E3: Civilization IV

[A Black Falcon]

Hmph.

Civilization was so perfected in it's second installment that with every extra bit fo complexity they add it seems to squeeze the fun out of it. I could never get into Civ III as much as I did Civ II. I think I played III for a couple of months (playing against Ryan online once for several hours), but I played II off and on for literally YEARS.

Not to say I didn't like Civ III. The culture addition made me squeal like newly deflowered teenage girl. I HATED when other civs would come and build tiny cities all over your irrigated, mined, and roaded continent. Took away my commerce and food, and I couldn't attack them because they had tons of little military factories all over me! The culture addition set firm boundaries and gave players some much needed leg room.

Civ II was the ultimate pinnacle though. Civ was close to perfect, Civ II made it so. Civ III made it too complicated for my taste, and I have a suspicion Civ IV will further degrade the series in my eyes.

That being said, I'm still probably going to buy it when it comes out, because I'm a Civ junkie .

I played Civ I, borrowed a friend's copy for a while. I got Civ II. I got both expansions. I got Civ II Gold Multiplayer. I didn't get Civ II Test of Time, though... looked pointless. Then I got Civ III... yes, it came out winter 2001, soon after 9/11. It's pretty odd that a game then would have terrorism (did it? I never got that far into a Civ III game... :D ... would you believe it if I said I didn't remember/know that the game had hard age boundaries? :)), but a game now won't... sad, too. I loved planting nuclear devices! :)

... World War 79, awesome civ ii scenario (from Fantastic Worlds)... instant global thermonuclear war. Watch Europe become a jungle before your eyes!


Anyway. Civilization II. As I said in the first post, I consider that gaming perfection. Not that it does absolutely nothing wrong, but that the things it does wrong are irrelevant or can be ignored... you can't ask for a game to be any better than that. And that's a problem because the developers have an impossible task in trying to improve on it... Alpha Centauri was a valiant effort, and a success, but after that the developer of AC and Civ II (Brian Reynolds) left Firaxis... and Jeff Briggs clearly just was not as good at making 4X strategy games, given what we got in Civ III. Oh well...

Now, I never played any of these games as many as some people. Even Civ II I haven't played as much as a lot of people... but Civ III? I didn't play that much at all. I said 'huh, the graphics are nice, who cares', and 'this interface is annoying! Bring back my nice Windows interface from Civ II!' and 'what did they do to bombardment??' and 'why are they so cruel as to restrict irrigation to rivers only and then have your worker start in an area surrounded by mountains and oceans that has no rivers?'... etc. And I didn't play it that much. And when I went back to it, I enjoyed myself... but there was always this thought 'shouldn't you be playing Civ II? It's the better game, after all...' ... and usually, that's what I ended up doing.

I never got the Civ III expansions.

I could see something like civil war in Civ. If a certain region of your civilization is being neglected and the people are rioting for a certain number of turns in a row for multiple cities in the same region they would secede and become a new civilization. It was implemented crudely in Civ2 where something like that would happen to the computer if their capital was captured. It wouldn't be a common thing, but it would be cool if it was possible.

But how do you model parts of your nation being oppressed or neglected? I mean, every part of your empire is the same in these games... cities have individual ratings in some things, but in the most important ways they are all the same. Would be be based on their individual culture score or something? But that isn't necessarially be a good judge of potential revolt... I'm not saying revolting cities/regions is a bad idea. I remember Civ II and how cities would go into anarchy if you had too much unhappiness in them, and that system worked decently well I think, but if things got too bad perhaps they should revolt...

Anyway, my real point is that revolutions don't always happen because of predictable factors. So should there be a 'percent chance of revolution' meter, that the game keeps track of somehow, for each city, like you've got in the Total War games? I don't know... maybe. But it'd be tricky. I mean, just looking at how Civ has a city-based game model, and how empire-wide stats are important, and how the things that cities do keep track of individually aren't necessarially the best ways to monitor potential revolt... some independant statistic that looks at all the potential factors might be best, if you want it in.

Oh, and yeah, if cities are revolting/Anarchy (Civ II-style -- I have no idea what Civ III does for this. As I said, I never got far enough into a Civ III game to have to worry about it...), after X number of turns they should revolt. Unless you crush them with lots of troops. :)

Take this example: You have an empire of about 20 cities. Corruption is greatest in cities farthest from the capital. Let's say you have a large, influential city that's quite a distance from home, and it goes into a period of civil disorder. You are unable to correct the situation adequately. Neighboring towns begin to fall into disorder because the large city is in a state of flux. The disorder spreads geographically, until you have a cluster of towns and cities rioting... let's say, five. This rioting turns into open rebellion, and this large city becomes the capital of a seperatist movement that breaks ties with its homeland and proclaims itself an independent nation, consisting of this large city, and every town within certain proximity that is also in disorder. Troops situated within the cities turn traitor, and those within the borders but outside of the cities are either repelled or destroyed.

Oh, corruption! I think it was better modelled in Civ II than Civ III... that one had annoyingly high levels of corruption for some cities far from your capitol. It could get high in II, but not as bad as in III... I hope they fix that system up.

Anyway, that could work... though you should be able to stop it if you put enough military units in the cities, of course -- unless you wait too long, or it's still too strong, and they create troops...

If it was Civ II they'd just create Partizans, and if it was lategame you'd kill them, but I'm sure in Civ IV you could come up with a better system than that for the actual revolt. :)