The pitfalls of expanding city-areas in Civ-3

[Ralf]

This thread is about the pitfalls of over-powerful terraforming in general, together with the idea of gradual expanding to enormous 69-tile city-areas (CTP-2 style), in Civ-3.

But first; lets start from the very beginning, with some comparing tbs-game city-area history (no, NOT mathematical ICS-formulas - rest assured. Im taking this one from an different angle):

In Civ-2 you had a fixed 21-square city area + some early transform terrain-type capabilities (basically plant/chop down forrest to begin with).
Because of those attractive special resource-spots were spaced out the way they where, it was a constant challenge trying to simultaneously have as much of them as possible under any city-influence - but, at the same time avoid too much neighbor area-overlapping.
You have to prioritize fertile enough overal city-areas, and - not to forget: prioritize that all important central city-square. Without that fertile central city-square, it was impossible to support a land-improving settler and grow the overal city-population at the same time - at least early on.

Finally, because the city-area was fixed and limited to 21 squares, it really mattered if too many non- or less productive squares was within the city-area. Sure you could always transform, but only in later stages, and only if you where prepared to let it take some time.

Above was good, because it forced the player (at least the fun-having non-ICS´er) to PUZZLE - to make benefit/trade-off choices on where to found his cities. Later the player got more powerful transform terrain-type capabilities, and that was nice (although i never liked the unrealisticly powerfull one: transforming to/from mountains. Creating and level out huge mountains should simply be impossible - period).

Time went on and we got SMAC. This game basically gave the player the same nice base-area puzzle-challenge as Civ-2, with one questionable addition: terraforming.
I never liked it, because the puzzle-effect was somewhat diminished. You no longer was forced to "make the best of the existing land-areas". Thankfully, this feature was editable/turn-off able, however.

Also, thanks to the fact that borders never extended out from land and that fertile oceans-squares and ocean-recources was just as uniformly and evenly available, as on land (at least special resources) one could found ocean-bases on huge areas in relatively uniform looking patterns.
On land these uniform patterns was often discontinued because of irregular coastlines, unhabitable squares and the existing landareas. The ocean had lots of inhabitale squares, but still:
because of the huge one ocean-connected uniform look, the placement of those ocean cities was much less of a puzzle-challenge, and less nice to look at.

The solution to the uniform ocean-base look, could be that the player is restricted to build ONLY on underwater "islands" (= chunks of special underwater land-squares equivalences). This way you reintroduces those discontinued patterns because of irregular underwater "coastlines" again. Just as on land islands.

Firaxis: if you ever thinking on expanding the main-game to involve futuristic ocean-cities in Civ-3, then please think hard about not "wash out" the puzzle city-area challenge, by add above or similar idea.

And now (at last) we come to the expanding city-area feature, and the pitfalls of implementing the same idea in Civ-3 - alá CTP-2:

On the surface this idea about an gradually expanding city-area seems really nice. However, because of this concept, the player only have to find a relatively fertile central city-square + and a few reasonably productive and fertile squares in the (to begin with) inner 8-square circle.

After that, the expanding city-area (in CTP-2; up to 5 circle-layers = 69 squares), you can easily "swallow up" the country-side, gradually. You dont have to cover any special resources-squares to begin with - these you can add automatically in later stages, if you just found your city near those enough.
Also, because of this concept, it doesnt matter much if some (maybe half, or in some cases even 60-70%) squares is non-productive. You still have and awful lot of squares to feed/produce on. An example: 69 squares - 70% still means a whopping 21 good squares left.
Now, admittedly - i dont know if its possible to expand to the 5:th max layer in CTP-2 on only 30% of the squares available. Anyway, you have plenty of time to terraform those non-productive squares as well.
According to the screenshots it seems pretty easy to build really huge cities on relatively few developed tiles.

Anyway, this thread is NOT about CTP-2. What i want to discuss the pros and cons of a similar solution IN CIV-3.

What do i think?

Frankly, i dont know if i like this concept that much. Theres no challenge in trying to puzzle those fixed easy-to-overview city-areas anymore. Also, it doesnt matter much where you place your cities - no dealing with important benefits/trade-offs squares anymore.

Three times as many city-area squares means that each indevidual city-square gradually become much less important in the overal picture, then in Civ-2/SMAC. Is that a good thing?

Now, some people dont like micro-managing, and thats perfectly fine. But wouldnt it be a better solution to try to add more effective city-mayors, instead of adding this expanding city-area challenge-inflationary concept to Civ-3 also?

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited November 28, 2000).]

[The diplomat]

I was thinking of starting a tread on this very topic. So, I am glad that you did.
You make good points. I will just add my 2 cents. I think that the original reason why ctp2 implemented expanding city radius was to make bigger cities better than smaller ones in an attempt to combat ICS. I believe that there are other ways to make bigger cities better than small cities. For one, make the rate of production more dependant on quantity of population rather than on quantity of ressources, and that should do the trick. Big cities will have larger populations and will therefore build things faster than smaller cities. Another issue that I would raise with expanding city radiuses is that it fuels city growth instead of limiting it. In civ2, the city radius is constant, so the maximum amount of ressources a city will get is constant. A city will grow until it reaches that amount then it will stop. In ctp2, a city will automatically grow until it is huge. As the city grows, the city radius suddenly gets bigger which increases the total amount of ressources so the city will grow even more at which point the city radius will expand again, helping growth again, etc, until the city is huge. So, all cities will get to pretty big population sizes no matter what, if the terrain is just half decent. The only question is how long will it take.

So, I don't think that civ3 should have expanding city radiuses. There are other ways to fight ICS and make the city model better overall. In an email, Firaxis hinted that they had a solution to ICS. I can't wait to see what creative solution they came up with.

[Tiberius]

quote: For one, make the rate of production more dependant on quantity of population rather than on quantity of ressources, and that should do the trick.

That's a good idea. I think this could be expanded by making trade more important and giving great trade bonuses for big cities. The advantages of great cities should be bigger than disadvantages.

I'm not against expending city radius (it's realistic and make cities more interesting and dynamic), but 5 layers are way to much; 3 would be enough.

[UltraSonix]

quote: In an email, Firaxis hinted that they had a solution to ICS

I seem to recall that they explicitly stated that they thought they had killed off ICS.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards... Despite any stupid advertisments you may see to the contrary... (And no, koalas don't usually speak!)

[airdrik]

Here's an Idea: instead of expanding the city radius by a whole circle every x population sizes, you expand it by one every 2-3 population sizes. You could even start with the radius of the city being a mear 5-10 squares, then after a while it would expand, you could choose which squares it expanded into, or let the computer decide (you have 1-2 rounds to decide before it became perminant). The new squares would have to be adjacent to the old ones. That way you have the advantages of expanding cities without having them expanding into 69 square monstrosities. Add that to the increasing production/trade(/food) and you have all your larger cities engulfing any smaller cities you have.

Another Idea: if two cities (in the same civ) are close enough together, and they have enough adjacent squares, you could choose to have them merge. If they were like this for too long (10-15 turns) then they would merge automatically. No more ICS because all your cities would merge with each other into one big super city. You could have one production center for every 15-25 squares. If an enemy invaded they would have to take it either one square at a time, or if they took a production center then they would take that entire secter.

Yet Another Idea: forget cities altogether and just have one expanding civ. You get one production center for every 15-25 squares. You could have settlers start new areas that aren't adjacent to your civ, but otherwise, expansion would be automatic. Each square would have it's own pop as well as the resources (rather than sheilds, the things like wood, iron, etc. all in one bundle) and food (trade would depend on the pop in a production center), and would only be able to expand depending on the food in that square. The amount of production produced would depend on the pop in all the squares in a production center's 'secter'. The amount of stuff supported by that center would depend on the amount of resources in it's secter.

More realism, I think, since in real life you have a lot of little viliages spread out across the civ which could not be implemented with the prev. city plan. Govs would affect the percent of resources/production that reaches a production center. Advances would increase the amount of resources that are extracted as well as the food produced.

Comments? Suggestions? Are my ideas too radical?
(By the way, I thought each of these Ideas up as I was typing, pretty good for on the spot thinking )

[jbs]

I like the idea of an expanding city radius. I dislike CTP2's implementation of averaging city tiles. keep the ability to select the tiles, but expand the radius. With a small city, this restricts you to tiles closer to the center (more realistic) instead of picking that best tile in the corner. Than as the city grows the number of possible tiles expands. This would let you grow very large cities (also realistic). I would not recomend the method of averaging the city tiles like in CTP2.

[The diplomat]

Well, I like the "no worker on tile" system of ctp2!! That is not the problem. Remember they are not averaging the city radius, they are simply taking a % of the total. The problem is that if you combine both systems (ie "no workers on tile" + expanding city radius") then you create a problem because the efficiency of the city actually fluctuates up and down. Every time the radius expands, the efficiency suddenly drops then has to gradually climb up again until the city radius expands agian at which point the efficiency drops again etc...

The reasons why I believe that the "no worker on tiles" is such a great innovation is because it reduces micromanagement and improves the AI. It is also more realistic since it represents rural population spread out around your city.

The worst thing to do would be to combine the "expanding city radius" with the old fashioned way of placing workers on tiles. Because the AI would have to cope with even more possible combinations of worker placement. And the player would have to worry even more about whether the right tiles are being worked. The player would have to follow a particular city when it expands so that he/she can readjust worker placement. Remember that everytime a city radius expands, you have to completely reevaluate what tile each worker should be on.

If anything I would suggest combining "no worker on tiles" with a CONSTANT city radius (like in civ2). The constant city radius will make the city model more stable. In addition, the model would have less micromanagement since you would not need to place workers on each tile. Here is how it might work:

I found a city. It has its traditional 21 tile city radius. Each worker would produce x% of total ressources (ressources of all tiles added up). 2 workers produce 2*x%. 3 workers produce 3*x% etc. At a certain point, you would eventually produce 100% of total ressources. Additional workers would automatically become specialists. In addition, tech and SE would improve overall efficiency by slightly increasing the value of x so that you would reach 100% with fewer workers allowing more specialists. This would accurately reflect how with technology we now produce the same amount of ressources (like food) with a lot fewer people). Tile improvements would improve efficiency just for specific ressources. So, with farms you might get a city that produces 10% of total "shields" but 15% of total "food". This would make tile improvements much more important than they are in ctp2. As well, notice that the original tile improvements would still play a huge part. The original total amount of ressources would not change. 10% of 100 is 10 but 20% of 5 is 1. Notice that if a city did not have much of a ressource to begin with, increasing the percentage would not do as much compared to a city that has a lot of the resource. The conclusion is that this model favors good city placement. You would want to find good spots where there are lots of ressources to begin with. A small city in a great spot might actually produce more than a huge city in a very poor location. (as seen from my example). So, this model favors good placement which I believe is what this thread was all about from the begining.
[This message has been edited by The diplomat (edited November 29, 2000).]

[Ralf]

THE DIPLOMAT:

Nice tread with good points. However, dont forget how Firaxis should implement quoted idea with the anti-BAB feature (Bigger Always Better), making small empires more attractive in some areas, then their huge empire counterparts. Anti-BAB could mean that, the fewer cities an empire has, the easier you can grow really HUGE cities, with out any happiness-problems.

Quote: "For one, make the rate of production more dependant on quantity of population rather than on quantity of ressources, and that should do the trick".

------------------------------------ edited:
Further down this thread i revoke my enthusiasm for Diplomats and Tiberius ideas, however.
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TIBERIUS:

I agree that the problems with the expanding city-area idea would be somewhat less excessive with only three layers, instead of five. But would that really cure ANY of mine or Diplomats objections?

Also, dont forget that this idea introduces some rather complex mathematical city-tile formulas, that isnt always that clear and obvious to understand and explain. Check out below thread, there one guy tries to sort thing out, while another guy five posts further down finally gets it right, with a lengthy read-a-couple-of-times explanation + a rolleyes-smiley (meaning; dont you see how simple it is).

Well, im not saying its non-understandable - what im saying is: does it really HAVE to be this way? All i wanted was some immediately understandable city-tile feedback alá Civ-2/Smac city/base-screen.

Is it an "intuitive" solution, or what? http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum35/HTML/000573.html?7

The only ones who enjoys this model seems to be those who primarily are interested in moving around units inside and outside there huge 40-60+ cities-sleeze empires.
Those who enjoys nurturing their smaller carefully developed 15-30+ cities empires, finds that most of the fun direct-control fine-tweaking and puzzle-challenges of the tile and city-placement have been "streamlined" away in CTP-2.
Now, admittedly, some likes that way - but is it commercially smart not trying to do everything to make Civ-3 enjoyable whatever playing-style?

Secondly, it doesnt seems to do what it was originally suppose to do either: killing ICS.
Check the following "can of worms" thread, there is member of the CTP-2 team that repeatedly tries to convince some math-crunching civer´s that ICS now finally is dead. The Activision-guy gives up answering after a while:
http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum35/HTML/000313.html?45

Finally some words about the argument that gradually expanding city-areas makes these cities "more interesting and dynamic".

Is that true? Take a look at some of the CTP-2 in-game map-screenshots. Because of reasons that have already explained, you are not forced to nurture these city-areas that much anymore, and you dont have to bother with how and where to place your cities.
You are bound to get pretty huge cities anyway. As Diplomat says: "The only question is how long it will take".

Now, in what ways is that "more interesting and dynamic"?

Also: The old fixed 21-square model actually HAD a built-in gradual expansion-effect. You could only place workers on more and more tiles gradually. Your city had to grow first, before you could take possesion of any extra squares.
The only principal difference between the two models is that with the fixed 21-square model you can choose freely between the 20 surrounding tiles, directly from the start, while in the "expansion city-area" model the player are lead-guided by a (at least initially) rather coinstraining 8-tile limit.

Above 8-tile constraint-factor is then gradually overtaken by the third, fourth and fifth layers, that makes each single tile less, and less meaningful to the overal picture.
One could argue that the constraint-factor gets loosen up temporarily by the second area-layer - just to be gradually overtaken by the washed out/diluted-factor when to many to digest city-tiles comes under the city-influence.

Again; in what ways is that "more interesting and dynamic"?

By the way; what does the word "dynamic" actually mean, when talking about city-areas? Should fast city-growth be a real challenge, or just some easy-going self-evident process?
Shouldnt "dynamic" mean that your cities can actually SHRINK, if the player is too sloppy and careless? Does the "expansion city-area" model give you that type of dynamics? Well, does it?

Diplomat quote:

"As the city grows, the city radius suddenly gets bigger which increases the total amount of ressources so the city will grow even more at which point the city radius will expand again, helping growth again, etc, until the city is huge".

The final nail in the coffin is that the old 21-square model has been tried and tested in miljons of play-testing hours, and Firaxis know exactly what they gonna get by re-using this concept.

A clever saying: If its not broken, dont fix it.
Now, by comparison; check out the CTP-2 "can-of-worms" thread above.

The problem is that the whole city-area concept is that is such a central and totally intergrated part of TBS Civ-gaming. Make a mistake with an easy addon-feature like SMAC terraforming - no big deal: those who dont like it can exclude it. Make a game-structural design-mistake with the city-area concept? Then it suddenly spells BIG mistake.


AIRDRIK:

You have some interesting ideas, but also remember:

What is simple for the human player to see and take advantage of on the map, is not necessarilly simple and easy to take advantage of for the AI.
AI-programmers works to a large degree in a black box here: they cannot instruct the AI to "overview" and "experience" the map in real time, the same way the human player can. Everything have to be meticulously calculated - and thats easy on a 8x8 two tile-types chessboard. But, on a huge-sized, irregular and complex Civ-3 map? Theres just too many variables here to take into account for.
I say; dont overload the AI with this feature on top of everything else. Follow the KISS-rule (keep it simple stupid).

Stick with the known 21-square solution, and try to improve on that instead. Ultimately however its up to Firaxis to decide.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited December 03, 2000).]

[Tiberius]

It's my mistake that I didn't explain better (more detailed) what's my opinion about expanding city radius.

First of all, starting with only 8+1 tiles for small cities restrict players to pick the best tile in a distant corner, fact that seems realistic and usefull to me. Realistic because villagers usually don't cross ocean tiles or mountains to collect food and usefull because if you want that distant tile, you must help the city to grow. Expanding to the 21 square radius is logical and doesn't need further explanations. I added the 3d circle because I'd like to see bigger cities in Civ3, and this could be a small step to prevent ICS. Your and Diplomat's objections are valid. I do not have an answer, but I still like the expanding idea, at least from 1 to 2 circles, maybe 3 (I said maybe).
I said "interesting and dynamic" because I'm a micromanager and I do care about my cities; I like to watch them growing and developing (btw, please Firaxis, give us a decent CityView!). (well, growing too much is not good either, I admit it). Maybe there should be an option to let a city grow beyond the 2nd circle only if you appoint it as a region capitol or something.

Next, about the "no worker on tile" system of ctp2: I think it's perfect for the AI, because this way the he can do what he knows the best: calculate; it's much harder for an AI to make decisions regarding "resource tiles puzzeling". I don't want to see though the same system for human players: I want to have the possibility to decide what resources the city must gather. For non-micromanagers, there should be an option to chose automatic-resource-gathering.

I'd like to expand a little Diplomat's idea about population dependant production: make all buildings in a city population dependant! What do I mean? First of all, in the Civ2 system, you can build in a 3 or 4 size city all the CIs that are available. That's stupid! Did you ever see a small town with university, stock exchange, nuclear plant, and all the other CIs ?! Why only resource gathering is linked to the city size and resource processing (goods production) or other activities not ???

Instead, I imagine the following system:
A part of your pop will work on the fields (tiles). Let's say 0.6 pop/tile in the beginning, or even more. Later, with certain scientific discoveries (like railroad, industrialization, refrigeration, and whatever else) this number will be lower (maybe 0.1 in modern ages).
The remaining pop will work in the city. Each building needs a certain amount of pop in order to function. (for ex. a marketplace 0.2; a bank 0.5; and so on)

A short example:
Let's say your city's pop is 5. The pop of your city will be distributed this way:
5x0.6=3 pop working on city surrounding tiles
granary+marketplace+school+factory = 0.1+0.2+0.2+1= 1.5 pop
unemployed=5-3-1.5=0.5
Next you can chose: build a CI that needs 0.5 working pop or wait until the city grows and you will have more workers.
Of course, those who are unemployed will be unhappy, but that's why you give them luxury, right?
Unhappiness will be caused by city size + unemployed + war discontent.

I know, the first objections will be: no, no, too much micromanagement. But the only thing that you, as a player should do is to take care to not build too many CIs in small cities! And a smart mayor can be a sollution for non-micromanagers.

I guess you got the main idea.
(Diplomat, didn't we discuss something similar (more or less)in the recent past??)
[This message has been edited by Tiberius (edited November 30, 2000).]

[Ferdi]

I think that the city radius as it is implemented in civ2 and ctp2 should be killed and replaced by something better which gives us more fun.
Currently, the city radius defines an area (fixed in civ2 and variable in ctp2) from which the city takes its ressources. This concept is at first wrong (my opinion) and I'd prefer a new one. Here is a first draft of what it could be.

In real life the city radius IS THE CITY ITSELF which contains houses, servicies (bank, supermarket, parks, ...) and industries that produce manufactured goods or simply transform raw materials. This urbanized area is very small when the city is founded but grows only with the number of buildings constructed as factories, banks, but also houses for your people (buildings can be skyscrapers in modern times to save room). The shape of the city is modeled by neighbouring terrains and its your job (when there is no more space in the current tiles) to select the next adjacent tile (only plains and grassland) when you want to build something new in your city. Note for example that it might not be allowed to expand your city beyond a river if you don't have the bridge building technology. And the population size would be limited due to the lack of room for new buildings or if ressources are too expensive to collect (too far from the city).

To build mines and farms you need to select a tile anywhere on the map (in your borders of course) that can support a mine or a farm AND people who will work there to produce food or iron/wood/... . The production of these mines and farms needs to be transported to your city. This transport costs money and couldn't be affordable if mines and farms are too far from your city. In ancient times it would have been impossible without the wheel or without a cheaper means of transport.

Farms and mines can only be performed in NON urbanized area! So if you need to enlarge your city because you need more room for your population or to create a big industrial center then you might lose some good grasslands from where you were producing food.

With this system the city radius a la civ2 and ctp2 disappear and is replaced by a more realistic one.

[Tiberius]

I don't agree with you, Ferdi.

Cities and villages always had a zone of influence, an area surrounding (more or less) the city or the village. People from villages/cities gathered their resources from that zone of influence. Maybe in modern times times it's not quite so, because industrial cities can buy the goods from agricultural centers (that's the food caravan in Civ2, I guess), but the model is realistic and historically true.

quote: To build mines and farms you need to select a tile anywhere on the map

Are you saying that a village, placed near the ocean will gather food from a 10-tiles-far farm instead of fishing? I don't think so.

[Ferdi]

In fact in my system the influence zone always exists but depends on the economic and technologic power of the city. A small city with a weak economy and without any means of transport won't be able to work tiles other than the surrounding ones.
I'll tell you more later.

[The diplomat]

Yes, Tiberius, we did talk about this concept a while back. I am glad that you brought it up. I remember suggesting that certain CI's should require a small amount of pop, to prevent small cities from building everything. It would encourage players to build big cities since the more pop, the more city improvements you would be able to support. So, I do agree with your idea. I don't know about your actual numbers. They look ok but I am not sure. The nitty gritty numbers are not that important. I do agree with your overall concept.
We do have to be careful about micromanagement. You made a good point about that. If the pop were only substracted from the workforce when the city improvement were finished, then the player would just need to determine whether or not the city has not enough pop to build an extra city improvement. So, the player could look at a city and say:"I don't want to build that city improvement just yet, I want more workers." or "the city is size 8, sure, I can build that city improvements A,B,C, I'll have enough workers left over."
Here is a possible solution: as soon as you got a citizen who only produced surplus ressources, that citizen would automatically become "unemployed". This wouls signal the player that the city has enough pop to build a city improvement. The player could go ahead and build a city improvement which would automatically convert the "unemployed" head into a "specialist" (for lack of a better term) or the player could manually convert the "unemployed" back into a worker to get that surplus.

Another idea would be instead of using pop for city improvements, to use "shields" just like support. This would limit the number of city improvements a city could build at a single time just like support limits the number of units.

An important point that I made when we last discussed this, that I want to repeat here is that not all city improvements should require pop. For example, barracks, aqueduct, granary would not require population to support. But for example, banks, university would require pop support. This is important because it would alow small cities to build the basic city improvements, just not the advanced ones.

A good aspect about this idea of "pop support for city improvements" is that it forces the player to make a decision as to what city improvement to build. The player would have to make a choice because a city could not have everything right away. This adds more strategy. Do I build a bank or a university? Or do I wait until the city can have both?
After all, civ is about strategy and making tough decisions.

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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[The diplomat]

I just came up with another new idea:

What if a city improvement were always built in 1 turn. Hear me out. A city improvement would cost SHIELD and POP SUPPORT so it would still cost to build. On the city screen, if I see a "unemployed" head, I could convert it back into a worker or I could build a city improvement. I would just select a city improvement, click the confirm button, and the "unemployed" would convert into the appropriate "specialist" for that CI. Like I said, ALL city improvements would require SHIELD support but some would require both SHIELD and POP SUPPORT.

Wonders would still be built the old fashioned way over several turns.

1)This would properly reflect how wonders are huge projects compared with city improvements.

2)It would reflect how a turn is 1 year at the end of the game, a lot more in the beginning. Does it make sense to take 20 years just to build a granary?

3)AI mayors could become "smart" because their task would be so very simple. If you turned the mayor on, you would give the AI mayor a specific agenda (econ, military, science etc). All the AI mayor would do is wait until a city got a "unemployed" head, and then create a city improvement but only those belonging to its agenda. (For example, a mayor with the ECONOMY agenda would only build ECONOMIC city improvements).
So, the AI mayor would only be doing the lowly micromanagement tasks if the player so choosed. The AI would not make any real decisions and therefore it could not mess up a city. It would just be doing the repetative task for the player if the player did not want to do it. Even with the AI mayor ON, the player would control every other aspect of the city, since the AI is only doing that one task. AI mayor could of cource be turned ON or OFF at any time. Players who want to micromanage everything would still be able.



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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[Ralf]

DIPLOMAT AND TIBERIUS:

I have read your and Tiberius posts a couple of times, and i think must redraw some of my early entusiasm. I guess i am some kind of traditionalist here, but i really think Firaxis shall pursue with a tweaked, improved version of the known "place workers on 20 surrounding squares" concept, and consequently drop the public-works idea. At least if its meant to be a total replacement solution.
What the programmers uses for strategies "below the interface" however - on an programming code-level - in order to make it easier for the AI-civs to nurture those city-areas, is of course a different thing. Frankly, i dont care what helping shortcuts they use - as long as the city-area improvements is reasonably equal with advanced players on higher levels.

Why no principal change? Because the Civ-2/SMAC model is so immediately feedback-friendly and instantly overviewable from the players point of view. Sure it requires some micro-managing, but only when the city grows a population-point, or some foreign unit occupied any used city-sguares. And this was ONLY necessary id you didnt trusted the automatic new/redirected tile-choices the AI made for you (which priorities can, and should be fully txt-file tweakable in Civ-3, by the way).
Was that really so hard and troublesome to do? Firaxis also introduced those city-mayors in SMAC already - im sure they are planning the same for Civ-3. So for those who didnt like to micromanage those cities and city areas - whats the problem?

Also, i think both yours and Tiberius calculation-examples suffers the same lengthy read-a-couple-of-times mathematical hard-to-digest problems, as in my critized example from the CTP-2 post. Read and compare - i can see before my inner eyes that the same "dont understand"-posts is going to reappear again if Firaxis decides to implement these ideas:
http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum35/HTML/000573.html?7

As i commented in my previous post; im not saying its non-understandable - what im saying is: does it really HAVE to be this way?

What i fear is going to get lost, is one 100% fundamental quality that did so much (at least in my eyes) for gameplay, replayability and the overal fun of nurturing an gradually growing empire in Civ-2. And that was:

The exact and immidiately understandable relationship between what the player did in terms of city- and tile-improvement input, and what the player recieved in terms of changed city-screen output.

Please guys, read above a couple of times, because i really think this is a crucial point, in terms of recreating that elusive Civ-2 MAGIC.

If i build any city-improvement or any tile-improvement i want the output-change to be directly and intuitively understandable in a graphic foods, shields, coins, lightbulbs, happy-faces, [any additions] -format. I dont want numbers.
A marketplace gives a clear and easy to understand 50% coin-increase, minus the greyed out corruption-coins. An irrigation gives an 50% food-increase (i dont remember exactly) from that particular square. This is what i mean: 25%, 50%, 100%, 200% - to this single product - easy to grasp benefit-factors!

What i DONT want is a game that forces the player to understand some multi/complex-related, multi-benefiting, percentage/fractions-numbered AND/OR/ELSE boolean mathematical god-damn formula. Sorry

I realise that the programmers deals with formulas, but for the love of God: keep them out of sight, and away from the players. From the players viewpoint, everything should be very easy-related and very intuitive - all in a nice and good KISS (Keep-It-Simple-Stupid) Civ-2 gameplay tradition.

Heres some thougts that i copied from a guy named Daniel Ban/ Deja.com:

"Sid wrote an afterword with some discussion of his design philosophy. What I remember is that Sid wrote that the hardest part of designing Civ was not in adding features but in keeping them out. Sid made the point that each and every feature added to a game has a cost, not just in developer time/effort but a GAMEPLAY cost.
Each feature will require the player to think about that feature. It may require clicking or micromanagement. It may require screen space or game time. Every time a designer adds a feature, the game gets larger, more crowded and more complicated. So Sid refused to add features that, although they sounded neato, would be overburden the game with details. I have always thought of the idea that adding features must be balanced against overloading game detail as "Sid Meier's Rule"."


About the "this makes it more realistic" arguments:

FIRST PRIORITY: What WORKS best in practice? Is it EASY to grasp? What actually ADDS something to gameplay?
Second priority: Is it realistic and compatible with real life?

Unwritten game-developing acronym-rule (well, at least it should be):
CIRARIC = Computergames isnt real-life, and real-life isnt computergames.

An example: In action-games like Quake and Half-life the developers dont even try to imitate exact human behaviour in order to pick up a weapon. The player simply runs over the ammo/weapon that lies on the floor. He hears a pick-up confirmation sound - but thats about it.
By comparison; the developers of a action-game called Trespasser (may it rest in peace) the player had to "physically" navigate an arm/hand in order to grab (and aim) a weapon.
The result was directly contra-productive in terms of both effectiveness and real-life realism. That game actually felt LESS realistic by this approach.

Sense moral: In order to imitate reality (also in games like Ctp2/Civ3), its often more effective to work with pre-understood assumptions, then trying to pedantically translate each and every real-life aspect physically on to the world-map or 3D game-screen.

Now, dont missunderstand me: Realism i great - but only as a second priority.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited November 30, 2000).]