RADICAL IDEAS (ver 2.0): Hosted by korn469

[Gordon the Whale]

I think ember is right, there shouldn't be too many specialists. However, I see the artisan/laboror and trader/merchant are entirely different. These are the things in cities that aren't specialists. Beaurocrats, Wise Men, Military Specialists, Entertainers, and such would be specialists, but Laborers represent the Working Class, and Merchants represent the Merchant Class, which both, at various periods of history, made up sizable fractions of city population. Why not have limits, dependant on SE settings, that decide what the maximum amount of each type of city dweller is?

ember: You said you don't like the idea of spontaneously generated cities... I agree totally, the villages shouldn't grow into cities without your explicit permission, but I think it should be something you can do. Make the AI in control of autobuilding villages from cities never allowed to build a village past the limit to make a new city, but if the player wants, they can build the 3rd village on top, or whatever the number is, to make the village a new city. I think it makes things easier. For real newbies, or those concerned with other aspects of the games, have an option to let the AI make you cities.

I had sort of assumed that villagers were content. Most factors affecting happiness are within the city... If villagers' happiness is affected, it should only be by famine.

As I saw it, bringing in the villagers is unlimited, you can bring in however many you want. As for shipping them to other cities, you can only do that along a clear road. So if the enemy blocks off your road (a move which I hope to see very important in Civ3, for many reasons) the only place you can put the villagers is in the city. If your city is a 13, with 6 city-folk and 7 villagers, this will be horrible. This is a city designed to hold 6 people... It has no aqueduct or sewer system. Now it holds 13, and disease runs rampant. In addition, a city that formerly required 130 food, and had that much coming in, is starving. It makes a seige a very dangerous thing, as well as over-building your cities important if you plan to have wars. Making the granary a simple food storage device, abd bigger, would also be good.

If a settler builds a village on a distant sea shore, where does the food go, and (in terms of justification) how does it get there? I disagree, settlers shouldn't be able to build villages. Also, that amounts to free population. (Make 1 settler, then build lots of villages with it.)

Regardless of that, the settlers should now take 2 population to build... One for the new city they will make, and one for the village next to it. Won't be burdensome, because all the cities will have about twice as many people.

[ember]

korn469, I'll try again.
First important point villagers are not in cities. They do not count towards the cities population and they do not affect happiness in a city (unless they stop sending food) For all intesive puropses villagers are content. They don't tend to starve because almost evey square can produce enough food to sustain them. They will always keep enough for themselves, and send the rest to the city/region.

What I mean by twice as many pop is that the cities will have teh same # of pop points, but there will be about the same number of pop points in the villages as in the cities.

In the cities the bulk of the population belongs to the 'average citazen' class.
'Workers' for communism, 'middle class' for democracy, 'serfs' for tyranny, 'peasants' for monarcy, etc.
These classes produce a bit of everything, so a bit of labour, trade and science.
Specialists can only be a certain fraction of the pop in a city. (remeber the people in villages do not belong to a city, they have nothing to do with them...) Specilaists are the types you listed. Labourers, merchants, scientists, clerics, etc. They have much more specialized uses, but can only be (1/3 or something like that) of a citie's pop.

I don't see why you need to limit how many resources a city can use because they are limited in how much industry they can use, and each unit will require a fixed ratio of industry/resources.
The city is still limited in how much it can sustainably use by how much your villages can produce...They can stockpile, with a decay rate for higher difficulty levels.
Same for food.

To limit ICS, make it so that the square a city is on does not produce any resources or food. The square the city is on is critical for future development because it will affect rate of growth and trade. Costal-river squares should be the best for cities.
Hills are bad, but well defended.

Advantages to this system.
1 City radius is no longer used. You can use every square in you territory if you desire, and keep the cities in logical places, like on the coast and river junctions, where cities historically thrived.

2. Rural population is represented. These are a ligitimate target for a pillaging army to kill of enslave. If captured, most historical villagers were not very loyal to the king. They were taxed, and if they weren't mistreated, they didn't care who was in charge.

3. Makes the logical split between resources and industry easier to manage.

4. Would work well with regions. The villages belong to a region and send food straight to it. Cities in the region recieve it as needed. All resources and isdustry could be centrally managed to ease micromanagemnt. Infrastructue is still placed in induvidual cities, but the the industry is calculated centrally. Regions are also good if multiple resource types are used, to reduce micromanagment.

Disadvantages. Some managment of village placement needed, but this is not much harder than for placing citizens. This could be helped by autopalcemnt and 'flaging' squares for development.
Use a setler to 'flag' a square, and the next available villager moves there. This is what I meant by building villages with a settler without using them up.

I feel that to build a village, all that is needed is a pop point. It takes as long as fortifying before the village is productive. Villages can be moved by click and drag, but take the same fortification time to move. Pop from city to city should be easier than it is now, maybe the same click and drag, limited to one a turn (by roads)?

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[raingoon]

Following this discussion about villages -- these are really good ideas.

ember: I understood you were saying that villages can be clicked and dragged to a new location. This makes a village a unit, doesn't it? Sort of a worker for hire, in effect? I'm just seeing if I understand you.

Really good concept that villages funnel resources into cities. I guess I need a definitive answer as to which comes first, the city or the village. Is there some reason why a village can't become a city? Whether on its own, or with the player's approval, I'm a little unclear where people stand on that.

By the way, I posted what you could call a pretty "radical" idea for getting religion into the game, under the religion 2.1 thread, here. It's a pretty clear idea, I'd appreciate any input on it...

raingoon

[Gordon the Whale]

I wouldn't really call the village a unit... It's more just a map representation of a worked tile, with a few more limitations and an inherent population. It has no attack or defense, and enemy units can sit on top of it, like any other TI. It can be captured or pillaged (make both be an option for an enemy unit on top of the village) like some suggestions on railroads in other threads.

ember: using the settler to flag squares for growth is a good idea, I like it now that I understand.

[ember]

A new method for populaation growth.

The population of cities are recorded as x.xxx. This allows fractional population points. The fraction has no gameplay effect until it reaches the next number. It allows groth rates to be experesed as an increase per turn. Attacks that hit population centers can now do fractional pop. points of damage. maybe 0.1 or 0.05 per hit.

The purpose of this proposal is to seperate growth from straight food production.
Growth rates can be expressed as a percentage per turn, (eg 2.5%) to give a familiar sort of look. What this means for gameplay terms is that 0.025 pop points are added every year. This gives a groth of 40 turns.

Pop is recorded as fractional points, but it is easy to convert that to a real pop number.
The formula:
Actual pop = 5000 x (pop points + 0.5)^2 - 1250
Follows the civx model exactly for whole numbers, and can give good values for fractional numbers.

Effects on population growth. All numbers are arbitray and should vary depending on SE choices and tech. This system is desigend to be compatable with the idea of villages.

I have made use of a 'happyness rating', which is (#happy - #unhappy) / # total. This gives 0 for all content, 100 for all happy, and -100 for all unhappy. This can be applied to a city, a region, a civ or the entire world.

Base growth: 10%
Happyness : + city happyness / N. N depends on SE.
villages : + 0.2% per village
medicine : + 2%
etc.

Immigration. To take into account people moving around in your civ and between civs.
The advantages of including this is that large unhappy cites will tend to slow down growth or shrink, while your smaller cities will pick up the extra people.

In civ immigration = (city happyness - civ happyness) / Y. Y depends on SE and the overall level of transportation availabble. In cty immigation tends to have larger volume than between civs.

between civs migration = (city happyness - world happyness) / Z. Z depends on SE and transport of all players. For this calcualtion government types can influence the happyness used. democracy might add 10 points, while communism subtarcts 10 points, to reflect that democracies never have had problems with too many people trying to flee from them.

Wonder: Iron curtain. Prevents all between civ emmigration. (for gameplay all cities count as average happyness level)


------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[ember]

I guess fundamentally the village comes first. You could start with the game with a hadnfull of villages and can choose 1 to become your first city.

For fractional populatio I see villages as just having whole number pop points (up to 2-3) to make things easier. Pop is added only when a city has a whole pop point to send to the countyside. Any growth from the villages is added to the city as a small boost to growth.



------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[raingoon]

This still strikes me as generally the best solution so far for the ICS problem. ICS is fundamentally a population growth issue, and this slows/changes the population growth rate. That said, after reviewing, I'm still a little foggy on how this suggestion boils down -- i.e., in English. Or if it boils down at all.

But... I CAN say I still don't agree that a village or a city or anything representing population on the map should appear in any other way than from one settler unit that I had to sacrifice to create it. I think the genius of Civ lies in the population spread model of the first two games. It clearly should be changed in some way. The trick is getting rid of ICS w/out throwing the baby out with the bath water.

[Tornado7]

I'm not sure if this is the right spot for this, but I'll try it here.
How about specialtists that increase food or shield production, like Taxmen, scientists or Elvis?
Call them Farmers and Miners or something.
Another thing, kinda related-
Why not increase the effectivness of the specialtists after certain advances? I mean, an entertainer should have more impact in a society with televison as opposed to one just figuring out writing. Just a thought.

[itokugawa]

Firstly, I do not think that villages are necessary. They are represented by the city radius. (At last cities do not feed their population). Anyway, if there are villages what should be the difference between a village and a city?

Secondly I believe that perfectionists must have better chances in the game. I would like to see one of the followings:
1)Libraries, factories etc. lead to 100% increase instead of 50%
2)there can be many libraries, universities etc. Each of them has a 50% effect but if 1st library requires 80 shields and maintainance 1, 2 requires 160 shields-maintainance 2, 3rd 320 and 4, 640 and 8 etc.

Similarly RR, mining irrigation should have stronger effects and for the balance weapons should be more costly.

[Gordon the Whale]

Raingoon: If you need do build a settler for each village, you are sunk. What was a single population point in Civ1/2 is, in the village model, more or less divided into two points, one in the city and one in the village. The one in the city produces trade, science, industry, and the one in the village produces resources and food. Requiring a sacrificed settler to build a village more or less means that you must build a settler EVERY time your city would have grown in Civ2. Actually, you would be building one every 2 times your city grew: City grows due to whatever reason city grows, you build a settler to put this person into a village, reducing the city population by one, sacrifice the settler to build the village, and the city grows again. You would have to do this, in a game with many cities, several times per turn. Villages must be built by cities, unsacrificed settlers, or not at all.

Tornado7: Farmers and miners, in traditional Civ, were represented by the "normal" people, i.e. the nonspecialists, that you put on the terrain squares to work them. Specialists are people who stop working the land and come into the city to do other things. Nobody leaves the family farm and moves to the big city to be a farmer!

itokugawa: Yes, villages are currently represented by the city radius. This is what we'd like to see changed. Here are some reasons:

1)You don't need to worry about the city radius! This would make a weird, nonregular map (geodesated, cubic) a possibility, which is something some people would like to see.

2)It allows you to spread out beyond the city radius. There must be a way for transportation to limit this, for instance, goods can only be shipped to a city within 3 regular squares, 5 road squares, or 10 RR squares.

3)It allows the efficient usage of space, which is currently not possible in Civ, because you can't Tesselate city radii.

4)It more accurately represents the population in the countryside for combat.

5)It more accurately shows the rural/urban population shift brought about by better agriculture. Early in the game, a single village could probably not support a single city population point. Rather, it would take 2:1, or maybe 3:2 to support the people in the city. However, as the game progresses, new technologies and TIs are discovered that gradually improve the food and resources that can be gathered from a terrain square, and you end up being able to support 2 or 3 people in the city for each one in a village. This is how real life worked.

A synopsis of things said earlier in the thread, that should have been made clear:

What is the difference between a city and a village? A village is made of those who, in one way or another, work the land. A city is made of those who don't. Villages get the resources from the square beneath them, cities don't. Cities have only specialists, villages have only regular people. Cities get production, villages don't. A village can be considered a TI, it's just a TI that takes population to build.

[raingoon]

gordon

Do I understand then, that:

1. In this model every time a city grows by one you are automatically given a corresponding village population?

2. And village are placed where you like?

3. And villages have non-specialist populations that are limited in growth potential to size 2 or 3?

4. And city radius is done away with, because villages now produce all resources and those resources are listed at the Civ level only (as opposed to city by city)?

[ember]

Raingoon:
1, Not automatically. You divide your pop between villages and cities as youlike. Generally you will have 2x the civX pop points available. You can focus more on resources/food when you need them, then shift to trade/labour at other times.

2, Within reason, yes. We have proposed that villages must be placed adjacent to anouther village (or city) and within a certain amount of MP of a city...

3 yes.

4 yes. Especially works well for regions, then you can just worry about regional borders...



------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[raingoon]

ember

I'm getting closer...

"You divide your pop between villages and cities as youlike. Generally you will have 2x the civX pop points available. You can focus more on resources/food when you need them, then shift to trade/labour at other times."

1. So my civ has a "pool" of regular population points equal roughly to the number I get when I add up all my city sizes?

2. And it is from this pool that I draw to create villages?

3. Which I can place within my borders to maximize resource making? I can futher move these villages around whenever I want?

4. And the work product of all these villages is stored on the civ level, or at the region level, but again, not at an individual city level?

5. But cities still are where units are created?

[ember]

I would say you hit the nail on the head there...

Of course there on some limitations on moving pop. and a certain % loss of resources dependant on transport infrastructure. With fractional pop used, then the total pop points stays exactly the same, no matter how you move them around (not counting growth).

Some pople want villages to send food to induvidual cities, but I favor empire (or region) destributed stuff.



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"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[tatterdemalion]

This is in response to an Ecce Homo post regarding setting game turns to 1 year through out the game. I don't think that is necessary. Instead why not link the length of game turns to level of technology or general enlightenment of the civ?

Right now the length of game turns is arbitrarily determined by the game designers and pegged to the approximate dates of the historical Enlightenment and Industrial Revolutions. Why not allow game turns to reduce from 20 years to 5 years once Philosophy is discovered. Game years from 5 years to 2 years once Enlightenment period is discovered. Game years reduce from 2 years to 1 year per turn once the Industrial Revolution kicks in. One could make the arguments that the Information age, Genetic Age and Nanite Age would allow for even greater Productivity.

The second part of this recommendation is that civs who are lagging on the tech tree would either get fewer turns to play or have all facets of their production factored down to when competing civs discover the key advances. For example, using the example above, if Greece discovers Philosophy first, then all others civs have their production divided by 4 until they discover Philosophy too. This effect may have to be attenuated to maintain game balance.

With this system, one of the measures of your success would be the number of turns needs to win, not just points at the end.