Civ should be about nations, not collections of cities

[Urban Ranger]

So far, this is the feeling I am getting from playing all the Civ-like games. Just replace "cities" by bases in SMAC/X or colonies in 4x games.

MoO 3 tried to compensate with Imperial Focus Points, but IMO that is just the opposite of what needs to be done. Civ 3 reduced this somewhat, but still far from sufficient.

I think the first thing to do is to reduce micromanagement. Instead of directly building facilties in cities, that happens automatically depending on a number of factors, such as population, culture, income, and form of government. Civs should be allowed to only build wonders and other special structures (such as monuments) in cities.

Another thing is take away the ability to build cities at will. This had been discussed at length in the old Civ 3 forum before the game came out. There are some excellent ideas dealing with population growth and formation of cities.

What are your ideas?

[DrSpike]

You haven't really explained how civ will work with nations, not collections of cities.

[Jamski]

Perhaps cities could be an automatic function. As you explored new areas, settlers would think "Oh that looks nice" and go and build a city. Or better, you can place colonies where you like, but some will fail, and some will grow into cities. Most cultures were agricultural untill recently, however, so the city focus can suck a bit.

Also, milltary units should be trained at castles or barracks, outside of towns ?

Just my 2 Euro cents.

-Jam

[Optimizer]

Seems a little abstract. I'm not sure that I get the point.

Maybe the improvements should be split into categories - public and private-owned. You have to build and maintain the public ones, while the private ones take care of themselves. The ratio between these categories would change - for instance there would be no private property in a communist country.

[LDiCesare]

In Clash, we don't use cities but provinces, which span several squares. That allows not to micromanage square-wise. City improvements etc. are considered as an abstraction (i.e. no actual buildings). This has the drawback of being a bit too abstract, so we may need to explain the figures as "you have X libraries" if the player requests info.
About cities, Dale made a nice mod for CtP2 where cities were founded by the population, not under player control. Note CtP2 has more of an empire feel than civ because of empire-wide controls which are much finer than civ (sliders), and cities exploit every square in the rings around them (although they use them at less than optimum when the population is low), so you don't need as much MM of cities.

[Mark_Everson]

The critical thing IMO is to allow civ-wide orders to be carried out Intelligently in all sub-units of the civ. FE in Clash we have a return-on-investment (ROI) setting that can be placed on build orders. The ROI compares the future stream of benefits of the investment to the cost.

The "Build Farms" order at the civ level can then be entered with a variety of ROI values which determine if its invested in locally depending on the circumstances. Lets say there is an ROI of 20%, which is equivalent to "only build if its fairly beneficial locally". If there is starvation in the province (roughly equivalent to civ's cities) the value of the extra food produced will be high and so the ROI will be high and the farms will be built. Somewhere that has a surplus of food will give a poor ROI value (far below 20%) and that civ-level order will not be triggered.

Similarly an order with ROI = 0% means "build anywhere that its not Really stupid to do so". An ROI of 50% or more means cherry-pick only very good opportunities for this investment.

This approach allows the player to act like the ruler of a civ, issuing only general orders which are then carried out according to their wishes. Of course we do allow orders to be given directly at the province level if the player desires.

Something like this also could be done in civ if the player were allowed to calibrate the values of the various types of output value. FE adding happiness when the city would go into revolt otherwise would probably get a very high value from most players. There might be about 10 cases you'd need to fill in your desires for to make this work. Food, shields, trade, etc.

[Cyclotron]

It seems like all you are suggesting, UR, is to take building things away from the player and making the machine do it. I still don't see why I should be worried about city centralization in the first place.

[Urban Ranger]

That's pretty much the gist of it. You, as the head of state, should not be concerned with whether or not a granary is needed in London or a firestation is needed in Moscow. You should be concerned about the decisions at the highest level: various polices to be carried out by your subordinates. Should we be friendly with the Egyptians? How much do we want to put into the military budget? What to do about the recent flood? Which direction should we expand in? How about an oceanic expedition to the new continent we have just discovered?

You make these decisions, and the game carries out the orders. Of course, this requires pretty smart routines. On the other hand, this is a great chance for introducing actual historical figures as your subordinates. Sort of like Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

[DrSpike]

I think being leader of someone that has to make all the decisions for you would be dull dull dull......and that is presuming those decisions could be accurately made for you, which they can't.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
That's pretty much the gist of it. You, as the head of state, should not be concerned with whether or not a granary is needed in London or a firestation is needed in Moscow. You should be concerned about the decisions at the highest level: various polices to be carried out by your subordinates. Should we be friendly with the Egyptians? How much do we want to put into the military budget? What to do about the recent flood? Which direction should we expand in? How about an oceanic expedition to the new continent we have just discovered?

But my question is, why? Why shouldn't I be concerned with such affairs? What is the reason I would want to give up doing these things? Why shouldn't I be concerned with lower level policies?

I understand what you are saying, but I don't understand why you want it.

[ottok]

In my opinion is this: Why not build units out of citys...

In colonize,why all think with that "at europeans invasion after Columbus", it is truth that colonize that live centuries maybe growth maybe even like New York?
Sorry indians peoples,or italians but that happen also EUROPE!. Howerwer: Greeks.
Continue others!

[Trifna]

If there was a management panel for the entire civ's production, it'd help. So you could give orders such as "30% on industrialization, 30% on these military things, 30% on hospitals/this/that and 10% boats". Stuff like this, instead of the city per city management we have now...

[MrBaggins]

You mean like the nation/empire management of CtP2? yeah... that'd be good

[Cyclotron]

Sorry, ottok, that one went right over my head...

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
But my question is, why? Why shouldn't I be concerned with such affairs? What is the reason I would want to give up doing these things? Why shouldn't I be concerned with lower level policies?

Pretty simple: you are the emperor, not the governor of a province or mayor of a city. In actuality, you have more than enough on your hands that you don't want anything to deal with local developments.

Originally posted by cyclotron7
I understand what you are saying, but I don't understand why you want it.

This is a design question. Currently, everything is done on a city level, so if you take away the local stuff, there is nothing to do. However, as I am advocating, this design should be changed. Make things happen on the national level - perhaps start shifting things after certain advancements have been achieved. For example, taxation allows you to do things on a national level. Coinage allows you to tax in $ instead of goods (such as salt). It's just the design of the game, it's not carved in stone.