City Production Possibilities...

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

A way of using Surplus Production

Hi Guys,
I've sort of touched on the production issue in a previous thread, but not on this specific issue.
My ideas concerning city production are as follows
1) Cities should be able to build multiple improvements (eg multiple factories, multiple temples etc.). The # of improvements would be limited by Population size and each new improvement would suffer from "The Law of Diminishing Returns"

2) Cities should be able to have at least 2 build queues each. At least 1 for civilian improvements and units(settlers/workers) and 1 for military improvements and units (available upon building a barracks?). Ideally, I think that coastal cities should have a 3rd queue for building naval units (once they've built the appropriate facilities) and possibly a 4th build queue could become available when you discover Flight (but I'd be happy with even just 2!!)
This wouldn't unbalance the game as much as people think, as you'd still need the money to support all of these units and because, when you have more than 1 build queue operating, they should all build below optimum speed (as they all share some common facilities)

3) Cities with a large surplus of "Shields", should be able to "Vector" them to another city. This would be useful for helping new cities become developed more quickly. Limitations should exist, like multiple cities vectoring to a single city should suffer from diminishing returns (see above), and their should be some transfer loss between cities. This would essentially make production shields a regional "Resource" just like coal, oil or iron (and yes you should be able to sell surplus shields at rock-bottom prices!)

4) Lastly: Ralf, the Manhattan project took only a few years to complete (which is about 3 turns), but of course they had the entire nation working on it. This is how I believe WOnders SHOULD work. A single city alone should take forever to build a wonder, but with other cities loaning surplus "Shields" that city should be able to build the wonder more quickly.

The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Urban Ranger]

OTOH, I don't see this is an abuse at all.

If a player has spent time and effort to create mega cities, what is the justification of penalising this person? For the same cost another player could make a whole lot more cities, but if a megacity can't build more than 1 unit or improvement per turn there is absolutely no point in doing so.

In effect, that just places a limitation on a player's strategy.


Lurker,

You have some good ideas. Having multiple improvements for a city is something you can find in Caesar III. What kind of diminishing of returns are you thinking of? Eons ago I had suggested multiple queues for a city. That just makes sense doesn't it? The vectoring of "shields" is also a good idea This replaces the cavaran for building wonders since the camel is gone. How do you prevent it's abuse though?

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Urban Ranger,

Firstly, the diminishing returns I'm talking about are in regards to the bonuses you originally get for that improvement. For example, if your first factory gives you a 50% bonus to manufacturing, the second might only give you a 40% bonus, etc. Same for research bonuses and happiness bonuses.

As for limiting the abuse of vectoring shields. You might be able to do that by saying that each city after the first can only vector X-1 shields to that city (where X is the maximum shields a city can give), then X-2, X-3 etc. You could also have a shield loss during vectoring based on technology, distance between cities and the corruption levels in each city.
Finally, the maximum shields that any city can give to any 1 city would be a fraction of it's total surplus.
Anyway, those are just a few ideas. If you have any more, I'd like to hear them.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker

[Vlad Antlerkov]

I think cities that are large enough should be able to build multiple things at the same time. A city that's working all available squares in its city radius and has a population at or above say, size 14, or is producing more than 120 shields/turn probably should be able to do this.

I also like Lurker's idea of vectoring shields. Of course, some of those shields might be lost in the transfer, the number being dependent on the amount of shields you're sending and how far they're being sent.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Again,

I reckon that 2 things should limit the "Vectoring" of production shields. The first is the population of the city recieving the shields-an example might be to say that a city can only recieve shields from a number of cities equal to it's population number. The second limitation would be the population of the city sending the shields-eg the max % of shields that can be sent by a city would be determined by its population number (up to the number of free shields it possesses), say 4% per population point!?
As I said in the earlier post, the # of shields lost in transfer would be based on factors like distance, corruption and tech level.
The way I actually envisage the production shields (in real-world terms) is as a combination of manufactured components (like girders, plastics, bricks etc) and man-power. Vectoring shields, therefore, is just a high production city sending its surplus, prefabricated materials to another city in order to speed up build times!

Anyway, any additional thoughts on my ideas are welcome.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Eternal]

Anyway, like all the other ideas, I say, IT SHOULD BE AN OPTION

[Urban Ranger]

Hmmm...

Maybe vectoring can also be limited by the production of the recipient city. This could represent having all available workers working around the clock so there's no way you can increase it more by pouring in more resources.

Say, 50%?