CITY IMPROVEMENTS (ver1.0): Hosted by CyberShy

[Robert]

In addition to the 'muliple improvements per city' idea:

• Give cities the option to build multiple improvements when they become bigger. City of 10 can have 1 Marketplace, city of 18 can hae 2 Marketplaces, city of 26 can have 3 marketplaces etc.etc.
• 1 Granary in a 8 people city works 100% but one granary in a 9+ city works 70% and one Granary in a 15+ city works 50%. Now you're forced to build a 2nd Granary when your city become 9.
• City improvements must become inactive when technology gets better. (like wonders don't work forever) and be replaced with others.

[SnowFire]

"Make improvements that belong to a nation or a religion or a gouvernament."

"Muslim nations will never be allowed to build churches."

What the? Ever heard of a mosque? Are you trying to say that Islam is less able to content their followers than other cultures? I'm not Islamic, but if I was, I'd be offended. Besides, what place does this have in a civilization game? The "cathedral" represents high religion in any culture and in any religion. There are no pre-set cultures and religions in Civ, that is all kept in the background. The other things are horribly sterotypical as well. The one thing I agree with is communism disabling churches, and I would only halve their effect myself (in return for much easier police control over people), because that's not a culture thing, that's a government thing.

"In addition to this idea: In big cities, more than one improvement of one type should be needed. I don't think there was only one Granary in ancient Rome."

Reminds me of a really bad game called Destiny. These things are abstractions. Just as a "chariot" doesn't represent one chariot, but rather an army, a granary does not represent just one granary. The "second level" is the job of things like acqueducts and sewer systems. By the way, in Destiny, you had to keep going back and building tons of old structures over and over again. No fun.

"City improvements must become inactive when technology gets better. (like wonders don't work forever) and be replaced with others. CyberShy"

I disagree with this. They may change their roles, but they should not become obsolete, except in perhaps a few rare cases.

Also, for us non-CTPers, what the devil do all those other improvements do? I'd be most impressed as to why I should be building a "City Clock" when you'd think that would go on at a far less micromanaging level.

I suggest you check out the technology forum as well. My suggestion is that you take the basic library (or equivalent), and you dedicate it to any of the 5 disciplines when it's built (I have a category system where all science is divided into 5 categories). When you build your university, you add another discipline to focus in. These two categories of science get special bonuses in research at the city. I’d kill the "research lab" of CivII and then add extra attributes to conventional facilities, like "Nuclear Power Plant: (Basic effect with resources.) Speeds physics research in city, if it has a library or university dedicated to it, by 50%. Or "Stock Market: (basic money effect). Increases economics research by 50%, if city is dedicated to that discipline." "Capitol: Government center, blah blah. Increases philosophy research by 100% in city." "Hospital: Increases population growth by 15%, makes two drones content. Increases biology research in city by 25% if yada yada yada." You get the idea.

Which reminds me. Considering that Sid just worked on SMAC and not CTP, I think we should base our suggestions more off of SMAC or CivII as a model than CTP.

[Trachmyr]

I have DESTINY... the game requires multiple structures to be built like many suggest. However the game feels like your working on a NEVER-ENDING pile of spread sheets. Great idea, but in the end the game was trashed bt it.

A compromise would to allow cities (or require) to increase effectiveness in a few abstract aeras.
1) Food Production/Storage
2) Industry
3) Religion
4) Entertainment
5) Defence
6) Health
7) ect.

you can then chose to "Increase Industry Infrastructure"... which will give a bounus based on:
(level of industy) - (city size)) * percentage increase of all indusstry city improvements

just a thought, but I do not recomend it... it's hard enough to make great cities as it is, and the idea of building city improvements is an abstract for instituing new tech within that city.

Now for similar structures that provide entirely diffrent advantages (Like the Var. Libraries for diffrent science fields) I am open to... But an idea for spending Reaserch into BASIC THEORY (from the Tech list) for modifiers to research specific tech fields, would accomplish the job much more efficently and w/o 10+ new structures to buils. After all if 15% of your reaserch is going into "Physics", then you probally have libraries dedicated to that field.

[Mark_Everson]

Trachmyr: Yeah, Destiny was awwwwful, quite an accounting game . And I'd had such high hopes for it... It was amazing, they screwed up virtually every area of the game!


I know already my suggestion isn't going to be popular here, but IMO its gotta be said.

Reduce The Number of Improvements

They just lead to ridiculous amounts of micro-management of cities.

CivI had a reasonable number of improvements, and it was still a management nightmare IMHO to "max out" a city. In Civ2 I rarely even bother any more because there's just a never-ending list of gotta-haves.

Well, anyway, I've said it. And now I can just walk away and hope the flames don't singe my back

------------------
Mark Everson
Project lead for The Clash of Civilizations
(That means I do the things nobody else wants to do )
This Radically different civ game needs your suggestions and/or criticism of our design.
Check our our Forum right here at Apolyton...

[Ecce Homo]

I have made some suggestion about a "Capitalist AI" that can build improvements instead of the player.

My idea: As a city grows, the player may get messages like "A private enterprise applies to build a Factory in London". You cannot take use of privately owned buildings' production, but they will give you tax income.

I believe this can decrease micromanagement in the late game.

[Travathian]

This is my first post here, but I thought I would start by saying all of the new ideas for city improvements look great, except for one thing, they have all been developed in the past 100 years or less. Definitely in need of more in the ancient and mideval time frames.

How about public bathes like in Ancient Greece and Rome? Burial grounds, which become modern day cemetaries? In feudal times you had keeps, which watched over the surrounding area, these could be similar to a Headquarters, but not quite as powerful.

[Darkstar]

The part where Destiny messed up the most was that you had to maintain the education level throughout your empire to do research. Instead, cities should have simply not have been able to research the top level items until their education quotient came up to specs. But yeah, it was an accounting nightmare.

I'd nix the "You can build it again." Idea. It really does lead to accounting and supermicromanagement. We want to have fun.

As noted, there has been several suggestions to tie military chassis types to city improvements. ala MOM. One more thing to slow down the War Monger, but Civ was a Building an Empire game first, so that isn't a bad idea. If it is tied into variable city production radius, you gain things like:

Horse Stables/Ranch: +1 Produciton Radius, permits the building of Horse Chassis units (Mounted Scout, Horse Archers, etc)

But lets keep down the supermicromanagemetn and accounting/spreadsheet game issues...

-Darkstar
(Knight Errant Of Spam)

[Ralph]

Why not add a new series of purpose-related buildings in order to battle HEALTH? The health-factor should be fleshed out considerably in CIV-3.

Add “Doctors house” (or whatever) to the already suggested “Pharmacy” and “Hospital”. A series of three related improvements.

The effects of the health-improvements should cumulative just as Marketplace – Bank – Stock Exchange.

[Depp]

Hello

Some comments on the discussion:

Multiple buildings: sounds very good

Like the new buildings

Something new, upgrading buildings!
Granary in 21th century???? No.
City Walls in a 2 million people city? No.

Granary should be made obsolete by some tech and they can all(or some) be upgraded to something more modern.

And citywalls should limit city size to 6 or something

What do you think?

[SnowFire]

"Granary should be made obsolete by some tech and they can all(or some) be upgraded to something more modern."

Perhaps you know something I don't, but food storage facilities are STILL all over the place, and aside from refrigiration, the technology hasn't changed that much, except that silos are made out of metal now. You could make an argument for obsoleting stables, but not a granary.

[HarryKattz]

City Walls

City walls are no protection against artillery, aircraft, or missile. That's pretty close to obsolete.

As a final nail in the coffin, maybe we could ask Firaxis to increase maintenance costs for city walls by 1 gold for every three population over 12. This would represent the drag on distribution caused by bottleneck gates and the expense of letting out the seams as the city grows.

I don't think city walls should limit population.

[HarryKattz]

Granary

There are still at least two large granaries(we call them silos) here in Ft Worth.

Maybe we should ask Firaxis to change the graphics for the granary at higher techs.

Also, I'm for the Shining1's idea that certain improvements are needed to build certain kinds of units. Like stables for mounted units, airports for planes, etc.

[HarryKattz]

Perhaps we should ask Firaxis to include a...
City Park

City land set aside for use by the public.

Benefit: Makes one addional citizen content.
Requires: Sanitation (Maybe a new advance, something like Modern Fertilizer)
Cost: 60 shields
Maint: 1 gold

Helps happiness in a pinch. Frees up a citizen for science or tax.
Requiring something early, like Sanitation could cause a balance problem.

[HarryKattz]

Maybe we should ask Firaxis to include a...
Theme Park

Large parks like Disney World or Six Flags.

Benefit: Two citizens happy. One additional gold for every 4 population. Plus 5 gold for every wonder in city(tourism).
Requires: Mass Media advance(if Mass Media advance not in game then Electronics)
Cost: 240 shields
Maint: 4 gold

Only helps in large cities. Expensive enough that you will not build it unless you need to.

[HarryKattz]

City Clock

In my opinion, this should stay over in CTP. Before clocks, roosters would wake people up. Just seems so trivial.
I think we should ask Firaxis to ignore it.