Get Rid of Building Every Improvement Everywhere

[polypheus]

In all the games of Civ, one thing I have noticed is that you tended to build nearly every improvement everywhere. Due to various bonuses, you tended to build roads and railroads everywhere. Simillarly, you tended to build almost all of the city improvements in each and every city for the same reason.

Not only does this make the game tedious and repetitive, it also makes all the cities pretty much indisguishable from one another and takes away strategic depth, not to mention makes the game IMO a little less realistic.

The debate over building roads and RR everywhere has already been discussed at length. Possible options would be to eliminate/reduce bonuses and/or increase operation costs so that it becomes unnecessary and impractical to build roads and RRs everywhere.

As for city improvements, I think that there are many ways to approach this. One approach would be the "Colonization" approach in which you had specialized factories such as aircraft factory, armoured vehicle factory, shipyward, etc which take a long time to build and/or require great upkeep so you would NOT build one in each and every city. This is how they did it in "Colonization" and I hope to see it in Civ 4.

Then you would have to make strategic decisions. Do I build them near the front for faster mobilization or away from the front for more security.

The point is that the cities should be more unique. A "Colonization" style of city improvement would go a long way to achieving that.

I mean IRL, does any nation have each and every one of its citiies be able to build bomber, tanks, ships, etc? Obviously not !

[DarkCloud]

good idea! bump!

--
sort of like pooling a nations resources in one place and then distributing them from a central location- it sounds like a good anti-micromanagement option.

[GePap]

In colonization you had the ability to build all the same improvements everywhere-all the colonies could still look cookie cutter. The reason you did not was the trade system, which made it non-sensical to build a cloth factory in a sugar growing city.

The problem in Civ is not that you have to build each impovement individually in each city, which is utterly realisitc and gamewise correct- is that the bonuses and uses of these buildings are so standard it makes sense for every city to have every improvement. Why not build a library and university in each city, and a temple and cathedral, and everything else for that matter?

So like the OP mentions, the issue is one of costs/benefits. Changing that though it more about changing the economic model of the game to make specialization more worthwhile, or better yet, to make it non-cost effective to have all the same improvments in each city.

[Ijuin]

A good step in this direction would be to increase the occurance of strategic resources, and have each resource have a "range of effect". In other words, a city would have to be physically close to the resource in order to benefit from it.

Here's an example. Let's say that you have an iron resource, and the "radius of effect" for iron is 20 tiles. That means that only cities within 20 tiles of the iron can use it. You will be able to "export" the iron to your other cities on a per-city basis by road or sea, but doing so will cost you gold to cover the transporation cost. Cities connected to the resource by railroads would get double the base radius, and cities connected by airport would get quadruple.

The result of this is that you will not be able to have every resource available to your empire being available in every city unless you want to pay a hefty fee to make it so. As such, you will be limited to producing various units and buildings only in regions where their raw materials are available.

[Adagio]

I agree... the building everything everywhere makes the game a bit too unrealistic...


I like Ijuin's idea


I haven't played Colonization, so I can't compare to that, but another idea that might work is by raising the costs of all improvements, while raising the benefits:
An university has a huge effect on the nations "knowledge production", but it's maintance cost is also very high, so you can afford to have an university in all cities...

I'd also like to see buildings upgraded after some time and use:
Let's say we have two cities with barracks. One of the cities keeps spitting out one unit after another, while the other city never produces any units. The unit-producing city would faster get a barrack upgrade* than the other, because of the military tradition in that particular city
A city without barracks can't create any units at all


*A barrack upgrade could provide better units

[GePap]

Well, the issue is whether one can make so much money though that cost is not an issue. That is what happens in civ. If my income is 4000 a year, who cares about the 3 gold per turn to upkeep a university?

[Adagio]

But when the maintance cost rasies, it can be much tougher to be able to afford a university in all cities...

I'm talking about raising this cost about 10-15 times 'normal' cost

[Jon Shafer]

I think having more types of city improvements would be superior to the current system.

This way it would be physically impossible to build everything in every city, and you would have to prioritize things. Do you want a commerce city, a military city, a growth city, a naval city, etc. You could focus on a distinct area (or you could try to build all of the lower level stuff in every city, and have a set of inferior cities) for each city and that way give you more distinction.

This is, in a way, related to some of the other ideas thrown out in this thread.

As far as tile improvements, removing the commerce bonus from roads and instead adding a maintainance cost is the obvious solution.

One thing I do think is important is how RRs currently function, increasing food and shield output. The building of the rail net in the 19th century was the reason for the massive human population explosion. Rails should be able to do this somehow. I think the solution is to have a "rail hub" which has to be connected to your rail net, along with taking a while to build and costing quite a bit to maintain. A radius of improvement would exist from that hub, either 1 or 2 tiles.

[GePap]

As I said earlier, the issue is one of economics. RR's did not increase production-they made distribution easier. So imagine if the game had a system in which each tile produces X, but these resoruces can only be transfered within a certain distance- after that, there is massive spoilage and loss. What railroads would do then is make it so resources far away could be transfered with little loss to the places that want them=plus make the movement of populations easier (thus cities connected to RR would grow faster). There would not be a need to then build RR on each tile (and one should pay upkeep for each tile of rail), but it would make sense to create a net of them.

As for imporvements, I agree, they have to be expensive to have, and as I said in my long population piece, there should be pop. requirements for improvements so only massive cities would have the population to sustain all imporvements-and smaller cities would have to be managed for efficiency-something that did happen in Colonization as well.

[Jon Shafer]

GePap: the problem is the way the Civ engine works - each city can use stuff up to 2 tiles away. What, do you have tiles that are a distance of 2 produce half as much as tiles only 1 away without a RR?

[Lawrence of Arabia]

nah, keep it simple. using civ3 models, add +1 to the cost of everything (at least) starting from marketplaces onwards.

[Laertes]

I would like it if cities had slightly different characteristics in terms of trade, industries, academic output etc, as they do in real life. Only the SUper Science City reflected this in Civ to my knowledge.

I think that many city / civ characteristics develop over a long period of time, and that this relates in part to the geography of their setting, for example the importance of trade to island/coastal/river cities.

Perhaps a city's population could have a set of attributes such as: Artisan-ness, Artiness, scientific-ness, industriousness, entrepreneurialism (really losing control fo spelling and word endings here) navel-gazing-ness, militarism, that could be reflected in their production/trade/food outputs, the benefits they got from certain improvements and the time it takes to produce stuff.

Examples:
- a city with high indutriousness and religousness would build a cathedral quicker but would not be kept happy by mass media
- a city with high military values might produce a regiment quicker

I'm sure that this idea can be improved

edit to remove typo

[Adagio]

I like that idea... I have been considering something like that myself, but I'm not sure how to implement it Civ'ish

[Drachasor]

I had an idea I shared in my pollution/corruption/waste/etc thread.

Basically my idea was that happiness and unhappiness would govern worker efficiency. Each net unhappy worker would cause 50%/(number of workers) waste and corruption (if everyone is unhappy, then you have 50% waste and corruption), and net happy works would add a similar bonus. This could be modified, I suppose.

Anyhow, I thought that perhaps each 3rd tier improvement (e.g. Stock Exchange, Research Lab, and Factories) would cause unhappiness along with the bonuses. This unhappiness wouldn't come close to canceling out the bonus you get, but if you build all three then you'd only get a very modest total increase.

This would naturally gravitate people towards specialized cities, and what cities specialized in what would depend upon the local terrain.

Oh, and naturally I advocate toning down rioting. I think I orginially said 50% angry population units before a riot. Since they are messing with corruption, waste, and rioting anyway, it has to change somehow.

Anyhow, it was just some thinking of mine.

-Drachasor

[GePap]

Originally posted by Trip
GePap: the problem is the way the Civ engine works - each city can use stuff up to 2 tiles away. What, do you have tiles that are a distance of 2 produce half as much as tiles only 1 away without a RR?

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.