Get Rid of Building Every Improvement Everywhere

[lajzar]

Hmm, not sure I follow.

RRs make it possibel for a city to collect resources from anyway (or say, 10 tiles away) in your empire. But you don't need to build a railroad connecting the city to that tile. That strikes me as a little unrealistic. And teh obvious solution - require a rail connection - defeats the RR sprawl we all love to hate.

[Dauphin]

A system of city improvements that eliminated the need or desire to build the same improvements in every city would be welcomed by me. Specialisation would be a good way of doing this - having specific agricultural, commercial, industrial, military, scientific avenues for a city to potentially develop along may be one methodology. Perhaps increasing the role of specialist labourers could help with this.

[punkbass2000]

I would go so far as having some improvements prevent other improvements from being built.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by GePap
No, the point would be what about some tile 4 spaces away, or 7?

The idea would be that every tile in your territory is populated and producing something- you would be able to make use of it early on only if a town is nearby-then you build roads to extend the reach-but for a long time this is the radius you are stuck with-then RR's come and you can move materials almost indefinitelly- imagine one city chosen by you to be your grand Industrial center using shields from a dozen tiles some 40 spaces away? That should be the grand promse of RR's, not infinate movement and extra production at each tile that has it. This way you don't have to build RR everywhere, and you can also specialize your cities in a way that you can't in civ.

In Colonization you could design one city as your sugar city, not only because sugar grew on the outskirts, but also becuase you could ship the sugar crop from anywhere there as well if you had the ships and wagons.

Well, this is Civilization, not CTP, sorry.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Adagio
I agree... the building everything everywhere makes the game a bit too unrealistic...

In virtually every city there is a library, an university, a court, etc., etc.

I agree that some improvements such as barracks aren't necessarily for all the cities.

[Fosse]

Adding negative attributes to some improvments would be a small step in the right direction. Think genejack factories and punishment spheres in SMAC.

I like the idea of improvments forbidding one another, and of limited strategic resources preventing buildings (I would rather see them quantified than by distance, but I agree with the idea for the topic at hand).

[Fosse]

-Double Post-

[Dauphin]

Rather than improvements preventing another improvement, how how about just make the old improvement redundant. You can choose at any time to use one or other but only one will ever be put to actual use at any one time.

Basically something similar to the solar plants being improvements that replace coal plants or nuclear plants.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger




In virtually every city there is a library, an university, a court, etc., etc.

I agree that some improvements such as barracks aren't necessarily for all the cities.

This is a good point about the modern era, and even about the usefulness of improvements before then.

Clearly many improvements should be buildable everywhere and only do good. Some shouldn't be needed everywhere without being wasteful though. I'd favor saying that a University can serve a certain number of population units, but that can get clunky interface and comprehension-wise, unless perhaps there are some global indicators of how well served your population is by the university system. If it was easy to see wether you needed another university or not, then it would be good.

However, this last meandering of my thoughts wouldn't work unless you globalize science and science improvements. That's probably too big of a change. Hmm, there might be another way to handle it though.

-Drachasor

[GePap]

Originally posted by Trip

Well, this is Civilization, not CTP, sorry.

sorryfor wanting a better game

[Japher]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=117811

Linked for continuity...

and GePap, how dare you want a better game!!!

[Urban Ranger]

There could be prerequisites for improvements.

Such as a city needs a certain educational level before a university can be built. Maybe cultural level could be used instead.

[Robert]

I posted this in another thread, it's very applicable to this idea as well:

To make cIV more an empire building-game then a build-a-bunch-of-cities game the player should not only get benefits for the cities he has, but also for what the cities combined add to the empire. The empire should be more then the sum of the cities.

ie. some cities might grow out as cities of study. (culturally, by some random change, and of course by some influence the player can have on it)
Other ideas might be: commerce, war, seafaring, argiculture, etc. etc.

Building certain improvements might higher the change of a city to gain these special skills. (wonders!! )
But pherhaps as well things like make your citizen work specific tiles, or pherhaps don't let them work at all but keep them in home to study the arts....

A city of science might build a university complex, and that university works like a palace, but only for science.
And all cities within a certain radius will benefit from the scientific city.

If your empire grows, you need more of these cities.

[Standup]

As someone who tended to play a 'builder' game i ended up building all the improvements in every city as the only other option was going to war or getting bored. So more improvements or greater dependencies would be good.

I'd also like to see unique improvements for each Civ - adds to the character of the Civ you play and pushes you towards a certain style of play. The national characteristics in Colonization seemed to influence style of play a lot more than in Civ.