New City specialists

[Bleyn]

Is there any info yet on what the two new city specialists will do?

I think the Police is sort of obvious. Being as it probably helps reduce unrest in some way or another, though more info on how it would be different from an Entertainer would be nice.

But I think there are way too many possibilities for a Civil Engineer specialist. Though the one that comes to my mind first is some sort of enhancement to worker speed in terrain alterations. But I can think of several other possiblities also.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Police reduce, I think corruption and war weariness! Civil Engineers, on the other hand, allow you to build improvements and wonders much quicker than normal!
Now, if they would only allow us to shift surplus 'production' to other cities, we might have a way of using our established cities to bring our newer cities up to speed much quicker!!!
On another note, it'd be good to see a farmer speciliast, who increases the food output of a given city!!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker

[Bleyn]

Ok. Thanks. Those make sense.

Though rather than a farmer specialist, I'd prefer to see something that allows you to spread food out amonst all your connected cities. It makes no sense to have some cities starving and others way surplus in the Modern era.

[Nuclear Winter]

That would be a good one Bleyn; just like in the real world.
But I guess the best thing they can put in this C3C (though I doubt they will, unfortunately) is editor flags. tha would be superb!

[joncnunn]

Almost every tile produces food already.

[Bleyn]

Originally posted by joncnunn
Almost every tile produces food already.

True, but its sort of silly to see situations where you have cities that are bursting at the seams with food while others are starving in the Modern era.

Pre-Industrial era, or even early industrial era it makes sense, yes. The technologies for large scale food preservation and transportation did not exist. So a civ could easily have some cities starving and others with a surplus, and no way to adequately rectify the imbalance.

In the modern era, technology is no longer the limiting factor. The only limiting factor now is economics and political will. An example of this is aid to drought stricken nations in Africa. Technologically, it is no problem to produce and transport a lot more food to those nations than ever gets there now. To my understanding, the USA and Canada alone produce huge surpluses every year. It is really a matter of who will pay for that food to get there(economics), and who will make sure it actually gets to the people that need it(politics). Because the people with the money(and the food) are rarely interested in spending it, and the political situation surrounding much of Africa is typically one big mess(and twelve smaller ones fighting it out to become the big one), we end up with massive starvation in Africa at least one year in every ten.

Another example of the other side of this is several of the states in the USA. I seriously doubt that on their own places like Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, or Hawaii can actually produce enough food to support their current populations. In Civ terrain terms Alaska is mostly tundra and forest, Arizona is mostly desert, Colorado is mostly mountains with a little bit of high plains, and Hawaii is mostly jungle. There is no way you can get the sort of population out of these sorts of regions in Civ that they actually have in RL. All of these regions, all of the US really, depend on food shipped from elsewhere in the US or the world for a fair amount of their supply.

Another way of thinking of it is this. About a third to a half of the time or more, with the really large cities in Civ, I get one that has one excess food left. Say 25 pop. and that city is producing 51 food. And while sometimes you can make adjustments to either get one more or one less food so that city can grow one more safely, or not grow at all. Sometimes those changes just are not possible. Eventually that city is going to grow one too many and experience starvation. And when it runs out of surplus food, you just lose a pop point get that one excess back, and there you go again. And yes, I know I could build a worker or settler. Thats not a real solution, that's just a temporary fix, if I can't balance the food at a maintainence level. I'm just going to run into this problem again.

Pre-industrial tech, this sort of thing does not bother me. It happened. It probably happened a lot. At Modern tech, its absurd. New York City does not experience mass starvation because it can get its grain from Kansas, its corn from Iowa, its beef from Texas, etc.

If there was a way of distributing the food supply at the Modern tech levels, one might be able to take that 25 pop city and either divert its one excess food to another city, or maybe shift an extra food or three to it and keep it going.

Unfortunatly, I know the best we can hope for in this regard is that something of the sort might appear in a Civ4 if it ever happens.

[joncnunn]

More complicated than listed above in the case of the US.

Alaska and Colarado have plenty of life-stock to support themselves from their own resources. However, that would be a very imbalanced diet and so both states export meat and import veggies.


Yeah, Arizona & New Mexico pretty much has to import everything, including water.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Bleyn
True, but its sort of silly to see situations where you have cities that are bursting at the seams with food while others are starving in the Modern era.

And yet the very same is happening all over the world.

[joncnunn]

I also note that under Civ IIIs rules that desert with rail yields 2 food a tile -> enough to support the population. So Phoenix, Los Vegas, and Albreqerque are fine in the Civ III world.

Even Denver is fine: It's at the western edge of the high plains, so roughly half the tiles would be plains (which when irrigated and railroaded yeilds 3 food -> a food surplus to use working the hills and mountains.)

Harbors would produce plenty of food for Hawaii.

The most likely US city to have problems in the Civ III enviorment would be Salt Lake City. Lots of hills and mountains surrounding it.

[Panag]

Originally posted by joncnunn
I also note that under Civ IIIs rules that desert with rail yields 2 food a tile -> enough to support the population. So Phoenix, Los Vegas, and Albreqerque are fine in the Civ III world.

Even Denver is fine: It's at the western edge of the high plains, so roughly half the tiles would be plains (which when irrigated and railroaded yeilds 3 food -> a food surplus to use working the hills and mountains.)

Harbors would produce plenty of food for Hawaii.

The most likely US city to have problems in the Civ III enviorment would be Salt Lake City. Lots of hills and mountains surrounding it.

hi ,

denver could get some cattle , las vegas a small lake with a fish , etc , ......

have a nice day

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Certainly I agree that Railroads in CivIII make the ridiculous surplus/starvation scenario of CivII far less acute!! All the same, though, I'd LOVE to see the food provided by rail, or even road, in SOME way connected to how much food surplus is produced in other cities!! That is to say, if you have 6 cities producing a surplus of 2 food each, then you should have a MAXIMUM of 12 food that you can distribute to other cities that are connected to the trade network!! That genius, Spiffor , had a brilliant mock up of a CivIII screenshot to show how such a system could actually work!! Of course, such a system could also be applied to surplus production shields!!!
Just a thought.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Vince278]

I liked how MOO2 handled it. The surplus accumulated in the empire and you could build transports for distribution.

[Bleyn]

That was a decent system, yes. I think the SMAC system also had its good points. Just having such a system is more my concern. Exact mechanics are secondary.

[Johann Moritz]

I'm afraid all this stuff about controlling where the surplus of every single city goes would make the game so complicated it would be impossible to keep everything under control without huge amounts of time wasted for this purpose.
All in CivIII is symbolic, it doesn't pretend to be a realistic game with all, from food production to diplomacy, EXACTLY like in real life.

[Spiffor]

I suppose the civil engineer specialist will give shields, that don't suffer from waste, and that can only be used to build civil improvements (such as forbidden palace or a mere courthouse).
Like most specialists, I assume the civil engineer will be useful only in highly corrupt / remote cities.