Firaxis - eliminate heads working in tiles !

[The diplomat]

I suggested a while back in one of my city models that civ3 should eliminate altogether the system where the player has to place heads on each tile to produce ressources. I suggested that a city automatically produce a fraction of the total ressources from every tile depending on number of workers and other factors.(the system assumes that the workers are evenly distributed over the entire city radius)
I saw at the ctp2 forum, that ctp2 will implement this idea.

Firaxis: Please, please, please, eliminate placing heads to each tile to get ressource. Adopt some kind of system where a city produces a fraction of the total ressources.

It would simplify city management, improve city placement, and most of all, it would IMPROVE THE AI. I still believe that the AI has a really difficult time in civ 2 and smac figuring out where to best place those heads in the city radius.

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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[The Joker]

Check out the Alternative Civs forum, at the bottom of the forums list.

Me and some others are developing a civ game - Guns, Germs and Steel: Tools of Conquest (the game formerly known as OpenCiv3).

Our goal is to take the best from Apolyton and combine it into a game. We are focusing on historical accuracy and a killer gameplay. We are changing all the basic features from Civ2 (like population and economy). One of our features is a real population - so no more heads - and a population on every tile. This means that we are removing a lot of the tedious city management. We are also trying to implement the rise and fall of great powers, a recruitment system and an advanced trade and economy model.

We are still in the early stages of development, so nearly all aspects of the game are changeable. You could post your population/city model in our forum. I am sure it includes features we can use!

Anyone is welcome to participate. If you just have one idea you would like us to know about just post it in our forum (currently the alternative civs forum). If you want to spend more energy on the project it would be even better. Everybody are welcome, no matter how much or how little they want to contribute.

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"It is only when we have lost everything
that we are free to do anything."
- Fight Club

[UltraSonix]

quote: ...a city automatically produce a fraction of the total ressources from every tile depending on number of workers and other factors...

But what happens then if you want to city to go overdrive into minerals (cause you need units fast or something)? This CTP2 system seems to suggest that the player'll have no control over this aspect, or it could be just that I misinterpreted the idea.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[Adm.Naismith]

Ultrasonix, AFAIK you still have special workers to chose from (as entertainer/scientist/taxmen in Civ2),
e.g farmers that increase food production. Look at the CTP2 city management screenshots.

You must manage how many workers are "general purpose" (no placement, they use available resources on city - dynamic - radius), and how many are specialist (still no placement, they simply are way to focus your production effort, as you ask for.

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[Shadowstrike]

Maybe the Diplomat's system might work. Cacluate the total amount of resources available in the city radius, then divide that by the number of citizens you have. It would even create a realistic "spread out" population.

[Shadowstrike]

Double Post. My apologies.

[This message has been edited by Shadowstrike (edited September 11, 2000).]

[UltraSonix]

Thanks Admiral - that means for the system to work then, extra specialists would be needed - since you wouldn't be able to put heads on the mineral-rich squares - so people like miners, lumberjacks, etc would be needed.

(But I was just wondering, if special workers are available, then doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of "no-heads" - oh well... )

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[Adm.Naismith]

UltraSonix, according to the sreenshot I've found on this review (please check it for better explanation) we'll only have

entertainers (more happyness)
farmers (more food)
laborers (more mineral/production)
merchants (more trade/money)
scientists (more research)

IMHO, this will be less micromgmt, because you don't have the need to redistribute "heads" when your settler/engineer improve a city tile.
You still can specialize a city with special workers, deduced from city workforce, but without the need for looking for the best special tiles: AI will have a better life too, with less choices to take.

You must take in account also that:
- city radius increase with city size growth (from two to four square of radius around the city, I suppose it means from 9 to 45 squares area!),
- a "first come, only user" rule is added to cope with cities overlapping (first city owning a square will keep it).

Apparently you'll have less needs to look at every growning city, at least until they don't start to overlap badly. But, of course, I'll wait for the real game review to understand if this model will be any help

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant
[This message has been edited by Adm.Naismith (edited September 12, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Adm.Naismith (edited September 12, 2000).]

[UltraSonix]

For those who are too slack to look up the Admiral's link above, here's the relevant quote from the preview on CTP2:

quote: On the city management screen, you no longer place workers around a city on the resource squares. Instead, a city has an area of influence that is automatically harvested. As a city grows, its area of influence grows until it eventually reaches four squares in every direction. "What you end up having is a patchwork of cities with different sizes and shapes of influence," Davis says. "It starts to look a real collection of different cities and villages and municipalities that grow organically much the way real cities do, but they're confined by one another." You can tweak a city's production by assigning specialists: farmers, entertainers, laborers, merchants, and scientists.

I'm still a little skeptical about the no-heads-on-tiles idea (it just wouldn't be Civ), but I definitely think that the expanding city radius concept is a must.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...