into the future

i see at least two problems with having the game lasting 1500 turns...

one is the length of the game which could be too long...being too long decreases replayability

two is keeping the game challenging through all 1500 turns...whats the point of having 1500 turns if the player can consistantly win in 400

but if we can solve those two problems i say sure lets go for it...

as for having 100 AI entities...well map size and game length and game balance would be the most important factors...i would rather see a smaller numbers of major competitive superpowers than a great number of small and very cut throat civs...i feel that about 30 (including splintered states) would be about the most number of civs in any one game, and that might be too many...but the number definantly needs to go up from 7

Youngsun

something about your corporation model doesn't feel right to me yet, but i will look over it again and then go on a brain storming mission and work with you on it

Steve Clark

nice pic! looks like that could work to me...how about the rest of you?

korn469
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited March 21, 2000).]

[The Joker]

What has happened here? Let's get some action back into this thread!!

I like the corporations idea although I think corporations should be AI controlled entities with their own agenda. I also think the civ should be able to produce processed food/MFG's and services. How about being able to turn 2 food into 1 processed food, and so forth? This would make it possible, but expensive to live without corporations.

Pris:
I don't ever think the AI has actually been using much computerpower. The stuff that needed the mhz's and the mb's have always been stuff like graphics. I would be satisfied with Civ2 style graphics (SMAC graphics was too dark and ugly) if it meant having loads of AI's and loads of gameplay options. If I am completely wrong here, please tell me, but at the moment I think it could be done.

I like the Combat model. It is complex, but still simple enough to be doable. I think a unit should be of a standard size, so no 1568 men phalanx against a 985 men archer. That would be way too complex and annoying.

[heardie]

I definatly think that we should encorprat the spy suggestion in the other section. That is cool. for those that were wondering there is are from the game maybe at http://members.xoom.com/acchiron/opensource/art.htm and coode is up to at http://members.xoom.com/acchiron/opensource/code.htm so have a look and see what you think
Korn I think you ar spot on here. Just a quick question to Korn also - is your emial working yet?

------------------
-Chiron Creators-
"http://members.xoom.com/acchiron"

[korn469]

heardie

what do you mean by

quote: Korn I think you ar spot on here.

i didn't understand...my email is still giving me problems, messages often get delivered late and it doesn't always let me view my messages in my inbox but it doesn't seem as bad as what it was...but if you need to contact me, i have a temporary email address at commieXTC@hotmail.com

i will look over the spy thread, the slave thread, and Youngsun's corporation thread and write another design document

all of my documents are just first drafts and i encourage debate on them

korn469

[Youngsun]

Korn

I'll be happy even small part of my ideas of corporations makes it. Since there is only I talk too much on that thread I need someone who really suggest something new and help to simplify it more for easier understanding.

There was no significant objection from other people about introducing "corporations" into the game but the problem is many people seems unhappy about the complexity of the model.

The ideas are entirely based on CIVII, so if there are some significant changes on city view/economy/trade in CIVIII only basic concepts can survive thus do not mind many details that I wrote.(They can be changed anytime)

[Victor Galis]

Here are some of my opinions:

About the command unit, it should not be required to form a stack. Each unit is assumed to have a commander, a commander who could command two such units; however, the stack would not fight quite as well as if it had a real commander. So for instance two phalanxes would fight at -25%, or like 1.5 phalanxes, but with a normal leader they would fight at 2 phalanx strength.

Secondly, I think non-standard sizes are very important. You can not create a unit in a non standard size; however a unit may become damaged in combat and lose some of its strength. Thus a unit that has fought through many other units, and lost half its men would fight at half strength, but to be fair if that unit lost 43.7% of its strength it should fight at 56.3% strength. Since the units would be created in increments of 1000 (bigger in later ages), 43.7% percent would translate directly into 437 men, so it wouldn't be some abstract number.

I don't have much time to do anything now, so I can't add much else to the discussion for the moment, but I think we should begin doing something, like seeing what code we can "borrow" from freeciv (I'm sure there's some), and what we have to make ourselves (most of it, essentially).

[heardie]

quote: Originally posted by korn469 on 03-22-2000 01:39 AM heardie what do you mean by

Hmm beats me!!!


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-Chiron Creators-
"http://members.xoom.com/acchiron"

[The Joker]

korn:

The Failure of state idea is great. It points out just how civs could break apart. But the rebels should not be barbarians. They should be a new civ. After all, if they win they should be able to negotiate with the other civs and so forth.

The concepts in the game:
Culture: Couldn' it simply be the nationalistic entity of which the people felt attached too? This would make sence.

Support: I agree completely!

Colonies: I like this idea. A colony should be all newly started cities and all newly conquored cities. But a colony shouln't at all just become an integrated part of your civ after x turns. Integrating a colony should be something you chose to do when you felt it would be good to you. A newly built city could propably be assimilated after 10 turns, but a conquored city or a city that had often rebelled against you could be colonies for a very long time. I think a colony should have certain SE effects to that city. It would be something like: -3 efficiency -3 happyness -3 nationalism +5 police. This way you would be able to surpress a city that was very hostile to you, but it would need a strong military presense in the city. A colony would be controlled by officials directly chosen by your government and so you could, even in a democratic government, do more or less what you wanted too there.

I think there should be 3 kind of modes a city could have within your civ: integrated, colony and protectorate. Protectorates would be semiindependant and could be previously conquored civs (it could be bad in the long run to have a large foreign group within your civ), previous colonies that you didn't want to stay in direct control over due to the cost of the military needed, or small civs that had simply asked you for protection. You could also demand to an enemy that he joined you or you would destroy him.

Nationalism: I think each city should have a nationalism rating.

Command unit: I can live with this.

King unit: I really do not like this. The game shouldn't be too focused on persons. Kings die in very few turns civwise, and so I do not think there should be such a unit. Having a capital should be enough.

I agree with the last 3.

About the future, I can live with limited amounts of SF, but the takeoff to AC should happend at a somewhat realistic time. And it is not realistic to fly there in 2050. We propably wont even have a Mars base there yet. But like all I am in for compromises. How about 2100? It is a nice, round number!

Number of turns: Personally I would like to be able to spend weeks, even months, on the same game. But as I can see how other people might disagree, how about making it optional? There could be anywhere from 200-2000 turns, with the advance rate happending at an appropiate speed. Of cause we should focus on getting a playable game before we get into such details.

100 AIs: I think the beauty of having so many states would be, that there would naturally evolve superpowers, medium powers and small powers. There could be civs of all shapes and sizes. Another thing would be, that it would give a whole new dimension to diplomacy. You could become a great power if you made a pact with most of the small powers of the world, that could beat the great civs, and you via diplomacy could get the majority of the votes in that, you could increase your power by supporting resistance groups (these should also be some of the AIs) in large civs, or you could get other civs to join you as protectorates. If the civil war thing is to work every civ has to have loads of these during the game (something like 10-15 - most of these would be destroyed early), which demands a lot of AIs. And a large civ with 40 cities should have at least 1 or 2 rebel groups within it. These would propably mostly just annoy it with terrorist actions (there should be a terrorist unit capable of doing stuff like destroying improvements and killing population - if a normal civ used one it would be a medium atrocity), but enemies of that civ should be able to make secret alliances and provide the rebels with money etc.

[korn469]

The Joker

some times they should be barbarians, but other times they should be new seperate civs...though i'm not sure exactly every instance of each...

as for culture being the nationalistic entity of which the people felt identified with...well if we went with the three maps idea then we could have citizenship on the cultural map, and culture or on the culture/economic map and culture would be the nation people identified with...an example of this is Iraqi kurds, yes they are Iraqi but they think of themself as kurdish and identify with other kurdish people...how does that sound?

colonies: i like your idea that colonies have different SE values...but i don't think cities you capture should be colonies...they should be occupied territory and have different SE values than colonies...colonies should also harvest more resources than normal cities...the farther away a base is from your HQ the more harder it is to change it from a colony to a normal city so colonies should have a formula based on distance and SE factors that determine how quickly they could turn into normal cities

i like protectorates but i think they should be more like submissive pact brothers in SMAC, except you could have more control over them...like you could set their objectives and set them to build/explore/conquer/discover like you do a govenor so they are semi-autonomous but you still have lots of control over them

i think command units are very important...also i think that a units should have two values, morale and experiance...morale could never increase, except if you increased your society's morale rating...experiance would only increase after a unit engages in combat, and all units would start off with low experiance

king units would be your king exactly...it would kinda be like a HQ in unit form, but if you think it is a bad idea then we can toss it

number of turns is negociable, but still it shouldn't be too excessive

as for 100 AI's...if you had 10 civs with 20 cities each, and 10 civs with 10 cities each, and 10 civs with 5 cities each, and 70 civs with 1 city that would mean that you have 420 cities on the map...that would mean either a gigantic map or very small cites that completely overlap covering every space of land on the map...the first solution would increase game time while decreasing system performance and the second wouldn't be very fun

what is the problem with having like aound 15-20 civs starting off and having an additional 10-15 break away civs, and a few barbarian/uncivilized/collapes+disarrayed civs? couldn't that solve most of our problems?

korn469

[JacobH]

quote: as for 100 AI's... [snip] ...the first solution would increase game time while decreasing system performance and the second wouldn't be very fun

Computers tend to become faster and faster. I think that is what we should have in mind when setting arbitrary limits. Why 100? Why not 101? Or 64? I feel strongly that there should not be too many predetermined limits. Instead, there could be a user-configurable maximum on the number of units and the size of the map.
I always found the maximum size of the map in Civ II to be too small. I would not mind if it would take longer to play the game. In fact, that was exactly why I wanted a larger map. I definitly think it would be preferable if there was a default limit, and people could easily change this. There could optionally be a warning that it could possibly be less fun to play the game if the limit was set really high.

Jacob

[Matthevv]

Re: nationalism

The idea of nationalism as we know it today is quite a recent development as a political force, only really in the last couple of hundred years. So I don't think it should be something in the game from the beginning. It could be a "technology" like fundamentalism, that would allow you to have a Nazi/Fascist government, and would allow your spies to foment nationalist uprisings in the parts of your opponents empires.

[The Joker]

korn:

Barbarians:
Perhabs, but most of the time they should be a new civ.

Culture/nationalism:
This is exactly what I had in mind. Great!

Colonies/occupied territory:
I like the idea of having occupied territory being different from a colony. But I do not at all think that a colony/occupied territory/protectorate should assimilate into your civ automatically. When it happened it would be something you had chosen as you thought the time was right. As I said before a colony should sometimes stay that way through the entire game (or untill you finally gave it up due to the cost).

Protectorates:
Great idea of letting you set their objectives. But they should still have full control over their units. You could move your units freely in their territory and inside their cities, but they couldn't do the same thing with your territory. A protectorate should be controlled from a central government (all the cities would work together) and have a capital. It should also have it's own SE settings. This would mean, that in a democratic protectorate you might not get it to build what you wanted it to all the time, due to the legislature. You could make certain deals with the protectorate (like "Sell me 200 energy for 100 gold per turn") that the protectorate could not break. Whether Science and Tax should be payed to you (you could say something like "30% of your net income is to be shipped to me") would be set by you when creating the protectorate, and could be changed by you at all times at the risk of creating unhappyness. The protectorate could declare independance at all times, but would have to fight a war with you to gain it. A protectorate that was not very strong would usually be satisfied with being a protectorate.

Command units:
Then let's include them!

King units:
I still don't like this.

Number of AIs:
I think Jacob asnwered this one nicely...