A New Take on Early Population Growth.

Great idea!  Wow, I love this. It portrays the fact that we are building up a world that is destroyed. Groups and bands of people would be the norm, as they would be looking for protection from the wasteland. And you have a point that some of these groups would be violent, as some of them might have power hungry leaders who don't want to give into this "freak" that calls himself a channeler of magic. Yet others would be more than willing as it provides them with more protection. Also, your idea that they might become bands again if something dangerous happens to them gives them an importance. As populations could exchange hands between nations without having to "build up" unrealistically.

I never liked how population growth was merely a fact for portraying how productive a city is, making it so impersonal. This to me would alleviate that problem of impersonality. Maybe we could, for once, have a realistic population growth. Where, every "generation" that goes by (since we are having children that will age, generations will be possible to track) we get more people based on the amount of population we currently have, our nation's traits, and possibly our prestige/individual cities quality of life.

So the population is growing, albeit slower than portrayed in other games, but also people can exchange hands between nations much easier depending on their original "mindset" as you will. If you have a group of violent people that you subjugated, but you eventually come into contact with another nation that is geared towards war, those people might join that nation, especially if that nation promises them more. Dang, great idea, Demiansky!

Thanks for ellaborating on the idea, Legend!  Your idea about different channeler personalities giving different advantages when dealing with different suvivor band types brings up some other possibilities.  Perhaps when players pick or design their races there might be an option to craft a race that is more pursuasive or gains better outcomes from survivor bands.  Also, you might be able to research technology in the beginning that allows you to better exploit or integrate bands of survivors (at the cost of pursuing more permanent technologies.)  And speaking of technologies, survivor bands might even have bits and pieces of technology that they would share with you were you to integrate them.

There are tons of possibilities, and none of them would be difficult to implement at all.  We already have wandering bands of monsters in the game with simple AI algorithms.  Survivor bands would be no different.  Also, you would still have fertility and growth in your cities like before, but the vague assumption that citizens just kinda amble into your cities from the wilderness on their own based on your prestige is really dry and unimaginative.  It's definately doesn't create the "living, breathing RPG environment" that Elemental is striving for.

But that's not to say that perhaps some wandering bands wouldn't show up at your doorstep asking to join up.  Naturally, a higher prestige rating would still influence small bands (or splinters from larger ones) to venture to your city.  Just think of how this feature would manifest itself:

It's been 2 years since the Rending of the World.  You've rallied together a rag tag band of 100 survivors and at last have settled near what you hope is a fertile field.  It has been a quiet 6 months since then, and it looks as though your budding civilization may at last make a sanctuary for man in this ruthless wilderness.  But then, a silhouette can be seen on the horizon.  At first one figure, then two, then ten. 

At first, no one knows what to make of it, but then... of course.  Surely, there are others who have survived the Rending of the World, and word may have spread that here, near this fertile field, you have created a sanctuary for the downtrodden... or perhaps a resource, ripe for the picking??  Are these but civil folk on the horizon who are willing to exchange safety and comradery for loyalty?  Or are they marauders, preparing to snuff out your budding civilization?

You stride out confidently to meet them with a few trusty men.

And many of the actions of these survivor bands may not directly influence the player, directly.  You could watch from afar as marauders gradually enslave one peaceful band after another, leaving you to wonder whether you should act now to staunch the growing threat or bide your time. 

Having recently remembered how intense my brief love affair with King of Dragon Pass was, the sketch in the OP is very engaging to me.

But when I think about very long games on very large maps, I worry about repetitive click overhead and boilerplate text that becomes annoying through excessive familiarity.

Do you have any ideas on how an approach like this might 'scale' across the boundary from RPG to TBS?

Good point.  It would be a lot like how you manage all those dialogue moments in Galactic Civs: as a steady and manageable flow throughout the game.  At first, there would be tons of tiny bands but you could only get to so many of them at once because your civilization would be small as well.  Then, as you became stronger and branched outward, they would become stronger as well (not in reaction to your growth, but simply as a function of their interaction with one another). 

This would involve there being fewer and fewer bands because they continue to combine or die, which means you'll be confronted with roughly the same amount of "choice boxes" early game as you would later in the game.  So on any given game, you would only expect to confront a certain number of dialogue boxes.  By the beginning to middle of mid game, you wouldn't be dealing with roaming bands anymore and you'd be moving on to a new phase of the game.  Even if there were small bands remaining, your prestige would be so high by that point that most of them would join you immediately without a dialogue box popping up. 

You'd encounter a few bands here or there in isolated places during the late game, but it wouldn't be a be deal.  Even if you didn't want to read them eventually, you could just look at the percentages and abbreviated, expected outcomes and make your decisions in one click.  As for averting repetition and tedium, I can think of a very snazzy solution.

We will have tons of modding options for units and gamestyles, so why not mini-story arcs and descriptions?  Modders can write up brief descriptions like mine and Stardock can give it a nod if it meets cannon or send it back if it does not.  I've already done two such descriptions above.  The modder might even be able to write the dialogue contents in addition to the actual group specs and scripts.  The game would flag descriptions that have already been used and only reuse them if there are no new ones, but new descriptions would be made all the time. 

The easy solution would simply be to have an ingame option to disable the dialogue.  When you march up to a band, it would give you their straight stats, whether they are aggressive or well armed, and prompt you to A, B, C, or D.

Unfortunately, I don't.. If this were an RTS like Knights of Honor (which was pretty much the only RTS I ever enjoyed because it was less of a click-fest and actually about strategy) then I could see it working flawlessly. However, I'm not too thrilled about seeing a ton of units on the map being represented as "The Band of The Hyen" or "The Tribe of Ganax". Also, all the text would be bothersome, I would rather it just be listed with simple descriptions such as:

Band of Trogs (This would give you an indication of their alignment. e.g more willing to join a fallen faction of trogs)

Population: 58 (Total number of possible civilians that would join. All men, women, and children)

Armed: 16 (Military Strength)

Attitude: Passive (could be violent, scared, etc. would give an indication for how to react to them)

Then under it have listed the simple options: Request That They Join You, Demand that they Join Your Cause, etc. with a different percentage of success (Although I wouldn't necessarily want to see how successful each would be).

So for a TBS, I don't know how it could be done. Because, I would like to see my possible population (rather than it just popping up randomly saying they are in the area) but I wouldn't like to see hundreds of units running around the map (if it were like Knights of Honor, the scale of the map would balance this imo) but maybe the scale of Elemental's map will be ok, like instead of them "running around" they could be stationary villages on the map, that when we hover over them it would show us an info card, showing all the information above. Sometimes those villages would get up and move, representing nomad like tendency, but more often than not they would stay put, making the map seem less crowded in the early to mid game.

If you're talking about the occasional colonization ethics events, one of the main reasons I go for Xeno Ethics early is to remove that repetitive (boring) click task. (I also do it to avoid the ethics event part of the GC2 Loves Evil problem). Huge, Gigantic, and Immense maps are my favorites. If that stuff kept happening for entire games, I might have quit playing GC2 after a few months from the dual frustration of tedious clicking and the vexing pro-Evil bias.

Well like I said in the last post, you could easily just disable the dialogue function.  Personally, even though I always play Galactic Civs on the largest map, I've never gotten tired of the event boxes (and I don't necessarily think evil is the best, but that depends on how many good civs there are and your playstyle).  But both preferences can easily be accomodated.

As for too many units running all over the place, I don't think it would be a problem.  When you start the game, there would be many, many, many small bands roaming around... but 99.9 percent of them you wouldn't see.  You would start the game and because you only have the visual range of your sovereign, you might see 1 or 2 bands after 10 turns.  Most bands wouldn't move completely randomly, even if they are nomadic, so you would have to move into their "home range" to encounter them.  In other words, you wouldn't have 50 wandering bands bumping into your borders every turn.  One out of twenty bands might be marauding wanders who never stay in one place to long, pillaging their way across the countryside.

By the time you've built your first city, half of the bands have already been killed by the elemtents or by monsters (think chaos and food shortfall after the Apocalypse.  Sure, you may have gotten away, but most people would die), and the rest have combined into larger bands.  Some of your early quests for surviving bands might actually be to kill a nearby monster before it kill them first.

By the time you have your second or third city, there are only perhaps 2 percent of the original number of bands represented by "units" still in existemce, but most of them are much larger.  Throughout your explored area at this point, there might be an average of about 4-5 of them that are squatting but you haven't been able to sway.  Some of them might be aggressive or defensive and unwilling to let you plop a city down next to the resource they are sitting atop.  Perhaps only 25 percent of the original population at the start of the game is actually still remaining in the wastes outside of channeler cities.  Many of the band sizes have stabilized though.  Once in awhile, a marauding tribe might come barreling through.  They might just be passing through or they might attack the other neighboring survivors and grow in strength (at which point they might attack YOU or just continue on.)  Some of the other survivors might even contact you and request to join your city, lest they be obliterated by the marauders.

So now, it is officially early midgame, and most of the leftover, unclaimed people of the world have either settled down into their own makeshift cities or are a stable, "wandering tribe" population.  You might be acquainted with 1 or 2 of these independant cities and you might be keeping a careful eye on 1 or 2 wandering tribes.  This is the kind of scale I imagine, and it would definately be manageable.  If you have too many surviving "units" in your local range, you can't keep track of them and thereby can't interact with the in a meaningful, consistent fashion.        

By late midgame, there aren't many neutral populations that haven't been gobbled up by sovereigns.

Awesome idea. Only thing i can add is that you might want to take into considertion the desperation level of the bands. Folks living in one of the rare fertile valleys that somehow surivived are likley to be pretty happy where they are and have a couple gaurds to make sure raiders stay away. On the other hand, if you run across a group that is starving to death and you rescue them, they are likely to be pretty grateful. Maybe they could even start a cult dedicated to you.

Go with the Galactic Civ 2 route of Good and Evil plus a racial modifier.

*Good* Human kingdoms would convince other human tribes to join, nonviolently.  *Evil* fallen races would just enslave or consume them for food, by force of course.

Ok, I suppose I could see this working, your saying they would be like units that would also fight and join one another, thus making bigger groups that might join you, effectively reducing the amount of units you see on the map but not reducing the numbers. Only now I'm wondering how you could build 2 or 3 cities without an appropriate population. Like if I have 100 people, theres no reason for those people to leave my first city. It's not like it's too small for them and they need more space.

Also, it sounds like some bands might be stronger than you would be. Now don't get me wrong, it sounds like it'd be cool to battle a huge post armageddon tribe with only 100 people. But I wouldn't want to lose games to them... Maybe your magic would be enough to keep them at bay? But it doesn't sound like at the beginning of the game you'll be able to do much more than bring life back to the land.

It seems like a great idea tho, I wish the devs would look here. Maybe they could give us some insight into what they're thinking. I just don't want to see another boring TBS population model that magically sprouts seemingly random numbers into cities. GalCiv was horrible with this.. The population levels in accordance to the rate of time passing was scary to think about  I just don't want Elemental to go the same way...

Random human peasent worms VS the almighty power of the god-channeler? i would lay money on that one.

Well, I think it might be an advantage to the game if you are finding no purpose to spew cities all over the map.  That's one of the faults of most strategy games: more planets/cities/provinces are always better so there's always a rush for land at the beginning.  But you would build extra cities if there were meaningful resources nearby, but you would have to calculate whether it would simply be more efficient to build another city or just keep one.  As for tribes, I don't think they should be designed to ever get bigger than most players at any given moment in the game (unless the player is awful).  After all, they are more likely to find the protection of a channeler better than the protection of just some non-magical people of their kind. 

If it were up to me, most tribes, per capita, would never get larger than half the size of the sovereign's civilization.  That doesn't mean there aren't a few outliers or marauding bands that temporarily get huge, then disintegrate.

Yea, I agree, it always annoyed me in Civ when there were cities like every 5 tiles  

If you are really packing the citys in then it was every 3 tiles, but if their zones overlap it hurts them both. But yes, for max efficiency it was every 5 tiles got a city. MoM would often end up looking similar with citys packed everywhere, but it never really felt that crowded somehow. I suspect it was because it felt like a single tile in MoM was much larger than in civ4.

TBH, i liked the way age of wonders handled that. Each city had a ginormus range around it for the no-city zone. Even once you had a city everywhere, it still felt like there was some empty space.

I think there's importance in those empty spaces. It seems to me like the devs think so too. I think based on what they've said we can expect to see this done (eventually) in Elemental. One of the things I think they need to get figured out is whether or not sovereigns are going to be the only ones to build cities. I think this would be a mistake... As we would have random cities spread out all over the world instead of having collective borders. I would prefer that a sovereign bring life back to an area and for either settlers to be used to build a city, or for the masses to forge out on their own to build in a designated spot.

I would prefer the latter, to have city building be put in charge of the people. You can tell them you want another city, but if they are happy they'll just stay put. Population and convenience would be major factors in determining happiness. If there's a small population there is no need to go live somewhere else. Maybe by offering incentives (land, gold) you could get them to build another city at a designated spot, or maybe they'd just choose their own location (If the AI was good enough I wouldn't have a problem with this)

It takes out the irritating part of settling new lands. As building settlers/colony ships in TBS games is getting old realll quick. I think this game could benefit from coming up with a new way of building cities along with this idea of populating those cities, especially since the back story almost asks for it.

Perhaps it could be done like irl cities pop up. If there is a zone that is monster free and has some useful resource, the harvesters head out to use it. And then a couple merchants head out to sell to the harvesters. Then you need an inn so all those folks can get drunk. Have some kind of score for each location and if the score is high enough, people just start living there. It would take a while to get a real city, but it would be organic. It would also ensure that citys are built in decent spots with resources, since that is what the people went there to get.

You could also tweak this around. Say there was a place you really wanted a city, and it had a gold mine right near it. Your soverign could declare that he is buying gold at 2 to 1 rate. Instant gold rush city pops up near that mine, right where you want it. The only issue here is when the deal is gone, you don't want those new citys to become ghost towns.

The other method commonly seen irl is for the soverign to build something in a good location. A castle on a strategic point, a gaint mining facility on a gold deposit. Citys often grew up around those kinds of places. Military bases often have citys devolp around them, mining towns are the same deal.

Basically, give the people a reason to move there, either natural(ore deposits/mouth of river) or artifical(military bases) and then let the citizens do the actual town building. The only issue would be getting people to move to really crappy locations(wastelands), even if there is something we want access to in that location(shiny goldz).

TBH, perhaps a combo of those two options would be best. If a location is awesome, say mouth of river downstream from a huge manufacturing town, then folks are likley to move there on thier own, but in order to get people to move into odd places, you need to raise its score by building things there.

Love this idea, Legend.  I've always liked the idea of providing incentives rather than micromanaging everything your population did.  For instance, most of the economy would be under the charge of your populace, and you would build special "sovereign buildings" that would encourage their growth in a particular direction (a royal barracks, a royal smithy, etc.)  The city itself would branch off in whatever direction was organic (along a river, for instance.)  You, the sovereign, would provide "concessions" to a city to spurn a certain type of growth and then watch the aftermath.

Actually, now that i think about this a little more, it could cause some serious problems, if you really need a city somewhere or you need a city to increase its pop fast or build in a certain way, you might not be able to influence it fast enough. If there is an organic system we would need the ability to have incentives that give a pretty much 100% success rate. They could be expensive to balance it out, but i would hate to lose the game because my citizens were too dumb to build warehouses or something like that.

Would also be nice if we could do forceful relocations. March into a town with a battalion of troops and inform them that exactly 20% of the population is going to be moving to the border region or where ever, right now. Nice empires might have to talk folks into doing it for the greated good, but us evil folks could inform them that anyone not volunteering quick enough gets to join the army as a zombie.

A few sure methods to control the pop would be nice if we get an organic system

Well yeah, with an organic system you'd have to make sure that the AI was smart enough to respond properly to your incentives.  That might produce a programming issue.

I am delighted when the AI manages to not soil itself. Regardless of how clever we think the AI may be, its always good to have a backup plan to enforce your will on your own empire instead of relying on an AI that could deiced that right now is a great time to take a crap in its pants.

lol this made me laugh. But you said you wouldn't like it if you lost because your people were too dumb to build warehouses. I was thinking the construction of game changing buildings would still be done by you. Like demiansky said, you'd build the barracks, the smithy, the temple. But also, if you want a warehouse, you just tell your people you want a warehouse. As for going about doing that, it could be like you say. Either the good will pay from his pocket, or the evil will kill some slaves to get the job done.

Exactly. If "sovereign buildings" wasn't working for you, think "national infrastructure" and remember that modern nation-states are the decendents of a much longer lineage of city-states.

That would work well. I was just worried we would get too organic. I don't wanna play the zerg. Unless someone mods them in, which would be hilarous.