Get rid of the 21 squares...?

[Adm.Naismith]

Youngsun, you are writing about a concept I mostly support

I never played Imperialism, so I have no hints about how it work, still I'm not sure the infrastructure (meaning roads or railiroads) will be the key to solve ICS problem. Roads are already useful to faster units movement, so most of players already build them. If you put a road/r.r. path between countries as a plus point to make a trade pact (mine suggestion on other post), it could add something, still not enough.

I agree about resources that must be on regional level, but I'm not sure to like some SMAC end games where a player can have hundreds od supply units sucking resources out of planet side by side as a carpet

Your proposed interface about drilling down from province to cities is somewhat crude and unefficient, but that's not the point.

Province borders can have different radius, taking in the misure the faster unit movement available, the natural borders (mountains, rivers), the borders pacts between civs etc.

Oh, I must add some other apolytoner suggested we must bring into the equation the technology age, to favour early easy development of Civ but keeping the support on a city level until the concept of whole nation (and the state of transports, politics and so on) let the support model switch to a more advanced (national) one.

On a different subject, Adm.Naismith doesn't stand for Adam, but for admiral Naismith, a fiction (and very smart ) main character of some science fiction books written by Lois McMaster Bujold. Good, funny reading, IMO.

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Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant

[Dienstag]

Youngsun-
Your last post had too many good ideas to respond to, but I like the idea of the player managing things on a provincial level, with numerous cities per province. It needs to be expanded upon, of course, but the idea as a whole is great.

To try to clarify my last post, I was suggesting that the computer know exactly how many people lived in each square (not 3 "heads", but 36,265 people), and what they are doing. It would need this info to calculate population change, production, trade, etc... The player need not know all this (especially if he doesn't want to), and micromanagement wouldn't even be an option unless you're in a communist government or something; otherwise it would be run by some hopefully _good_ AI that would take things like SE into account. That way, the people generally do what's best for them, and your job is to make them think they want to do what you want them to do. I don't really know how you'll do that yet. At any rate, the main idea is that population, production, trade, etc..., be handled on a square by square basis BY THE COMPUTER, independant of whether there's a city there or not, it's more realistic that way.

I totally agree that infrastructure is really important. Is there more to your idea than just roads and railroads?

Adm.Naismith-
Good ideas with the natural borders and the technology effects on management. Also, when I finish reading the latest Robert Jordan book, I might check out L. M. Bujold. Thanks for the tip.

Dienstag
[This message has been edited by Dienstag (edited March 03, 2000).]

[Youngsun]

Ehila Admiral!(This time I got your name right)

About the infra.

Road in CivII is used for only improving movement rate of units(mil units & other misc. units) CivII never had the concept of dealing the transportation of goods and resources with infra like road or canal.

Before Industrialisation, many civs used animal-drawn carts or ships for transportation of goods and resources. How many carts or ships you own will decide the T. capacity.

In Imperialism, locomotives and sea transports are treated as the same but I wanna see these got splited into two different categories(ground and water transportation)Thus sea-borne civs have to build more ships whereas continental civs will spent much time to build more carts.
These ships and carts things are not gonna be units on the map but will be represented by T.capacity.

Let me make an asumption here(with hypothetical scenario).

animal-drawn cart(add 1 point on T.capacity)
Ancient Ship(add 4 points)
Locomotive(add 8 points)
Industrial age Ship(add 20 points)
Modern train(add 16 points)
Modern truck(add 6 points)
Container truck(add 8 points)
Container ship(add 80 points)
Air cargo(add 12 points)
etc.(cart or trcuk represent groups of carts or trucks)

CivA(30 square owned)
City:1 Farms:4 Mines:1

Cities represent urban pop of the civ
Farms represent rural pop of the civ
Mines represent rural pop of the civ

CityA(pop size:8 production capacity:30 trade capacity:50)-also capital city
FarmA(pop size:2 food production:6)surplus:4
FarmB(pop size:3 food production:8)surplus:5
FarmC(pop size:1 food production:3)surplus:2
FarmD(pop size:2 food production:4)surplus:2
MineA(pop size:3 resource gathering:15)
Total pop.19 urban pop.8 rural pop.11

Fortunately, CityA is connected by river(natural infra)with FarmA,B and D so the ruler has decided to build 4 ships which has total 16 water T. capacity. To make more efficient use of the T.capacity the ruler wants to build canal to get a access to FarmC. After the construction of the canal all 13 food points will be carried to the capital by using water T.capacity.(16-13=3)

MineA has no access to river or canal(surrounded by hills)but the ruler was wise enough to build road to the mineA long time ago.(carts need road) Transportation minister reports civA has only 10 carts on its stock(10 ground T. capacity) To match the demand, 10 more carts are ordered to be built. Now CivA can get all 15 resource points from its mine.(20-15=5)

Since Farms are self sufficient on food supply, only mines and cities are required to import food. CityA will consume 8 food points then 3 food points of remaining 5 will be sent MineA to feed this minig town. 5 remaining ground T.capacity will be used(5-3=2)to carry the foods.
The remaining 2 food points will be stored.

CityA received 15 resource points and it has
30 prodcution capacity. Trade minister reports CivA has 50 resource points in its stock which was imported from neighbouring CivB 2 turns ago. CityA is currently building a military unit which cost 150 prodcution points and only 20 more points are required to complete the production. The ruler decides to spent 5 resource points from its stock with 15 points from MineA.

The ruler wants to have more cities so he asks his domestic advisor which site really suits to build another city. The advisor suggest there is no good site for building a city whithin CivA's territory and recommends to build more farms since it has lots of fertile squares.

The ruler gets really pissed off then orders his defense minister to prepare immediate invasion to neighbouring CivC which has many good sites for building cities. The defense minister reports his army is not ready to raise a war against such a strong civ.

Still preocupied with building more cities, the ruler orders to build a city where he likes within its territory. Citizens from CityA will be the primary setters for the new city. The new city is named as CityB. CityB has current population of 1 and is waiting more immigrant groups from other rural areas.

CityB has no access to either river or sea and has no right infra(no road)The ruler was too hasty and he forgot to build road first to boost the growth of the city. And what's worse since the location of CityB is too distant from CivA's capital,not enough royal influence can reach to CityB.

Few turns passed without incidents but finally cityB declared indepence. Influence from CivD which was the closest was suspected but no action was taken due to lack of evidence. CityB got downgraded to farm(neutral) status because all citizens engaged farming activities. The consequence of ignoring the characteristics of its territory was dire and the ruler may not make the same mistake again.

Not all news were that bad for the king. surveyor unit found another resource rich square near MineA. some portion of popualtion rushed into the site for their fortune. Soon the site became mining village then the king set his authority there. MineB is created!
The king orders to build road to connect the MineB to the capital cityA. He will need to build more carts to increase more ground T.capacity. The king has learned valuable lesson that forced migration can have dire consequenses and it is better to let people to decide where to settle.


Another scenario.

CivA has become leading nation during industrial revoultion. Steam engine was discovered by CivA's outstanding research effort.

Many wars have been fought.Alliance with CivB proved to be fruitful and CivC and CivD have become one of CivA's provinces.

CivA indeed is superpower of this region called Europe and has vast area of 3 provinces.

CityA's original territory is now called provinceA and former CivC territory is now provinceB. CivA now has prime minister as a leader and capital has moved to ProvinceB since ProvinceB are the industrial muscle of CivA.

ProvinceB
City:6 Farm:1 Mine:2

All the settlement in ProvinceB are connected by rails so locolotives can be used within ProvinceB with no problem. CivB has been faithful seller of resource to meet all the demand of CivA. But with Industrial revolution, the demand of resources far exceede the supply from CivB and CivA itself.

It's time to acquire some overseas colonies. CivB has already 3 colonies in region named America. CivA had 1 colony in region named Africa but the colony was not very productive in terms of resource richness.

CivA T. capacity
Ground road:150 carts X 1=150 T. capacity
Ground Rail:20 locomotives X 8=160
Water:30 ancient ships X 4 =120
20 industrial age ships X 20=400

Later road can be ugraded to paved or high way which can use trucks as main transport.

Any military unit which use rail as a transport will spent certain amount of T.capacity from locomotives.

For example if one infantry division costs 4 points of T. capacity, moving 2 of them by rail will cost one locomotive point of 8 railed T.capacity.

I made some silly examples while I describing the how the infra would work. The model is still very crude and lots of modification is needed. Any set number I used can be changed or adjusted to make the model more realistic.
I don't know I just wanted make some general points but I guess I made too many unnecessary descriptions.

Hello Dienstag! I found your post just before I post this.
[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited March 04, 2000).]

[Youngsun]

Athenian Empire now has 3 cities and Athens is its capital city. There are 5 villages over its territory.

Either city or village can engage farming and mining activities but a village can not engage any production nor trade activities.

The radius of village and city are the same(only surrounding square=total 9 squares)If village grows more than size4 it becomes city thus the dwellers can engage trade and production activities.

Athenian Empire has only one province right now. The province chart will show what's going on overall in the province with some stats about cities and villages.

VillageA has 3 mines and 3 farms(irrigated sqaure)and as you can see VillageB is the centre of agriculture in the empire(6 farms!)



The provicial chart will provide some sense of what's going on in the province with some stats about cities and villages.



As you can see VillageD and E are not connected by imperial road network so usage of porter will be essential since they can operate without road. But Road still gives the porters some bonus 3move/turn. Foods and resources from VillageA and B will be mostly carried by horse-drawn carts since they can go faster than Porters by using road.

All three cities(Athens,Sparta and Corinth) can get access to the sea and this gives some advantages to this coastal cities due to availability of sea transport(Vast volume of trade can be possible) Units in the T.capacity chart will not be represented on the map(They are too many!)

Athenian empire should modernise its transportation by having more carts and ferries(Hugh dependency on Porters-about half of national T.capacity)If it want to expand further inland, more carts are required or if it pursue to be naval empire with lots of coastal cities, more ferries should be built.

Local TribeA is being assimilated but the dispute between VillageD causes frequent incidents which might trigger a rebellion against the empire whereas TribeB maintains good relationship with the empire due to mutually beneficial trade between the two. Anyway these two tribes are under the protection of Athenian Empire which has been recognised by nearby civs so their assimilation with the empire is just matter of time.

Hordes of northern barbarians crossed the border without an explanation and their motives are clear to the empire. 2 phalanx and 1 heavy cavalry units are immediately deployed but as they(barbarians)come closer it is clear the imperial army is outnumbered. Soon Athens mobilised a reserve force to back up the frontline troops.
Good luck soldiers!



Japan has got most of its territory(only 10 squares)urbanised and densely packed cities merged into two gigantic megalopolis(Tokyo and Osaka) Now the player can control all the cities in Japan by commanding only two megalopolis(reduced micromanagement)

Since Japan has no farms(irrigated square),most of food supply comes from inshore and deep-sea fishery as well as vast amount of import of food from other civs. Japan also has number of pelagic-fishing fleet. Most of the population participate in either manufacturing or service industry.

Note:Most of graphics are from ToT and those of mil units from WarlordIII.

[Sarxis]

A perfect illustration to the whole idea Youngsun.

And who said that ToT was worthless?

btw, I have ToT too :¬D

[Dienstag]

Impressive presentation, Youngsun. That's pretty much what I thought you were going for but this makes it very clear. Now if only we could get these ideas into Civ III...

[tniem]

I like this proposal for getting rid of 21 squares and it would allow the possibility of colonies which would just be villages overseas or away from your nation. I am just not sure how exactly these villages would be formed though. Any thoughts.

[Biddles]

Any idea which takes agricultural and rescource production out of cities is a step in the right direction. If you look back about 4 months you will see a few threads in which people(including me) were advocating villages as a form of permanent supply crawler(much upgraded of course, especially so that it could produce minerals and food at the same time). Using transport points(or capacity, or whatever) is a good way of limiting expansion. If it is made to include an efficiency decrease over distance than this system will work well. If you have 6 villages mining rescources in siberia and your nearest city is constantinople, than it is going to be worth your while to found a city in siberia, or at least closer.


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- Biddles

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[S. Kroeze]

quote: Originally posted by Youngsun on 02-28-2000 03:05 AM I really like the idea of having farms and mines over my territory regardless of city presence.(Imperialism) We do not live in the World which has well distributed cities all over the place and a city has limited radius to support its food and production. City can be a centre of trade,science and production but not generally farming and mining. But all civ-style game has a city can do all the farming and mining. I totally support the idea of abandoning 21 square thing. To do that we need to have an interface which can treat food and raw material nationally not city to city. WE WANNA PLAY SIMCIV NOT SIMCITY. There should be a sense of territory which can tell us "this square belong to CivA and that square belong to CivB" The meeting point of other civ's territory will be the border. During later stage of game we may even claim the water square as our territory. Farms and mines still can be built over our territory for more fertile or resource rich ground. Cities should be built with regard of potential commerce or production. For example, if we can find a site that can link many other civs' communication or trade that will be a great site for a city. It will be great to have large area of fertile or resource rich ground with some places which have no resource at all. Current game's resource seed is too evenly distributed like a net. We need to have uneven distribution of resource seed. This will trigger many territorial war for resource. [This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited February 28, 2000).]

This now forgotten thread is a good example of the many creative and inspired ideas that were developed on the Forum in the beginning of 2000. And the posts of Youngsun are always true gems, with beautiful illustrations or detailed outlines. He also had a quite developed idea about Corporations, but I haven't found the actual thread yet. Where are you, Youngsun?

[Shogun Gunner]

S. Kroeze: Thanks for bringing this thread back up. It was fascinating reading. Certainly some great ideas there.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Nice work, Youngsun!