CITY IMPROVEMENTS (ver2.0): Hosted by CyberShy

[Robert]

This thread continues where <a href = "http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000084.html">ver 1.1</a> ended (33 messages)

The results of ver 1.1 have been mailed to Firaxis with the complete list of suggestions.

The discussed topic here is "City improvements" and thus please only post msg about city improvements.

Thanks a lot,

CyberShy,
Thread-'head'

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<H3>List of Current City Improvements:<H5>

• Baracks
• Granary
• Palace
• City Walls
• Temple
• Library
• Courthouse
• Marketplace
• Aqueduct
• Colosseum
• Harbor
• University
• Bank
• Cathedral
• Power Plant
• Stock Exchange
• Sewer System
• Port Facility
• Coastal Fortress
• Super Highways
• Factory
• Airport
• Mass Transit
• Hydro Plant
• Police Station
• Recycling Center
• Supermarket
• Nuclear Plant
• SAM Missile Battery
• Offshore Platform
• SDI Defense
• Research Lab
• Solar Plant
• Manufacturing Plant

Ordered by purpose [MBD's idea]

• Food
Granary, Aqueduct, Harbor, Sewer System, Supermarket

• Defense
Baracks, City Walls, Coastal Fortress, SAM Missile Battery, SDI Defense

• Science
Library, University, Research Lab

• Money / luxerious / Economy
Marketplace, Bank, Stock Exchange, Super Highways, Palace, Courthouse

• Production
Power Plant, Factory, Hydro Plant, Nuclear Plant, Offshore Platform, Solar Plant, Manufacturing Plant

• Hapiness
Cathedral, Colosseum, Temple

• Special
Recycling Center, Police Station, Mass Transit, Airport, Port Facility,

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<H3>List of ideas for new Improvements:<H5>

• Theater [EnochF]
• City Clock [EnochF]
• Hospital [EnochF]
• Cinema [EnochF]
• Pharmacy [EnochF]
• Television [EnochF]
• Security Monitor [EnochF]
• Fusion Plant [EnochF]
• Base Support Structures [Trachmyr] <== read more under the 'new ideas' section
• Pastuerization Plant (Adds 25% to total food due to the reduction in losses to spoilage.) [Sieve Too]
• Pesticide Plant (Adds another 25% to total food but increases pollution) [Sieve Too]
• Doctors house [to the already suggested "Pharmacy" and "Hospital". A series of three related improvements.] [Ralph]
• City Park [Benefit: Makes one addional citizen content. Requires: Sanitation (Maybe a new advance, something like Modern Fertilizer) Cost: 60 shields Maint: 1 gold]
• Theme Park [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
• Transmitter [Benefit: Makes two citizens content(by distraction). With the advent of Mass Media(Electronics if Mass Media not in game) provides one additional gold for every two citizens(advertising). Requires: Radio, Cost: 120 shields, Maint: 2 gold
• ISP [Benefit: Plus 20% science in city. Plus 2 science for every other city with an ISP, including cities in other civs.
Requires: Computer, Cost: 160 shields, Maint: 3 gold] [ALL above by HarryKattz]
• Medieval Fairs
• forge
• textile mill/loom
• suburbs
• highways,
• public schools
• parks
• circus [all by wheathin]
• Bomb Shelter [Protects citizens from artiliery attacks, missle attacks, and bombing runs from aircraft. Prevents the city from going down in population from these attacks.] [Travathian]
• Stationary units (Possibly custom-designed) [Isle]
• SECURITY STATIONS [(automatic genetic and/or fingerprint identification when accessing city areas/buildings everywhere): automatically "detects" spies within city limits and may have a chance of making them fail. Spies may later gain an ability to have a chance to be hidden from security stations and decrease their fail chances.] [Freddz]
• I would be interested in seeing a 'Military Academy' city improvement, which would control the upgrading of units. Units must be moved to a city with an Academy, and stay there for 1 turn, and they would be automatically upgraded to the most modern military unit of their strategic type. Leonardo's would still exist as a wonder, but would act as a Military Academy in every city. [AgedOne]

• -Suggestion for defensive structures-
# WALL
Available with Masonry. If Civ 3 contains different resources, there could be a choice between wood, brick, stone or a compound. The wall is built "slot by slot"; each "slot" protects one unit (primarily), one citizen (second) or one city improvement (third).
Close combat units cannot attack what is protected by the wall - they can however attack the wall itself. Range attack units can bombard across the wall - random citizens, units and city improvements might be lost.
#FORTRESS
Available with Construction (or Engineering). It is also built slot by slot, but is of course more expensive and cannot protect city improvements.
Units can only attack the fortress itself. As it is damaged, random slots are destroyed and the hosted unit/citizens are damaged/lost.
#BOMB SHELTER
Available with Radar. Works like a Fortress, but is harder to destroy - does even give some protection against nuclear arms. [Ecce Homo]

## In addition:
We here in Canada had the Deifenbunker, to house important politicians and scientists in case of disaster.
Building one in your capital should make for more interesting battles to capture a spacecraft before it is launched. [NotLikeTea]

• air raid sirens [NotLikeTea]

• Buildings that give the arts some representation in the game and improve either "quality of life" or happiness such as a
#theater
#opera
#museum. The player can allocate some money from the yearly budget to support them.
• Build works of art that could be pillaged or stolen on the capture of a city and which could survive from ancient times to the present, similar to the paintings/sculptures in any museum today.
• Build a (small) variety of factories/industries so that a city can specialize in producing certain types of things, like weapons.
• There must be a way to dedicate a city to a particular activity, such as a manufacturing city, a religious center, an administrative center, or even a gambling center. I can see that building more than one of any type of building can be a headache. Maybe you could have different sizes/costs of a building, like a factory, where a larger factory produces more.
• There must be more medieval buildings [MBD]

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<H3>List of other /new ideas<H5>

• Make improvements that belong to a nation or a religion or a gouvernament. [CyberShy]

examples:
# Muslim nations will never be allowed to build churches.
# Temples only work till 500 AD
# Communism disalbes churches / temples. (till another gouvernament is chosen)
# Wind Mills are typicall dutch improvements
# Mc Donalds has double the impact in the USA then in other countries etc. etc.
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• I'd resuggest in this new thread that the player be allowed to build miltiples of certain improvements [within limits, of course], with diminishing returns for subsequent iterations. [Druid2]

examples:
[lab = +100% ... lab*2 = +180% ... lab*3 = +%230% .. max build of "n".. which is set in a modifiable parameter file]

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. [Ecce Homo]

In addition to this idea: each new building of the same type will have a reduced effect, let's say 25% less than the previous one. Suppose you built 3 stables, then the first one builds a cavalry regiment using 100 shields, the second using 125 shields, the third using 150 shields. Some improvements, such as aqueducts and sewer systems, should not be able to build multiple times [Transcend]

In addition to this 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. [CyberShy]

In addition to this idea: 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. [CyberShy]
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• That city improvements that effect science be dedicated to a technology category and the benefit gained through that improvement can only be applied to that category (or could be changed with a penalty.) [Zorloc]
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• Base Support Structures... a new city improvement
This Improvement includes ALL of the CRITICAL structures of PAST under a single name and structure, including all the benefits of it. The old buildings will be replaced, and the upkeep costs will be low. Auto upgrade or build upgrades when you move to a new age. (read more below in Trackmyr's post] [Trachmyr]
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• There seems to be some general agreement with the suggestion that some unit chassis and weapons require improvements to be built before the unit itself can be done.
In this case, extra city improvements will be needed in order to produce units - about 15 - 20 new structures need to be designed (spanning the whole of history, though). [Shining1]
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• City improvements must become inactive when technology gets better. (like wonders don't work forever) and be replaced with others. [CyberShy]
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• 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 [Trachmyr]
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• Reduce The Number of Improvements
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. [Mark_Everson]
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• 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. [Ecce Homo]
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• More ancient improvements are needed,
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.[Travathian]
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• A city can select the percentage of its resources that go into each area (e.g. science, money, happiness, ect.). New technologies(e.g. Banking, Scientific Thought, ect) would increase the effect that the same amount of resources have, perhaps with a temporary decrease to simulate improving the current facilities. This would allow more realistic cities, instead of cities that do everything, you would have a science city, with alot of research, a industrial city with a high production, ect. It would also be easier to manage [Blue Moose]
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• I dont like multi-boosting improvements which boost both energy AND research, or both research AND happiness. Keep things simple.
Part of the fun in building city-improvements in CIV-2 was that i always had an exact overview what each and every improvement added to the overall picture. If we start to mess things up with "multiple-" and "multi-boost" city-improvements, that exact overview easily gets lost. [Ralph]
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• Population growth is affected not only by available food, but also by birth rates and death rates. Thus, there should be improvements that reflect this. At the least, things such as the Aqueduct, Drug Store/Pharmacy, and Hospital in CtP should have a large effect on maximum city size, an effect that could be generated by having them result in increased food (paradoxical in that more old people would eat *more* food, but it is as close a representation as we can get). [wheathin]
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• allow upgrades, with the existing improvement counting for 50% of the cost of the new improvement. [Wheathin]
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• a. decreasing costs for improvements - as the game progresses, while established cities have much higher production levels, newly founded cities take forever to get up to speed. If the costs dropped each era, (maybe with a multiplier, and each imp has an "era" variable) it'd be easierfor your cities founded in the 1800's (like most of America) to be worthwhile before 2100.

b. Rollover on the build queue - production that's leftover is applied to the next item built... important with:

c. Allow multiple builds in one turn - so these cheap but needed imps can be finished quickly.

d. "Packages" of cheap imps for later in the game, all built one after another. (In effect, readymade queues of items) Thus, by the modern era, an "ancient package" might include Granary, Marketplace, Church, Courthouse, Colisseum, Aqueduct, Sewer, Library, Public School, and Barracks. By selecting this single "package item" in the build queue, a newly founded city could build all the ancient imps in 2-4 short turns, thus saving a player lots of needless clicks and micromanagement, and time. [Wheathin]
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• I would like to be able to contract a CORPORATION to build my units, let the religions build their places of worship and leave me the task of keeping the city safe, clean and happy [CormacMacArt]
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• I would like to see more governance type improvements, and less general type [NotLikeTea]
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• As governer, we should be building the millitary structures (city walls, baraks, etc), public services (grainaries, aquaducts, etc) and that's pretty well it. Other improvements should be controled only second hand, by influencing religions, city planners, etc. [NotLikeTea]
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• Stationary long range units as a land improvement would be cool: a unit that fire automatically when hostile units approaches.
[Freddz]
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•Clearer distinctions between the epochs.
•Better modelling of industrial revolution via when improvements become available (earlier!) and what effect they have (cumulative doubling!).
•More improvements that effect trade directly (that's what drives city development in the real world).
•Better modelling of sanitation/health as effecting city growth. [all by don Don]
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•The idea of totally managing your city as in SimCity will work fine at the start of the
game, but not in a later part. In that later part a lot is left over to the citizen.
(communist / fascist regimes left out). Part of the solution is to provide more
government organs. communist gov't would not have AI Imps for banks or factories or churches. Or much of anything... Theocracies would have gov't control over religious improvments

in example:
- Religious beleivers ask to begin construction of a Cathedral.
- Scientists petition for the establishment of a Royal Society.
- Professors and Academics demand that you found a University.
- A learned scholar asks permission to establish an Academy for our Youth.
- The local merchants request that you sponsor a Fair.
- Local merchants seek a charter for a Bank. [wheathin]

• in addition:
Religions should work like an AI that can build improvements etc.
Religious communions have always been dominant roles in international politics!
And maybe the same for corporations! [Ecce Homo]
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• in addition:
You accumulate "Improvement potential points". When you get enough for "Industry", the industrialist build a factory, more points, a Power Plant etc. If a city is too small, it can;t support the improvement. (not suffiecient market. It won’t pay itself back.) [wheathin]
• in addition
Who’s going to pay for these improvements ? Building improvements needs to compete somehow with building units or cities or keeping people happy or researching techs.

Option 1: You accumelate "Potential" points in addition to tax revenues. (Abstraction: the economy can only expand so fast based on the available resources, so the choice to build one item prevents building of others. )

These points could be a global pool, like Public Works, or purely local or a mixture of both (might change
Per gouvernament as well)

There can be an ‘build’ or ‘allowed to build’ list for denied petitions. So the player can chose later to build
It. The timing and appearance of the demands can depend on: Population of city, Current tech level, Government type, Economic base of city, Industrial capacity and resources

Option 2: Building might cause problems as well, in example:
- Building the university might anger the religous types.
- Factories (without the appropriate regulatory/courthouse improvements - which the gov't would build directly) would upset the citizens by explooiting them, and might also cause pollution.
- Building lots of churches and cathedrals and mosques would give too much power the the religious elements at the expense of the crown (but being a democracy could reduce this effect with Freedom of Religion). [wheathin]

• in addition
"As governer, we should be building the millitary structures (city walls, baraks, etc), public services (grainaries, aquaducts, etc) and that's pretty well it. Other improvements should be controled only second hand, by influencing religions, city planners, etc." [Snowfire]

• in addition
Churches Building their own Buildings could cause you all kinds of problems, i can see individual cities rioting because you manage to upset the local religious leaders, or maybe due to religious uprisings the units arround a particular city turn Barbarian [ceebs]

• in addition:
When you build/pay support cost for a Cathedral, just think of it as the government giving tax breaks to the religious organization, write-offs for individual donations, royal warrants for timber or other controlled strategic resources, etc. [don Don]

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• How about prisons/gulags/concentration camps/penal colonies/slave labour facilities. These things were important to the development of many if not all. Some of these "improvements" could be linked to particular forms of government with rewards and penalties for building them. For example, nasty ones such as gulags could be built under nasty forms of government such as communism. They could give some benefits in terms of population control but have a high maintenance cost (and even made a "must build" so you have to bear the cost because its hard to have totalitarianism without them). Under democracy, gulags are automatically disbanded and you get cashback like with barracks currently [Alexander's Horse]
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• An Idea just came up in the regional menu thread. What about regional improvments? Not every city builds a stock exchange for example, they serve a region... [ember]
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• improvements that could only be built in one city but that would affect the whole civ. Sort of mini-wonders that a civ only needs one of, but which are possible to build by every civilization
Examples:
- Hoover / Aswan / Three Gorges Dam
- Space Program bits (launch centers, etc...)
- National Defense Command center (a la NORAD)
- Super Particle Accelerator
- Royal Court (may or may not be built in the Capital - Versailles is outside Paris)
- Regional Weather Control station (futuristic, would help with crops and food production)
- National Museums and Galleries (modern happiness improvements)
- Olympic Stadium (there must be 15 or 20 of these around the world!)
- SDI / BMD
- Stock Exchanges or other major financial improvements
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• there should be more negative effects on improvements. This Could make for more variety in cities, rather than identical super infrastructured burgs.
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• Improvements act different under differrent gouvernaments, in example:
Re-education camps: Built under a Fachist government they would decrease the city population by one, but would turns three unhappy people into happy(brain washing :P)
Under any other form of government these centers would be a terrible reminder of a darker past and would create 2 unhappiness in each city they occupy. they would need to be sold. But, by selling them, you don't gain any money
Cathedral: Under a Monarchy, Feudal, Tribal and City State government they would make two unhappy people neutral. In a Republic and Democracy they would do this to only one pop, due to the govenrment no longer favoring one religion. Under a Fachism and Communism, these govenrments disapprovle of religion would lead people to look upon Cathedrals as a relic from the past, and would create two unhappiness due to loss of support fro the govenrment to religions [Cartagia the Great]

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<H3>List of new purposes / names for old improvements<H5>

• Superhighways ==> Shopping Mall / Mall / Downtown / Commercial Centre [VaderTwo]
• use the highways as an option in the roads/terraforming area instead [VaderTwo]
• I'm in favour of retaining all CivII structures, though possibly in a somewhat modified state [Shining1]
• Granary should be made obsolete by some tech and they can all(or some) be upgraded to something more modern. [Depp]
# In addition: Change the graphics for the granary at higher techs. [HarryKattz]
• citywalls should limit city size to 6 or something [Depp]
# in addition: 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. [HarryKattz]
# in addition: I would like to see the deemphasis of city walls, as the game progresses.
Look a round you... how many cities have city walls anymore? Once the modern age came around, walls were no longer used. [NotLikeTea]
• the Idea of Muslim nations not being allowed to make churches strikes me as Odd, dosent that religion have Mosques?, i've always taken the cathedrals in Civ to be a Generalised religious building [ceebs]
# In addition : This is indeed the case in the current civ. Though I think in Civ3 there must be a difference between Churches and Mosques. [CyberShy]
• the library:
each city library holds 200 years of information. sketchy at first but better as time goes on. you chose what years are recorded in a given library. if a library is captured or unmatained you lose the info on those given years. Kind of like built in viking scribe cliff notes with areas that say
• SDI should be a LOT cheaper. Given the stupid way the AI uses nukes [Flavor Dave]
• Recycling centers and mass transit should either be cheaper, or they should work better. [Flavor Dave]
• Airports should be able to handle more than one airlift per turn. Either a flat rate of three or five airlifts per turn, or the number of airlifts depends on the population of the city Oh, and I also forgot to mention that I
# In addition:
Build an improvement called Runway. You can have one or many in a city - each one of them allowing one Airlift per turn. When they are not used for airlifting they are used as Caravans à la CtP. Each Runway cost one shield a turn, representing the demand of fuel and spareparts for the aircraft.
You can also have a Dock improvement, allowing "sealifts" and a Railway Station improvement, allowing "rail-lifts". This would certainly reduce micromanagement.

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<H3>List of people involved with this thread<H5>

CyberShy [Thread Leader]
Alexander's Horse
Blue Moose
Cartagia the Great
CormacMacArt
ceebs
Depp
Druid2
don Don
Ecco Homo
EnochF
ember
Flavor Dave
Freddz
HarryKattz
Isle
Mark_Everson
MBD
NotLikeTea
Ralph
Shining1
Sieve Too
SnowFire
Trachmyr
Transcend
Travathian
VaderTwo
wheathin
Zorloc

[Ecce Homo]

Thank you for your summary!

What about city improvements concerning space flight? Maybe they should go in the Space Exploitation thread.

Anyway, my suggestion is an Interstellar Communication Central - an expensive improvement which must be built in order to launch a spaceship. If it is destroyed, the spaceship is lost. Finding and capturing an enemy ICC would be a greater challenge than sacking the capital.

[Alexander's Horse]

Great summary. I notice the people on the "war" threads and the "peace" threads are not the same (but with some crossover). Its like two tribes. Perhaps the two should interface somehow on the play balance issue.

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THREAD UP*=-

[EnochF]

Sometime in January there was a thread in the Suggestions for Civ3 forum (remember? those were the days) about "More Powerful Spies." The argument was that spies were game-breaking units in Civ II and should have limits placed on them.

My suggestion then was this: Limit spy production to cities with the University city improvement. I still think this is a good way to limit spies, not to mention encourage University building.

[Ecce Homo]

Limit spy production to cities with the University city improvement.

Maybe more units should require special city improvements to be built. Say, a factory is needed for building tanks and aircraft, and a port facility is needed to build battleships.

[korn469]

i think that having building prerequsits would be a great idea. maybe only one or basics units could be built if a city didn't have any structures at all. i also feel that infinite city sprawl must be contained. maybe the base square wouldn't produce any resources itself but would produce modifiers.

here's how it would work

the base square has a production of 0-0-0 but maybe it has a modifier of +50% food +25% minerals and +25% energy certain structures could increase the percentages the base square increase production. under this model one size ten city would produce more then 10 size one cities

i think it's a good idea any feedback?

korn469

[Flavor Dave]

Spies only being built in university cities is a great idea!!

[wheathin]

The base city square should be worth something, but maybe not as much as a normal square? Then, you'd have to build an improvment like the Recycling Tanks in SMAC to get "normal" resources out of the base square.

I definitely like the improvement pre-reqs for certain units. It would force you to specialize.

wheathin

[korn469]

the base square would be worth something if you did it by my percentages idea say the percent bonus for food was 50% for the base square and you were producing 2 food from a tile then the base square would be worth 1 food...then again if you were producing 50 food off of your tiles then the base square would be worth 25 food

korn469

[Flavor Dave]

I suggest 3 levels of city walls (did I already do this?)

1. Barricades, available at the beginning. Costs 40 shields, doubles defense, doesn't protect population.

2. City walls, costs 40 more shields, acts exactly like it does now.

3. Fortifications. Cost 40 more shields, available with, I don't know, Labor Union. Costs another 40 shields, works exactly like city walls, but gives 50% bonus against air attacks, and 50 or 100% bonus against howies. Howies need to be reined in.

[FinnishGuy]

(If strategic bomber units are implemented.)

Underground Factory city improvement:

Actually cuts slightly production compared to an ordinary factory, but greatly reduces production penalties caused by enemy strategic bombing. Also lesser chance of factory being destroyed by bombing or nukes (if city installations can be destroyed by air campaign).

[korn469]

if your city is hit by a nuke it should be destroyed along with all of it's city improvments just like in SMAC

but i do like underground factories for civ3 that have a low probability of being destroyed by strategic bombing
and maybe besides costing more they don't have quite as much production value (maybe like 40% instead of 50%)

korn469

[NotLikeTea]

Animal 57!

Ok, this is slightly less than serious, but it might be a fun little improvement for the very near future. Gives a food bonus, obviously.

For those who don't know the wonders of the Animal, look at http://www.kibo.com/exegesis/index.shtml#ANIMAL57 or my own image at http://home.iSTAR.ca/~sdevet/Animal-57.jpg

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THREAD UP*=-