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Well, I was thinking about things, and here's an odd idea I came up with for Civ IV. This may be like some other TBS out there, I am not sure.
I'll use numbers to illustrate each point of my idea, as I think that aids reading and organization.
Part I of the Crazy Idea:
1. Workers only build roads, forts, and outposts (or whatever is used to secure Strategic and other resources).
2. A city builds improvements to take advantage of its mining, farming, and logging areas (and whatever other areas might exist). When you build one, you select the tile it applies to.
3. A city may build multiples of each improvement building (of course). Each time you build an improvement building it is more expensive to build another of the same type.
4. When you select an improvement and tile, the more tiles of that type you have, the cheaper the improvement is, but the price still ramps up with further builds. (This simulates the fact that if you have a ton of hills, then it will be fairly easy to find good mining locations early on).
5. Perhaps workers can provide some modest speed improvement to the building process? (I am not imagining it takes a long time though).
6. Roads do not per se give a trading bonus, but Roads that connect you to other cities do (through some formula). Likewise, roads and rail do not increase any kind of production in and of themselves. This is governed by the above method as well as the standard city improvements. This will make cities look prettier and more city-like, I think.
7. Travel on non-railed, improved city square becomes like traveling on a road after some tech advance (perhaps earlier you can get an advance that gives you 2 for 1 movement).
Part II of the Crazy Idea:
1. Each city has a production pool and food pool slider, defaulting at 0, it ranges from -(X * # of Citizens) to +100%. Positive percents indicate how much food/production the city is giving up to be used by other cities connected to it via road (or perhaps just other cities in your civilization). Negative amount is a fixed number of food or shields, capped depending on your technology (X), and city size. (This would be easy to distinguish).
2. So at each city you can decide how much of its production or food it is going to share with other cities, or how much it is going to take from other cities that are sharing. If the pool amount is too small to satisfy all the cities, then some cities go without 1 shield, or all go without 1 and some without 2, etc; the same with food. If there is an excess, then excess food stays in its home city, and excess production is either stored (perhaps to a limit) or turned into cash (a bit like capitalization).
3. Cities can build projects that are like capitalization, but one increases production, and another increases food. These effects work on the base production and food generated, not the leftover.
4. This makes it so that it is good to have food cities, raw production cities, and refined production cities. Additionally, if you have a high trade or production city with no access to food, you can give it the food it needs. This is in line with how cities actually developed.
5. I might be nice to allow tech improvements/regular improvements to let an individual citizen farm more than one square, but this is probably too complicated to deal with.
I know this is a bit crazy, and in some ways a huge depature from how things have been. On the other hand, I think there are some nice elements to my crazy idea. Perhaps it is broken in some way, unfun in some way, or too complicated in some way though. I do not think it is however, (but I am open to correction and suggestions).
Thoughts?
-Drachasor
I'll use numbers to illustrate each point of my idea, as I think that aids reading and organization.
Part I of the Crazy Idea:
1. Workers only build roads, forts, and outposts (or whatever is used to secure Strategic and other resources).
2. A city builds improvements to take advantage of its mining, farming, and logging areas (and whatever other areas might exist). When you build one, you select the tile it applies to.
3. A city may build multiples of each improvement building (of course). Each time you build an improvement building it is more expensive to build another of the same type.
4. When you select an improvement and tile, the more tiles of that type you have, the cheaper the improvement is, but the price still ramps up with further builds. (This simulates the fact that if you have a ton of hills, then it will be fairly easy to find good mining locations early on).
5. Perhaps workers can provide some modest speed improvement to the building process? (I am not imagining it takes a long time though).
6. Roads do not per se give a trading bonus, but Roads that connect you to other cities do (through some formula). Likewise, roads and rail do not increase any kind of production in and of themselves. This is governed by the above method as well as the standard city improvements. This will make cities look prettier and more city-like, I think.
7. Travel on non-railed, improved city square becomes like traveling on a road after some tech advance (perhaps earlier you can get an advance that gives you 2 for 1 movement).
Part II of the Crazy Idea:
1. Each city has a production pool and food pool slider, defaulting at 0, it ranges from -(X * # of Citizens) to +100%. Positive percents indicate how much food/production the city is giving up to be used by other cities connected to it via road (or perhaps just other cities in your civilization). Negative amount is a fixed number of food or shields, capped depending on your technology (X), and city size. (This would be easy to distinguish).
2. So at each city you can decide how much of its production or food it is going to share with other cities, or how much it is going to take from other cities that are sharing. If the pool amount is too small to satisfy all the cities, then some cities go without 1 shield, or all go without 1 and some without 2, etc; the same with food. If there is an excess, then excess food stays in its home city, and excess production is either stored (perhaps to a limit) or turned into cash (a bit like capitalization).
3. Cities can build projects that are like capitalization, but one increases production, and another increases food. These effects work on the base production and food generated, not the leftover.
4. This makes it so that it is good to have food cities, raw production cities, and refined production cities. Additionally, if you have a high trade or production city with no access to food, you can give it the food it needs. This is in line with how cities actually developed.
5. I might be nice to allow tech improvements/regular improvements to let an individual citizen farm more than one square, but this is probably too complicated to deal with.
I know this is a bit crazy, and in some ways a huge depature from how things have been. On the other hand, I think there are some nice elements to my crazy idea. Perhaps it is broken in some way, unfun in some way, or too complicated in some way though. I do not think it is however, (but I am open to correction and suggestions).
Thoughts?
-Drachasor
It began with the development of Civ3 and when that tird hit the market, I fear the infection spread and has been spreading since. Soren's recent power point presentation seems to have put the final proverbial nail in the coffin, however. It's gotten to the point where it's almost got you people trapped in a mindless state, believing that Civ3 was actually a complicated game. I can hear the drones chanting in unison when I visit Apolyton:
sure, that will happen).
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