[Bobboau]

SimCity+Command and Conquer.

discuss...

[Fineus]

Sort of a "build up your city *and* your army, you can only be successful if you do well at both as, with no city, you can't fund an army?" kind of deal?

Could be fun... doubly so for people into macro managing and base building. You could add a historical /map progression system in as well, taking your little cluster of spear throwing villagers into a town era with swords etc... then on to large fortified towns with battlements etc.. then on to more modern day stuff and so on and so on, until you're finally waging intercontinental warfare which you could micromanage on a battle by battle basis.

[Black Wolf]

Any of the Caesar games... though only kind of. The military role there definitely plays second fiddle.

[Stormkeeper]

Rise of Nations. Sounds a lot like it.

[miskat]

I dunno, this would be awesome but I'd prefer to see a sort of Civilization meets Command and Conquer kind of thing.

[haloboy100]

ya, like a big city/nation that decides to go to war with another one. Sounds nice.

[Flipside]

Yeah, I've thought of a game like this a few times, the hard part is that a city-builder tends to require things like large terrains to build the cities on, and, as Black Wolf says, most games lean toward either the city-building or the combat, but always seems to focus on one, Caeser focusses on City building, whereas, thing like Medieval Total War focus on the combat.

The main hurdles I've thought of are:

1: Creating multiple large areas to build cities on, not just the player, but his opponents, since you'd not only need to control your own city, you'd need to invade others, this might even need an AI to manage those other cities.

2: Controlling the movement of Civilian AND Military assets, even with mutli-tasking, a lot of optimising would be needed, or tricks like making all civilians run indoors when the city is under attack, so the processor can focus on the armed units. I suppose it's possible to ignore the fine detail of logistics etc (i.e. Move the stuff, but don't worry about how it gets moved), but for me, that's part of the challenge.

Edit: Admittedly, my own idea was more based around Warhammer Fantasy + Sim City

[Stormkeeper]

There is Rise of Nations, i guess it kinda focuses more on the military aspect of things, though.

If you created a game that focused on both aspects, then you might need maps of SupComm size, so that you have sufficient space to expand your city, as well as space to construct military installations and conduct military operations away from the city. As for creating an AI to do it ... I'm thinking that if an AI was programmed to handle this game, it'd probably out-perform the player, because the player can't be in 2 places and control both his civvy and military troops at the same time.

Nevertheless, it is an intresting idea, i'll give you that ...

[Bobboau]

the way I was thinking of it would be you could focus as much on either side of it as posable, you'd even be able to play the game without ever getting into a war (diplomatic efforts, ecconomic ties, ect). it would start out more as a sim city, were you need to take care of resources and basic city infastructure, of mutable cities, but there would be a lot more intercity focus than any simcity has had before, so there would be two main modes for the simulation, city mode and nation mode. in city mode it would initaly play out a lot like any sim city, and initaly you'd only have the one city, but once you get a big enough city ('big enough' is something the player decides) you can try to found another city else ware on a nation map, and claim larger territory, or build up a military force and outright conquer another city, this would require a city builder AI, which might prove difficult (unless we supplied some prebuilt cities or made it MMO). all the while you buld police forces and other public services, military assets, your education levels in your cities have an impact on how easy it is to get certan things, like an education level of 100 it becomes posable for you to get nuclear technology, but it is prohibitively expensive (and posably less reliable) unless you get your education levels up to 160 or so. logistics would play a huge role, you'd need to plan out rail lines and highways to ensure you keep your industry alive and troops supplied IF you are in a war, also unlike any simcity game it will take time to build things, if you lay out a highway it wouldn't just POOF into exsistance, youd get an estimate on how much it would cost and how long, if you find you desperately need some money later you can suspend/cancel construction and save whatever you haven't spent yet.

oh, another good idea, if you fail management of a city bad enough they will revolt, and all military assets they have will be used against you. you'd have the option of recognizing them as a new state (losing power without haveing to fight, posably opening new economic/political ties with a state you are no longer responsible for) or fighting them back into submission.

in terms of combat, you'd be able to deploy what ever assets you have in what ever cities they are in, but the distances they are from were you want them will play a role in when they get there, if it takes too long for one of your forces to arrive the enemy will realize you are plotting against them and attack, or maybe even someone you were not planning on fighting will think you were about to attack and do a preemptive strike (especially if you call for forces too far away and they stray too close to another nation's border, this is another case of how logistic management would be important, planing the rout not only to get what you need were you need it, but also not making blandsulvainia freak out cause they see an armada of two hundred foot tall nuclear attack gerbil robots marching towards them)

[Ace]

Outpost 2 came pretty close.

[jr2]

or tricks like making all civilians run indoors when the city is under attack,

Or go the Swiss route, or the American route...

[Bobboau]

how your population reacts to invasion could be related to things like level of nationalism, urbanization, ect... so you could feed your population nationalist propaganda from the moment they are born and your entire population could be a usable military asset, though you won't have as much time to teach them actual facts about the world, so you won't have as many people who know how to make good weapons.

[Flipside]

One thing I thought about was that the environment has an effect on the skills available in a city, for example, sending people who grew up in a farming town to set up a mining colony would have a supply penalty at first because the people working there aren't used to working with that kind of produce, so each 'villager' would have a small set of 'skills' that effected how well they did certain jobs. That also means you could use those skills and promote skilled villagers up to more important roles.

I always liked the idea that there's nowhere you can build a city that has everything you need, so you'd either need to build 'satellite' towns to supply goods as the capital grows, or take over/trade with other peoples'