Civ4: City Specializations?

[Egbert]

Originally posted by Spiffor

I was precisely thinking along these lines, but maybe the waste would also be dependant of tech (better alimentation techs makes food waste less terrible).

I don't know for the freighters, though, it might be too much micromanagement.

The MOO2 freighter system is extremely simple. You just build the freighters and forget about them, all freight movements are handled automatically. Of course, you pay gold per turn for the freighters so you must not build too many (or you can scrap some).

I reckon Spiffors' suggestion would be an excellent addition to Civ. You could build the freighters, give a distribution order to some cities and forget about it.

[bobbo008]

or how about building a "mega" thing, like a huge dock... in my current game, my best port can build a battleship in 2-3 turns (i forgot which). it would be cool, since that's all the city produces now, since they're experts at it now, you'd think, they would become "prized" battleships, maybe elite automatically or something.

[Master Zen]

Interesting but I think cities specialize by them selves naturally. Just think about a huge 100+ shield city with the Iron Works. Wouldn't that be your Detroit or Essen? How about a city with the Colossus, Copernicus' Observatory and Newton's University, wouldn't that be your science city?

Of course, it would be nice to specialize a bit more..

[Spiffor]

Re: freighters. Well, that might be an excellent idea then. After all, I had a bit of trouble thinking about the implementation of the actual cost of such a trade network. I'm not sure if these costs are necessary (after all, resources and luxuries get dispatched across your empire for free), but the freighter system at best avoids abuses, and at worst doesn't add too much clutter, so I guess it's not bad

bobbo008 : that's a good idea

[JRK]

I like Spiffor's +- idea on food trade--it is very simple and would be easy to implement--but it does not allow for an easy method of introducing waste/corruption. If your two cities are land-locked and a thousand miles apart, it is difficult to see how that would be able to be treated as differently as two cities twenty miles apart and connected by a river. I think city-city trade routes are still most appropriate, with a portion of the food rotting before its arrival.
Also, the cost of the food route could be taxed if it goes through another nation or it could be made expensive if unnecessarily long. This proposal would definately be more demanding (concerning micromanagement) than the pooling idea, but I can't see how the other way would possibly deal with the differentiated corruption of very distant and very proximate cities.

Of course, when dealing with civ3 it is a reality that we seriously need to avoid more micromanagement

[JRK]

Also, concerning shield-sharing. I'm not exactly sure what the game considers a shield to be, but it seems as if at least some of the problem could be rectified if workers could be regarded as extra production. If you pool fifty workers together, it seems as if you could get some public works projects done a bit sooner.

Maybe if we called them engineers in the modern ages...

[JRK]

I should probably add something about group movement on this. I don't want to be moving my fifty workers around every couple of turns

[Panag]

Originally posted by bobbo008
or how about building a "mega" thing, like a huge dock... in my current game, my best port can build a battleship in 2-3 turns (i forgot which). it would be cool, since that's all the city produces now, since they're experts at it now, you'd think, they would become "prized" battleships, maybe elite automatically or something.

hi ,

, a small wonder " dry dock " , great idea

it should help to speed up the repairs on both your own and allies ships , one extra commerce for the city that build it and it would allow to build a type of UU naval unit , like the yamamoto or a large more powerfull ( only one for each civ ) battelship

have a nice day

[Spiffor]

Panag : this "dry dock" is a great idea

[Sultan Richard]

With the food --

Assuming that the food will be transported using the regular trade rules (harbour/airport/roads ...) could the distance be calculated between where the pool is stord (assuming a building that acts as a pool HQ) and the target city, then the tils distance could be used to calculate food loss.

Eg, two cities close to each other will have negligible food loss, but two cities far away will have significant food loss, unless you build another pool HQ near it.

This idea could be linked into the Province idea whereby each Province has its own pool, or some might want a unified pool for the whole nation, or groups of pools for different provinces/cities etc.

[dexters]

Pft, it can just be a formula where a constant, say 0.01 is multiplied by a factor for age and distance (I think the cpu is very good at calculating distances between two points).

In the ancient age, you may have an age factor of 10 and for every tile (assumung Civ 4 is tile based) you multiply it by 1.

So food loss for two cities 4 tiles apart would be 10 X 4X 0.01 or 0.4

How do you break this fractional unit down to fit the current food system?

The food system just get reworked into fractions.

[Jamski]

It would be quite simple to have a trade system like in Colonisation, but with fewer traded goods, setting up the trade route and then watching the cracan, ship, wagon go back and forth automatically. That would be nice, and people could attck the trade ntwork directly - at last a use for privateers.

-Jam

[MoonWolf]

Actually it can be done very simple without any central pool. To summarize the ideas I here, I suggest the following:

-Have +/- to decide how much the city should contribute to the empire of food and shields
-Let the corruption affect you gold pile, not the individual city
-Make some local adjustments for trade/science be possible. Scientists are also paying taxes, so no city should be without income

Panag, liked your "dry dock" idea! Made me think if I could make something possible in Civ3, but how to make bonuses available when only building certain units? Hmmm....

[Panag]

Originally posted by MoonWolf
Actually it can be done very simple without any central pool. To summarize the ideas I here, I suggest the following:

-Have +/- to decide how much the city should contribute to the empire of food and shields
-Let the corruption affect you gold pile, not the individual city
-Make some local adjustments for trade/science be possible. Scientists are also paying taxes, so no city should be without income

Panag, liked your "dry dock" idea! Made me think if I could make something possible in Civ3, but how to make bonuses available when only building certain units? Hmmm....

hi ,

thanks for liking the dry dock ( panag thinks back when he was asking firaxis for a 360 X 360 map and everyone told him it was not possible )

well there are several buildings that civ III could use to build certain units , but the problem is the coding , .....

Gramphos , any ideas on this

or could Mike or Soren take a look at it

anyway , it remains a great idea for an XP or civ IV

but who knows , look at the large map , everyone told me i was nutz , but after a long talk in a chat with firaxis , surprise , surprise , ..... so who knows what lays around the corner , ....

have a nice day

[MoonWolf]

Originally posted by panag

well there are several buildings that civ III could use to build certain units , but the problem is the coding , .....

It can't be that impossible. Like it is now, you can set paramaters that won't allow you to build certain buildings until you have an other one (like you need library to build university). If a simple patch can add this to units, the problem for specializing in unit production is solved.

Let's make an example with your "dry dock". This can of course only be built in coastal cities and as a small wonder. This building must be present to be able to build e.g. a certain battleship that are greater and/or cheaper (cheaper to simulate more efficent production). As this battleship can only be build in a city with the "dry dock", it is specialized!

Yeah, I like big maps too! I might only play on the smaller ones if I'm playtesting something.