A major flaw in ALL Civ games

[Belart]

First of all and since it's my first post here
Hello to all CIV community.

Second. If this issue has already been adressed, just point me in the right direction, please.

Okay to the point. I've been playing civ since the beginning for god knows how many years but recently (while playing CtP2 and reading the list for Civ3 )I realized that theres a huge problem in civilization.
It is that the _only_ reason for any battles in civ is conquest (I mean like only to please your ego - I have conquered all) You never go to war because of the scarcity of resources, control over a particular fertile area (since maps are normally quite uniform).
This is not waht happened in history, it's totally wrong from the point of the reasons for human action.
Therefore I think that there should be.
1) Strategic resources.
When your civ area is very small and you dont have any mountains or hills you cannot discover metal working or stone working or whatever. Of course the maps shoud be totally reworked for that. Then you meet other civs. If they have that resource you can now research it _but_ to build any unit with that resource you pay gold to the civ (If you area at war - you get no resource)Of course Iron and copper should them be in nearly any hill/mountain tile or it will not work.
Same with everything up to uranium with only a few select locations for that one.
No mountain rivers in your tiles - no hydroelectric power, just oil (you may have to buy it, meaning the civ with oil field get some gold every turn from each of your cities with power plant)
Much fertile land - only where it's supposed to be. This will give all the steppe, desert civs the drive to conquer land. In this context the idea of city tiles would be great as cities would grow along rivers a.s.o...
2) more happiness/unhappiness.
I am not yet clear about this one so forgive me but it is something like this.
If you have a democratic society and other nations not you get unhappines in all cites (small one)(Your people want to free the others from despotic rule).
If the other nation and you have comon borders this modifier should be much greater so that you have a desire to go to war to remove this unhappiness.(Maybe the other way round _less_ democratic receive happines penalty.) If eveyone(you know) is monarchy and you republic you get bonus.. Anyway you get the idea! Different ideologies should result in severe problems that should lead to conflicts. Now in civ we decide on a government based only on our economic desires, that should be changed we should be able to force on others those governments that we'd like to see (for our own sake)
Another idea. If your neighbour's city is near a proposed natural wonder yor nearest city gets a happiness penalty.
Another one. If you control some landmark of military importance (e.g. Gibraltar Bosphorus or some mountain pass on the Silk way) you receive some economic or military bonuses.
In short I would like to be forced to go to war not just because I (or my neighbour) has many troops and want to get a bigger score or have delusions of grandeur, but because my people lack something, just like real history.

Thanks for your patience.

BA

[Patient English]

Belart - I agree totally with point (1), and it would be good to be able to place these resources where you want in a scenario game, not have to live with some "resource seed" generated by the game.

Point (2) I agree with to some extent. Differing ideologies should certainly generate tensions. Civ II already has some rather unrealistic happiness penalties HARDCODED (boo, hiss!) into the game if you are a Democracy or Rebublic. I think too much unhappiness spoils the game if all it means is that you need to build more Cathedrals etc. If it means political instability, that would be more interesting.

Holding special strategic locations will be its own reward, if they ARE truely strategic.

John

[Yeti]

Yeah I got the resource seed blues too.

Altho it would make things completely complicated, how bout you only see SOME resources and others are presented when you do something, (mine, drill). AND that resource has a FINITE supply. So most or all mountains have some type of resource that would last a long time, but at some point disappear from mining so you wouldnt get such a production bonus out of it, and stuff like recycling centers would reduce the supply needed to maintain the same level of production, among other things.

a thought

yeti

[jdlessl]

What might be an interesting twist would be to be able change the mineral content of a randomly generated world. If you set it really low, then nations will fight dearly over scarce resources. Same thing for arable land.

If any of you have played MOO2, you should recognize this.

--
Jared Lessl

[Ribannah]

quote: Originally posted by Belart on 12-07-2000 03:51 AM First of all and since it's my first post here Hello to all CIV community.

Welcome, Belart

quote: Second. If this issue has already been adressed, just point me in the right direction, please.

There have been several related threads. Since you are new anyway, my advice would be to read ALL the old posts that have been kept. There's a lot if great stuff posted by many creative civvers!

quote: ... It is that the _only_ reason for any battles in civ is conquest (I mean like only to please your ego - I have conquered all) You never go to war because of the scarcity of resources, control over a particular fertile area (since maps are normally quite uniform).

I have played a few games that were different. And if you play on a young world, the maps won't be very uniform. Also, you can play a more peaceful game with no conquest in mind at all - and still be the first to land on Alpha Centauri.

quote: This is not what happened in history

.

Well, about all wars in human history have been about economic factors, but not very often about access to specific resources. One example that comes to mind is the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan in WW II, after the USA shut down Japan's fuel supply.

quote: ... When your civ area is very small and you don't have any mountains or hills you cannot discover metal working or stone working or whatever. Of course the maps should be totally reworked for that.

You would have to make sure that every resource is available at least somewhere in every part of the world, or some tribes will remain very backward.


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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[DarkCloud]

About non-conquest battles.

(1) If the prey moved every few years and the population of resources could be exhausted, but new resources could be discovered then, you could conquer cities and divert the resources to your larger cities, without resources and thus fight for resources.

[OreoFuchi]

quote: Originally posted by Yeti on 12-07-2000 05:35 PM Altho it would make things completely complicated, how bout you only see SOME resources and others are presented when you do something, (mine, drill). AND that resource has a FINITE supply. So most or all mountains have some type of resource that would last a long time, but at some point disappear from mining so you wouldnt get such a production bonus out of it, and stuff like recycling centers would reduce the supply needed to maintain the same level of production, among other things. yeti

I don't wanna deal with my mines suddently losing production value. I know it's not realistic that a mine can last forever, but it's not realistic that a civlization has the same leader for 6,000 years either. In my view, neither is a bad thing.

[Belart]

I also don't think mines should lose their value.
It would be too much. But i definitly think that if you terraform a tile to mountains or hills it should be for military purposes only (defense, move bonuses)
These man-mase hills cannot have any ores or any other production capability.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Belart:

I agree with your point on special resources. In fact I agree with it so much, it was one of the reasons I started designing a civ-type game. If you're interested, you can see my idea for how to implement your thoughts at this link.

In the Clash econ model we, like you, think it'll make the game more Fun if we simulate the effects of rare or important goods and products - e.g. that of coal in the industrial revolution. Special goods will give the player new possibilities for cooperation and competition with other civs: enabling important trade pacts, struggles for trade dominance, wars of conquest brought on by material shortages (Japan in WWII for example), and embargos. The strategic space in which the player acts would be much richer, as you want. But this needs to be done without need for micromanagement. If you read the link above you'll see how we handle that.

This idea could work for civ3, but I'm sure it won't happen, since it goes a ways beyond the civ econ model. And even if they did do it, it'd probably require heaps of micromanagement... one thing they don't seem to have a handle on is how to reduce micromanagement .

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited December 09, 2000).]

[Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto]

First of all, Welcome!

I agree with this, in civ2, everything is based around conquest. all throughout history, wars have been based on religion, resources, arguments (rather large arguments), etc.

sorry, had to add something, Ribbanahana, the attack on pearl harbor was not becuase we shut the japenese fuel line.
[This message has been edited by Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto (edited December 09, 2000).]

[Vitmore The Great]

I'm split between the non-renewable resources and the infinite resources models. But if the non-renewable model was used, it would be more realistic. But it would be proper to classify the resources. For example, could a river be counted as the same type of resource as coal? Coal runs out, so you begin trading with other civs for it, or conquer new lands. Rivers could change direction, as they have many times in the past. This would result in the need for people to migrate, as opposed to simpy expanding. So, to implement migration in the game, a city should be able to make as many settlers as there are people, therby the entire popualtion of the city would be mobile. They could all move to a new location and refound the city. Of course all the improvements would not be taken along, but all new communities start from scratch.


Vitmore

[Ribannah]

quote: Originally posted by Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto on 12-09-2000 05:38 PM Sorry, had to add something, Ribbanahana, the attack on pearl harbor was not becuase we shut the japenese fuel line.

No need to be sorry, Diabolito!
However, the Japanese really saw it that way and since it was their decision to attack ....

Of course the fuel line was shut for a reason (Japanese invasion of Vietnam).

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[Roman]

I think Ribannah is right. Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour was in fact mainly because the western nations including the USA shut off Japan's supply of fuel and rubber. They agreed to restore the supply only if Japan withdrew from all the territories they have acquired in the last 15 years of conquests, including Manchuria. To the Japanese this was unacceptable, but without the raw materials they were denied by the allies they could not carry on their war against China for more than a few months not to mention the effect this would have in the long term on their economy. Hence, they decided to take the resources for themselves by invading the resource-rich European colonies in the Far East especially the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), which produced vast quantities of oil and rubber.
Since the Japanese figured (probably correctly) that the USA would not stand idly by while they helped themselves to more territory in Asia, they decided not to wait for the American retaliation, but to strike first and destroy the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour and Manila...