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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Country Borders


Breunor

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I apologize if I missed a previous discussion of this, but I mentioned this elsewhere and wanted to make sure it was discussed:

 

 

Country borders... Here's another can of worms IMO. I think we should be as general as possible here, rather than specific. Use the United Kingdom or Great Britain, not England, Wales, Scotland, etc. Each seperate country with borders is supposed to also be a seperate funding entity in the game. That's the only reason you see the borders, as well as for tracking activity. So you have to break out each country's funding, and then deal with the aliens taking over those smaller chaunks, etc.

 

But here's the nasty part. As soon as you start splitting hairs for this part of the world, in a relative fashion you're made another part less important. How many countries do we include? Consider the African continent. How many countries do we list there? What about Russia, Russia/Chechnya? See where I'm going? And every year we have the chance that our maps become incorrect as more regions either break up or combine. I think we would do well to remove ALL individual country names, and instead use regional names, like western EU, eastern EU, western Asia, Eastern Asia, northern Africa, southern Africa, north america, central america, south america, etc. We can just break those regions down until we have a similar number compared to the original game. It's unlikely "asia" is going to fall anytime soon, so east/west/north/south asia should be safe names to use. :D

 

I highly recommend we consider this route over specific country names. Otherwise we will spend a lot of effort determining which countries are "important enough" to specify in the game, and we'll create tension doing that. Just my $.02US worth.

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Trimming down the number of 'countries' represented is definitely a good idea... But, instead of just naming countries by region when we group them together(aka 'South Asia'), it might sound better if we come up with an appropriate sounding group/collective name. Instead of 'North Africa' we have the 'Northern African Alliance,' to make it sound like the counties are in some sort of organized sense providing funding as a group...

 

I just think it might sound better if we break them up in groups like you might hear about in the real world, rather than labelling them simply 'general location.'

 

 

- Matt

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Monkey has a very good idea there as does Breu :)

 

Using generic names like the 'Northern African alliance is a good idea.

 

How about

Eurasian Union - Europe

League of Conferderated States of Russia - USSR as it used to be

Northern African Alliance - North Africa

Southern African States - South Africa

Asian Colalition - India, Pakistan and surrounding countries (scary prospect)

Mongolian Protectorate- China, Japan, Indonesia and oriental countries.

Antipodean United States - Austrailia and surrounding countries. (My fave as the acronym is still AUS :))

USA obvious one really but we pull Canada into it (ooh I can hear the flames rising now :))

South American League - Again pretty obvious.

 

All that would be left would be to divide up the areas with the colours needed to be shown in close zoom on the Geoscape.

 

I still think we should have Capital cities shown on the map for each country a shown in the example below

post-42-1058547310_thumb.jpg

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Guest Jim69

Yeah, I agree. I know this is just a concept of the names, and I dunno if this is a typo but Eurasian Union should just be the European Union since it already exists. I also think that instead of USA it should be North American League, which could also pull Alaska into it as well. Would be good to have a tie in of N. American and S. American as their acronyms could be NAL and SAL.

 

Side note. London is a bit off in that map, that is somewhere in Kent, needs 2 come up and left a bit.

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as long as Iceland (and Reykjavík) are in the game im happy

But you can split Eourope into smaller peaces.

The Scandinavian Unuion(or something like that) that could be Iceland,Greenland,Faroe Islands,Danmark,Sweaden,Norway and Finnland

and then mabey join Germany and Austria or something like that.

 

Oh and i would be hella kewl to have the Vatican. The aliens are killing the pope :o

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Guest Jim69
as long as Iceland (and Reykjavík) are in the game im happy

But you can split Eourope into smaller peaces.

The Scandinavian Unuion(or something like that) that could be Iceland,Greenland,Faroe Islands,Danmark,Sweaden,Norway and Finnland

and then mabey join Germany and Austria or something like that.

 

Oh and i would be hella kewl to have the Vatican. The aliens are killing the pope :o

Well, I don't actually think Europe needs 2 be split, I always made sure I covered it all anyway as together it gets the same amount of cash as USA and canada.

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Side note. London is a bit off in that map, that is somewhere in Kent, needs 2 come up and left a bit.

I knew someone would say something like that :D

 

Eurasian isn't a typo, its a nod to a tabletop game called Stargrunt by Ground zero games. Chack it out its a very good game.

Edited by Deimos
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Regional alliance names would be great, as IMO I see that being the way of the future really. Regional conflicts causing regional alliances. The European Union would be the model for other regions. I was wondering if some version of NAFTA could be imagined for a north american alliance? One part of deciding how many chunks would be to make sure we had a similar amount compared to the original game, but also to make sure that we didn't create 'hot spots'. For example, if you have the EU, plus the N.African Alliance, and an western asisian group, you could plop a base down in rome and cover most of your funding regions. While that's a good idea, I simply mean we want to make sure that there's a good reason to defend all areas by balancing the funding a bit. So if you place your base in a central location on each continent, you could pick from multiple starting locations for a vaible cash flow. My impression is that most people started either in europe or n.america to protect the big investors. I'd like to be an optimist and say that other regions prosper between now and 10 years, and other regions contribute equivalent amounts. Maybe that's just me?

 

In any case, perhaps North American Trade Confederation and South American Free States could be used? Other names could include The Oceanic Conference (a nod to the UN term).

 

This UN site breaks down regions in a typical east/west/north/south fashion. Perhaps we could use those divisions to some extent, and give them our own names?

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We can use UN recognized borders so we avoid PC issues. If we lump things together we should just use geographical names not political ones to also avoid trouble. Canadians are not gonna like being called part of the USA any more than Brits being included in France, but say "North America" and "Western Europe" would be fine.
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Guest Jim69
We can use UN recognized borders so we avoid PC issues.  If we lump things together we should just use geographical names not political ones to also avoid trouble.  Canadians are not gonna like being called part of the USA any more than Brits being included in France, but say "North America" and "Western Europe" would be fine.

Grouping USA and Canada is no different from grouping England with Scotland, which has already been agreed is a non issue. To prevent such irregularities is one of the reasons that the alliances are being created. And in this way the UK IS being grouped with France. And Germany. If I can handle this, then I'm sure the Canadians can handle being grouped with USA :D. Which is why I don't think it should be called USA, but rather N. America.

 

BTW, I had an thought ( and it hurt real bad ). Maybe funding adjustments from base coverage could have a radius of influence, and the percentage of that continent that is covered would be the adjustment, not just covering part of it and getting full benifit. That way it would be easy to cover a small continent, but u would get much cash, but covering a large continent would be hard, but worth it fiscally ( I think thats the word ).

 

Edit: Ignore most of first paragraph, read ur post a little more clearly and u were agreeing with me ne way, soz :hammer:

Edited by Jim69
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Well, since funding can go up or down before you lost the entire section, that could represent portions of the region dropping out or coming back in. So if you protect a large area poorly, you'll lose some of that larger funding, which is similar to totally covering a smaller region I guess.
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as long as Iceland (and Reykjavík) are in the game im happy

But you can split Eourope into smaller peaces.

The Scandinavian Unuion(or something like that) that could be Iceland,Greenland,Faroe Islands,Danmark,Sweaden,Norway and Finnland

and then mabey join Germany and Austria or something like that.

 

Oh and i would be hella kewl to have the Vatican. The aliens are killing the pope :o

Well, I don't actually think Europe needs 2 be split, I always made sure I covered it all anyway as together it gets the same amount of cash as USA and canada.

I agree. Also, with the EMU thing starting and the discusions about creating an united European defence force, I can't see any reason to split Europa. Unless it is in the name of creating game balance.

 

And here's another thing for the creative text team. Shouldn't the player be able to know a little more of each region? Some background history, inhabitant totals, total funding, feeling about X-COM and so on so on.

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The thing I would be worried about with these regions is the alien infiltration. If a UFO gets through (or several) then you would lose the whole area, and that seems unrealistic. Especially with Europe, where it is a grouping of many different countries. I think you would have to test it, and change how readily a group can defect.
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I offer this suggestion:

 

We have no real way of predicting the future. I think Microprose realised this when they released X-Com, which is why they didn't change any national borders.

 

In my opinion trying to predict which countries will be around and which will not is fruitless and will inevitably be incorrect. Also, I think making up regional aliances disconnects the player from the game because it removes him or her from the immediacy of the threat to the world. It's some other world, similar to ours, but not actually ours. If the names are the familiar world's, it's then your country or one that you know about getting attacked, not an unfamiliar conglomerate.

 

When Microprose developed X-Com, it appears they used their contemporary list of top GDP rankings, then added a couple each from unrepresented continents by taking the top two or three countries and then they dropped a few European nations from the list because they had too many from there for the player to keep track of. I think we can do the same thing with a similar method using existing borders and take the current list to do our funding nations. (Note: The new terminology for Gross National Product (GNP) is now Gross National Income (GNI)):

 

http://www.worldbank.org/data/databytopic/GNI.pdff

 

Who cares if the game is set 10 years in the future. Our players can suspend disbelief if things change that dramatically. Besides, in 10 years, no one is going to expect Xenocide to be with the times. The predict the future trap goes a long way down. There's a reason X-Com abstracted things the way they did; we can do the same thing and solve this issue without having to make up new geodata or placenames.

Edited by Kenshiro
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I agree with kenshiro, there is no need to create mythical political entities. even Xcom 3 looses some of its impact for me due to the location.
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as long as Iceland (and Reykjavík) are in the game im happy

But you can split Eourope into smaller peaces.

The Scandinavian Unuion(or something like that) that could be Iceland,Greenland,Faroe Islands,Danmark,Sweaden,Norway and Finnland

and then mabey join Germany and Austria or something like that.

 

Oh and i would be hella kewl to have the Vatican. The aliens are killing the pope :o

The Scandinavian Unuion(or something like that) that could be Iceland,Greenland,Faroe Islands,Danmark,Sweaden,Norway and Finnland

and then mabey join Germany and Austria or something like that.

 

NEVER! Finland will not be ignored in favour of such a country as Sweden no longer! And it is written with a single "N" :cussing:

 

:LOL:

 

I agree. Also, with the EMU thing starting and the discusions about creating an united European defence force, I can't see any reason to split Europa.

 

Actually that causes some difficulties recarding real life politics, for instance the great and noble republic of Finland has a sort of policy agains military alliances or something in that direction...

 

Oh and i would be hella kewl to have the Vatican. The aliens are killing the pope :o

 

So it's cool to have a country a kilometer in diameter, but Finland's not good enough for yeh, eh?

 

... :LOL:

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I think that Europe should be just one region and only largest cities should be visible. In that way we would avoid alot of troubles.

 

Perhaps in V1 but after that we should start expanding the political spectrum. Then again, when you lose EU you lose about 50 % of your funding, am I correct? EU should be unified in funding, but militarily(is that a word?) it isn't unified as of jet. And as I said Finland has a policy agains military alliances or something like that, no? However Europe should definedly be unified totally(both financially and militarily) in V1...

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Guest Jim69
I think the political climate would change a lot in the event of an alien war, just look at what world wars have done 2 country alliances, and aliens attacking us all would definatly change forigien policies.
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I think the political climate would change a lot in the event of an alien war, just look at what world wars have done 2 country alliances, and aliens attacking us all would definatly change forigien policies.

 

True, for better and for worse, too... I mean, it's not impossible for countries to abuse the confusion and panic that the alien intrucion causes. And while your point is walid I would like to suggest that what ever the changes may be, they should be either starting or in the middle of the change, to illustrate the drastic difference in global politics when compared to this day...

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I think trying to keep borders close to current day is not as effective as making new alliances based off of current trends. Remember that there is lots of political change going on in the storyline in "the next 10 years", so making something significantly different helps create that atmosphere. To say it's unrealistic, so is the idea of alien races attacking the earth...

 

I agree that there should be smaller funding chunks for the major players, as losing the EU when your base is centered there would be disasterous. I still think the safest system to use for funding is to break major areas into chunks based on north/south/east/west when possible. Remember, this has nothing to do with what borders you'd see for individual countries. Those could still be used as well. But you would also show the major borders for the funding sectors too for effective base placement. So if you had 'northern europe' as a funding sector, you could still put the borders for individual countries in at a finer detail level. Just because we have the EU now, there are still seperate countries there that will fund things at different levels. Normalized currency and open trade is different than "planetary defense funding" IMO.

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Guest Jim69

Yeah, I agree. Maybe a system of not showing the player the whole list of countries would be good. I think this is what u mean Brue, but I'm not totally sure. Say there are a big list of seperate countries, but 4 the sake of a clear screen u only c the continent funding. Maybe the continent is a parent level that can be dropped down by that + thing it has in windows 2 show the child levels ( not sure that is right word ).

 

This would include the list of countries, their funding and if they have signed a pact with the aliens. So, it would only say on the funding screen "European Union: £3,000,000" which would be the total funding from all countries within the union.

 

Then, if countries sign pacts then they are removed from the union and added 2 the "Alien Allies" list, which obviously u wouldn't get ne funding from. This way u could have a big list of seperate countries, but not actually have 2 look at them all in the funding screen unless u really wanted 2.

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Not exactly, as activity graphs are linked to the funding areas as well. What I meant was that instead of having activity/funding split out into every country or into the entire EU, you'd use some more generic blocks. This has already been suggested by someone else IIRC.

 

EU: Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western

Asia: same

Africa: same

Americas: ?? Perhaps north/north central/central/south central/south?

 

Those type of divisions could easily be based around the local countries, and provide enough diversity for funding. When you zoom in on the geoscape, it would show the borders of the regions first, then zoom more to see borders of the countries making them up. Zoom even more and you'll see capitals of those countries.

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My impression is that most people started either in europe or n.america to protect the big investors. I'd like to be an optimist and say that other regions prosper between now and 10 years, and other regions contribute equivalent amounts. Maybe that's just me?

Just as a thought, to avoid this and add a new level to game strategy, why not have the funding be random. So that in any given game, Nigeria could be a larger financial contributer than America. All you need is a small random number generator that picks values between a certain limit and applies them to the country/alliance/whatever we use.

 

I think that might be the way to go, as it does set up a dynamic campaign in each game. You don't come in with an advantage of knowing who is rich, so you pick the most strategic/sentimental location. Or this could be implemented only in harder levels (although I think it would be best at all levels).

 

Gold

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But not knowing who are the best funders at the start is, well, weird :huh: There you are, shiny new base in the middle of Europe... OMG, entire EU brings in 10% while Oceanic Regency ( ^_^ ) brings in a whopping 50%?? AAAARRRRGGGH!
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Two things:

 

1 ) the idea of funding diminishing WRT the base location goes against the idea that the bases location is secret. Countries fund what they fund, it goes up it goes down, period.

 

2 ) This is all getting silly. Let's just pick some countries that exist today (we can have more than 16) and stick them in and leave it at that. That WORKS the only problem with the real XCOM is that there are only 16 Countries (probably due to computer limitation in the day it was written) and that they had to be distributed around the world. So you got Egypt but not Argentina, Nigeria but not Korea, etc.

 

All this grouping talk and predicting imaginary LARGER (but never smaller countries) is silly.

 

* To do this we first need to determine if there is a limit to how many countries Xenocide can handle.

 

* If there is we have to determine that limit and then decide what countries will go in.

 

* We have to adjust the funding/pricing from a game mechanics point of to accommodate the extra countries.

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I think we should deside how far we are going to take the politics in Xenocide. I talking about original Xenocide, not mods or anything like that. I mean how diverse and complex we make the politics, and how time consuming we make it?

 

Edit:

 

To do this we first need to determine if there is a limit to how many countries Xenocide can handle.

 

Technically couldn't Xenocide handle all the countries, I mean, what kind of restrictions are there?

 

And like I asked, does Xenocide need extra politics?

Edited by Aosar
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Guest Jim69

Damn, look what an angry Scot can do :P All coz he was moaning to me that Scotland wasn't on the map, LOL.

 

I thought the idea of having larger country regions, not necessrily much bigger than in UFO, was to avoid annoying peeps that their country had been grouped with another 1. Alliances would do this. That is pretty much the discussion, whether it should remain as it is or be grouped into regions like East Europe, West Asia, East Oceania etc. My vote's 4 the regional 1s, but I guess a lot of peeps don't like this.

 

If not that then u might as well leave it as is, as having loads of really small countries would just be annoying and a wastefull exercise.

 

Example: "Luxembourg: £10" :P

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If not that then u might as well leave it as is, as having loads of really small countries would just be annoying and a wastefull exercise.

 

True, but there aren't really that small countries anywhere, exept for Vatican and Luxembourg. There are small countries, yes, but not that much. And still it depends on the fact how much political and regional detail is needed/wanted in Xenocide.

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Let's do an exercise then:

 

Let's assume 64 countries (good computer number, and out of 200 countries in the world that will probably get most of the land and population).

 

If it's 64 countries what will they be?

 

I'd say first just list the 64 richest countries and see how distributed that is, then we can adjust from there.

 

For now let's do 64 instead of 128 just to see what the outcome would be.

 

Sound worth doing?

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They might have much gdp per capita but if the population is under 1000000 it's not gonna help much. AND, it's not enough if population has much money, also the country must be wealthy.
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Would any of those 64 lie in Africa? :unsure: I don't think there'll be many...

Probably, that's why I suggested we start with the richest the re adjust from there.

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  • 3 months later...

I don't think thats such a good idea... if you divide up the countries like that then you will take significant hits when the infiltrators go into the countries in the beginning, before you get bases there. If you do it that way, Africa will suddenly become the most important, because of the many different combined states... that will be very strange. It seems that this is dumbing down part of what made

X-com great, the choices at the beginning of the game, where to place that first base... US or Europe, Asia or Antarctica...

One of the pitfalls that some recent x-com games have fallen into is dumbing down a great game. We aren't in this for the revenue, we are in this to make a great game. We don't need to dumb it down so more people can play, we should sieze this opportunity to create the most popular free game ever.

 

Just my 2 cents worth :unsure:

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instead of having "cuntries", what about uniting them into bigger parts? (USA, Europe, Scandinavia, South Amarican Unition, mid amarican republic, Canada, South Pole, North pole, Russia, Near East Foundation, Far East Foundation, West african republic, North african republic, and South African republic)

 

EDIT: fixed size.

political.jpg

Edited by mikker
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