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One of the main advantages of Infinite City Sprawl in the civilization games is that 10 cities of size 1 grow much faster than 1 city of size 10. The ICS thread has a great discussion on how this affects gameplay.
My point is, maybe we need a new growth model. Because as it is now, growth is not only linear, it also stays relatively constant throughout the course of the game, and larger cities grow much more slowly than smaller ones. And this is NOT realistic. History has shown that:
A: growth is exponential.
B: growth is very dependant on technology. Growth before the advent of medicine was at a turtles pace compared to growth in the modern era, which is skyrocketing.
C: Growth rates in cities depend less on inherent population, and more on living conditions. It doesn't matter if a city has 5 million people. If everyone is happy, well-fed, and healthy, growth is going to be huge.
I think Civ4 should make growth more dependant on technology, it should be exponential in nature, and it should depend more on the happiness of citizens. Let me illustrate what I mean by exponential:
The growth of many modern cities can be estimated by the equation Y=X(e)^[0.01(t)], where t=# of years, X=beginning pop, Y=resulting population, and e is a special irrational # whose value is roughly 2.718. Just try it, it really works! Let's take a city of 150,000. In 10 years, what will it's population be?
Y=150,000(2.718)^[0.02(10)]
Y= approx. 166,000
In about 10 years, its population is 166,000.
Let's try world population. Let's estimate the current population at...6.2 billion. In 20 years, if nothing drastic happens...
Y=6.2bil(2.718)^[0.02(20)]
Y=7.6 billion
Yikes, 7.6 billion!
Now, what if we incorporated a similar formula into the game? It would be very realistic, but it also could be too confusing for newcomers and/or non-math students.
And then concerning technology:
Here's some data on world population at given times:
2000 B.C. - 108,000,000
1000 B.C. - 120,000,000 (a +11% jump in 1000 years)
A.D. 1 - 138,000,000 (+15%)
A.D. 1000 - 275,000,000 (+199%) - Big jump, eh?
A.D. 2000 - 6,261,000,000 (+2276%) - HUGE jump!
Why is this happening? Technology. Improved medicine, agriculture, etc. is causing our population to soar. I think the game should emulate this. Like when you discover medical or agricultural technology, your growth should accelerate.
Now concerning growth in big cities:
Big city growth doesn't inherently slow down due to just a bigger population. Instead, it is limited by coinciding factors: Not enough food to feed the masses, unemployment, general unhappiness, emigration to other cities (hmmm, perhaps Civ4 should have immigration between cities...), etc. But if a big city is well managed, and these problems are taken care up, then the city should still experience rapid growth. This would give players incentives to concentrate on their big cities and build them up instead of ICS-ing like crazy.
Well, I hope that made sense, and I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks.
My point is, maybe we need a new growth model. Because as it is now, growth is not only linear, it also stays relatively constant throughout the course of the game, and larger cities grow much more slowly than smaller ones. And this is NOT realistic. History has shown that:
A: growth is exponential.
B: growth is very dependant on technology. Growth before the advent of medicine was at a turtles pace compared to growth in the modern era, which is skyrocketing.
C: Growth rates in cities depend less on inherent population, and more on living conditions. It doesn't matter if a city has 5 million people. If everyone is happy, well-fed, and healthy, growth is going to be huge.
I think Civ4 should make growth more dependant on technology, it should be exponential in nature, and it should depend more on the happiness of citizens. Let me illustrate what I mean by exponential:
The growth of many modern cities can be estimated by the equation Y=X(e)^[0.01(t)], where t=# of years, X=beginning pop, Y=resulting population, and e is a special irrational # whose value is roughly 2.718. Just try it, it really works! Let's take a city of 150,000. In 10 years, what will it's population be?
Y=150,000(2.718)^[0.02(10)]
Y= approx. 166,000
In about 10 years, its population is 166,000.
Let's try world population. Let's estimate the current population at...6.2 billion. In 20 years, if nothing drastic happens...
Y=6.2bil(2.718)^[0.02(20)]
Y=7.6 billion
Yikes, 7.6 billion!
Now, what if we incorporated a similar formula into the game? It would be very realistic, but it also could be too confusing for newcomers and/or non-math students.
And then concerning technology:
Here's some data on world population at given times:
2000 B.C. - 108,000,000
1000 B.C. - 120,000,000 (a +11% jump in 1000 years)
A.D. 1 - 138,000,000 (+15%)
A.D. 1000 - 275,000,000 (+199%) - Big jump, eh?
A.D. 2000 - 6,261,000,000 (+2276%) - HUGE jump!
Why is this happening? Technology. Improved medicine, agriculture, etc. is causing our population to soar. I think the game should emulate this. Like when you discover medical or agricultural technology, your growth should accelerate.
Now concerning growth in big cities:
Big city growth doesn't inherently slow down due to just a bigger population. Instead, it is limited by coinciding factors: Not enough food to feed the masses, unemployment, general unhappiness, emigration to other cities (hmmm, perhaps Civ4 should have immigration between cities...), etc. But if a big city is well managed, and these problems are taken care up, then the city should still experience rapid growth. This would give players incentives to concentrate on their big cities and build them up instead of ICS-ing like crazy.
Well, I hope that made sense, and I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks.
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