Major issue: territory = victory

[Trifna]

Well I think that this kind of factor is not a fatality (except by communication system limitations) but something to be managed. Just as each civilization got to deal with its minorities or different groups (Canada, India, United States... and many not so positive precedents with pogroms, repression such as "encouraged" conversion and exiles).

[Jon Shafer]

The issue is limiting the power of large empires. That is what corruption was included for - not to model anything. Since it fails, it needs to be replaced.

[Trifna]

I never said corruption was modeling anything (though I believe it was: it modeled losses). And the issue is not simply "limiting the power of large empires", but to do it in a coherent way. And considering multi-ethnicity/religion/ideology/whatnot seems to be pretty much the most important factor limiting empires (with logistics in earlier periods).

Find a simple way to include multi-ethnicity/multi-other, and you have a big part done. Logistics seems easier to arrange (I guess we'd need to look at the Roman empire).

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I think people might have misunderstood me. I support the removal of the CURRENT corruption model, and replacing it with something slightly more 'abstract'.
Corruption and crime could (and SHOULD) be based on a greater variety of factors-such as:

(a) happiness

(b) overcrowding

(c) poverty

(d) hunger

(e) RELATIVE distance from the capital, as determined by tech level.

(f) overreliance on luxuries

(g) underemployment

(h) government type and SE factors

(i) lack of connection to the rest of the nation via appropriate infrastructure.

However, rather than directly impacting on shields and commerce-as it currently does. Instead it would have a role on the 'stability' of the city-which, in turn, plays a role in revolts, uprisings and secessions. Crime/corruption can also reduce happiness which, in turn, can result in reduced shield and income production!

Therefore, with this model, you would do away with the hopelessly ineffective border cities which result from the current corruption model, and would instead have to only worry about significant corruption issues if you fail to adequately develop your cities, both physically and economically (and whether built or captured) within a reasonable space of time!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

To give you an example of what I am getting at:

Say you build a new city around 15 hexes away from the capital. Now, this city will have corruption/crime issues as a result of its isolation and distance from the capital, but these two factors alone would, at MOST, only account for a loss of around 10-20% of the shields the city produces (So, a city with only 4 shields would only lose ONE of its shields-and then only under extreme circumstances). Connecting this city to the trade network will immediately reduce initial corruption, and increasing the wealth and productive output (as well as improvements which generate happiness and culture) will reduce this still further.
In my model, in fact, it is older and more established cities which have more to lose from corruption than newer ones. As a city increases its access to luxuries, becomes more overpopulated, and has fewer people 'effectively' employed, the greater corruption will effect it! Also, as these cities are more productive at this point, a % decline in income and shields will be more detrimental than for the smaller, starting cities!

Hope that all made sense.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[diablovision]

I think part of the solution is to allow cities to grow larger--much larger. I think up to 100. For example. Consider a city like Denver. Population: about 550,000. Pretty big, and pretty productive. But consider Los Angeles. Population: about 15,000,000. Thats a factor of 30 larger! For the same distribution of scale in Civ3, LA would have to be population 30+ and Denver 1!

Cities should be able to grow much larger, and draw food from all over the nation, not just in their area. That would making an efficient road system much more important.

Also, I think that citizens should get more productive as the city size grows, making having big cities (as opposed to lots of smaller ones) far more important. Also, small nations could have a few super-big cities and be competitive with nations that have lots of smaller cities.

[Jon Shafer]

Actually, you're numbers are off.

The Denver Metro Area has about 2.5 million people (since suburbs are obviously included in large cities, since you can't have a bunch of small cities next to each other - plus, the people are still there, just because lines are drawn between them), while Los Angeles has around 9.5 million.

That makes LA only about 3.8 times as large as Denver, not 30

[diablovision]

Trip, perhaps it was a bad example. I used the numbers from the US census--550,000 for Denver county; I didn't check but assumed that this county contains most of Denver. As for LA, your numbers are off; since those only count LA county. If you include Orange, Ventura, and the others then you quickly get to 15 million.

If you don't like Denver as an example, use another. There are plenty of 500,000 person cities in the US that would correspond to some Civ3 city.

My point still remains valid--if LA is 15 million, and it corresponds to 30+ pop, then a pop of 1 is about 500,000. It's a bit unreasonable to think that a just-founded city of a fledgling civilization is half a million people, don't you think?

[Jon Shafer]

Actually, a size 12 city is about 700,000 or 800,000, so I don't know where you're getting those numbers.

Size 1 is only 10,000.

[Donegeal]

Originally posted by Trip
The power of civs in reality is based upon their resources. Included in those resources are things like food, minerals and people. The more resources you have the stronger you are. In Civ, the "land" resource is one of the most powerful because you can derive all other resources from it.

To bring Civ back towards the way reality works, it would require a model based more upon population than land area. By extension, having more land should not automatically mean more population.

The way to encourage larger cities is to make them more powerful. Give them higher support bonuses (Conquests started this, but it should be taken many steps further), perhaps give a bonus to production and commerce as a city's size increases... and so on. The key is to make building UP more important than building OUT. That's how you make a civ like Germany or Japan stronger than Russia.

Nice post Trip.

Originally posted by diablovision
I think part of the solution is to allow cities to grow larger--much larger. I think up to 100. For example. Consider a city like Denver. Population: about 550,000. Pretty big, and pretty productive. But consider Los Angeles. Population: about 15,000,000. Thats a factor of 30 larger! For the same distribution of scale in Civ3, LA would have to be population 30+ and Denver 1!

Cities should be able to grow much larger, and draw food from all over the nation, not just in their area. That would making an efficient road system much more important.

Also, I think that citizens should get more productive as the city size grows, making having big cities (as opposed to lots of smaller ones) far more important. Also, small nations could have a few super-big cities and be competitive with nations that have lots of smaller cities.

Ok, what can there be that combines the desire to make cities grow UP in both production and commerce, increase the size limits (or reflect actual populations better) and make the citizen more productive (to continue with the urge of making bigger cities)?

I know!
From this Link to The List.

Originally posted by Donegeal
[On the discussion about using a hexgrid]
However, since most Civ players aren't going to space their cities 6 hexs apart to take advantage of the additonal hex ring, I would also like to see the worker job of "Build Suburb" added. As I stated in another thread, the action would consume the worker and place a "town" graphic on the grid. Now if the "Build Suburb" action was limited to the inner ring of hexs surrounding the actual city, we would get a fine graphical representation of "Urban Sprawl". Now to fix the actual population explosion problem I mentioned at the on set of this post, I would have the "Build Suburb" action add two food to the tile it is built on (now I know that building a suburb on farm land does NOT increase the food gained from that farm, but the added food will reflect a higher population in the city it is attached to to better represent the population explosion).
(Posted by donegeal)

1.3.2 - Worker builds suburbs

I have also be wanting a good way to deal with Urban Sprawl/Suburbs. Currently, for astetic reasons, I use the Urban Sprawl graphic for rail roads. Looks good, but then you get the Urban Sprawl everywhere. I have been wanting a "Suburb" tile improvement. The graphic would be similar to a "town". Suburbs would only be allowed to be built in the inner eight squares surrounding the actual city (maybe even giving cities the ability to build naval/costal things even if they are one tile back of the coast) and only on flat terrain (Grassland, Plains, Desert). Have a suburb add one or two of each food/shield/commerce (added food to show that the city is now larger population wise, added shield to show that there is infact more than one city working to complete something, and added commerce for all the extra trade that goes on). Building a Suburb comsumes the worker.

Ok, where it says "hexgrid" imagine it as a square grid now.

The concept does not nessacarily mean that it prevents large empires, but it would certianly encourage large cities. Remember, all the values can be changed (or modded). Like require a city to reach size 21 before suburbs could be built. Or have it double the shields and commerce of the tile. Yes, even have it add food to the tile (Someone thought that adding food was a dumb idea, and I agree because suburbs don't add food to a tile, they add population to a city which could most easily be shown be increasing the food).

[bongo]

Isn't the corruption model working quite well in limiting the usefulness of big empires?

Once you expand too far away form your core, the point of having more land is not what *you* can build there but what the others cannot.


Just won a PBEM which illustrate this point very good. When my last adversary retired I controlled 33% of the land while he had 17% according to the victory screen. In reality I controlled ~80% of the territory as he couldn't project power outside his territory. Despite this 4 to 1 imbalance in territory my army/economy/production were less than 50% larger than his.

Of course, newly conquered land isn't very productive, but there are no way I could reach the same lead on productivity as I had on land.

[Jon Shafer]

There are better ways to do it.

Corruption doesn't really balance expansion with building, what it does is make expansion LESS profitable than it would have been - it's still profitable, just not as much as it used to be. That means crushing your neighbors and taking their land is always a good idea if you can do it.

That's not really limiting expansion.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

You see, though, that is why I believe my model for corruption would work so well. In it, a brand new city, even one which is quite distant from the main empire, will have a base 'corruption' value-to represent 'lawlessness'-yet will have a shield and income output almost equivalent to that of a starting city built in the 'core' of your nation. In these 'frontier cities', your biggest initial problem would be stability (if you are close to a strong neighbouring empire and/or the population of the city are unhappy) and the effects of corruption on the movement of shields and food to and from the city. A large captured city, OTOH, is going to have a much more significant corruption problem, relative to the brand new city I mentioned above-largely because corruption would be calculated on a % basis-which will hurt the captured 25 shield city more than the new-built 5 shield city!
So, it still partially limits expansionism via colonisation, whilst REALLY putting a break on expansionism via war!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[diablovision]

I think corruption tries to balance power by capping power. I think this is the wrong way to go. There needs to be a better mechanism. For example, I think that it is completely reasonable that a large empire can be fully productive. If it is balanced against another large empire then that is totally fine with me. Limiting it by saying, basically "empires won't be bigger than X" is a cheap way out, IMO.

[Trifna]

1- A large empire is not fully productive. And the point here is not to cap power but to get something coherent and strategically better.

2- Wether it is balanced or not with another one, the effect is the same. And in a game, there is not always such a power balance situation.

3- It is not a cheap way out to keep empires small, but the opposite: trying to make this coherent instead of letting it go, and getting better strategy like this.

And of course, it is to be represented in an easily managed way englobing the whole thing.