Solving the problems of trading AND city management

[AzNtoccata]

Although I posted this idea before, it was pretty disorganized so I'll make this more clear:

Some of you:
-hate using settlers to move around and build stuff
-like a more complicated trade system
-like a more complicated city management

Guess what? i can solve all of them with my idea =)

Okay, first of all, everything in civII still exists. That means you still build improvements and stuff like that. The difference is now you "zone" the squares around your cities. That's right, zoning, as in SimCity zoning. It costs no money to zone, but what will be important is HOW you zone. The zones develop by themselves, and can be encouraged to grow faster if you put money into the city.
T
here are a few basic types of zone I'm thinking of

Residential: Allows population to grow, holds population. Can hold more people if on flat land (plain, grassland)

Farms: Produces food from the terrain, thus allowing population to grow and more people to fill houses. A grassland farm will produce more than say...a plains farm.

Mine: Collects the shields from the terrain. Similar to farms.

Factory: "Blends" the people living in residential and the shields from the mines to make "resource points", which are then put into the units, buildings, wonders. I think that a city should have multiple projects and you can set how many resource points per turn is put into it.

Marketplace: Basically "collects" trade from the terrain. It also collects trade from other cities, which I'm going to talk about later.

Research center: Converts the trade into beakers
Entertainment center: Converts trade into the goblets
Banking center: Converts trade into coins
(This can be bad idea, it's COULD be more simple to just use old trade % thing instead of zoning these centers)

Deversity (and realism) in zoning is encouraged because if an enemy occupies a square that is 100% houses, then suddenly your factories have no workers =).

As you research more advances, zones should upgrade. Exp: huts to apartments, workshops to factories to manufacturing centers. This should be done AUTOMATICALLY, but over time. If you put money into city, the change occurs faster.

Not all the factories you have give resource points to your public project. Depending on the government, a large percentage should be private. However, you can set this rate, but different governments have limits. Communism, for example, can set 10% to private but republic only set 60%. The private factories produce trade goods such as iron, oil, furs. All cities have a market price for selling and buying these trade goods. Prices are random, but things such as city proximity to special resources, trade embargos (need black market), and war. The trading should be done AUTOMATICALLY. Caravans, still exist. If you establish a trade route, you can sell more goods to that city and vic versa, thus making you have more trade.
This is simpler than it sounds. All you set is percentage of private factories and building caravans to frequent trading cities.

**Simple, yet realistic, yet complicated**

Did anyone think of a similar idea before?

[Koyaanisqatsi]

quote: Originally posted by AzNtoccata on 01-15-2001 04:47 PM Did anyone think of a similar idea before?

No. For a reason.

You can't take everything out of the player's control. If the player is just left running a simulation, then what is the fun in that? Yes, I know, the Sim- series has made a lot of money doing just that, but it is also a fundamentally different genre than 4x TBS.

If you want zoning, think of it this way: It's already in the game. When you build a factory or marketplace, you're zoning a little plot of land inside your city square for factories and marketplaces. Your people, being the good people they are under your benevolent dictatorship, follow orders and set up shop as soon as they can. Of course, while zoning is instantaneous, it takes time to exploit the zones. That's what's happening in the time it takes to build your marketplace. When it's built, the zones are full and productive.

In a game with the scope of Civ, some concepts have to be abstracted...If you want to play SimCity, play SimCity.

[JosefGiven]

There's the basis of a really good idea, here.
Let's hope the Civ III crew get a chance to read it, and mull it over before they get set on the final game model.

It'd be great to see your cities sprawling out over the map, could be a graphical feast...

A few points:

I like your proposition for industrial and commercial zoning in the Sim City vein. This would be a great way of introducing the strong CTP style Public Works method, without it being direct plagarism. My only worry is that the 'suburb' tiles might become a little complicated.

In free-market societies, allow the player to buy/sell utilities to the private sector for quick cash injections. When the state owns a large portion of it's civ's industrial base, then the player gets a large fixed rate of production per turn. When the private sector owns the predominant chunk, then the government has to buy resources from it, at rates determined by the market climate. Does this make sense? I hope so!

You could also include a happiness penalty which kicks in when a flourishing free-market society is up-rooted and turned into a society with a very centralised government, like fascism or communism. To elaborate, If a large portion of industry, research etc. belongs to the public, they are going to be cheesed off if the assets are seized by the state.

I know this is starting to sound complex, but it can't be that difficult to include in the game!

If Sid and his mates wanted to get really complex, they could set up Boom/Bust algorithms for market economies, which depend on factors like:

quote: Prices are random, but things such as city proximity to special resources, trade embargos (need black market), and war

AzNtoccata
Plus things like the amount of goods the state buys from the public sector.


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Josef Given
josefgiven@hotmail.com