important city concepts

[The diplomat]

I have been thinking about some concepts that I think could make cities in civ3 a lot better:

1)Unemployment.
Even if civ3 has the most basic economic model (I am not necessarily asking for a super complicated model) I think unemployment needs to be included. Each city improvement could be assigned a number that represents how many people it can employ. You would add up that number for each city improvement to get the total amount of jobs the city has to offer. If the city's total pop is greater than the total amount of jobs, then there would be unemployment. You would calculate how many people are unemployed by:
unemployed = total pop - total jobs.
SE choices could also influence unemployment.

2) Desirability.
This represents how desirable a city is to live in. A positive desirability rating would boost pop growth (rural pop coming to the city). A negative desirability rating would reduce pop growth.

Desirability would also affect happiness level. A high desirability rating would cause happiness levels to increase, and vice-versa.
Some of the factors that would impact on desirability:
-the wealth of a city. For example, if a city has a gold mine in its city radius, it would get an increase in desirability (gold rush)
-jobs. Unemployement would decrease desirability. If there were more jobs than total pop (job openings), then desirability would increase.
-pollution. it would decrease desirability. A city with no pollution at all would get an increase in desirability. (this would further encourage players to try to eliminate all pollution!)
-barbarians. if barbarians are near a city, desirability would go down.
-security. If a city is very close to a foreign civ who is at war with you AND the city has no city walls or no defense units, it would suffer a decrease in desirability. (fear of being conquered makes city unappealing)
-SE. I suggest that democratic types of gvt should give a boost and totalitarian gvt should decrease desirability, to represent how democracy is more pleasant than dictatorship to live under.

Adding up the pluses and minuses for each factor would give you the desirability of a city. I would suggest a simple range from -10 (horrible city to live in) to +10 (paradise to live in). Last, I would suggest giving newly founded cities a +2 bonus for 10 turns, to represent new opportunity.

3)Loyalty.
This would represent how loyal the citizens are to you. Happiness (among other factors, like military victories) would increase loyalty. Severe unhappiness would decrease it. If loyalty got too low, then the city would rebel for its independance. If loyalty were really high, then there would be a sort of military "golden age". The military units supported by that city would get a combat bonus and the city would support extra units for free. This would last only as long as the loyalty level remained super high.
The loyalty level could be indicated from -10 (rebellion) to +10 (military "golden age).
The in-between levels would serve to calculate how succeptible the city is to bribe. The higher the loyalty level, the harder the city would be to bribe. (I think this would also be a good fix for making bribery less easy than it is in civ2. Just because you have a lot of money should not automatically allow you to bribe another civ's city)

What are your thoughts? opinions?

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[Par4]

quote: Originally posted by The diplomat on 06-21-2000 07:50 PM I have been thinking about some concepts that I think could make cities in civ3 a lot better: 1)Unemployment. Even if civ3 has the most basic economic model (I am not necessarily asking for a super complicated model) I think unemployment needs to be included. Each city improvement could be assigned a number that represents how many people it can employ. You would add up that number for each city improvement to get the total amount of jobs the city has to offer. If the city's total pop is greater than the total amount of jobs, then there would be unemployment. You would calculate how many people are unemployed by: unemployed = total pop - total jobs. SE choices could also influence unemployment.

Yes unemployment needs to be in the game its in most of my models. You should be able to give money or food to the unemployed or build things like 'coliesium' wonder that lowers unemployment. Unemployed would move to rural areas, but if the local area becomes saturated and you don't have roads then % of unemployed goes up. This wouldn't be hard to take care of but would add some to the game.

Coliesium(sp), lowers unemployment civ wide by 5%, lowers chance of unemployment or hunger rioting by 50%. New ideas very welcome

quote: 2) Desirability. This represents how desirable a city is to live in. A positive desirability rating would boost pop growth (rural pop coming to the city). A negative desirability rating would reduce pop growth. Desirability would also affect happiness level. A high desirability rating would cause happiness levels to increase, and vice-versa. Some of the factors that would impact on desirability: -the wealth of a city. For example, if a city has a gold mine in its city radius, it would get an increase in desirability (gold rush) -jobs. Unemployement would decrease desirability. If there were more jobs than total pop (job openings), then desirability would increase. -pollution. it would decrease desirability. A city with no pollution at all would get an increase in desirability. (this would further encourage players to try to eliminate all pollution!) -barbarians. if barbarians are near a city, desirability would go down. -security. If a city is very close to a foreign civ who is at war with you AND the city has no city walls or no defense units, it would suffer a decrease in desirability. (fear of being conquered makes city unappealing) -SE. I suggest that democratic types of gvt should give a boost and totalitarian gvt should decrease desirability, to represent how democracy is more pleasant than dictatorship to live under.

Quality, need a better name-
religious levels, area(no one likes a desert), disease, improvements etc.

Also transportation, no one likes to be isolated

quote: Adding up the pluses and minuses for each factor would give you the desirability of a city. I would suggest a simple range from -10 (horrible city to live in) to +10 (paradise to live in). Last, I would suggest giving newly founded cities a +2 bonus for 10 turns, to represent new opportunity.

Yeah I'll go for the +2.

quote: 3)Loyalty. This would represent how loyal the citizens are to you. Happiness (among other factors, like military victories) would increase loyalty. Severe unhappiness would decrease it. If loyalty got too low, then the city would rebel for its independance. If loyalty were really high, then there would be a sort of military "golden age". The military units supported by that city would get a combat bonus and the city would support extra units for free. This would last only as long as the loyalty level remained super high. The loyalty level could be indicated from -10 (rebellion) to +10 (military "golden age). The in-between levels would serve to calculate how succeptible the city is to bribe. The higher the loyalty level, the harder the city would be to bribe. (I think this would also be a good fix for making bribery less easy than it is in civ2. Just because you have a lot of money should not automatically allow you to bribe another civ's city)

Don't forget colonies, they should be more prone to rebellion. Also I doubt cities will be individually supporting units in Civ3. Maybe a higher recruitment rate{IIIC3} or lower production costs for units?

quote: What are your thoughts? opinions?

I like this system, especially unemployment. I would like to cities be very large and spread a few squares with suburbs and stuff.

Irrelivant to idea but I would like to say this.

More materials than just shields.
Fuels>engine fuels
Construction materials>refined const. materials
Raw consumables>manufactured consumables
Food>processed food

I'll expand a little later, I might post a new economics thread if I'm bored.

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[Tiberius]

Diplomat, I like your ideas.

Let's see:

1. The idea is not bad, but I'm afraid this is again a "too much micromanage" or, at least, a "too much information" situation. Let me understand right: how would you represent the number of unemployed pop. and what are you doind with them? How would you calculate the number of unemployed?

2. I like it very much, and this is a concept which doesn't add micromanage but improves the gameplay.
Beside happiness, desirability should affect trade (more probability for caravans to arrive), tourism (more tourists, more tourism income), and finally, maybe the most important, migration. A city with high desirability should "suck" people in your city from all over your empire and also from all over the world.

3. Loyalty is OK. Some sort of loyalty already exists in Civ2 and this can be observed in the price of a city bribery. Of course, the concept can be much better developed.

[phunny pharmer]

Loyalty would be an interesting topic to explore...

However, I would like to see changes between loyalty and dissent. In a democracy, the people may oppose the government without being in an active revolt. A low loyalty rating may mean a high dissent rating, but a high dissent rating (meaning that the people don't like the government) does not always mean that the people aren't loyal.

I like the unemployment factor! This helps to show why 40+ cities would not be good for an empire. There would be too few jobs, too many people, and people just wouldn't want to live in such places. In one of the other threads, someone proposed a province system: perhaps this unemployment system could be used for an entire region of your empire, thus reflecting how people will move where the jobs are.

This may be off the topics that you proposed, The diplomat, but I would like to see some other model of growth for a city. Food production encourages (but does not control) city growth. Sure, food shortages limit city sizes, but a food surplus doesn't force a city to grow. Here's where an unemployment scale could be useful, along with a loyalty rating and other factors.

In fact, I wouldn't mind if city growth was not human controled- it would be more lifelike. I don't mean that worker placement and terraforming should not be controlled. I would like to see a difference between the government telling a city to grow and a city growing. However, since I can't think of a better model, I am content with the one that CIV 2 and SMAC are using.

[UltraSonix]

Unemployment would probably be too much micromanagement, but the the desirability idea is good. But to prevent the game from appearing too complex, it could be done in the background.

How it cone be done:
The desirability rating (which I define as how much poeple want to live and stay in the city) would be caculated by how many improvements and wonders are present in the city, and also the type of terrain that surrounds the city. Improvements and wonders affect the desirability rating according to a set figure in the rules file.

Its effect:
The desirablity rating would be factored in while calculating the number of happy/sad people in the city, and could also affect population growth (ie a city needs more/less food to gain a pop increase).

Other pro: right now there is no relation between global warming and logging forests in Civ2. So this could be a psuedo-replacement (since people here didn't like that idea). Chopping trees means the city gets slightly less desirable and so it would be harder to get a pop increase. This wouldn't have too much effect on gameplay, but is good because it would still make the game seem more real.

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[This message has been edited by UltraSonix (edited June 22, 2000).]

[Tiberius]

Diplomat, I understand now.

We could see the pop. of a city in 2 ways: employment and happiness.

1. In the employment bar there would be 3 kind of people: workers, specialists and unemployed. The unemployed are people without a job and thus they are lowering the happiness and the desirability factor of a city.

2. In the happiness bar there would be happy, content and unhappy citizens. A low city happiness would cause production penalties and if it is too low then the city will revolt. The happiness of citizens is also influencing the loyalty of the city, besides other factors (we didn't discuss it yet, but maybe distance from capitol, different religion, low desirability, etc).
When a city does revolt, it doesn't produce anything or the goverment can collapse, but the city is still yours. But if the loyalty of a city is too low, you would have a mini-revolution in the city and you would lose it.

Yes, you are right: this concept adds a little bit micromanagement but it is a good model.
[This message has been edited by Tiberius (edited June 23, 2000).]

[The diplomat]

quote: Originally posted by phunny pharmer on 06-22-2000 01:35 AM However, I would like to see changes between loyalty and dissent. In a democracy, the people may oppose the government without being in an active revolt. A low loyalty rating may mean a high dissent rating, but a high dissent rating (meaning that the people don't like the government) does not always mean that the people aren't loyal.

Exactly! I believe that there should be a distinction in the game between unhappiness and disloyalty. People can be angry about living conditions or a war, and still be basically loyal. That is why I propose this "loyalty" concept. I am separating civ2's concept of "unhappiness" into two concepts: "unhappiness" and "loyalty". In my model "unhappiness" represents what you called "dissent". A city with high "unhappiness" would suffer production problems. If "happiness" were high, the city would get a production boost. For example, if happiness were on a scale from -10 to +10, -2 means production slower by 20%, -7 means -70% production speed. +3 means +30% production speed, +4 means +40% production speed. (you see the pattern). The idea is that unhappy population work slower due to riots etc but that really happy population will work faster and better. In other words, "unhappiness" represents dissent but not rebellion. "loyalty" would determine if cities revolt instead of "unhappiness".

quote: Originally posted by phunny pharmer on 06-22-2000 01:35 AM This may be off the topics that you proposed, The diplomat, but I would like to see some other model of growth for a city. Food production encourages (but does not control) city growth. Sure, food shortages limit city sizes, but a food surplus doesn't force a city to grow.

Again, I agree completely. I suggest that "desirability" (or maybe "happiness")would be the main factor that determine growth instead of food surplus. The logic is that people have more kids if living conditions are better. As you said, food shortages would cause famines and thus pop loss so food would still be an important factor in pop growth since you would need to insure food surplus to have pop growth. But, food surplus would not cause more pop growth.

quote: Originally posted by phunny pharmer on 06-22-2000 01:35 AM I would like to see a difference between the government telling a city to grow and a city growing.

Again, you are right on the money: look at my thread I posted a while back entitled "economic growth". I suggest a new concept called "economic growth" that would cause cities to grow by themselves, without player intervention. The player would still have a build queue which would represent the gvt telling a city to build something.

Tiberius: "unemployement" is kind of like SMAC's inefficiency or civ2's corruption except it is population "inefficiency". Unemployed "heads" would play the role of SMAC's "drones". They don't work a tile and can't be specialist. In other words, you would not have the micromanagement of unhappy "heads" and "unemployed" but only the micromanagment of "unemployed". (unhappiness would not be per "head" but a city factor)
Unemployement would be harder to get than "unhappiness" in civ2. It would only come into play, when the number of city improvements gets too small compared to the total pop. For example, say you have a city of size 10 with only 4 improvements. The pop distribution might be something like: 8 "worker" heads, and 2 "unemployed".
There are ways to decrease the micromanagement of "unemployment": cities could grow by themselves (ie new city improvements built by themselves) in addition to build queue. See thread on "economic growth".
Last, I want to say that if unemployment does add a little bit of micromanagement, I think it is worth it because unemployment is such an important economic concept that I believe it is needed for civ3.




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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[The diplomat]

you understand my idea perfectly!
To alleviate micromanagement, I would suggest that the display bar only show "working" heads and "unemployed" heads but not happy or unhappy heads.
Happiness would be represented by a number and an explananation for the whole city. Here is an example:

city mood: +3 (most people are very happy)

or,

city mood: -2 (some people are angry because of lack of a temple)

But your idea is good too. I think it works well either way.





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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.
[This message has been edited by The diplomat (edited June 23, 2000).]

[OrangeSfwr]

Unemployment can also tie into having to choose an economy style. With Communism unemployment could remain at 0%. (Going with the idea that in Communism everyone has a job to do, even if it wasn't proven effective in the game) And with Laizze-Fairre more unemployment would result. Socialism would have very little, etc. Great ideas in this thread!

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