Managing 40 Cities

[Slingshot]

The worst part of micromanagement is not building roads or mines, but having to visit each city and order the same improvements all the time! When a person has 40 cities to manage, this takes a lot of time.

CTP had a good idea with the building queues, but these lists always need to be upgraded as technology changes.

In Civ II, I thought that the best wonder was Leonardo's Workshop. This was because it eliminated the chore of upgrading units.

Soooo....

What about enabling the player to divide a civ into regions (like provinces or states)?

The benefits could be:
- Sharing of resource tiles
- Sharing of city (now "state") improvements
- Pooled productivity / trade


There would have to be restrictions, eg:
- must link the cities with a "super" road, rail road, etc.
- the cost of "state" improvements is equal to, say "cost_per_improvement*number_of_cities*90%"
- each state cannot be made of more than 10 cities, or x% of the total cities in a civ
- distance or geography...

Any thoughts?

[Graag]

Civ3, could benefit from a system used in the game Stars. You can save a number of queues, and simply load the appropriate one when you need it. Very handy.

Graag

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You should never smoke in pyjamas, you could start a fire and burn your face

[raingoon]

I like the province idea -- "que templates" are great, but even better is being able to tell the cities of an entire province to concentrate on building one type of unit, or structure, etc. Just the idea of being able to group your Civ into subsets is brilliant.

Even better if your "CIVilians" have some say in how they're grouped.

[MarkG]

a couple of notes:
1) the best thing about micromanagment and ctp is actually that you can give multiple build orders to multiple cities. you can also assign a build queue to multiple cities at once.

2) your queues in ctp can also be saved and recalled in other games

3) what is needed is buttons beyond build such as "put at end of queue"(ala smac) and "put at second queue spot"

[Adm.Naismith]

Slingshot and Raingoon, yes, you are underlining that some micromanagement is viable (and funny) if number of city is small enough, than become a nightmare.

With province idea you simply pool your cities into kind of SUPER City, turning down the number: manageable numbers again

IMHO saving a preferred queue and the like you just put on a band aid by a nurse where a surgeon is needed

If a province take place of some cities, we probably need a compromise between fine control and macromanagement. Hmm, I need more brainstorming on this line.

See you tomorrow.

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Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant

[NoviceCEO]

"Supercities" (aka provinces) could work really fine, but would take some time to be balanced.

Every RTS player now this rule: "Micromanage your units so they attack only one unit at once together". You see, in RTS's games, 10 90% damaged units will do 100% damage, while 5 units 100% killed and 5 units 100% healthy would do 50% damage.

Concentrating your produtcion is something nice, but too easy. And 40 cities is still not the really biggest problem, it's just starting to get boring. You're ruined when you reach 100 cities, which includes 70 conquered ones that need plenty of repairs. It's a very common situation in smac, even on standard maps.

novice
-off for the month
[This message has been edited by NoviceCEO (edited February 16, 2000).]

[Slingshot]

So it sounds like greater minds than mine have worked around the problem of "too-many- monotonous-things-to-keep-track-of."

Thanks for the feedback, although I balk at the thought of managing 40 cities well enough to capture the 100 other cities filled with bad guys.

To "borrow" from Shakespeare:

There would have been time for building improvements,
[But]In this turn, the next turn, and the next turn,
Creeps this petty pace from day to day,
Until the last syllable of recorded time.

And all our yesterdays have lighted Civ addicts making lists of city improvements:
The way to dusty death!

Out! Out! Brief candle!
Life is but a walking shadow,
A Civilization zombie that struts and frets his hour upon the map,
And is heard no more.

It is a tale, told by the Viking Scribes,
Full of sound and fury!
Signifying nothing.

- At least that's what MacBeth would have said, had he been addicted to Civ.

[Bkeela]

Slingshot, yours is the first amateur suggestion that I have really liked. I think it would be fantastic, that when your nation finally become interconnected with rail and highways, that micromanagment should be dramatically reduced. Well done: I hope this idea comes to be.

Bkeela.

[tniem]

Provinces need to be included in Civ III along with of course the option of having an individual city build an improvement that differs with the rest of the province. I think you should be able to make orders with your province or state. So in your production capital you can go to a screen and tell them to build you 12 musketeers and 3 cannons and build a bank, marketplace, and library in each city.

Provinces should also be able to pool food together, possibly giving excess to other parts of the nation instead of growing. Much like the great plains in the U.S. which is not growing despite massive excess food instead it sells it to the rest of the nation.

[Murgatroyd]

Maybe the amount of micromanagement required should depend on your government type. Under despotism, you would have to deal with everything. With a modern federal republic (modeled after the USA), the civilization would be divided into regions as suggested.

Murgatroyd

[OrangeSfwr]

Something else to add...

I hate starting cities after about 1500 A.D. because by then you have to build so many things in the new city. Why not have a certain cut off and start cities with a certain amount of improvements. Like a city started in 1880 should come complete with a library, temple, and marketplace. I think it makes sense if you think about it because there's a million more things to build (like the banks and universities and cathedrals) but they are in larger cities.

Anything to add?

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~~~I am who I am, who I am - but who am I?~~~

[Slingshot]

I like your thinking, OrangeSfwr!

How about city improvements that are automatically built, based upon the following:

1. Your tech level
2. Your level of resources (funds are automatically withdrawn from a city-"PW" account)
3. Your level of trade

For example. You have discovered banking.
All cities will automatically be upgraded to have banks in 10 turns, so long as you have sufficient resources in the city-public works budget. Next turn, you find a foreign trade partner for six trade units, boosting your civ's level of trade by 20%. As a result, all cities will get banks 20% faster, or maybe 20% cheaper.

Another idea: forget the special city-PW fund. New improvements come about as a result of your general economic health. (It is assumed that the business they generate will be sufficient to pay for them.)

There could be notable exceptions, including:
1. Special defensive improvements, which normally do not pay for themselves, but are deemed a national priority (eg. city walls, SDI defense)
2... you get the idea

[Slingshot]

You guys are really encouraging.

I think that a lot could be done to reduce micromanagement without having to go the Public Works route.

Public Works is fine IMHO (in my humble opinion). But the real chore is city management. I know that you can load building queues, but still more could be done....

[UndoRetry]

Some small suggestion: now you choose a city and you select improvements to build for this city. What if you could just choose an improvement, see all cities that do not have it yet, and quickly select the cities that should put the improvement in their build queue ?

[Slingshot]

Good idea UndoRetry,

But maybe you could flesh it out a little more.

Another idea is to have the city icon represent less, and make many of the city improvments something that gets put on the map, like roads, mines or farms.

Some examples are:
- Power generation (dams, coal plants, solar banks, etc).
These could be placed on mountains, rivers,... and be connected to one or more cities via power lines. Of course, each power generation facility would only be able to support so many production shields!
- Fresh water (eg. Las Vegas)
A city in a desert needs water, and this must be piped in from somewhere. Replace the aqueduct with a water resevoir, and make it necessary to connect the resevoir to one or more cities with an aqueduct.
- Sewage...
- Barracks. This is connected via roads. One barracks could service many cities with troops. The total number of troops and the number per city could be set by right-clicking the baracks.


Another spin on this idea can be found on the Big Huge Games to release a Civ Title! Thread within the Other Games Forum.