Open civ Shields

[markusf]

I like the idea of having shields for each city. I like being able to change production between varying amounts of shields. So i can slow down pop growth or speed up the building of infustructure. once you take away shields the stregnth of a city is solely based on building position.

[amjayee]

quote: Originally posted by markusf on 05-30-2000 08:43 PM once you take away shields the stregnth of a city is solely based on building position.

Quite the contrary. Shields are not taken away, but replaced with workyears, that work a little differently from the earlier civs. But still, you can change what is produced by simply giving orders to increase this, and decrease that.

Also the goal in our game is, that city's strength is not based on its location as heavily as in civ2, but more in how good strategies the player has. And strategies do not include moving people around - that was one of the silliest things in civ2.

The player can instead leave the details to ai (governors, mayors and advisors) and simply give commands - like "increase food production", "produce x amount of food per turn" etc. AI tries to follow the orders, and may build stuff, create jobs etc. The player can concentrate on global strategies. Or, micromanagers can adjust the priorities city-vice by adding jobs somewhere, cutting elsewhere, building farms, factories etc.

In this system you have to adapt to the current condition. Some idea might work in some situation, where some other idea doesn't. Isn't this much more strategic than following simple pre-learnt techniques? I think it is. Not as easy as civ2 (confess all; how many times you have actually lost a civ game?), but also not too difficult - just challenging, and more thought-requiring. But of course difficulties can be adjusted.

[markusf]

ok then how is max production for a city determined. I have a whale a spice and a silk in a size 1 city. what is the max production of science and shields for the civ?

[amjayee]

markusf:

Max productions depend on many things. Here are a few:

1. Infrastructure; the buildings, connections, roads etc. For example, science is boosted with universities.
2. Your technological level (not only what you have discovered, but what you have put into practice; this is mainly modeled with the infrastructure. You have to spend money and resources to advance the infrastructure in a city or whole empire to certain level.
3. Population amount and SE settings; SE creates an environment, and depending on it, your people produce certain amount of workhours and CE.
4. The tile properties. Each tile produces x amount of each resource.

These determine the maximum productions. Then, your funding and encouragement determines the actual amount produced. With science, also trade and connections with other nations increase production.

But please don't worry too much about the maximum productions and stuff. Isn't the intention to get rid of the "strategies" in former civ games - maximizing productions etc. I hope in our game there will be so many more interesting things to care aboutm that people don't want to waste their time to trivial matters. You won't need to know the excact amount your people could produce. Instead you would think, what is the best thing to do in the current situation.