DESIGN: Government City Caps

[Solver]

One more thing I can never understand. Stealth units. Why do so many people hate them? I hear those named usually as one of the worst CtP feautures, while Lawyers and the like are one of the things I (and I assume most of you) love about CtP.

[Maquiladora]

Damn you people and youre civ hangovers I knew no-one would dare to question history for gameplay

Still you need to make this smaller scale more interesting, less time to discover/build etc - maybe have a much more compact tech tree with more minor discoveries? But then if it comes too quick and easy you can lose track/interest in the process. Which was one of my (few) complaints about Smac, things came so fast in the weapons race that often a tech was obsolete before it came into service.......

Well as ive tested it doesnt actually knock the scale off at all, because youre cities are growing BIGGER rather than building more small cities, you still have the same amount of Population in your whole empire, its just all collected into less and bigger cities and not in lots of small cities. Lots of small cities in Civ3 = Good (same as always) Tactic. Small cities in CTP2 = Low (bad) Production.

One more thing I can never understand. Stealth units. Why do so many people hate them? I hear those named usually as one of the worst CtP feautures, while Lawyers and the like are one of the things I (and I assume most of you) love about CtP.

I guess its because most of them are tacky, mainly the Future ones. The main ones i like are Spies and Slavers, they take up too much support though i think.

[Gilgamensch]

Originally posted by Solver
Or ditch the city limit altogether, but make corruption increase strongly with distance from capital...

This, me think, is not a good idea. It will favour more the human again than the AI. We are more flexible working around those limits as the AI.

And we already have an unhapiness modifier based on distance.

[Martin Gühmann]

Re: DESIGN: Government City Caps

Originally posted by Maquiladora
(1) Everyone would be spacing their cities wider and so would the AI, so less chance of the AI overlapping too early if its told to space far enough.

No the Ai wouldn't do it automaticly you have to adjust this in strategies.txt and then there is no need to decrease the city cap.

Originally posted by Maquiladora
At the moment its, cram cities in allowing for 2 borders, the AI doesnt know how to cram and i suspect it will be hard to tell it how to, not as good as a human anyway. So lower the city cap and tell it to space wider, that will help the AI sustain and keep growing food/commerce/production, into the modern age even. Telling the AI to space wider now with the default city caps just makes it waste good land and split its empire too wide, needlessly.

It is not a problem to make the AI to leave bigger gaps between its cities for instance with MinSettleDistance 7 it wasted to land between its cities with MinSettleDistance 3 the cities are too close together, so you have to find a balance between, also dependent on the AI personality. The real problem is that the AI doesn't settle fast enough at least in the default game but that can be changed by modifying the strategies.txt. The only problem is that the AI doesn't switch to another strategy when the city cap is reached and expands beyond it. So we need another strategy: STRATEGY_TOO_MANY_CITIES added to the strategies.txt that is used when the city cap is reached.

Originally posted by Maquiladora
(3) Reduces the late game tedium and makes specialists more important, because of larger cities sooner.

I don't see why the cities should grow faster, their population is limited by buildings, so the game would be slowed down. And that is bad I don't like this as player, I want to have many cities that grow and prosper and not a game where I wait for eternity that my empire does something, in my lastest verson of GoodMod (unfortunatly not released yet) I have use AI empires which expand as long as the city cap is not reach and conquer very aggressivly as long as the opponent is on the same continent.

Originally posted by Maquiladora
(4) slows down early science to better follow the timeline, but not too slow that it becomes a pain.

If you are on pair with the AIs there is no change necessary.

Originally posted by Maquiladora
(1) Some people think the caps are too small already, in conquests and such.

The real problem is that one set of city limit is ok a certain map size but completly rediculous for another map size, so the city cap should be coupled to the map size more precisly be coupled to the number of tiles that are on the according map available, of course also in releaton to the number of tiles a city can cover. A middle city spacing should be the base. So Tyranny can cover 10% of the world and Virtual Democracy can cover 100% of the world and everything else something in between.

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Heres some numbers +/- a few,

* Tyranny - 5

* Monarchy - 10
* Republic - 10
* Theocracy - 10

* Fascism - 20
* Communism - 20
* Democracy - 20

* Corporate Republic - 30
* Technocracy - 30

* Ecotopia - 40
* Virtual Democracy - 40

Well these values might suitable for a small world map but not for a big one.

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Im talking about changing the default game here, for the better (i think), not a mod, so if its a bad idea with the majority of people then it wont happen. Thoughts?

No, the just plan reducing of the city cap for all map sizes is a bad idea.

-Martin

[child of Thor]

Peters suggestion(and one i have thought that many games could benefit from) of a much more configurable setup screen, would be the icing on the cake. It would let each person play the game how they prefer to.

Still it would be a massive/impossible(?) task to say get the AI to change the way it plays because player A wants less cities, while player B wants more, and all the different strategies the AI would need to employ?

I have played Imperialism 1 and it also has a very comprehensive set of start up options. I also liked this aspect to the Warlords games(well it had it in the second one). Many,many customisations

And the stealth units are great - they make sense, they work and can just be plain fun(sneaking that spy across half a continent to get that enemy tech, only to have him fall at the last momment! etc) - although i think maybe they should cost more as they are very powerful?

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
No the Ai wouldn't do it automaticly you have to adjust this in strategies.txt and then there is no need to decrease the city cap.

I know the AI wont do it automatically, im aware of strategies.txt

I don't see why the cities should grow faster, their population is limited by buildings, so the game would be slowed down.

Population is limited by buildings, but you research those buildings before your growth slows down, so any slowdown is from bad tactic.

Larger cities produce faster, so your choices become more flexible than one Cavalry every 15 turns then an Arena in 30 turns....

And that is bad I don't like this as player, I want to have many cities that grow and prosper and not a game where I wait for eternity that my empire does something,

Actually, it depends on your outlook to the game on where your empire goes, not expecting a city to grow without farms.

The real problem is that one set of city limit is ok a certain map size but completly rediculous for another map size, so the city cap should be coupled to the map size more precisly be coupled to the number of tiles that are on the according map available, of course also in releaton to the number of tiles a city can cover. A middle city spacing should be the base. So Tyranny can cover 10% of the world and Virtual Democracy can cover 100% of the world and everything else something in between.

Well this is a side issue i didnt even comment on. I dont think i said ALL map sizes. A reduction in general, would improve many areas of the game, including the AI, but unfortunately i can see this isnt going to happen, only in a mod

It wasnt my intention to change the game for the sake of it, but to actually change it for the better, but if its a mod, then so be it.

[Solver]

I read the CFC threads, and suggest everyone else does. Indeed, one of them does contain good constructive criticism (although a few standard CtP sucks notes too), including also things that we have mentioned in our discussions.

[Maquiladora]

Well i read both threads from start to finish and came to a few random conclusions.

75% of civ fans dont like future techs.
80-99% dont like stealth units, id agree with that except for the good ones (slaver spies).
Whenever someone likes CTP2 over civ3 they always type civ3 all in lower case and CTP2 properly.

[hexagonian]

The caps are a great idea in principle - They are there to stop unlimited expansionism (infinite city sleaze). The whole idea of some sort of penalty for large empires is historical too. CTP2 currently places exceeding the city cap as an unhappiness/crime penalty.

When establishing caps, you also have to take several variables into consideration - map size/land and sea percentages, and number of civs in the game. A cap will play out differently if those settings are different.

Personally, I prefer keeping the caps low in my games, because it offers a greater degree of challenge to maintain an efficient empire.

However, we (the Modders) may have gone about using the cap in the wrong manner. In the default game, the unhappiness modifier kicks in at 75 but you didn't have a large chance of a riot until you got below 72. This was a 3 point margin for the player. If you are at 74 in a city, you might suffer a riot, but you also will suffer increased crime - go lower and crime rates/riots increase even more.

It was terribly easy to manage - to most players, it was merely a speedbump to expansionism. And the AI usually wasn't near the cap in the default game, so it wasn't affected.

In Cradle, the cutoff point for unhappiness/full riot was at 75 - and if you fall below 75, you had a great chance of falling into a riot state - and Cradle also greatly increased the unhappiness penalty if you exceeded the cap. The end result was the caps made it brutal to the player (...but challenging in a good way), but at the same time, the AI had a hard time managing it once it was prompted in later builds of Cradle to increase expansion.

Perhaps we need to go back to the setup as it was (75 happiness/68-72 full riot), but rather than increase the happiness penalty for exceeding the cap, we greatly increase the crime rate as you fall below 75, and have a more gradual riot chance. The end result are cities that produce very little, but are not in a riot state.

All of a sudden, crime rate becomes even more important to manage - almost just as important as unhappiness.

The end result is that crime reduction buildings become a lot more important to build. As it is now in Cradle, crime buildings reduce crime, but their effect is negated in cities in a riot state - and since the unhappiness/riot margin is so small in Cradle, their importance is low.

And the AI does not have a problem constructing buildings in Cradle, so the AI problem is eliminated.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Well this is a side issue i didnt even comment on. I dont think i said ALL map sizes. A reduction in general, would improve many areas of the game, including the AI, but unfortunately i can see this isnt going to happen, only in a mod

In my opinion it is the real problem, the problem that a fixed city cap works only on a certain map size. So we can decide what number of city is needed to cover the whole map and then if we decide that we should make it very difficuilt to cover the whole map then we chose the lower limit. So with the best government you would only be able to cover let's say 65% of the world.

Another aspect is that it was intended that you have the choice to space your cities close together or leave huge gaps. But in practise you are rewarded for building as much cities as possible and it doesn't matter if there is a gap of 3 tiles or 7 tiles between them, you can feed a size 60 city with less then the maximum tiles such a city can cover, I think you don't need the outer ring for that task, but I don't like to reduce the maximum radius. So too wide spacing is not rewarded and take Cradle for instacnce it take ages that the cities fill the second ring, so I am rewared for sticking the cities tight together, because in the end I have more production, because I have more cities.

So I suggest for the city cap a formular, that contains a factor in the govern.txt with a modifer of city number depending on the government, another one that takes the map size into consideration, another one that takes max city size into consideration and finally one for the level of difficuilty:

DiffFact * MapSize * MaxCitySquares * GovFact

In the current game a city can have as maximum 68 tiles (I think) a gigantic map has 140 * 70 quares that are 9800 quares through 68 is roughly 144, so 144 does fit on such a map if you use maximum spacing without overlapping and best use of space, well in praxis you lose some space during the cycle nature of the city radii, so we can reduce this by some cities.

So one value is MapSize/MaxCitySquares the next factor is given by the DiffFact or we can also call it setting fact, when we want it somewhere in the settings. Let's say we want to make it so that you aren't be able to fill the map with cities so you take a factor smaller zeoro like 0.5. So that means you can't fill the whole map just 50% of it.

So the updated formular is:

DiffFact * (MapSize/MaxCitySuares)

We we want to be able to fill the map with more cities then the minum city size we use a factor of 1.25 for DiffFact so we can fill the map with 25% more cities then there is space for as large as possible spaced cities.

And now we to introduce the government factor so all governments have a procentual factor, we can write it as precent into the text file or as fractal like 0.05 for 5%.

So let have a GovFact for Tyranny lets say:

GovTyrFact = 0.05
MapSize = 70*140 = 9800
MaxCitySize = 68
DiffFact = 1.0

Then we have:

1.0 * (9800/68)*0.05

Rounded down it quals 7. So according to this formular we have reduced the max number of cities on a gigantic map from 10 to 7.

So the final formular looks like:

MaxCity# = floor(DiffFact * (MapSize/MaxCitySquares) * GovFact)

In that formular DiffFact and GovFact are floats/doubles and MapSize and MaxCitySquares are integers.

Of course we can also introduce another factor that takes into consideration the number of land tiles that are available before the tech that allows sea colonys.

-Martin

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by hexagonian
However, we (the Modders) may have gone about using the cap in the wrong manner. In the default game, the unhappiness modifier kicks in at 75 but you didn't have a large chance of a riot until you got below 72. This was a 3 point margin for the player. If you are at 74 in a city, you might suffer a riot, but you also will suffer increased crime - go lower and crime rates/riots increase even more.

Actual in the default game it cicks in at 73, you have a small chance that it riots at a happiness level of 72 and at 71 it is more likely and at 70 or 69 it is very high.

-Martin

[Solver]

75% of civ fans dont like future techs.
80-99% dont like stealth units, id agree with that except for the good ones (slaver spies).

Remove those and I will like CtP2 much less...

[child of Thor]

Martin, i'm a tired , so the exact specifics of what you said kinda went over my head, but from what i did understand i agree - if there was some kind of 'balanceing' formulae, then that would be great.

Of on a tangent slightly: Ok lets look at the current(and never to be won ) Democracy game.

The way both the German and English nations have squeezed many cities into their borders looks wrong to me. Are they all being productive? I doubt it very much so why has it built so many? Particularly the Germans seemed to have gone crazy in an ICS fashion.
So this is why i agree with Maq and others on the notion of trying to stop the ICS - we need to make other things more attractive to the AI(and player) - a more cultured,crimefree,productive,and happy city with many improvements, should IMHO be the goal of all rulers(human and AI). Try to aim for a more natural look on the game map, something less cluttered and artificial looking.

To throw in the counter view to Gilgs(all hail the Emperor ) comment about the Egyptians,Rome etc - well they all did reach a point of implosion, when they got too big to effectivily run themselves. Ok compared to other civs they did pretty well, Rome in particular - but it was in a way the sheer size of the empire Rome was governing that caused many of its problems.
So in a way there was a city cap in effect

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by child of Thor
The way both the German and English nations have squeezed many cities into their borders looks wrong to me. Are they all being productive? I doubt it very much so why has it built so many? Particularly the Germans seemed to have gone crazy in an ICS fashion.
So this is why i agree with Maq and others on the notion of trying to stop the ICS - we need to make other things more attractive to the AI(and player) - a more cultured,crimefree,productive,and happy city with many improvements, should IMHO be the goal of all rulers(human and AI). Try to aim for a more natural look on the game map, something less cluttered and artificial looking.

The problem here is that the AIs here have no idea about the city cap and therefore they go beyond, I am shure with my latest script I wouldn't see it, well they AI wouldn't even bother your cities if it is over the cap.

-Martin

[Solver]

Bah, look at some Civ 3 games where people played without ICS. A relatively small amount of cities, and upgrading them.

Yes, I'd love to have the choice of having a small or medium sized empire with developed cities appealing. But, I'd hate to have that choice pressed down upon me with caps or such stuff! I already hate how Civ 3 forces you to fight an Ancient war, whether you want it or not...