Let's have a game with REAL strategy for a change!

[The Rusty Gamer]

Why can't we have a Civ game with some real strategy for a change and some real choices that have repercussions to the end of the game?

Currently, as I see Civ 3 and other Civ-type games, the choices are lame such as "What shall I research first" or "What shall I build first"? Eventually in these games you can always research and build everything so it all evens out so I ask again where is the real choices?

For instance, what if you had to choose between researching one technology or another but you could never research both? Or you had to choose between some buildings ie: You could either build a marketplace or a library in a city but you were never allowed to build both. Now there's some real strategy, there's some real choice.

Real choice comes from giving permanent limitations on things. Unfortunately most gamers appear to miss this subtley to strategy, don't want restrictions, and then wonder why each game ends up same old same old in the end.

I'd like to be able to implement this with the scenario editor but I don't see this happening, even with the upcoming free update, though it just occurred to me that I could use the required resources option for some buildings. Hmmmm...that might make it interesting.

One thought I had was to limit the number of buildings that could be built in a city by linking space to build with the size of the culture borders round a city and Wonders would take up more space so you'd really have to think about what you were doing.

Another thought is the amount of knowledge you could retain would depend partly on the size of the population (people understand things in their head) and certain buildings like libraries. If one such building was destroyed or there was a decrease in population, some knowledge would be loss, maybe you'd loose a tech and you'd have to rediscover it. It would be possible then to literally bomb a civilization "back to the stone age".

Please discuss.

[Random Passerby]

Well, one fairly simple option presents itself: reduce the abilities of current city improvements, breaking them into a larger number of improvements with increased overall cost (both in shields and money upkeep). Unfortunately, lack of fine-tuning controls really makes this tough; you couldn't do an awful lot without increasing the general scale of, say, commerce (i.e., increasing all gold and tech costs possible x2, so that libraries etc. would be less effective, and add more improvements to each side).

[Ben Williams]

I can imagine the town hall meeting now.

"Gentlemen, we want to build a library."
"We can't."
"Why not?"
"Because we have a marketplace."

I see what you're getting at though, I just think you'd have to go about it a different way.

-ben

[The Rusty Gamer]

Your're not the same Ben Williams who won the Australian Big Brother last year are you? No, thought not, just a coincidence then.

Anway, I've had some more ideas. Let each city have a certain amount of space to build on directly proportionate to the city border size and/or cultural points for that city. And give each building a size setting (which can be redefined in the editor). So you have to think about what you build, what's more important and how much space you have left.

On top of this, you may not have thought about this but Civ 3 obviously must have automatic housing built into the game since we don't build any. So how about some city space is lost to those theorectical houses automatically - the bigger the population, the more space is lost to this housing zone.

In addition, you could add another way of giving more happiness by being able to implement a luxury housing policy; however this would double the amount of space required for housing.

Even better, have a quality of housing slider for each city - from low quality which doesn't take up much space but people become unhappy to high quality which causes happiness but takes up alot of space. Also, the high quality houses may cost some maintenance.

You could discover technologies which improve the quality of housing as well or expand the slider.

[Sava]

I see what you're getting at, but what you're suggesting wouldn't work in Civ. I'm working on a game now that is actual strategy. There is more of a focus on intellegence, industrial power, and allocation of resources in different areas of science. The game is mostly about combat, but it definitely has aspects of the Civ games in it (Expansion, Science, Diplomacy, etc).

It's very early in the development stage, but rest assured, I'll post a link for a beta version once its ready.

[vondrack]

Well, while I do understand what you are thinking of, I do not think this would work in Civ...

It may be just me, but especially in the very beginning of every game, choosing between the available improvements involves a LOT of strategy and balancing. Perhaps later in the game it becomes less of an importance, as you can quickly build almost anything...

Limiting technologies/improvements: while this might add some pretty complex depth, it would actually spoil the gameplay, I believe, because it is absolutely illogical. The more I know, the more I can learn - this is true in the real world and it must be the same in the game, otherwise, you would be losing that feeling of "reality", however weak it may be. Look at it from this point of view: currently, your bombers cannot sink ships. This was done probably to balance the game... (yes, I miss the possibility of replaying the Battle of Midway ) And just read through the forums here - how many people complain of that being illogical... choosing between a marketplace and a library would definitely be absurd...

Linking the number of buildings to a virtual space would probably not help much. The largest cities would still be able to build anything, which is as it is now... and which is how it should be, IMHO.

There ARE important strategic decisions to make, especially when founding cities - the terrain imposes very strong limits on what you can later do with a city. Not only that certain improvements can be built in, say, the coastal cities only, but the overall mix of the terrain tiles DOES have a very strong effect on how many people can live in a city and how productive it can be.

For me, the games do not end up the same every time... unfortunately... I sometime lose... The difference comes from the fact that the geography and starting location are (or can be) always very different. Besides, I do not care that much if the game ends up this way or another (there are two possibilities anyway - either I win, or lose), but what I do care about is how it plays... and my Civ3 games are quite varied, at least much more varied that in Civ2.

[Ned]

Sounds just like Deus Ex. Good.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by The Rusty Gamer
Why can't we have a Civ game with some real strategy for a change and some real choices that have repercussions to the end of the game?

For instance, what if you had to choose between researching one technology or another but you could never research both? Or you had to choose between some buildings ie: You could either build a marketplace or a library in a city but you were never allowed to build both. Now there's some real strategy, there's some real choice.

In the (in)famous The List v.2.0 (Civ 3 suggestion archive) you can find plenty of suggestions gave to Firaxis on how to make and browse a Tech tree with mutually exclusive paths. Specific buildings are probably mentioned, too. Give them a check, if you want.

Firaxis ignored them, probably because they means a more complex game, with plenty of different graphics and too many path to playtest and balance.

[Apocalypse]

Mutually exclusive buildings would be wrong. Marketplaces and libraries work together. A city must be good financially to be able to have a good library. Libraries attract well educated people, which is good for the economy.

Techs also seem wrong. It doesn't make since that your civ can't research something just because they know something else.

[Capt Dizle]

The problem with Civ3 is that in your core cities you can easily build everything but in outlying cities corruption makes it very hard to build anything.

Corruption is overmodeled, maintenance is undermodeled. A library is not just a building, it is library facilities for the city (and each city represents more than a city its the surrounding area, a province really). Maintenance costs for facilities should go up as a city grows. Then you would have modeled reality, in the town hall meeting the issue would be "We can't build a research lab because the costs of our library system are too high!"

Then you would have to make some real decisions. Subsidize facilities in city X with civ wide cash reserves (could be risky) or just don't build that research lab.

[Destroyer]

Originally posted by Apocalypse
Techs also seem wrong. It doesn't make since that your civ can't research something just because they know something else.

I agree. And while you can guess at the technologies that would open up if you researched refining, I dont think it would be resonable for you to start researching combustion until you had access to the prior technology. This make the majority of technologies essential.

Perhaps what you want is a less rigid research tree.

Perhaps the scrapping of ages, and having a more civ 2 like tree?

After all, in reality there are a lot of African countries that are little more advanced the renaissance period (game wise) that have suddenly been given modern weaponary by the west (and east).

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
Maintenance costs for facilities should go up as a city grows. Then you would have modeled reality, in the town hall meeting the issue would be "We can't build a research lab because the costs of our library system are too high!"

Wes pulled this off in CTP2 Med Mod...

Just started testing civ3, based on the fact that it was given to me.
Question, is there a city building tree in civ3 that prevents a player from building a particular building, even if he has the enable advance, because the player hasn't built some of the more basic buildings? I know this is a feature of Modded CTP2 that adds a lot of strategy. For instance, if I want to build a Craft Guild in a city, I need to have built a Bazaar/Agora/Marketplace/Forge/Mill/Bank in that city first.

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by Destroyer
I agree. And while you can guess at the technologies that would open up if you researched refining, I dont think it would be resonable for you to start researching combustion until you had access to the prior technology. This make the majority of technologies essential.

Perhaps what you want is a less rigid research tree.

Perhaps the scrapping of ages, and having a more civ 2 like tree?

After all, in reality there are a lot of African countries that are little more advanced the renaissance period (game wise) that have suddenly been given modern weaponary by the west (and east).

I was just saying that techs shouldn't be mutually exclusive like the things in Deus Ex. The way the techs are set up now really doesn't concern me as much as other things. It would if it were mutually exclusive though.

[Spiffor]

Rustygamer :
You can edit Civ3 to have exclusive "building paths" in a limited way :
Let's say you want thre exclusive paths : economy, knowledge, military. This way, a merchant city will never produce good military. It's just an example.
Go to the editor. Select barracks and check the box "replaces all improvements with this checked" (sorry, I don't know the real name with my French version of the editor). That's the box different power stations use.
Select marketplace and library and do the same thing. Then, give other buildings a requisite which is either library, marketplace and barracks.
I know it's not the best way to have true strategy with true choices, but it may work.

BTW, I would like to see more countereffects when you make a choice (currently, the only concern when one builds something is the maintenance cost), but I sure would hate being unable to build a library in a marketplace city.

Hexagonian :
Yes, there are building prereq for buildings. For example, you can't produce a power plant before you built a factory in this city.

EDIT : added answer for Hexagonian

[Destroyer]

Originally posted by Apocalypse

I was just saying that techs shouldn't be mutually exclusive like the things in Deus Ex. The way the techs are set up now really doesn't concern me as much as other things. It would if it were mutually exclusive though.

Sorry Apocalypse, The second part of my message was to answer the question at the top of the page. I knew what ya meant

[Apocalypse]

Ahh. Alright.

[MBD]

What do you think of the idea of having a percentage of each turn's production allocated to something like "luxury goods." Then, in wartime, when you might need to increase production of military units, you'd have to take back some of that production, increasing citizen unhappiness. Kinda like the "guns vs. butter" approach to production.