City pool

[Naokaukodem]

I had an idea about number of cities and the way to manage their production tiles:

What about to extend the production tiles to the city culture area if any?

Each distant tile from the city center would not have the same efficiency rate. For example, the 8 adjacent tiles from the city would have a 100% production rate, the larger tile "square" a 50% production rate, the above one a 25% tile and all the others a 10% rate. Like so, we could have the possibility to not build many cities and their buildings and tale profit from those of one big one. The hole could also be easily exploited without the addition of other units like in Alpha Centauri, and the dead frontiers, if they remain, would be harverstable but the culture fight more important.
Well, depending on the city system and expansion mode adopted in civ4, the city model could be slightly modified so that the common harverstable tile base would be 8 and not 20, allowing larger map possibilities and civilization type, configuration and evolution.

[Daz]

I like the idea. It opens several new options.

I agree to keep it bound to culture. The cities would be huge though and with the improvements and wonders you could get insane production (not that this would be bad).

It also puts a new perspective on rex-ing. You can choose not to rex, and have one huge city, or have a lot of smaller cities.

[lajzar]

This sounds like an excellent idea.

Perhaps building a rail depot city improvement should improve the efficiency of the distant tiles (or maybe merely enable them to be usd at all).

It would end the nonsense of having un-usable tiles within your empire.

Once, I proposed a series of city improvements (paved roads - rail depot - monorail depot) that would progressively increase the useful city radius. This is just as effective at solving that issue.

It makes teh one city challenge easier, but the traditional 2 tile radius shouldn't be weakened - we don't want to encourage ICS.

One other point - almost every building, especially at later ages, should have a minimum opulation requirement. That should weaken the ICS strategy a lot.

[Skanky Burns]

Hello ICS reborn.

You make it so that only surrounding tiles are worked efficiently. This encourages people to place their cities 2 spaces apart or 1 space apart, so all tiles will be at maximum efficiency. I'm assuming the rule of minimum distance still aplies, so no 0 spaces apart cities.

The suggestion of minimum population levels? Great.
One problem though, when using the ICS strategy you don't build infrastructure.

[Dauphin]

Minimum city population for improvements is a good idea. I hate ICS, I hate it even more that if you face someone who uses it you have to use it aswell just to stay competitive.

[Max Sinister]

I once thought about costs for working tiles - the farther away from the city, the more expensive. But you'd need to change the money system for that, too - it wouldn't work if a city produces mere 10 gp / turn.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
The suggestion of minimum population levels? Great.
One problem though, when using the ICS strategy you don't build infrastructure.

Although ICS'd be steamrolled if you said that no military units except conscipt warriors can be built in a city below a certain size, ooh say size 6.

[Naokaukodem]

What's with ICS? You build your cities the way you want for the type of game you play.

In this example, i thought about a possibility to make the population of a city to rejoin one other, so no need to build workers/join/destroy, what is a pain.

[Naokaukodem]

Originally posted by lajzar
Once, I proposed a series of city improvements (paved roads - rail depot - monorail depot) that would progressively increase the useful city radius. This is just as effective at solving that issue.

It would not be the same thing as it would just increase the power of your city, allowing more laborers and increasing buildings revenus.
Here your city radius is replaced by cultural developement.

Originally posted by lajzar
It makes teh one city challenge easier, but the traditional 2 tile radius shouldn't be weakened - we don't want to encourage ICS.

It encourages ICS only with no taxes/science building, so it does not encourages it that much. Now imagine that corruption in civ4 disappear and you don't have to respect a tight city web.

Originally posted by lajzar One other point - almost every building, especially at later ages, should have a minimum opulation requirement. That should weaken the ICS strategy a lot.

Same thing, in late ages there is no ICS or only for the dead.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Naokaukodem
What's with ICS? You build your cities the way you want for the type of game you play.

ICS is bad because it is an annoying but powerful way to play. If your opponent uses ICS, you either have to use it yourself or you die.

And again, ICS doesn't build improvements in their cities. They get massive gold and science income from having huge numbers of crappy cities everywhere. So while you build a library and increase one cities science by 50%, they build 5 more cities for a 500% increase in science.

So what if they can't build improvements. They weren't going to anyway.
This goes for the endgame as well.