Removed Features & Replacements: Maintenance, Corruption/Waste, Rioting & Pollution

[Roman]

Is there any word yet on what replaces the supposedly 'unfun' maintenance as a balancing factor and a factor in ensuring that not all cities have all improvements? Out of all the removed features of the previous games, this one has me 'concerned' the most. To be honest, I am sorry to see maintenance go the way of the dodo.

How about corruption/waste and rioting - are these going to be replaced with other balancing features mitigating infinite city sprawl/sleeze/strategy? I was neutral about these features - I am not too bothered to see them go as long as there are other balancing factors to replace them.

As to pollution, I already know it is being integrated into the new health concept and am very glad for it, since I found pollution as it was implemented in say Civ III extremely annoying, while frankly not being much of a balancing factor - it would not really affect your civilization very much if dealt with, but dealing with it was unfun and tedious.

[Jaybe]

Maintenance is not going the way of the dodo.* Instead, corruption is manifested as increased maintenance (and courthouse decreases maintenance). Instead of rioting, unhappy people just don't do squat -- they refuse to contribute to the common good (or evil )

* Ref: Civ 4 preview at 1UP.COM
Also, CFC discussion - New 1UP Preview & Movie

[Vince278]

Health.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

Pollution=Health (particularly negative health).

Corruption=City Maintainance.

Rioting=Citizen no longer works (Lost Hammers/Food/Commerce).

I actually haven't heard any of the game designers say that they are removing maintainance costs for individual improvements though!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Roman]

Originally posted by Jaybe
Maintenance is not going the way of the dodo.* Instead, corruption is manifested as increased maintenance (and courthouse decreases maintenance). Instead of rioting, unhappy people just don't do squat -- they refuse to contribute to the common good (or evil )

* Ref: Civ 4 preview at 1UP.COM
Also, CFC discussion - New 1UP Preview & Movie

Interesting - I very much like the idea of city maintenance as a replacement for corruption/waste - this sounds like a great system. Unhappy people simply not contributing instead of rioting is also good.
That said, there is no indication in the previews you linked (which I have now read) that maintenance of city improvements has remained in the game - instead, there seems to be a new concept of city maintenance replacing corruption. This, of course, does not act as a deterrent to building all buildings in every city as original maintenance concepts did... unless, of course, this original building maintenance is built into the new city maintenance concept. This is something I would not assume to be the case, though, as Firaxis has stated in the past that they are removing maintenance. They could have changed their minds, I suppose, but we won't know until they say so.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Well, I think that City Maintainance and individual City (and tile) improvement maintainance should be in the game together. The latter would be good to stop people from building every improvement for every city (which would be in line with their claims that cities will become much more specialised in Civ4).

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Roman]

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
Well, I think that City Maintainance and individual City (and tile) improvement maintainance should be in the game together. The latter would be good to stop people from building every improvement for every city (which would be in line with their claims that cities will become much more specialised in Civ4).

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I think so too. BTW: I don't think there will be tile improvement maintenance - it has no historic inertia from previous games, there have been no hints that it will be in any of the previews, etc....

As to 'removing maintenance' from the game, it was mentioned in some of the early previews and design presentations. Maybe they changed their minds about removing it and integrated it with the city maintenance concept. That would be good news.

[ajbera]

Y'know, I'm slightly annoyed that rioting has been removed altogether. I would prefer if things had to get really, really bad before they started to riot (but keep the non-productivity when things are just bad.)

As it is now, can you just treat cities like absolute crap and the worst that'll happen is that they'll cost you more money and not produce anything?

[Solver]

As it is now, can you just treat cities like absolute crap and the worst that'll happen is that they'll cost you more money and not produce anything?

Which is worse than a riot. A rioting city is absolutely nothing in Civ3. A city that you treat like crap in Civ4 but that wouldn't riot would take your money, be useless anyway if 10 out of 11 citizens refused to work, so it would be a huge drain for your economy.

[MattPilot]

What i'd like to see, in regards to the buildings/improvements, is to only have limited slots available. Knights of Honor has a system like that.. you gotta plan what you build in what city and what you expect each city to accomplish.

I'm going to name a relative low number now (just for example, so don't freak out ). Lets say 8 - one for each tile around the city radius (cities with more land tiles could support more buildings)

So i'm in the ancient age and i start out building walls, temple, barracks, collosseum (sp?), market, library, harbor, etc.... I quickly fill up all slots and advance through the ages, and i have more buildings available to build, but no available slots. So all one can do is destroy improvements he no longer needs. Not every city needs barracks - not every city needs walls. Now some improvements should be upgradeable - like temple to cathedral/church, or market to bank.

Anyhow - the main point is, if we have a limited amount of building slots, we will be forced to specialize and make some tough decisions. I like how "Knights of Honor" does it - very good game.

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Yes KOH is a great game and the idea of so many improvement slots would certainly make civ more interesting addiing an extra layer of strategic choice.

But even if this is not in the finished game i suppose someone could mod it that way ?

[GeoModder]

The problem with this idea is what must happen if for some reason the city radius decreases (due to cultural influence for instance) to a lower number then there are facilities. What must happen with those non-supported facilities above the supported tiles? Autodisband?

[MattPilot]

GeoModder - the idea that slots available is tied to tiles available was just a secondary thought, which would give the player an extra level of management as to where the optimal city placement is.


The main point is that there should be only certain amount of slots available (either variable as discussed above, or fixed for all cities) to build city improvements.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hmmm, perhaps if you made it based on population in some way-rather than tiles. For instance, a size 1 city might only be able to build 2-or 3-city improvements, wheras a size 5 city might be able to build 10 or 11 city improvements. Another idea might be that an unhappy citizen reduces the number of slots available for building or-if you have already reached your limit-one of your buildings becomes non-functional until you make that citizen content-to sort of increase the impact of the idle, unhappy worker effect (they not only won't work at the mine, they won't work at the factory either !)

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Xorbon]

Re: Removed Features & Replacements: Maintenance, Corruption/Waste, Rioting & Pollution

Originally posted by Roman
Is there any word yet on what replaces the supposedly 'unfun' maintenance as a balancing factor and a factor in ensuring that not all cities have all improvements? Out of all the removed features of the previous games, this one has me 'concerned' the most. To be honest, I am sorry to see maintenance go the way of the dodo.

Frankly, I don't see what was so "unfun" about maintenance. Assuming building maintenance has been removed, I'd be interested in seeing what has replaced it.