And yet another weekly update...

[yin26]

Cort Haus: Thanks for the reply. One idea I've thrown around is simply that after a certain number of cities founded or a certain level of government achieved, you go to a state model and not a city model. At this point, you have a handful of states (representing numerous cities) that now ask you different kinds of questions: states rights, regional taxes, etc., and population flows would be effected, lets say, by making your Northern States have a good quality of life while the Southern States have mostly dirty factories, low health care, etc.

In other words, I want the management of my empire to challenge me as much as if not more than the enemy AI itself. I mean here, of course, an intellectual challenge and NOT the challenge merely of cycling through my city build cues for the umteenth time to make sure I've actually got them all doing something useful. Anyway, if Civ is an Empire game, then let's see some empire management and not forever keep us locked in low-level city sweeping.

Adm.Naismith: Man, if I can get to Milano and have that pizza, I'll lose ANY bet. I think I will enjoy testing and prodding Civ, and I bet you are right that the process would take about 3 months...so you win already! By the same token, if you come to New York (or New Haven), let me know.

AeonOfTime: I suspect you guys are too smart to take that bet.

[Addled Platypus]

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith


The bet is you'll enjoy the coming Civ IV, at least for three months

i just soiled my armour

Originally posted by yin26


In other words, I want the management of my empire to challenge me as much as if not more than the enemy AI itself. I mean here, of course, an intellectual challenge and NOT the challenge merely of cycling through my city build cues for the umteenth time to make sure I've actually got them all doing something useful. Anyway, if Civ is an Empire game, then let's see some empire management and not forever keep us locked in low-level city sweeping.

I see said the blind man who picked up the hammer and saw

You are luring me to your side yin26

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

The key Yin, from what I understand, is that cities can and will make money-obviously-but that this is no longer a given. In civ3 every city you built was a guarantee of profit. Why? Because the city itself generated income and then, once you had built a few roads, you were home and hosed. Now, as we know, roads do NOT generate commerce, but certain squares (unimproved and improved) do generate income-this means that choosing a location for a city is going to be very important, for both health and financial reasons, making settler spamming much less successful-especially when you combine it with what I described above!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Jaybe]

For Civ5 I want citizens to SPONTANEOUSLY become dissatisfied with where they are living and decide to leave Dodge. This assumes they are ALLOWED to travel by the civics/rules & laws of the land (do they need permission (or just do it anyway), or are they serfs/slaves?).

They either migrate to another city or they found a new city by themselves without player (or AI civ) involvement. The civ then has the choice of whether to spend the effort & resources to support and defend the new city to enable collection of taxes from it. Unless they migrate to a city in another civ, of course, which brings up a whole other can of worms: Do I want them BACK, or do I want to TAKE that city from the other civ?

If I do not support a new city, it can DECIDE to:
1. Join me (or another civ) with reduced support or higher taxes;
2. Organize itself into a new civ or;
3. Raise its own funds through theft ... leading to potential punitive actions, annexation, repression and general bad feelings.

Civ-sponsored and directed expansion as with traditional Civ would also be allowed.

[yin26]

Platypus Rex: Be careful what you say!

The_Aussie_Lurker: What you're saying is that spewing forth cities might actually take a little thought and planning. This is an important step, I grant you. Perhaps this will be enough to make the formula seem fresh for a time, but I do hope we will see a Civ-like game one day that does something more radical.

[andyiam]

Originally posted by Jaybe
For Civ5 I want citizens to SPONTANEOUSLY become dissatisfied with where they are living and decide to leave Dodge.

Yeah, it would be cool to give the civilians a bit more independence like this. I really like this idea. (Ooops, I'm off topic? But I really like this idea)

[Fidel]

according to the latest gamespot MP preview, you still gotta expand, albeit you are toast if you JUST expand. that makes sense, as it is difficult to imagine a civ that wins while having 2 cities. that might be a nice civ to live in, everybody happy etc, but economies of scale gotta have SOME say at least to a certain extent.

[Drakan]

From Gamespot's article:

" The ultimate key to survival in Civ multiplayer, though, is expansion, which makes sense. If you have three cities, and your opponent has six cities, you're in obvious trouble. Simply put, you need to build up a larger empire than your rivals so you can generate a larger economy, which helps you not only create a larger army, but also lets you research up the technology tree faster, letting you unlock some potentially decisive technologies. "


I guess this proves Yin's point of view.

Nihil Novi Sub Sole.

[Addled Platypus]

Originally posted by Jaybe

They either migrate to another city or they found a new city by themselves without player (or AI civ) involvement. .

so who or what controls the unit?

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Drakan
From Gamespot's article:

" The ultimate key to survival in Civ multiplayer, though, is expansion, which makes sense. If you have three cities, and your opponent has six cities, you're in obvious trouble. Simply put, you need to build up a larger empire than your rivals so you can generate a larger economy, which helps you not only create a larger army, but also lets you research up the technology tree faster, letting you unlock some potentially decisive technologies. "


I guess this proves Yin's point of view.

gold (economy) doesnt equal more units. you need production for units

as for the number of cities, when you have three buildings increasing gold by 25-50% you need much more small cities to equal a big one

[yin26]

Riiight...and your small cities will grow to big ones soon enough. Just face it! I mean, if you like micromanaging a ton of cities, then this is fine. I bet the other tweaks to the game are more than enough for that kind of player, but let's not start saying stuff like:

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinski."

We all know what we mean when we talk about city spew, and Civ 4 will be a little different in some details but precisely as we have ever seen in the grand scale of things. Again, for many players here, that's perfectly fine, but don't demean general human intelligence with this other stuff.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

OK, I read that same article, and I confess that I am incredibly disappointed by the claim made by the reviewer in regards to expansion. However, I still hold onto some degree of hope for several key reasons:

1) Soren Johnson has already confirmed all the major ways in which rapid expansion (leading to ever more expansion) have been curtailed, and they all sound totally feasible to me.

2) The reviewer himself partly contradicts himself in the very next paragraph-by saying how rapid expansion can ruin the player. This, in itself, is a big difference from civ3-where expansion was automatically successful, and simply fueled even more expansion-and so on and so forth. Now, it sounds a lot less guaranteed.

3) The reviewer was playing a short, fast MP game, where more subtle influences such as civics, religion and trade probably played little or no part. These three factors will, I believe, have the greatest impacts on the relative economic/military strength of large and small civilizations.

For instance, the Gamespy reviewer was talking about his MP experience, and how he went around converting the cities of other civs to his religion-and how he was raking in huge amounts of cash via his holy city. Now, this amount of cash could be recieved by a civ whether they have 5 cities or 20 cities. There is also a strong suggestion that the maintainance costs of certain civics settings will be based on the number of cities they control.
So, yes I am a little bit nervous after this review, but overall I still have hope that in this Civ, a player will be able to play civs in a style like England, Switzerland and The Netherlands whilst still keeping very competitive.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Platypus Rex
so who or what controls the unit?

In my concept of how it would work, no player or AI civ would control the cit until it joins (or is annexed by) a civ. Especially if it builds a city outside of anyone's border.

Those people are NOT civ directed once they become migratory. They become migratory by "unsatisfactory" pressures at home.

[yin26]

Build too many cities too quickly and you'll have a lot of vulnerable cities to defend. But if you wait too long, the enemy will get the jump on you.

Sounds like Civ as always, frankly. The bottom line in ICS has ever been that it's perfectly acceptable to lose some of your young, outlying cities if the overall benefit is that your sheer volume of cities is powering up a huge production base. And I'm not against this on paper. I'm against the ensuing, mindless micro that tending to these billion cities forces on the player. Yes, there are governors, and if they ever worked well, I might use them and feel that the micro is tolerable.

Also, there do seem to be some nice tweaks to the formula overall, still Civ, of course. If anything, I'm now at least eager to have some fun ICS'ing for a few months.

[Wise Ass]

Yin, just out of curiosity, what did you think about the management controls of CTP(II)? I mean ICS still worked but city management was considerably easier.