Terrain city bonus

[MrBaggins]

I'm not sure if this subject has been done to death already (I did do some searches and found nothing)

I've been working on a mod, and examining a number of fundemental game issues along the way, one of these being terrain, and its values... specificially with regard to defining programmatically how and where to settle... translating general AI 'goals' into choices, using weighting.

As part of the democracy game, i've made a somewhat elaborate spreadsheet, which calculates growth, production, science and gold, turn by turn, based on a 'grid' of terrain/river/good that you input; You define the prospective site, using the terrain name and so on, and the spreadsheet does the rest.

I was aware that part of the bonus, is a 'city' bonus, which is modifiable by terrain, but in all cases, at the moment, uses the same values, +10 food, +20 production & +20 commerce.

I was really curious to see whether concept which the Civ2 and Civ3 people have had to eliminate ICS (Infinite City Sleaze)... to negate the food/shields/trade which the city square provides could be done in CtP2... so I entered negative figures for the City modifier in each terrain, corresponding to the positive figures which the terrain normally gives. The technique works, insofaras the city square gives (without a river) a 0/0/0 value.

Since I have the simulator, I started to play with the figures to see what effect that this has on growth and so on.

If you negate the city square, the growth becomes constant... that is... if it starts at 1500... it stay at that level, rather than being reduced when the city grows, as it normally would.

The behavior happens since the city square's value is only ever added once, and the rest of the value is gained from the ring surrounding it. The city square's proportional value decreases as the divisor (the population) increases.

The same behavior occurs with production and commerce.

Something that you could theoretically try would be to keep the +10 food in the city modifier in each terrain, but have a negative modifier for production and commerce that matched the positive value that the terrain normally had. You would need to proportionally increase the production and commerce values throughout, since cities would be producing low and/or negative amounts.

This would, at first sight, solve the ICS issue...

City's Production and Commerce would grow proportionately with size...

E.G. if a size 1 city produces 20 production and 25 Commerce, then the same city at size 2 city will produce 40 Production and 50 Commerce, and 60/75 at size 3.... and so on. So... one size 2 city would be just as productive as 2 size 1's...

Another alternative would be to reduce the proportion that the city square is valued so that growth had less steep decline and/or production and commerce had a more proportional growth.

There are a lot of options here...

---

Just a few random thoughts that may be of interest...

MrBaggins

[Maquiladora]

Can you attach the spreadsheet?

[Gilgamensch]

MrBaggins,

the ICS had been cured with the maximum values per government, although this is possible to be changed by the user, it isn't so likely for beginners to change. This would mean that they have severe limits after i.e. the 10. city.

But still interresting to know. Might be a nice choice to increase the difficulty level (not sure if it could be done this way?), instead of giving the AI, other bonuses????????

[Maquiladora]

Id rather the ICS problem was solved another way different to max cities per government, i always thought that abit weird. Even extreme crime and corruption (under some governments) might be better than max cities per government. Just got to figure out how the AI would handle all these great new ideas.

[Gilgamensch]

I actually prefer the way, they have done, as this gives a feeling as more in reality, although default wise they are a bit low.........

[MrBaggins]

Two points:

1) ICS still exists. Empire Size limits slow the process, but since you get science rewards for the technique, you are not as subject to the limits as other players, you can continue expanding through governments (and so the caps) quicker.

To very simply see... just imagine 2 empires... one with 3 size 1 cities, one with 1 size 3. The empire with 3 cities will have significantly more production, and commerce than the empire with 1 city.

If the center square held no value (for production/commerce especially) then the two empires would have identical production.

2) Yes I can attach the spreadsheet, but I'm hesitant to do so: It isn't finished to a degree that I'm happy with, isn't wonderfully intuative and so on... The production formula hasn't been finished...

But... here it is.

The 'top' grid, X1-X3 and Y1-Y3 is where you enter the names of the terrains (as found on page2, first column), Rivers are 'Yes' or 'No' answers and the Good columns use 0 for no good, 1-4 for that specific good number.

There is no bounds checking.

The 'results' appear in the grid below, is aggregated in the City/1st Ring section, and then turn by turn values, including culmulative growth is presented below that.

This spreadsheet is intended for approximate productive valuation simulation. It is unfinished, and is not for reuse, or contra-indicated use.

Unrar (probably with winrar). An Excel 5.0 format spreadsheet. Will work with any Excel from 95-XP.

MrBaggins

[Gilgamensch]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Two points:

1) ICS still exists. Empire Size limits slow the process, but since you get science rewards for the technique, you are not as subject to the limits as other players, you can continue expanding through governments (and so the caps) quicker.

To very simply see... just imagine 2 empires... one with 3 size 1 cities, one with 1 size 3. The empire with 3 cities will have significantly more production, and commerce than the empire with 1 city.

If the center square held no value (for production/commerce especially) then the two empires would have identical production.


MrBaggins

OK, downloaded but haven't checked yet..........

For your first point:

Yes, it is true, but only to a certain degree. As you can't settle anymore city next to city, as you have the limit of government, it isn't really possible to cheat with it anymore. Because in your calculation you are missing the extra production from the extra workers, plus you could allocate speciallists......... so 3*1 isn't 1*3 really.

And if you would continue your example, for tyranny, it would be a maximum of 10*1 or 1*10, before unhapiness, but adding another city would create a lot of unhapiness... so you would be better of with 1*11.

[MrBaggins]

I have to verifiy, but as far as I recall, specialists add... not in an unmodified way, but to the ring that they 'would' have been working... and are hence subject to division, and thus are less proportionately valuable than the city square, which is unmodified.

3 laborers in one city or 1 laborer in 3 cities add the up to the same total bonus. They are actually remarkably balanced.

A city might double in production through growth at 8-9.

It can multiply in production by 8-9 through creating that many size 1 towns....

The player is significantly better off ICS'ing until he hits the cap, pausing until his signficant science advantage gets him to the next government, and then continuing.

MrBaggins

[Gilgamensch]

I think in the vanilla version you might be right, but other's have been modified (AFAIR, as far as I remember)......

For the workers:

But with putting in small cities workes, you limit their growth (not talking about farmers).

And Yes, the human is always better at using weaknesses in games, as the AI can't discover those

The radius depends on the MOD, default it is (IRC) 6 and the mods 8.

But don't forget how long it takes to create those settlers.........

[MrBaggins]

Growth is a special case...

Growth is capped at 2500, and massively degrades as you grow

Many small cities will always grow quicker than a large city, farmers or not; their growth bonus is unmodified at pop 1, so their effect is far greater than the same number of farmers in a large city (where the growth is divided by pop)

MrBaggins

[MrBaggins]

Workers appear insignificant at smaller sizes, because regardless of their better-than-average value in a specific trait; food, production, gold or science... due to the unmodified city square being the most signficant proportion of the cities production... masks the effect... not to mention that the city model is designed to operate best when balanced.

[Gilgamensch]

Actually after rethinking all the facts you brought:

Yes, you are right. ICS is still there, only more hidden..... and not longer as strong. It could be nice, to leave it for the first city and just remove it from the other cities. That might be another possibility. (If possible).

It would give you still a faster growing center. So a kind of growth-center (like in good old Populos).

[Gilgamensch]

the city model is designed to operate best when balanced.

Not sure what you mean???????

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Gilgamensch
Actually after rethinking all the facts you brought:

Yes, you are right. ICS is still there, only more hidden..... and not longer as strong. It could be nice, to leave it for the first city and just remove it from the other cities. That might be another possibility. (If possible).

It would give you still a faster growing center. So a kind of growth-center (like in good old Populos).

Easy: give your the capitol building growth, science and gold bonuses, as well as the small happiness bonus.

Good idea too...

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Gilgamensch


Not sure what you mean???????

Well... Terrain becomes more valuable, as it can be improved. Specialists have... useful at first, although not overridingly so, fixed values, that don't improve as the game progresses.

It would be nice if specialists could be improved by advances as well as terrain.