Solving the worker problem in Modern Age

[Gallagher]

Big picture problem (we all know this already): Civ breaks down in modern age.

• Economic model--It's still based on farming and mining
• Graphically--Pretty nice looking map turns into 'railroad world'
• Game play--decision making radically reduced
• Workers--Tons still required, but only for maintenance, not civ building

Firaxis could address all 4 problems above with 2 very simple additions.

• Add 2 new worker jobs: Build Industry and Build Commercial ("Mall" or something)
• Change pollution effects and solution to a city level rather than a square level

Industry and Commercial are built on squares, and replace the underlying terrain. Industry could be 0/5/2, Commercial 0/1/6, or something similar. (Oh yeah, and Supermarkets would need to be brought back in some way to keep food production up). Pollution in a city would result in unhappiness and increased corruption. No polluted squares, no cleanup. Solution in improvements, wonders, techs.

Effects:

• Map begins to look like a modern world, with urban areas surrounding city centers
• You have some real economic decisions to make--new challenges in balancing food, shields, and gold
• You let workers do what they do in Ancient--build your civ.

Do I mean to say this is a complete solution? Not at all. Vel's Disenchanted thread has some amazing solutions to the game play issue (at least in the first post, after that it gets a little too ambitious). I've seen some great ideas for slowing expansion that wouldn't slow the game down (reducing food in certain terrains) that would seem to solve that part of the problem. But I haven't seen the economic, graphic, or worker issues addressed as neatly as in this idea.

What do you think?

[Adagio]

It sounds like the ideas is ok, nothing special, but ok. But there's some other things I'd rather like to see be made.

[Gallagher]

"Nothing special" is, imo, part of the advantage. It doesn't radically change the game, something Firaxis isn't going to do anyway. It doesn't even add any new concepts, so no major recoding. It takes what's good in the ancient age and adds it to the modern. Again, a partial, but important change.

[Qilue]

This is going to sound sarcastic and I apologise if you are offended. The food and such sold in supermarkets isn't conjured out of thin air as many believe. Outside of large cities, the landscape is still cluttered with farms and mines.

[Libertarian]

Indeed, agriculture is the very foundation of civilization. No ag, no civ.