(Firaxis, please read) RIDICULOUSLY EASY-TO-IMPLEMENT suggestions

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by sophist


Inaccurate might a little strong. Those names are still in common usage.

And mistakes are still mistakes, no matter how common.


Calling Mumbai Bombay when the inhabitants called (and call it) Mumbai is still inaccurate- even if it reflects a period when the British crown and East India Company once ruled in parts of India.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by molly bloom



And mistakes are still mistakes, no matter how common.


Calling Mumbai Bombay when the inhabitants called (and call it) Mumbai is still inaccurate- even if it reflects a period when the British crown and East India Company once ruled in parts of India.

Well, it's more complicated than that. The village from which they city got its name was called Mumbai-devi (or something), but the original city site was called Bombay from the start. Mumbai remained the name in the local language, Marathi, but the Hindi word was "Bambai." Many residents still call it that, and Bombay was the city's official name in all Indian maps and such until about 10 years ago.

[sophist]

Originally posted by molly bloom

And mistakes are still mistakes, no matter how common.

Calling Mumbai Bombay when the inhabitants called (and call it) Mumbai is still inaccurate- even if it reflects a period when the British crown and East India Company once ruled in parts of India.

We call Espagne Spain, Nippon Japan, Munchen Munich, etc. Bombay was its official English name, not just a colloquial name. That it has been different for the last 10 years doesn't mean Firaxis needs to change the name in a game that spans 6000 years. Choosing one of several names for a city is a lot better than inventing a city that never existed (I'm looking at you, Ganges).

[kofeiini]

Ridiculouously easy-to-implement suggestion: Please make my total population show somewhere in the main screen, maybe next to where current year is shown. Just like in CIV I and CIV II. Maybe this could be turned on/off from the preferences if it bothers somebody.

This is again just one cosmetic thing, but I trust that Firaxis knows what they are doing on the gameplay issues and they can see things as a whole better than somebody suggesting one single thing. For example I believe that they will find the best solution to RR/infinite movement issue, the one that will suit best in the game they're making. I would like to see same model as in Civ III, but maybe something else is better for CIV IV. I don't know because haven't played it... yet...

[LDiCesare]

Calling Mumbai Bombay when the inhabitants called (and call it) Mumbai is still inaccurate

I know a guy from Pune who called it Bombay too, so that's probably not that inaccurate.

[sophist]

You mean Poona, right ;-) ?

[LDiCesare]

I actually mean Pouné since that's how I hear it and would write it in French.

[sophist]

That was a joke. Poo-nah is how the Brits pronounced it and they spelled it Poona.

[LordShiva]

I also hope they don't go and spell Ashoka's name as "Asoka."

And it's probably a lost cause trying to get them to not use Gandhi as a leader?

[M. le Comte]

Originally posted by kofeiini
Ridiculouously easy-to-implement suggestion: Please make my total population show somewhere in the main screen, maybe next to where current year is shown. Just like in CIV I and CIV II.

And please make this "total population" figure coherent, which it was not in Civ I and II. Having only 50 millions inhabitants while the whole world is yours is a nonsense.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by M. le Comte


And please make this "total population" figure coherent, which it was not in Civ I and II. Having only 50 millions inhabitants while the whole world is yours is a nonsense.

Good one. I've always found that annoying. Perhaps have city populations scale as an x^2 (or x^1.5) function of city size.

[sophist]

The population problem is rooted in the "is it a city or a state?" problem. If you have 200 cities in your game, then presumably that's 30 million people per city, on average, with some cities having double that. People will protest that as unrealistic. You can't win.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by sophist
The population problem is rooted in the "is it a city or a state?" problem. If you have 200 cities in your game, then presumably that's 30 million people per city, on average, with some cities having double that. People will protest that as unrealistic. You can't win.

6 billion - for a planet, that's not so bad. Better than 50 million.

Perhaps city populations could scale with time as well - a size 12 city in 1000 AD might hold 200,000 inhabitants, while in 2000 AD it would hole 5,000,000.

[sophist]

Originally posted by LordShiva
6 billion - for a planet, that's not so bad. Better than 50 million.

6 billion global population = good. 60 million city population = bad.

Originally posted by LordShiva
Perhaps city populations could scale with time as well - a size 12 city in 1000 AD might hold 200,000 inhabitants, while in 2000 AD it would hole 5,000,000.

What would that accomplish besides confusion?

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by sophist


What would that accomplish besides confusion?

Nothing, except that it would be totally transparent (a simple function that takes in year and city size, and perhaps map size, and outputs pop.) and would produce reasonable civ- and planet-populations that don't affect the game in any way but are a nice touch.