Are farms coming back?

[Palaiologos]

Originally posted by WarpStorm


Actually, most of the people responsible for Civ2 no longer work for Firaxis.

Oh i didn't know that.


It does explain a lot, doesn't it?.

[XOR]

I think connection networks (like roads, harbors and rails) should do a similar effect to that of traderoutes in Civ2, just not as powerfull. Maybe something like 10% extra trade multiplied by the fraction of the wolrds friendly cities it is connected to, so that if the number of friendly cities a city is connected to is equal to 50%-1 of the wolrd's total cities then it gets a 5% extra trade. It's not as exagerate as in Civ2 where a city could have 60% of its trade from trade routes . I dont know if it's already like that or not, I just think that that is/would be the thing/effect that trade network should have on a city's resource production.

I'd really like to see farms coming back and railroads being just for transportation. It would also be a nice idea to use advanced mines instead of putting railroads on mined tiles. Railroads are being a bit exagerated and some other things (like farms and advanced mines) end up "missing" in favor of just doing things by spreading Iron and Coal all over the map. Tile improvements could use some improving.

[dunk]

Originally posted by Palaiologos
In the civ2 manual a programer(don't remember his name) says that in civ1 there were only railroads and irrigation and that the final result looked ugly.So they decided to add farmlands as an upgrade of irrigation, as RR was an upgrade of roads plus it would look cooler.

Unless i am mistaken were not the same men who made civ2, responsible for civ3?

Kind of funny seeing as how the AI in Civ II still built RRs on every tile in their territory.

[WarpStorm]

Not just the AI, I did it too. The high speed movement was too valuable to risk by not building a little (okay, a lot) of redundancy into the system. Even if the took away the food bonus and allowed double irrigation, I'd eventually RR every tile in my lands. Infinite movement (don't restart this argument here) is a very valuable defensive tool.

[Dinner]

If they won't make these improvements part of the default game then I wish they would atleast unhard code it so we could mod them into existence.

[Hagbart]

Of course railroads increase food production. When it can get transported quickly it can be spread to more people.

But I would like the 'fields' from civ2 back, they were cool.

[alexman]

I think tile improvements are fine the way they are. If I could change something about railroads, I would make their movement cost something greater than zero.

The best way to think of railroads within the current system is as suburbs and factories. There is a mod that adds little buildings next to the railroad graphics, in effect simulating urban sprawl. It's very nicely done. In effect, you get a city that covers the entire city radius after railroading is complete. That might not be any more pretty to look at, but at least it's more realistic!

[Blue Moose]

Maybe Railroads should work somewhat like rivers, and give bonuses to adjacent squares (though they are still in a square themselves, of course). That makes more sense, and it would eliminate the ugliness effect (because a little bit of rail does look nice). It makes sense too, I think.

Though really, if you are going to complain about realism, then the entire city model is pretty unrealistic. I like the ideas about being connected to other cities giving you bonuses for food and production. What really would be nice to have though, is the following:

Early on, one citizen means one square can be produced from. But with the later arrival of technology, in some cases citizens can gather resources from more than one square. This is done by means of what the square produces. Squares that only produce food would get some very dramatic effects, ending the game with 1 citizen being able to gather from 4 or 5 food only squares. Industrialization and the like would allow citizens to gather more from production oriented squares....

and what would tie it all together is that trade centric squares would always need one citizen each, and the amount of trade that a city produces would be one large factor in determining how much food it gets from you food network. Food production would be shared.

I think this would model the real world better. You'd still have tile and city improvements that increase resource gathering, but now you'd have your agrarian cities with very low population (just like it is in modern times), as well as high production without needed to many people doing it (with the advatange of assembly lines and automation). But you still need people to manage trade networks and research....and trade is where the people go.

-Moose

[XOR]

Originally posted by Hagbart
Of course railroads increase food production. When it can get transported quickly it can be spread to more people.

That's when you are speaking about transporting food from other states far away, if we are speaking of local production of a city... well... no, of course not.

[WarpStorm]

...and how big is a tile?

[Optimizer]

Have we heard anything from Firaxis about Farmlands in PTW?

Farmlands were one of the really good things in Civ 2. I cannot understand why they were dropped in Civ 3.

[WarpStorm]

They are redundant with rails. If you are going to put rails everywhere (and you did, even in Civ2), why add complexity where it isn't needed. Maybe someone just needs to make an attractive railroad graphic.

[XOR]

No tile improvements other than the already mentioned airbases, radars and watch towers will be added in PtW. Also no changes will be done to the existing tile improvements.

The reason is because for each new tile improvement they would have to teach the AI how to use it efficiently and make advantage out of it.

Irrigation does look very ugly, the same goes for railroads in every tile. I think I will at least change the irrigation graphic to farms. And really, pretending that railroads would increase food and production without new mining and farming technology is quite a bit silly. In any case, new mining and farming technologies increase production without the need of railroads.

In SMAC, for example, roads and rails were only transportation (and uncap production when a tile was too productive). So you would build rails only to connect cities and strategical locations. Not building rails everywhere had a purpose.

In Civ2, since anyone could ride on anyone else's railroads, building railroads in every tile of your territory could be the cause of your own demise (if only the AI had been smart...). An example, each time I went to war with someone in Civ2 I unloaded a bunch of spies/diplos and stole 1 tech from each city, if no tech could be stolen, I would trash all marketplaces. The howizer's attack-and-vanish exploit also comes to mind.

[BigFurryMonster]

Originally posted by Optimizer
Farmlands were one of the really good things in Civ 2. I cannot understand why they were dropped in Civ 3.

They were not dropped. They were just not added.

Civ 3 was built from scratch.

(The question remains: "why?")

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by BigFurryMonster

They were not dropped. They were just not added.

Civ 3 was built from scratch.

(The question remains: "why?")

Why what? Why was civ3 built from scratch or why weren't the farms added?

Regardless of the quaestion's form, the answer is what Warpstorm has said:

They are redundant with rails. If you are going to put rails everywhere (and you did, even in Civ2), why add complexity where it isn't needed.