Improving the city model

[The diplomat]

Does anyone have any ideas about how to improve the city model?

I have been thinking that it would be very good if city workers were represented on the main map by a "mini-worker" icon, so that the player could directly see on the main map which tiles are being worked. This would help the player better manage which tiles a city works. It may sound like just a cosmetic change, but I think it would really help.

I have also been considering only allowing bonus tiles to get terrain improvements. This would enhace their value, and greatly simplify the process of improving terrain, which would reduce excessive micromanagement, improve aesthetics and help the AI.

Of course, you could allow a single tile to have more than 1 special ressource. This would give the player an extra element of decision-making because they would have to decide which terrain improvement to build based on which special ressource they want more of.

Any other ideas? thoughts?

[Spiffor]

I think something must be largely reworked in the city model : the too close relationship between commerce (science/tax/luxury) and nearby roads. To me, commerce shouldn't be dependant on roaded tiles, but ultimatively on the population of your city with many elements that can improve it.

I think any citizen should produce 1 or 2 commerce, and many improvements should raise the output (such as libraries and marketplaces). But also, some elements external to the city should raise the output too : if the citiy is connected to the trade network, it should receive some commerce too, and should recieve more commerce if it has several "commercial" connections : for example, the city could 25% extra commerce from being connected to roads + 25% extra commerce for having a harbour + 25% extra commerce for being connected to another city with a river etc. Also, I think CTP-like commerce routes should give more commerce to the cities they get through. Eventually, bonus tiles should give commerce as they do now, like gold or luxuries.

Such an idea will reduce the usefulness of roads and railroads, and will hopefully let the map look better.

The Diplomat :
However, I think it is good to allow normal tiles to be improved with mines or irrigation.

[Inverse Icarus]

kill cities as they are now, and create regions as per my definition, where "cities" form themselves

here's some convos i had with buddies about it.

http://www.r0x0rz.org/mm/regions.php

[brianshapiro]

UberKruX UberKruX UberKruX ,

that is sort of like my idea, where the 'city radius' has both industries and residential areas form by themselves over time. i still like calling them 'city states' though

[brianshapiro]

UberKruX

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=82409

"1. The city's radius, within the border, as an area for growth of residential, industrial and commercial complexes, similar how its done in Railroad Tycoon; this at first may remind people of the original realtime attempt at Civilization that Sid Meier speaks of, where the player just made 'seeds' for industry, but its significantly different, while trying to keep the same intent, as I'll explain. As you found your city you start a residential complex, and also the main city center, forming the border around it. There is no local economy, so the player has to utilize the land himself. He uses a worker to build a farm on a grassland, a lumber industry on forests, and then other industries. Once the local economy has enough steam of its own (enough wood, etc. to construct them) they spring up naturally on their own as needed for the cities, throughout everywhere with connected trade (roads and harbors). Thus, maybe for the next city the player has, after a few turns, farms appear, and other industries. Most of this theplayer never has to worry about at all. The player has some role in 'seeding' things, but it isnt a matter of just placing a seed on the map, its a matter of taking the right steps in the economy. This would obviously also bring resources into the game, like it was in colonization. No fear about this, the resources produced by factories and gathered from other industries would be shown on the map overlayed on top of the industries easy for the player to see; trading is done automatically through Civilization 3's system (unless a more advanced system is added for other reasons). The point is to have the government initiate change, and then the private economy takes over. Also, residential buildings would also appear other places besides the main city center when population grows. They would appear in single blocks and then combine to double sized blocks like in Caesar or Pharoah as its done there for wealth of residence. This would take care of the constant suggestions for cities that take more than one square. Walls would be built on tiles directly, instead of through a city screen, as well as everything else."

"4. to make the last suggestion more viable, move to a city display like i suggested in a previous thread, where cities appear on the map much like they do in Railroad Tycoon. Industries develop themselves inside the city radius, to cater to the environment of the area, and can be covered by enemy troops during war, to prevent production. The development of industries by themselves, however, depend on commodities, which depend on trade networks. The previously suggested public/private development idea i suggested i don't think would work so i won't mention that again. But the player would still be there to build the 'public' improvements that exist in civilization today."



UberKruX

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=82409

"1. The city's radius, within the border, as an area for growth of residential, industrial and commercial complexes, similar how its done in Railroad Tycoon; this at first may remind people of the original realtime attempt at Civilization that Sid Meier speaks of, where the player just made 'seeds' for industry, but its significantly different, while trying to keep the same intent, as I'll explain. As you found your city you start a residential complex, and also the main city center, forming the border around it. There is no local economy, so the player has to utilize the land himself. He uses a worker to build a farm on a grassland, a lumber industry on forests, and then other industries. Once the local economy has enough steam of its own (enough wood, etc. to construct them) they spring up naturally on their own as needed for the cities, throughout everywhere with connected trade (roads and harbors). Thus, maybe for the next city the player has, after a few turns, farms appear, and other industries. Most of this theplayer never has to worry about at all. The player has some role in 'seeding' things, but it isnt a matter of just placing a seed on the map, its a matter of taking the right steps in the economy. This would obviously also bring resources into the game, like it was in colonization. No fear about this, the resources produced by factories and gathered from other industries would be shown on the map overlayed on top of the industries easy for the player to see; trading is done automatically through Civilization 3's system (unless a more advanced system is added for other reasons). The point is to have the government initiate change, and then the private economy takes over. Also, residential buildings would also appear other places besides the main city center when population grows. They would appear in single blocks and then combine to double sized blocks like in Caesar or Pharoah as its done there for wealth of residence. This would take care of the constant suggestions for cities that take more than one square. Walls would be built on tiles directly, instead of through a city screen, as well as everything else."

"4. to make the last suggestion more viable, move to a city display like i suggested in a previous thread, where cities appear on the map much like they do in Railroad Tycoon. Industries develop themselves inside the city radius, to cater to the environment of the area, and can be covered by enemy troops during war, to prevent production. The development of industries by themselves, however, depend on commodities, which depend on trade networks. The previously suggested public/private development idea i suggested i don't think would work so i won't mention that again. But the player would still be there to build the 'public' improvements that exist in civilization today."

[The diplomat]

I have come up with a really good city model that uses real pop numbers instead of "heads".

Here is how it would work:

-real pop numbers.
-no workers in city radius.
-city radius would simply give the city a food/labor/gold bonuses or penalties based on terrain.

The city would produce food/labor points/gold in the following way:
(Each new founded city would start with 1 food building, 1 industry building and 1 commerce building.)

1 food building produces 2 food units.
1 industry building produces 1 labor point
1 commerce building produces 3 gold.

(these numbers would gradually increase as the civ progresses up the tech tree)

Each building could employ up to 1000 people.

total food produced = (food produced by 1 building)*(total number of food buildings)*(terrain modifiers)*(% of employment)

food consummed = total pop/1000

net food = food produced - food consumed

food surplus would produce a small amount of gold.
gold = (food surplus)*(price of 1 food)

the gold produced by food surplus would go into a savings box just for food buildings. After taxes were deducted, when the savings reached a certain amount, the savings would automatically be spent to create an additional food building.

Industry would be similar.

total labor points produced = (labor produced by 1 building)*(total number of labor buildings)*(terrain modifiers)*(% of employment)

net labor = total labor - support costs

The number of net labor points would determine speed of producing military units and city improvements the same way shields do in civ now.
Net labor points would also produce some gold too.

gold = (net labor points)*(price of 1 basic goods)

Like with food buildings, the gold after taxes would go to creating an additional industry building.

Commerce would work in a similar way to food and labor.

Commerce = (gold produced by 1 commerce building)*(total number of commerce buildings)*(terrain modifiers)*(% of employment)

Net commerce = total commerce - maintenance costs.

The gold produced by commerce would also go, after taxes, into a savings that would create additional commerce buildings.

Food, labor, commerce and gold would be represented as decimals.

In addition to food, labor and commerce buildings, the player could build city improvements that would give bonuses to the city. Each city improvement would require a certain amount of pop, gold (maintenance cost) and labor points (support cost).

If the total pop were greater than the maximum number of pop that the food/labor/commerce buildings could employ, then the city would have some unemployment.

unemployment% = 100*(((total pop) - (number of pop all food/labor/commerce buildings can employ))/(total pop))


Now the player would control what the city produces in the following:

there would be the traditional build queue where the player can place a city improvement, wonder or military army to produce.

The player would set the % of total pop allocated to each area:
-food
-labor
-commerce
-military (pop allocated this area would automatically serve as militia for basic city defense and unrest control)

The player could of course lock a % if they want that % to stay fixed.

last, pop growth would be based on food surplus but also unemployment and economic status:

pop growth% = (5%)*(1+(food surplus/food produced))*(1-(unemployment%/100))*((total gold*1000)/total pop)

Note that if unemployment is negative, it means there are job vacancies, and pop growth would get a boost representing migration to the new jobs.

The 5% number would change based on SE settings and certan techs.

I have tried to numbers and they work really well AFAIK. Here is an example:

I found a new city with 500 people on a river bank (for example purposes, let's say terrain modifiers are +20% food, -10% labor, +10% commerce)

I allocate 70% (350 people) to food, 20%(100 people) to labor, 5% (25 people) to commerce and 5% (25 people) to military.

I therefore would get:

food produced = 2*1.2*1*(350/1000) = .84
net food = .84 - (500/1000) = .34
gold produced from food surplus = .34*1 = .34

labor = 1*.9*(100/1000) = .09
net labor = .09 - 0 = .09
gold from labor = .09*1.5 = .135

commerce = 3*1.1*(25/1000) = .0825
net commerce = .0825 - 0 = .0825

military = 5% of 500 = 25 men in militia

total city economy = .34+.135+.0825 = .5575 gold

pop growth% = 5%*1.4*6*1.115 = 46.83% (234 new people next turn)

The pop growth% may seem way too high. Remember that there are only 500 pople but 3000 jobs (3 buidlings) so there are plenty of job vacancies which provide a huge immigration boost. So new cities would essentially get this "immigration to new opportunities" boost.

[Spiffor]

The Diplomat :

I am quite tired right now so I cannot thouroughly analyze your idea, but it sounds really interesting. However, I think agriculture shouldn't be city-centred, and should rely heavily on the surroundings.
The land can produce only up to some food until discoveries are made. In your model, food production is unlimited even with neolitics technology

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Spiffor
The Diplomat :

I am quite tired right now so I cannot thouroughly analyze your idea, but it sounds really interesting. However, I think agriculture shouldn't be city-centred, and should rely heavily on the surroundings.
The land can produce only up to some food until discoveries are made. In your model, food production is unlimited even with neolitics technology

I value your input so I hope at some point you will have the chance to look through the entire thing (yes, I know it is really long, sorry )

Your last point about food is a very good one. I think (I may be wrong) that your point could probably be dealt with by simply tweaking the number representing the food that 1 food building produces. I set it at 2 as an example but that is undoubtly too high. At the start of a new game, it would probably be lower.

For example, if at the beginning of the game, it were set to say 1.1, then cities without positive terrain modifiers would produce no or little food surplus. This could deal with your point by simulating the difficulty of producing food in the neolithic age. It would also force the player to choose good food producing sites like river banks for cities in the early game, until they discover better agriculture tech. This would be fairly consistent with real history too!

[The Strangers]

One thing that always puzzled me about cities in all the Civilization games was the fact that when more citizens appear in the cities, they automatically have a place to live. If reality is what the designers are looking for, then some improvments should be housing, taking a different form throughout the ages - and possibly being built in the city radius as time goes on rather than in the city itself.

Of course, this could make the game exceedingly irritating, as every time a new citizen appeared, there would be instant disorder in the city. That would have the potential of making Civ 4 very irritating to play, unless of course there was an option when beginning a game as far as housing was concerned. Then the experienced Civ player could have a new challenge, and the beginner wouldn't have to worry about it.

An even more advanced form of this would be that if you wanted to turn a labourer into a farmer, you would have to build a farm for him. If you want factory labourers, you would have to build inner city residences. If you want politicians, managing directors etc (a whole new concept in Civ), you would have to build suburbian residences on tiles adjacent to the city. This would crate a whole new concept in goverment also, as in a facist/despotism government, far less politicans would be required compared to a republic, democracy, etc.

[TimeTraveler]

I've had a few thoughts myself.

1. Suppose a civilization changes it's form of currency (like from gold to paper money to energy)

2. What if a city simply ran out of room for its facilities?

3. Suppose a worker could not get what is being harvested/mined to the city because it is too far away, or the road needed to get there hasn't been built yet? Or suppose they could, but not as efficiently, like if the amount is halved if a certain difficulty to gather.

4. Why do the creators of the civilization games try to make adjacent cities impossible? They do exist or are close enough to be adjacent (New York and Philadelphia)

5. Will they ever make a game where the range of places a city has to gather resources increases or decreases?

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by TimeTraveler
1. Suppose a civilization changes it's form of currency (like from gold to paper money to energy)

Interesting, but it might be a bit too complicated for a civ game. How it was implemented, would be the key. Before the player discovers "currency", they would rely on bartering, simply trading one resource for another, like say 1 wood unit = 1 stone unit. After "currency", the player would get a certain amount of gold units every turn from gold mines in the city radius. Gold units would buy a lot more than bartering did, say 1 gold units = 6 wood units. There would be a maximum amount of gold the player could get from a gold mine. With the discovery of the tech "paper money", the player would no longer be limited by the number of gold mines, and would be able to automatically produce as much money as they want (ability to print money). This would mean the player could build more city improvements and military units than before when limited by gold. However, printing too much money would increase the cost of everything (inflation). So, the player would have to be careful not to print too much money or building city improvements and units would become increasingly more expensive. Lastly, in the late game, energy could be a currency. The player could build city improvements like the "power plant" to produce a certain amount of energy units per turn. Energy would have the advantage that it is bountiful, a power plant would produce a lot of energy units per turn. The main disadvantage would be it's vulnerability since energy producing facilities like the power plant could be destroyed either by enemy attack or by random event. Power plants would also produce pollution. Of course, the player would have solar/wind/hydro type of facilities to produce energy without pollution.

I think that each type of currency system should have gameplay advantages and disadvantages. There should be no correct system to use. There is where strategy comes in! There would also have to be exchange rates so that players could exchange one currency for another.

2. What if a city simply ran out of room for its facilities?

I can see this happening for space colonies like in SMAC where the different atmosphere requires that the colony exists inside a "bubble". On Earth, I don't think this is as much as a problem. A city can always spread out horizontally or build vertically with more skycrappers.

3. Suppose a worker could not get what is being harvested/mined to the city because it is too far away, or the road needed to get there hasn't been built yet? Or suppose they could, but not as efficiently, like if the amount is halved if a certain difficulty to gather.

I guess that is what the city radius is for. It limits what ressources are available to a city. I suppose we could have it where a tile produces at 50% efficiency if there is no road, 65% if there is a road, 100% if there is a railroad.

4. Why do the creators of the civilization games try to make adjacent cities impossible? They do exist or are close enough to be adjacent (New York and Philadelphia)

Well, a lot of players are upset with having the map covered with roads because they consider it ugly. Imagine a map covered with cities in every tile! YIKES! It would not be pretty!

5. Will they ever make a game where the range of places a city has to gather resources increases or decreases?

CTP2 did this a bit. It had a system where the city radius would increase, if that is what you mean.

[LDiCesare]

Well, a lot of players are upset with having the map covered with roads because they consider it ugly. Imagine a map covered with cities in every tile! YIKES! It would not be pretty!

Nope. In civ1, you could do it. It is extraordinarily efficient. You build cities everywhere and ICS with great ease. Kind of too easy and an exploit.

About happiness: Both civ and CtP limit the population of a city based on aqueducts and whatnots. In CtP2 in particular, there is something like pollution (the more population, the more pollution) which tends to make bigger cities unhappy when the pop grows unless you do something.

About regions: Clash has regions. There aren't any buildings, but there is infrastructure, and build unit orders at civ, region or square level. UberKruX, you might want to see how "settlers" and expansion are handled in Clash. I think it is both elegant and of good gameplay (automatic colonization of empty nearby squares, adding population to any unit who then carries them around).

[GePap]

I think what needs to be reworked is tile managuement, with cities being a special form of tile management.

The basis for this would be pop. point. Population would exist as point. You would assign them to tiles as needed, with different tiles having different limits about how many people could be using that tile for a specific task. Now, cities would be formed once enough pop point were placed in one tile, with special tasks such as artisan or priest and such (the game could begin pre-cities). Very large efficiency bonuses would be given for congregating such workers in one place, thus giving the player an incentive for cities (though a player could always try to create a nomadic civ, withouit major cities). Now, building in a city would just be another form of tile managuement: building a mine and a temple would both fall under the same system and not two different systems. Building would be based on number of people employed and the resources available. You could state that only within city tiles could certain things be built, thus encouraging even more the creation of city tiles. (or cities in tiles)

Now, this system would ask for there to be a lot of info on each tile, so map size would porbalby be limited, since too large a map wpould be killer on a system.

On production: one way to manague the system of incentives for cities is to create a system of loss. For example; in theory, one pop point could grow 4 food units, enough to feed itself and one more. But at the beginning of the game inefficiency means it can only produce 2 tops. To get it to make 4 you need to create buildings (like storehouses) to lower inefficency, and to try to discover new techs that also lower it. Both things would require cities to do, thus giving an incentive for city tiles. Also, each tile porduces for itself, roads would be needed to move surplus form one tile to another, but early on, moving things would mean losses with distance. That fact would limit the spread of a civ early on, nuless you went with land managuement techniques that do not reauire roads and such (such as herder, thus again allowing for a nomadic civ scenerio)

On pop points. Population gorwth should not be tied to food production. It should be driven by algoriths based on actual dmeographic reasearch. Overpopualtino should be a real possibility and worry. The factors that would lower pop. growth would be disease (as in real life), and the dowside to city tiles would be that they increase the likelyhood of disease, so that to keep cities running you need to continue to import pop from the outside, until rather late in the game when techs cutting back disease allow city tiles to be self-sufficient in pop.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by GePap
The basis for this would be pop. point. Population would exist as point. You would assign them to tiles as needed, with different tiles having different limits about how many people could be using that tile for a specific task. Now, cities would be formed once enough pop point were placed in one tile, with special tasks such as artisan or priest and such (the game could begin pre-cities).

I am a bit confused by your idea. It sounds like you could have pop spread all over the map and not necessarily concentrated inside cities.

Also, how would the player produce units and such before cities? Would ressources be pooled?

[LDiCesare]

GePap, I like your suggestions. I also think we're doing something somewhat along those lines in Clash:
You can have population in tiles, and there pop is assigned to some tasks based on what's available in the tile (farms in plains, mines in mountains, whatever). This doesn't require micromanagement unless the player wants to.
About building units, you can pool them between various tiles, call these tiles a province, and give orders at this level. As for buildings (temples, etc.), in Clash we don't have them, but there's not much difference with tile improvements: You could build marketplaces with settlers/workers or a public works system the same you build mines and irrigation in civ.

I agree that no population growth system in any game is good. Population growth should be maxed to a factor dependant on diseases/healthcare, and when pop reaches a max level based on food/disease/promiscuity, then you can start an epidemic or limit pop growth.