The Symbiotic Nation: a Civ 'goal'

[MrBaggins]

Its quite apparent that there is a particular area of Civ that has very little choice associated with it:

City Size: Bigger is always better.

The 'trick' is finding a way to grow your cities faster, and keep the minor annoyances and costs in check. Generally speaking, however, there are always internal solutions; you can fix what ills the city by building the temple, courthouse, hospital, aqueduct... or whatever. Governments are usually a limiting factor... but these affect the nation as a whole.

Bigger is paper and smaller is the stone, and there are no scissors.

Given the right order of tile improvements, city improvements and so on, a city can be all things... productive in food, science, gold and 'shields'... and happy too. Improvements generally have flat 'costs' and exponential 'rewards'.

Its true that the terrain can make certain cities more growth, production or commercially useful, and make the market place or mill a more beneficial improvement, for that city. That never takes away from the beneficiality of other city components, however...

Given the choice between ultimately having science, gold and production improvements, its almost *ALWAYS* a good idea to have all, at least ultimately. There is the 'sense' of choice within the game, but its really only a question of when, not if...

My contention is that the game would be markedly improved if:

* There were Specialization of cities... 'Generally balanced', Production, Gold or Science.

* That specialization would be costly, and require that the city 'sacrifice' in some other area.

* That ultimately multiple specializations in a single city would be counter productive.

* That these specialized cities should be symbiotic- thus although Gold is the overriding improvement support currency, Gold specialization towns should require other resources or deal with other limiting factors to be productive and/or viable. Production and science towns should require (mucho) Gold... perhaps.

* Specializations should become more costly as the city increases in size, requiring an even growth and support policy to maintain cohesion.

* That the AI would be aware of these concept, and use them to its benefit.

Thoughts? Comments?

MrBaggins

[J Bytheway]

It's not too hard to implement a method of promoting specialization in cities, you use improvements with benefits and costs, e.g. Trade Union +2 happiness, -20% production,

[MrBaggins]

That specific case, would require a need for more happiness... by some method... of course...

The big issue... is with Gold improvements... they 'pay for themselves' and hence you can have them without 'downside', as it stands...

[Sandman]

Hmm. I'd say that historically, cities started out with specialisations (military base, natural harbour, trade routes, manufacturing) but get those specialisations get less and less important as the city grows. All the world's biggest cities have many different roles.

Why not impose some sort of cap on the number of improvements that can be built, based on say, population?

I'd also suggest that cultural level have an effect on the performance of a building, so that if you want a really effective temple, then you should build it as early as possible. This is already in civ3 to a small extent, given that 1000 year old buildings produce double culture.

[Nikolai]

Re: The Symbiotic Nation: a Civ 'goal'

The idea looks interesting. However, it could lead to imbalance of the game if not implemented carefully... Of course, so can any idea.

Originally posted by MrBaggins
* That specialization would be costly, and require that the city 'sacrifice' in some other area.

* Specializations should become more costly as the city increases in size, requiring an even growth and support policy to maintain cohesion.

I was instantly thinking of this when reading this part:
One city produces loots of food, and therefore exports to the sorrounding cities. (Here we could use demand and production as a factor BTW.) But, the city has neglected the production of other important things, and becomes dependant of other cities to fill this demand.

On the contrary(sp?), another city has neglected food producing, but is a huge producer of something just as important for the community, which it, of course, has to trade for food. These two cities has therefore become dependant of each other. But, what if the crop is destroyed one year, or a disaster occurs?

I like it!

[MrBaggins]

Sandman>

In modern times, I'd agree with you... still... in gameplay terms... do we want this, is the question?

Bad idea to cap number of improvements based on population... it all gets back to the 'bigger=better' problem

Consider comparing India and the UK... should Indian cities be more 'powerful' than UK cities?

The culture idea is interesting, but I don't think ultimately its a 'solution' to the core 'richer get richer' issue.

[Nikolai]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Sandman>

In modern times, I'd agree with you... still... in gameplay terms... do we want this, is the question?

Bad idea to cap number of improvements based on population... it all gets back to the 'bigger=better' problem

Consider comparing India and the UK... should Indian cities be more 'powerful' than UK cities?

The culture idea is interesting, but I don't think ultimately its a 'solution' to the core 'richer get richer' issue.

Of course, the bigger the city, the more capable is it to maintain several improvements, but I think we should add something balancing the "big city" versus "small city" issue you mentions.

[Lemmy]

One way to make bigger not always better is by rising upkeep costs for buildings, bigger cities pay more upkeep.
Or go even further, make the upkeep adjustable.
So you could raise the upkeep of buildings for small cities, making them relatively more effective then in bigger cities.

[MrBaggins]

I think I have the solution:

crime/corruption

The first couple of improvements are 'freebies' but subsequently each adds percentage to crime.

There are a limited number of 'corruption fighting' improvements, and you can deal with the amount of crime that one 'set' of improvements; science, gold or production add... but not all... You could still build others, but then the gains start to become increasingly counter productive.

Happiness and government effects the amount of corruption... so given a very 'happy' city or a less corrupt government form, you could have a mix of specializations: allowing for late game metropolii(sp?)...

MrBaggins

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Originally posted by Lemmy
One way to make bigger not always better is by rising upkeep costs for buildings, bigger cities pay more upkeep.
Or go even further, make the upkeep adjustable.
So you could raise the upkeep of buildings for small cities, making them relatively more effective then in bigger cities.

or you can give all improvements some backdraw, what comes to my mind is e.g.: arena adds happiness, but reduces population (remember, those lions have to be fed somehow )

[Sandman]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Sandman>

In modern times, I'd agree with you... still... in gameplay terms... do we want this, is the question?

Bad idea to cap number of improvements based on population... it all gets back to the 'bigger=better' problem

Consider comparing India and the UK... should Indian cities be more 'powerful' than UK cities?

The culture idea is interesting, but I don't think ultimately its a 'solution' to the core 'richer get richer' issue.

Bigger is better. Instead of punishing sucessful players, it should be more difficult to be successful.

Suggestions to check city growth:

A hell of a lot fewer grassland squares. Forest and jungle should yield plains, not grassland. In fact, I'd suggest scrapping grassland altogether. It should certainly be impossible to 'mine' grassland.

Desert and Tundra should be utterly, utterly useless.

Change the irrigation system. It's not very logical, and invites silly activities like irrigating an entire continent from one tiny lake. Drainage of wetlands is just as important historically, include that.

Get rid of luxuries, or change their effect. It's too easy to keep a population happy as it stands.

Soil erosion and salinisation should be included as further checks on growth.

Bring back the exponential food box, and prevent population booms from happening.

Make disease more important.

Regarding Indian cities being more powerful than UK cities, well, it's clear that Indian cities have yet to build all the improvements that UK cities have. Plus their cities are not a big as you might think, they are still a primarily agricultural economy. They only have four very large cities, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Calcutta.

[MrBaggins]

Bigger is better, but returns never diminish, only multiply. *THAT* is the problem.

I.E. A size 21 city is 20% more productive and rich than a size 20 city, even though it only works 5% more land.

A player, being ahead, only increases his lead, turn in, turn out. If you don't solve this... the AI will always be screwed, since it can never catch up.

Returns should diminish. Going from size 20 to size 21 a city shouldn't gain as much as it did going from size 19 to 20. If you make the bigger city less happy, via increased 'pollution'/disease, perhaps, and link happiness to corruption, then as a city grows its corruption rate slowly grows too... inevitably diminishing returns.

Crime/corruption/waste affects growth/production/commerce equally via a %, and can be controlled, but only up to a point via improvements. It works as a diminishing agent. Happiness and cr/co/wa improvements can keep this in check. Empire size should not affect corruption, but happiness instead, indirectly affecting it. Larger production improvements should increase corruption, as the surplus gives more opportunities for waste, crime and corruption. Different governments give different base crime rates.

I do agree that growth should be slowed in other ways. I had a concept for hidden resources in another thread: that a separate map would be kept with resources that were not visible or useful to ancient peoples... like oil... and that these resources could be discovered and exploited when appropriate technology, and survey units were found and created. The non-renewable resources should have a 'quantity'. Water could be an 'invisible' resource below rivers, wetlands and so on... and be used... although to some degree, it is renewable.

MrBaggins

[DrSpike]

Re: The Symbiotic Nation: a Civ 'goal'

Originally posted by MrBaggins

Bigger is paper and smaller is the stone, and there are no scissors.

My compliments, it's a fantastic line. However it's not entirely true. In fact if I had to choose one strategy that dominates civ based games its constant expansion, often referred to an infinite city sleaze (ICS). A good player can beat any of the main civ games without having more than 1 or 2 big cities.....not only can they do it in many circumstances it is the best strategy.

At higher difficulty levels happiness problems require a lot of resources to contain........if you aren't facing this constraint enough just play at deity or equivalent and you will.

I would also maintain that good players do not just build everything in one city, but have specific roles for each city, and hence specialise in the manner which you want. This comes out more in MP than SP.

[MrBaggins]

DrSpike

Yep... i'm aware of ICS... but its massively reduced in recent games, given empire size caps. 'REX'ing is valuable, but you could actually negate the benefit by making government types with improved empire size caps have trade-offs... such as lower growth...

The ICS problem is due to the center square producing, effectively. This isn't an issue for the bigger=better problem because its a diminishing return... that center square bonus is static, and becomes less and less of a percentage of base city production. Improvements, however, beget larger values, as the city size grows, due to being percentage bonuses.

Whilst there are happiness 'problems' for bigger cities, and those problems are magnified at higher difficulty levels, every city can still be 'solved', and its only ever a minor setback. Bigger sometimes equates to another problem to solve, but these problems never amount to a diminishing return.

As I mentioned, terrain can make different improvements more or less useful. This is 'why' cities 'specialize' in the game, as it stands. Consider a city with a lot of mountains and a mixture of other terrain. This might be a good candidate for a 'production city'. Its base production numbers will be good, and hence multiplication of those will be more valuable, through production improvements. However... its also true that commercial and science improvements can also be built, are not, as it stands, counter productive and do contribute, if only lower amounts. This is not specialization... this is a side effect of terrain.

MrBaggins

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
DrSpike

Yep... i'm aware of ICS... but its massively reduced in recent games, given empire size caps.

Nah, they tried in civ3 admittedly, but one look at the games of players like Aeson shows why ICS is very much alive and kicking should a player choose to use it.

Far from presenting diminishing returns it is expansion that yields exponential long term resources, whereas it is in improving your city in fact you experience diminishing returns.

Amongst experienced civvers I guarantee you the power of expansion will bother them more than the 'bigger is better' problem you are discussing.