Foundations of Civilization

[SevenSpirits]

Are you still limited to one improvement per tile? Could I build a farm, then a monument, on the same tile?

One improvement per tile, yes.

I do like the cultural advances idea - in civ4, the first border pop worth of culture is worth a lot, and after that culture's mostly meaningless; this would give an alternate goal for culture. I see the total culture produced is multiplied by 4 by your spreading mechanics, which seems reasonable, just take it into account when you're balancing.

Good observation! Yeah, I did the math. Quick speed only needs 7 culture to pop, and that's a 7x multiplier. Having such a high multiplier is perhaps a bit misleading to the player, but it leads to the desired border pop rates. (Specifically, the desired time ratio between first and second border pops.)

Is it going to be possible to take tiles during war without taking the city itself? I see lots of other Stack of Doom preventing mechanics, but you'll still want to funnel your army toward cities otherwise.

Yes, though it takes time. If you have a military unit (or more, quantity is irrelevant) occupying a tile where you have culture, you gain 1 culture there per turn and remove N-1 enemy culture per turn on the Nth turn of occupation. "Enemy" meaning anyone you're at war with.

In most cases, I'd expect your goal to still be city capture. But the difference is that it will be reasonable and strong to defend your land outside of cities.

The other main question I have at this time is how do you envision the Archer's ranged attack working? Specifically, if I build an army out of 1 phalanx and a hundred archers on the same tile, what prevents the civ3 artillery strategy, where you kill everyone with ranged no retaliation attacks, then mop up with the phalanx?

This is open for debate, though obviously I don't want that strategy to work. Right now I am thinking of simply limiting the number of ranged attacks per turn across a given border, too. E.g. one normal attack and/or one ranged attack.

[SevenSpirits]

It sounds like you want to go in exactly the opposite direction than what I suggested: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=409770 . I wanted to take away tile yields completely, while you want to make them even more important . I think both approaches could work, though.

Yup!

I'd be a little concerned that in your system, making a balanced map seems very difficult. You'd have to guarantee that each player gets the right kind of terrain that they need for all those 6 different yields, whereas civ only has 3 basic yields that people need (or really just 2, since you can get commerce anywhere with cottages).

Well, most of the yield variety is in improvements, which anyone can build, and the rest is mostly in resources, which Civ IV managed OK. Plains not being so bad compared to grassland as it is in Civ IV should help too.

[SevenSpirits]

The Battle of Wesnoth is an excellent hex based 1UPT, that is free and open source.

To highlight the combat differences, every unit has two combat strengths, melee and ranged, with the attacker choosing the method of combat, again melee or ranged. Attacks only go through one combat round, not to the death like civ, and only adjacent units may attack. There is the standard zone of control rules, etc.

Units are built at forts (think city centers), but there are no city improvements. Now take your idea of building "cultural city improvements" on hexes outside and you have an interesting hybrid game.

There is fertile ground for ideas (are other city improvements attached to a city, or perhaps also built in outlying hexes), at the very least I hope to expose you all to a gem of game.

It's definitely too combat-focused to translate directly into a civ game, and I strongly dislike 1UPT in Civ V, but thank you for the pointer!

[fire&ice]

If you got rid of the 1 upt in wesnoth but kept the multiple strengths for units the attacker could chose which way the units would fight. While, forcing them to attack the best defender for each type or maybe just the best overall defender. For a combat system of rock, paper, scissors. This seems like a smart way to design the COMBAT system and only the combat system.

As a note I would have no idea how to chose who would defend.

[Cyneheard]

I'll second the Battle of Wesnoth as an inspiration for the combat. Numbers of troops are small there, and it's a fixed 1upt system on fairly open maps with slow units having ~3-4 movement. So it's a different scale from Civ5's system in a lot of ways.

Combat:

I like the idea of having two types of attack/defense (melee and ranged), but think that there are usually huge balance problems when the two types actually cover different lengths on the map: why not have ranged and melee attacks both work from only 1 tile away? The more constrained a combat system, the better an AI is at handling it. That's Wesnoth's take on it.


The 1-attack rule is interesting, but there could be some problems with it if you can stack as many units as you want in a tile. If you're going to have some type of 1-attack-from-A-to-B rule, then you need some type of collateral capability (maybe some Archer-types get the option of a strong single-target or weak-all-target attack? Or we get catapults and archers, with different specialties). Otherwise, it becomes impossible to ever break a well-fortified choke point on a map. Another possible option is the Alpha Centauri model: when a unit dies (on defense only, I believe) in the open field, it explodes, damaging all units on that tile, but that makes taking cities nearly impossible if enough units can always be sent into the city. Also, I think the Civ 4 model of "heal if you don't take any actions" would have to go: Maybe "heal if inactive, and your tile wasn't attacked this turn".

If there's no collateral, then what happens when there is a 1-tile choke point on a map. I hold all territory behind it, and assume that neither side is capable of making amphibious landings in the backlines of the other (say, I'd lose half my forces to concentrated fire). At most, the choke point can be attacked 3x a turn by melee, and 3x a turn by ranged:

Enemy
Water Enemy
Choke
Mine Enemy
Water

You tell me how that choke can be broken if I can produce 6 units a turn. Then think about what Deity AI can do: the Civ5 Carpet of Doom becomes unbreakable because there are infinite units, but not infinite attacks.

[SevenSpirits]

why not have ranged and melee attacks both work from only 1 tile away?

Yeah, that's the plan.

The 1-attack rule is interesting, but there could be some problems with it if you can stack as many units as you want in a tile. If you're going to have some type of 1-attack-from-A-to-B rule, then you need some type of collateral capability (maybe some Archer-types get the option of a strong single-target or weak-all-target attack? Or we get catapults and archers, with different specialties). Otherwise, it becomes impossible to ever break a well-fortified choke point on a map.

This (bombardment, presumably with the capacity for unlimited collateral) and the Charge promotion (continue fighting after killing a defender) are the intended ways of making large stacks defeatable.

[Mardoc]

This is open for debate, though obviously I don't want that strategy to work. Right now I am thinking of simply limiting the number of ranged attacks per turn across a given border, too. E.g. one normal attack and/or one ranged attack.

Hmm. In my opinion, the problem with both this method and regular stacks of doom (with free healing) is that they allow you to inflict damage for free. Limiting it would help on the magnitude, but not the underlying problem. You always want to be able to inflict all the free damage you can; there'd never be a reason not to bring along an archer.

So I'd be more inclined to suggest a counterattack type of thing, that gives a cost to the attack. Or maybe a hammer cost for ammunition replenishment, or the archer becoming immobilized. The important piece is that you can't ever hurt the enemy without them at least having a chance to hurt you.

Historically, any force that could inflict damage for free smashed its opposition - think Mongols, or a modern air force with control of the air - but in a game you don't really want to allow that.

Cyneheard brings up a good point on choke points and the general problem of outproducing the damage rate; the only thing I can think of there is to balance the production vs. damage rate formula so that it's impossible to outproduce damage, but that might have nasty consequences for other aspects of the game like rushes, so I hesitate to suggest it.

[SevenSpirits]

Hmm. In my opinion, the problem with both this method and regular stacks of doom (with free healing) is that they allow you to inflict damage for free. Limiting it would help on the magnitude, but not the underlying problem. You always want to be able to inflict all the free damage you can; there'd never be a reason not to bring along an archer.

Hm, I don't think that's true. Imagine a ranged unit in Civ IV that costs 500 hammers and can do 1% damage to a single adjacent enemy unit. You'd obviously never build one.

[antisocialmunky]

Actually it's much easier to balance improvements that have more than one yield type. Take Civ V: if your choice is between building a mine and a trading post, you just look at the city and decide which yield type you want more. It's really easy to figure out, and not dependent on the situation. Even more strikingly, in Civ IV early game, watermills/windmills/workshops are often strictly overshadowed by other improvements, and there isn't even a decision there at all.

However, if mines yield 2 production and 1 science, and cottages produce 1 culture and 1+ gold, the tradeoffs are much more dependent on other factors, and choices are left non-obvious even if they were balanced a little bit worse.

About your specific suggestion, I find it too complex. Mostly because you're allowing more than one improvement on every tile... I think that makes the tradeoffs needlessly opaque. By the way, here are the base tile yields I'm using:

Grassland is 2 food
Plains is 1 food 1 construction
Hills give -1 food, +1 production
Forests give +1 construction and must be removed for most improvements.

So, all the extra yields come from resources and improvements anyway. I think it's simpler if that's in the form of additive values rather than % bonuses.

You yourself said that multiple improvements go on tiles not long ago.

Okay, buildings. City Improvement/Tile Improvement too ambiguous using Improvement for tile improvement and building to clarify.

I'm saying use 3 basic yields for tile properties, have one tile improvement that modifies the basic yields of the tile and the ability to add buildings that convert to secondary yield types. Does that make it clearer?

Also:
Why does it have to be 1upt or stack of doom? Why not (N)upt? Just limit the number of units you can stack on a tile to like 3 and extra if you have a GG or something. Then instead of having a single wounded unit, you can shove two healthy units in there. If you have issues with out-production, then increase N. You can also vary N with techs or something as well.

[SevenSpirits]

You yourself said that multiple improvements go on tiles not long ago.

Okay, buildings. City Improvement/Tile Improvement too ambiguous using Improvement for tile improvement and building to clarify.

I'm saying use 3 basic yields for tile properties, have one tile improvement that modifies the basic yields of the tile and the ability to add buildings that convert to secondary yield types. Does that make it clearer?

I'm pretty confused about this post. But I'm not confused about your idea you posted earlier. It's clear, I just think it's more complicated than I'd like.