Increasing the empire size for the future games

[wieder]

This applies to the LT40 type more experimental games. This is also just an idea and not even a suggestion or proposition. It still remains to be seen how the empire sizes sill work on LT40.

There are already few city improvements that will allow you to lose one or few of the unhappy. While building these let you to have bigger cities, they also let you to build a bit bigger empires.

What about if the initial empire sizes would be in range of 15-20 (now 22-29) and there would be more slamm wonders allowing you to grow your empire. Administrative buildings, making the 2nd palace to increase the empire size, stuff like Bach's. This would make it harder to build really big empires in the start.

The governments are normally used for this purpose but in the more experimental games this effect is reduced close to the minimum. Instead we could use infra for that.

[Corbeau]

I'd definitely be in favour of more creativity when it comes to different empire sizes. And yes, it should depend on government AND on technological (social) advance. And with two mechanisms for this - unhappiness and corruption-by-distance - I think you can make miracles.

Basically, create the first limit with corruption (not waste) at R so that the logical number within radius R is N. Cities outside R have so much corruption that you don't get anything from them. They can, however, produce units so it may be worth building them. But then, set base size-unhappiness at N+50% so that it's more and more pointless to build further cities unless you get an advanced government or some infrastructure built.

I'd set N for Despotism to be somewhere between 7 and 10, Monarchy at 15, Republic at 20, Democracy at 25.

So, better government reduces corruption. Also, technology reduces waste.

[wieder]

Or... How about increasing the empire size simply with advancing on the tech tree? There are 18 "levels" on the tech tree. Maybe every step could increase the empire size by one and the initial empire size could be something between 10 or 15? That would give 28-33 cities with the full tech tree. It would also reward for researching and improving your empire. No huge steps or stuff like that. The steps could be tied to the most reasonable tech on every level. Most reasonable or some that still makes sense but isn't that popular.

Pottery - Map Making - Seafaring - Republic - Medicine - Chemistry - Steam Engine - Railroad - Refrigeration - The Corporation - Espionage - Automobile - Mass Production - Computers - Nuclear Power - Plastics - Environmentalism - Fusion Power

Maybe something like that?

Bigger empire, more knowledge is needed to run it without too much unhappiness?

[wieder]

Coupling the empire size with techs would also lead to more interesting fights over the unclaimed land. It wouldn't be possible to grab all the land as fast as possible because the cost in terms of unhappiness would be simply too high. Instead you would build the initial cities as before and using diplomacy and units to "claim" the land that's not populated. No need to build improvements to make the empire bigger.

I can imagine this would also lead to situations where someone would build the initial empire in one place and then start building colonies on the unclaimed land because that would make it easier to claim even more land when the techs would allow this.

[Corbeau]

Coupling the empire size with techs would also lead to more interesting fights over the unclaimed land. It wouldn't be possible to grab all the land as fast as possible because the cost in terms of unhappiness would be simply too high. Instead you would build the initial cities as before and using diplomacy and units to "claim" the land that's not populated. No need to build improvements to make the empire bigger.

Actually, this is exactly what I had in mind when proposing size dependent on government: what you said works perfectly for that, too The difference between size-tech and size-government dependences is that the former is a one-way race, while the latter allows choices. You can run all the way to democracy (or republic), get needed techs, build improvements and then, with improvements helping you keep your people happy AND corruption low, go back to Monarchy or Communism to do a less peaceful path. However, if you tie size to tech advance, then it's simply, whoever gets there first gets the land.

[wieder]

How would the size-government based stuff work? Would there be a new kind of democracy, for example, and some city improvements that would needed to be built before getting more cities?

Using the tech-empire size based would also lead to less focus on fighting wars. I'm not sure how good that would be. Then again it could also be a combination of different empire size properties. With the tech based empire size all the govs would remain usable or kind of usable for a longer period of time. Maybe stuff like tribalism shouldn't be usable in the late game even while the civ2civ3 ruleset is designed to allow that.

One problem with the original governments leading to bigger empire sizes is that you basically get the gov with the best possible empire size really early in the game. Democracy is pretty much the best there is with huge 32 city empire size steps. It's not necessarily a bad thing but leads to a situation where you already have the best when the mid game starts. Govs like communism has other kind of advantages but not really on the empire size side of things.

[Corbeau]

How would the size-government based stuff work? Would there be a new kind of democracy, for example, and some city improvements that would needed to be built before getting more cities?

I'm not sure what isn't clear here. I thought we were discussing unhappiness-due-to-size? That is how it would work. Also, additionally, corruption-per-distance (from capital). The more primitive government, the more corruption and more unhappiness you get. So, basically, you *may* build more cities, but they will not prouce trade and it will make your citizens unhappy.

Now, all this unhapiness and corruption can be decreased by improvements that come in throughout the game so, basically, once you got a lot of techs, you may be able to revert to the more primitive types of government, at a cost, but not impossible.

As for democracy being best possible, I'm not sure how much you read the news, but it turns out that the most developed nations in the world today *are* democracies. (Although, it will be interesting to see what happens to China in the following decades.) However, those democracies do tend to go to war a bit less than non-democracies (with a few exceptions due to imperialist tendencies and past.)

However, democracies can be discouraged to go to war, or at least make it more difficult by unit upkeep and unhappiness. If that had very little effect so far, it simply means the penalties were too low.

For example, in the ruleset I've been making for centuries now (but I'm sure I'll finish it before Iceland is split in two by tectonic activity), I'm planning much more upkeep for units, especially more modern ones (no point in Warriors using the same amount as Armour), but also food upkeep for EVERY unit (because people have to eat, apparently) which should be double in democracy (and maybe republic), because soldiers in Democracy also want to eat well or they will democratically decide that benefits of a military career have been greatly exaggerated.