Cities and traffic

[Max Sinister]

I just thought about the old problem: In Civ, cities grow big if they have lots and lots of food. You'll never see a city founded at the site of New York or LA grow big in Civ (especially if you also found cities at the sites of Washington, Philadelphia and Boston).

But what's the reason that some cities in our world grow big and others don't?

It's traffic.

All the early civilizations (China, India, Egypt, Mesopotamia) developed in river valleys. Most of the big cities today are around rivers or seas - not in the center of the big continents. Nations started wars to get access to the sea (Russia against Sweden and Turkey, f.e.).

I don't know how, but this should be reflected in the game. Cities in places where there's lots of traffic should grow fastest. Your advisor should tell you "we need to found a city at the coast, that would give us a harbor" or "with a road, these cities would grow faster" or "we should found a city there, this place is ideal for a center of trade".

[Epistax]

I think I can answer this: While growth on the whole should still revolve around food, it'd be a nice to try to include migration. Let people want to flock to economic hubs from your own cities and others.

Now the problem with this is it would require some remodeling. Food would also need to migrate (pretty obviously, on trade routes), however non-economic centers (that is, food generating areas) would need to sustain a population to grow the food. So, if this were to be implemented, I think they'd have to redo how food is collected from tiles. Perhaps a city of size 3 can harvest from every square in a turn, however at a cost of money.

The nice thing about this is it gives a whole new meaning to culture and trade. Need food for your cities? Want/need to limit immigration or emigration? Actually this seems so obvious that I'm sure people have discussed it before. I don't see this as a micromanagement nitpick and it's really something I'd like to see done (er, correctly that is, not that I know how that'd be).

[Max Sinister]

Maybe introduce inner-civ migration based upon which city makes the most trade, i.e. money? People tend to go to where the jobs/money are/is.

[Vince278]

Cities like Mexico City get ridiculously big for little real benefit.