Manufacturing output

[Sandman]

It seems very clear to me that the current method of allocating shields makes very little sense in light of the fact that we now have strategic resources. Consider two cities, one with hills and forests, one with just grassland. They're both plugged into the national economy, so they both recieve all the coal, iron, uranium etc that they need.

But the hills/forest city is far more productive than the grassland city, even though it probably has a smaller population. Why? Both cities are getting supplies of strategic resources. How does having access to hills and forests translate into faster cavalry production? The only thing those hills are offering is stone and possibly copper.

I suggest that the strong relationship between manufacturing output and terrain should be weakened. Population should be the first determinant of production, followed by strategic resource availability with terrain a distant third. Each pop point would generate at least one production point, so currently weak grassland cities would become strong production centres, whilst hill and forest cities would be weakened.

I'd still like forest tiles to provide a resource bonus, but with one crucial difference: the forest resource bonus would NOT be affected by industrialisation, whereas resources granted by population and strategic resources would, so in ancient times, terrain is important, but it becomes less so as time progresses.

Thoughts?

[lajzar]

You know, it wasn't until very modern times that the idea of a national economic grid was even relevant. If you want to make it so modern times have that grid, you need to also make it so the ancient through to age of sail world does not have such a grid.

So far, I've seen...

Trade should be separated from terrain
Food should be separated from terrain
And now production should be separated from terrain.

While some of these do make sense for the modern times, for about 90% of human history, productivity (of all types) was intimately linked to terrain. Civ isn't just about the modern era.

I'm not against replacing the benefits of specific terrain as such, but I'd like to see something better than just linking it strongly to population. It seems that that removes the choose your city site aspect of the game.

One thing I would do though, is make the terrain improvement a bigger factor in productivity relative to basic terrain values, compared to the present system. And make it so that certain improvements either cannot be built in certain terrains (no farming in the mountains), and that certain improvements give a better bonus in certain terrains.