To FIARAXIS: Provinces and independence.

[dexters]

Heheh. I'm not one for reviving old threads, but I've recently been playing A LOT of Civ III and felt that it is as a game, better than ever. I have my thread relating to Independence here:http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=52255

On a closely related note, I was recently inspired by an interesting new concept. This is definately a Civ IV suggestion, but the current Civ IV thread is too broad and I'd like comments and feedback from you guys on this one idea exclusively instead of constantly switching topics.

The idea i am proposing is (City) States / Provinces.


Think of it as being able to build an infinite amount of forbidden palaces.

The idea is simple and I think a far more interesting alternative to the corruption fiasco when the game was first released in 2001.

-Civilizations will have the Palace. As usual, it will have it large radius of effect. It is your Capital City.
-But as empires expand players can further subdivide their empires into provinces. These provinces will have a flag indicator (so they are easy to identify) and each province or state will have a capital city.

-Here is the catch. A provincial capital will have vastly reduced corruption fighting power, and its power is a factor of its distance from the actual capital. Thr further away from the capital, the less effective these provincial capitals are.

-Max/Min number of cities required for each Province / State can be adjustable by the player depending on map size. But an obvious suggestion would be from a minimum of 1 city to a maximum of 10. In the lower extremes, 1 city provinces are effectively city states. Much like the Italian model, or mordern Vatican City, Singapore or Hong Kong.

Advantages

- No more rushing Courthouses/Police stations for each city. Instead, once players decide on a provincial configuation (I'm assuming they manually select cities to be included) They get to choose a capital and immediately it begins building a provincial capital palace. This will be a costly building 300 to 500 shields.
Like small wonders it cannot be rushed, but some other rememdy could be applied if players absolutely need to hurry the building of the capital for military or other considerations. -- perhaps paying a higher than normal rushing fee.

-No more swing a ling Palace placement. One of the things that annoy me is the Palace swing startegy where on large maps, players are forced to swing their palaces to a new land area to control corruption. For a lot of players, moving the palace from its traditional home city could cost years in research and lots of gold. And there are emotional considerations too.


-Ability to trade /barter entire provinces. Or better yet, go to war because of a province. New diplomacy options is always a plus. The idea of strategic resources can be tied into this. Given luxuries tend to cluster, players who build provinces containing a minimum number of a resource gain commercial or shield bonuses or are able to build unique buildings.... think of "Textile mill" for a province that has a minimum required # of silk or dyes. And this certainly introduces a whole new resource. PROCESSED GOODS. Civs could now trade silk (the raw materials) and silk cloth
more trading and more diplomacy = good.

-Entire provinces may succed and form new nations.
(** This is where a related idea of separation comes into play. The introduction of minor tribes. For the American civilization for example, the candidates for minor tribes could be the 50 states. For the Romans, it could be the classical Italian city states. We could then have a scenario where the guy who is playing American civ could potentially experience a situation where a far off province declares independence to form the nation of California Or they could choose to keep the name of the province given by the player.
All the majors Civs currently in Civ III have provinces and historical precedents that can be used as minor tribe candidates. I don't see this will be a problem as far as trying to get enough names. And as I've already said, the game could just choose to keep the name of the province given by the player. So yes, we could see the nation of Ass :/

-New improvements related to the management of the provincial capitals.

What doesn't Change
-It doesn't encourage the kind of virus like growth found in Civ II where corruption and waste wasn't a big a deal. Since it takes time to build the provincial capitals, war mongers will have to stop and spend serious cash to take care of their new conquests or risk rebellion and succession.

-It stays true to Civilization and includes the advent of a visual border system as represented by "Culture" in Civ III. For Civ IV, I'd like to see the idea retained, but instead of culture, it will be called "Sphere of Influence" and instead of relying solely on cultural imrprovements in the city, a City's culture will instead by a function of 5things: 1) Military force in the city 2) cultural buildings in the city 3) distance from the capital 4) economic power of the city as measured by pre corruption gold output 5) overall power Cultural and economic of the Civ. This makes sense. A player that establishes a colony close to home gets a bonus in sphere of influence expansion. At the same time, the whole border system is not so constraining and unrealistic that a powerful civilization setting up a colony somewhere has to essentially start from scratch.


Thoughts, comments, suggestions? All welcome.

[dexters]

Just an addendum.

A potential exploit could be that players simply choose to build 1 city provinces so you end up with a super rush, super productive nation of 20 city states. Yes, it will take a long time or cost a lot of $$$. So I am certainly open to the idea that provinces may not be inifite. For small maps, provinces may be capped at 5, medium at 10, large at 15, huge at 20.

And There could be further distinctions. If players exceed their provincial caps, they can redraw the borders to include new cities, or simply have cities that are said to be ruled by decree, directly from the capital.


Addendum #2

In case there is any confusion, provinces are self contained units. If two provincial capitals are next to each other on the map, there will be no overlap of corruption fighting power. The corruption fighting power of a provincial capital applies only to the cities designated as part of the province. A very corrupt city of another province will get no benefit even if it is next to the provincial capital of a different province.

We may also have to include a distance limit from the next closet city of a province to prevent people from creating strange provinces where you have a city for a province half the world away.

[HazieDaVampire]

How about to prevent this the provinces capital has slightly more corruptions than the closest citys encircling it. That way you'll need some citys next to it for maximum effect.

[Demerzel]

i like the idea of provinces having a chance to secede from your empire, would be nice to have some way of preventing the ridiculously large empires you can get in the game.

[Kuciwalker]

I really like this idea.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Demerzel
would be nice to have some way of preventing the ridiculously large empires you can get in the game.

no it wouldn't. just because the germans failed doesn't mean i'll make the same mistakes

[Lord_Davinator]

sounds like a nice idea...

[bongo]

Even if I favour the idea of a province declaring independence I can only imagine how much it will piss people off when they loose a province. Much like loosing 20+ state-of-the-art units to a culture flip, only worse.

[Elok]

Bongo's got a good point.
Being able to build more than one FP sounds good; maybe if you used a leader to build one(provided leaders were a little more common, and preferably less military-centric). Having to wall off provinces sounds like a royal pain in the rear and I doubt it would add much fun to gameplay. At least, not for me it wouldn't.

[Fosse]

If there were indicators that losing a province were likely, and there were measures that could be taken to stop it, then I don't think there would be a huge outrage from players.

The problem with culture flipping is that it just HAPPENS. Sure, we know the theory behind it, but there is no warning, and nothing that can be done about it (other than rushing buildings and hoping... but even then).

I would picture province revolts being like the anarchy that your civ can enter if you let too many cities riot for too many turns.

Nobody gets mad at how unfair it is when their civ thorws out its government after IGNORING, despite repeated warnings, the happiness of the people for four or five turns, do they?


I'm a big supporter of province, region revolts and civil wars.

[dexters]

Originally posted by Fosse
If there were indicators that losing a province were likely, and there were measures that could be taken to stop it, then I don't think there would be a huge outrage from players.

The problem with culture flipping is that it just HAPPENS. Sure, we know the theory behind it, but there is no warning, and nothing that can be done about it (other than rushing buildings and hoping... but even then).

Yes. an indicator would be a no brainer addition in Civ 4 if they decide to keep this whole flipping "succession" business.

maybe if you used a leader to build one(provided leaders were a little more common, and preferably less military-centric). Having to wall off provinces sounds like a royal pain in the rear and I doubt it would add much fun to gameplay. At least, not for me it wouldn't.

I'm not sure what you mean by walling off provinces. Think of a network. Then of your provincial capitals as a hub. The cities in the provinces will then be the nodes connected to the hub. The GUI for this may just be that, a web with a hub in the center and you pick and choose which city you want to be in which province.

As for the fear that losing an entire province will make people even more po'ed, provincial succession is a gameplay aspect but I certainly don't want it, or expect it to be as haphazard and unknownable as the culture flipping business. By its very nature, provincial revolts require at least the majority of the cities in the province to agree to revolt.

That makes things more managaeable than culture flipping just by virtue of giving the players more room to maneuver to make sure provincial succesion does not happen.

A very good idea here is for players to absorb newly conquered cities into neighbouring provinces and keep them as dependents until they are strong enough to be let go and form a province of their own with other cities.
This has two effects.
1) It gives players room to meanuver and gives them semi-usable cities immedaitely even if they are quite far from the capital

2) It slows down the warmonger. As I have noted, there is a limit to the number of cities you can have in a province. Therefore, merging newly conquered cities to a bordering province can only work for so many cities. When enough cities have been absored, players have to stop and wait for sufficient infrastucture to be built before moving on.
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Anyways, I'm currently playing a game where I have holdings on both sides of the continent. On a standard map with democracy as my gov, I have corruption up to wazoo and if I'm going to build the Forbidden palace, it would be awkward. The ideal placement for the FP would require me to invade my immediate neighbours to the south.

It's vexing to say the least. And I would appreciate, at the very least, a one building improvement I can build on one city in a region that can improve the corruption so I can get things going. Otherwise, I get 1 shield producers and it takes forever to even get a courhouse done.

[Sultan Richard]

Could it be possible for the number of provines one can have be related to the map size, like the tech rate? So you can have more provinces on a Huge map than the number of provinces on a Tiny map (not that you'd need any )

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On a similar vein...

I know this idea will never be implemented, but what disadvantages would you think of if a 'dominion' system was implemented, whereby the dominion just acts as a country under another country, with a separate Palace, Treasury (gold), units etc etc (making sure there are sufficient checks and balances so that this isn't abused, like counting Dominions towards the country limit). This could also be applied so a province of yours could become semi-independent, or so you can take over someone else's provinces intact, without completely intergrating them (or running a puppet country ).

[dexters]

Sultan, well, actually I have a lot of ideas for Civ IV.

One idea I've always wanted to see is that instead of destroying a civilization, AI and human players can have the option of being co-opted to a larger empire.

When Civ III was first released, people found very quickly a flaw in the game AI that allowed the AI to pay out immense amounts of gpt for peace when they are losing big time. This was called the "Vassal" system whereby instead of conquering your enemies, you just beat them bad enough and get them to pay you money. With corruption ampant in big maps, it was a far superior way for people to control their rivals.

Unfortunately, it was a bug. After it was fixed, the Vassal system was essentially dead. Very rarely will the AI want to, or have the resources to pay you anything, since the new system only counts surplus gpt, and apparently, the AI isn't deperate enough to adjust its science slider to pay you the money. :/ Which doesn't make a lot sense. "Oh, you have 10 cavalry parked outside my last city. But nevermined, take my 2gpt or leave it. I've got to research Replacable Parts..."

Anyways, I suppose the vassal system just wasn't meant to be. in Civ 3. In Civ 4, they should consider putting something like that in along with vastly expanded diplomacy options. Here is a scenario for you:

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Japan is brought into a war through an alliance. It is outmatched. The Human/AI player comes in and takes several cities. On the peace table, Japan agrees to become subject to the victorious power and surrender all of its military units, except those not yet produced.

The deal will also include tributes to be paid, and additional trade concessions (ie: the Human/AI player can tell the defeated power who they can or cannot trade with.) And perhaps rights to use seaside citys as ports to heal ships and tropps. Other than that, the victors are essentially generous. They will be left to rebuild in peace by treaty. Breaking of the treaty by the victors would either be impossible or so costly that it would be a good detterant.

So is the game over for the defeated power? No. They get to rebuild, and they essentially have the victor playing as their protector. Again, a system of incentives can be set up here to ensure the human player doesn't sell out their protectorate. Including for example gtp bonuses and credits for doing a good job. (The details can be worked out later).

The main point here is that instead of crushing civilizations, players can co-opt them. This arrangement could go on indefinately and if certain condition sare met, the defeated nation may ask to be let in as a province at which point the AI ceases to control the area and it becomes part of the player's domain.

On the other hand, I envision a game such that as time passes and geopolitical forces shifts, the AI protectorate may align itself with somebody else, at which point the human player may go in and finish them off... unless of course they can't. I'm sure the AI in a few years time will be to the level that they can be quite sly about it and declare their "independence" just as the human players is having trouble of its own.

I think sometihng like this will add a more diplomatic solution to pacifist players who may have to go to war with a militarisitic neighbour but quickly establishes their superiority and prefers the AI to handle the management of the cities and simply collect a tribute and some trade bonsues. The game mechanics may be set such that there will be some advantages to not conquering all your enemies outright. Corruption for example, could be one of those.

But you know, it's really diplomatic, and while I'm a semi-war monger myself, I think the Civ games up to this point have been about war mostly because of computer hardware. It was much easier to perfect and run a fighting system on 16 mhz cpus than a diplomatic one. The Civ1 and Civ2 diplomacy segments were rather shallow because of the low computing power of the time. In Civ 3, we're beginning to see something new emerge. Civilization is moving towards a more diplomatic game. Power and domination in Civ should shift from direct control of every city by the player to a game of influences. Whereby the powerful civ exerts influence on lesser civs it may not control directly.

[Sultan Richard]

Another idea:


The UN could ask major powers to let go of provinces which have a significantly different ethnic composition then the rest of the player's lands, or provinces which were a long way away from the player's main capital.

[dexters]

The UN can be a major pain like it is in rea life. A place of political intrigue where a rival power may engineer a plot through the UN to force another power to give up its control over another nation.

Think about it. Diplomatic wars and no one has to fire a shot.

In response, the target player could resign from the UN in protest. And receive whatever consequences will be meeted out. But at least it won't be forced to give up its control over the weaker civ

[Demerzel]

Originally posted by UberKruX
no it wouldn't. just because the germans failed doesn't mean i'll make the same mistakes

All empires when they reach a certain size will prove impossible to manage successfully. Trying to please 50m people with a single policy is hard enough, imagine trying to keep 500m content or 1bn.

The problem with Civ is that once you get a big empire you're pretty much unstoppable in the game. You can effectively do what you want and have no problems. A way to combat grossly overlarge empires would give players a challenge in the end game, a challenge other than - "I have to move these 400 MA this turn again *yawn*".

Obviously you'd need to be able to prevent it happening, so a far more intelligent system than culture flipping is necessary.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Demerzel


All empires when they reach a certain size will prove impossible to manage successfully. Trying to please 50m people with a single policy is hard enough, imagine trying to keep 500m content or 1bn.

The problem with Civ is that once you get a big empire you're pretty much unstoppable in the game. You can effectively do what you want and have no problems. A way to combat grossly overlarge empires would give players a challenge in the end game, a challenge other than - "I have to move these 400 MA this turn again *yawn*".

Obviously you'd need to be able to prevent it happening, so a far more intelligent system than culture flipping is necessary.

Exactly ! I didn't think of this, but provinces and independance could be great to fight late-game tedium, which is one of Civ3's flaws.

[dexters]

Thanks for the support

One thing though. Superpowers do exist and they exist because it is profitable for them to exist. They accure power and it becomes a self perpetuating thing. So I'm a bit weary of making it impossible or so difficult to achieve that it becomes not worthwhile to have it.

But I'm assuming the point is to have a bit more challenge to superpower players?

[Spiffor]

Dexters :

I really like the province idea. It can help managing a huge empire, can help fighting late-game tedium, can help fighting corruption (with the famous "several forbidden palaces" option). Your ideas are sound, yet I'd like to elaborate on them a bit.

I don't think provinces have anything to do with autonomy, because "autonomy" is not really a civish concept : in your empire, you are able to micromanage everything, and every decision can be yours. Cities are either dependant of your rule or independant (AI controlled). 'Autonomous' cities would mean some of the decisions are solely taken by the governor's AI without you being able to change anything, while other decisions are taken by you.
I am talking about autonomy, because it is very essence of city-states, a kind of government that had never made it in Civ. City-states aren't about fighting corruption. They are about a very opposition to what we call an empire. In some way, they are 100% corruption when it comes to the wealth they bring to your empire.

That's why I think in-game provinces should be rather administrative than anything else. Don't get me wrong : I'd like to see them trying to secede and create their own Civilization. But while they are under your control, they should have no autonomous decision whatsoever.
Autonomy was the biggest historical drawback of city-states, and Civ cannot feature this drawback.

To refine your idea of limiting province capitals, I think you should be allowed to build one for every X cities you own, much like armies. I am not sure whether X should change according to the size of the map. This way, if the player really wants to add a corruption-fighting building in every core city, he'll be able to do so only if he has a huge empire, and only if he's ready to abandon his outer rim cities.

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Maybe a better idea (I'm thinking out loud as I write) : you don't need a provincial capital to create provinces. Creating/modifying a province could be done in a few clicks, but you can only create a province everytime you have X cities (except for the first one around you capitol). You can build one provincial headquarters in each province except the one harboring your capitol.

However, what would make this mechanics interesting for the greedy player or AI ? Why would they bother to create provinces, if it can come to unrest and independance ? The ability to build good provincial headquarters would sure help the case of provinces, but is there something else ? What could the existence of provinces bring to the leader of a Civ ? What did they bring historically ? I feel the answers of these questions can help us refine the concept even more. Anybody knows ?

[Kuciwalker]

I think that once a province has existed for a certain amount of time, it should still be able to revolt even if it is reorganized.

[Fosse]

Spiffor,
One thing that provinces could do well is reduce micromanagment of the leader.

This doesn't mean making them autonomous, either. You could give province wide orders, goals to be met by the cities within it, and otherwise sweeping commands that would guide the governors of those cities. You could, of course, always modify their decisions.

That would allow me to tell my biggest producing province to crank out the military units, and my highest commerce one to go bank-crazy.

I think being able to change my empire from being a 100 city clickfest where I hve to decide on every infantry build, into a 10 province country would I could issue sensible goals based on province characteristics, would be a huge incentive to subdivide, besides corruption fighting benefits.

[Spiffor]

Fosse :
I wholeheartedly agree with you, and I would use provinces this way too. But my questions were more ingame-specific, a.k.a what ingame bonuses would a province bring for the AI and the control-freak human to create ?

[Kuciwalker]

It would allow the AI to understand strategy better, by adding another layer of abstraction.

[Spiffor]

Erm, I don't understand
Could you please be more specific ?

[Fosse]

Spiffor,
I actually saw the use of provinces by human players as so helpful for reducing micromanagment that is would be reason enough. No need for extra bonuses.

Though, if each province is its own corruption zone, and slicing your empire into reasonable chunks reduces corruption, then that's all the bonus you'd need, in my opinion.

Other ideas though... if a province has a certain ratio of resource to city - say your entire empire's wine supply is in Gaul and there is a 1:1 ratio of wine to city - then perhaps you'd get a percentage commerce bonus for exports from that region, since its people are "experts."

Being able to set luxury/science/tax settings for each province would allow both the human and AI to fine tune their economy to get the best in each area. So my core cities, with every happiness structure, don't need to spend any luxury, while my outpost province, recently conquered and experiencing unrest, can quell its populace without needing to contribute to the country's coffers... yet.
I would see this as you have your empire tax screen, with displays of how much each province provides each economic area on this screen. CLicking on a province lets you change that province's rates, and on the main screen it's highlighted to show a different tax system there, and you see the resulting amounts.

If cities not aligned with a province suffer a higher chance of revolt (in addition to greater corruption) than those in a province, then that would feel like a bonus.


edited for typo

[Kuciwalker]

The province would enhance AI strategizing because it could understand threats on a province level. Thus, it can recognize and prioritize threats to its empire without looking at individual tiles.

This is in fact what humans do. Don't you think, "oh, the zulus are threatening this section of my empire", not "oh, the zulus are threatening city x"? This lets you realize that the entire region is threatened, not just a single insignificant city.

[Spiffor]

Excellent points Fosse
Edit : and Skywalker too

[Sultan Richard]

Bravo Fosse and Spiffor

On the capital province:

Would it be possible to have the capital city as its own province, like how Washington D.C., USA is a Federal Territory or like how Canberra, Australia has its own Capital Territory? This idea could be expanded for the 'Federal Jurisdiction' to extend over the cities with no provinical affiliation

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Also, could the function, bonuses and mechanics of provinces be different for each Government type?

For example, Canada is a Federal state whereas New Zealand isn't.

Examples for Governments:

Despotism: No provinces allowed

Monarchy: Provincial centres will require the construction of a building called CASTLE or COUNTRY HOUSE etc, with provincial bonuses like increased farming (for example, touching on the example of feudalism)

Republic: Provincial centres will require the construction of a building called PROVINCIAL SENATE etc (and increasing the draft rate)

Communism: Provincial centres will require the construction of a building called PEOPLE's SOVIET etc


etc and so on.

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Drafting could be applied at a city or provincial-based model. You could have different kinds of drafts, like NATIONAL DRAFT, PROVINCIAL DRAFT and LOCAL DRAFT for the different categories, and all three could be enabled, or only one, depending on Government, happiness etc

[Demerzel]

yes being part of a superpower is an advantage but consider the Soviet Union which had to use military might to hold bits of its empire in.

unless you can provide a genuinely superior option, people will always want to govern themselves rather than let some bureaucrat from 1,000 - 10,000 miles away do it for them.

[Nym]

Very interesting ideas!