I have to get something off my chest about Civ. Something I despise and just really get dragged down by. Why the hell don't they use Provinces? Picture it, a randomly generated world, where the computer would draw smooth borders, then divide them up according to natural features. Rivers, mountain ranges, etc. Each one could have, say a number of "slots" depending on size, one "master slot" and anywhere from 1 to even 20 subordinate slots. The master slot would be your "city heart", and the subordinate slots would have the same terrain types as are currently used. The river rule would still be in effect, as rivers would be between provinces instead of between tiles. Roads and such would have to be re-conceptualized, but hey, that is what innovation is for.

Benefits of the province system:

-Absolute Defense: A strong military power could put their troops into defense, only funneling them to border provinces. Military clashes would be far, far more focused, particularly as a defender.

-Looks: The map would look far cleaner all around, and it would be trivial to keep track of what was going on.

-Province Specials: Provinces could have neat "special rules" either assigned to them via scenario or randomly generated such as "Fault line", "Frequent Floods", "Tornado Alley", "Land of Milk and Honey". The imagination is the limit!

-No "Road Sprawl": However they were re-conceptualized, roads would no longer turn into the visual atrocity that they are in Civ 3 (and almost as bad in Civ 4 from what I have seen, sorry to say.) By visual atrocity, just to defend myself ahead of time, I don't mean "It ain't purdy like Doom tree wid all da bump maps an stuffs." so don't go there, I mean it's like having your eyes splashed with acid.

-Pre-Designed maps: While random maps are still the primary focus of Civ, and hopefully still would be if these were used, hand made maps would enter whole new realms of cool.

Figuring out how Exploration would work is one major kink that I don't have any answers for that are good, but I wanted to see if anyone else had similar thoughts.

i like the idea of having states or provinces instead of cities..but its really jsut the same thing in the game with a different name...now that being said..changes that you have asked would drasticly change the game play..meaning it would be a whole different civ...not a sequal...im already afraid of what civ4 is going to be like...let alone changing the whole game concept...

I have suggested this before, after playing with Medieval: Total War, which it worked well in. They would have to rethink some features but it would look better, be more natural and offer interesting strategic passes and chokepoints to gain control over.

I think they changed the provincesystem in Rome: Total War though...

personally i hate (or dislike if people think it too agressive) the idea. its too restricting and Civ is unique and doesnt have to play like another game.

You say about a road sprawl? once people get Civ IV they will notice it be a waste of worker turns building roads as they are not needed there. Roads DID give a commerce bonus so a sprawl was common but to fight this in Civ IV the creators made it so no bonus was given therefore trying to get away from this sprawl.

Now, don't get me wrong, I usually like a system like that, and I believe it would be good, but...

It's not CIV. It would call for an all different kind of game. Simple as that, in my opinion

Well the best way to do a Province system would be with Dynamic Provinces (They start out small and as Transport Technology gets better they merge with each other become large... so that Ancient France is ~30 provinces and modern France is ~3)

And I don't think it would call for a different kind of game.

PS road sprawl will still exist, assuming it only costs worker turns to build a road, because there are turns that workers will be idle, and if there are any benefits at all to a road in a square (ie movement bonus) eventually all squares will get filled by them.
(This wouldn't apply as much if there was a 'construction cost' to various improvements... you would only build roads that you thought were useful.. but it still might happen..later in the game excess cash... but that probably would be the way to limit road sprawl, charge like 2 gold for each road built)

I'm not sure provinces would be a good way to go. This would predetermine national geography rather than letting it expand organically. A province based random map could also limit the number of different worlds on which to play. In addition, this leads to a number of sticky situations - how many cities per province, for instance? What about resources? Military conflict would be severely limited if unit movement was restricted like Medieval Total War.

like i said before.. a complete re work of the game...i just usually rename my cities to provinces...ie ."great one...the province of______ is in a riot" works the same.. cities are the only real way to implement the base concepts of the game at present..and its a change that hardly anyone would really be dancing about.

Not a bad little mod, there. Always thought it was strange to have a three city Roman empire.

I'm not sure provinces would be a good way to go. This would predetermine national geography rather than letting it expand organically. A province based random map could also limit the number of different worlds on which to play. In addition, this leads to a number of sticky situations - how many cities per province, for instance? What about resources? Military conflict would be severely limited if unit movement was restricted like Medieval Total War.

That's why I think they should be
1. Dynamic
and
2. A replacement for cities

Essentially my change would
1. make the 'city radius' dynamic
2. allow more 'area of effect' for military units
(and 3 rename cities to provinces)

I'm not sure provinces would be a good way to go. This would predetermine national geography rather than letting it expand organically. A province based random map could also limit the number of different worlds on which to play. In addition, this leads to a number of sticky situations - how many cities per province, for instance? What about resources? Military conflict would be severely limited if unit movement was restricted like Medieval Total War.

Strictly one city per province. The "City Tiles" would be further abstracted to "Province Slots".

It's just the MOO2 in me, I enjoyed the "Here is a star, it has planets around it" simplicity and I just don't always like the big flabby sprawly map in Civ 3.

To each his own, but I would like it :D

MoO2 worked well. So does Space Empires IV and Galactic Civilizations (+ XPack). If we're going to borrow from the Total War series, though, why not take the empire map unit movement system? Why not use the movement system foun in Heroes of Might and Magic? Remove tiles and provinces altogether. It would solve the unrealistic movement issue already found in civilization while allowing for more organic strategic level warfare.

Provinces work extremely well in a pre-built map scenario, but...

How about this? Civ's random maps often had a schizophrenic quality to them with regards to how tiles were placed and continents were spawned. What if it worked on a more regional method? placing a whole desert, forest, sea, instead of one tile at a time, and the type of region, along with the relative location of that region, would determine the percentage chance of its neighboring regions.

Possible?

That's why I think they should be
1. Dynamic
and
2. A replacement for cities

Essentially my change would
1. make the 'city radius' dynamic
2. allow more 'area of effect' for military units
(and 3 rename cities to provinces)
YES.

Also, with the addition that the province boundry should replace the city boundry (ie all tiles in a province can be utilised) and possibly that the production of the province be (max production potential) * (population density)
where the production potential is the total production of all tiles in the province and the population density is the number of tiles divided by the population.

I've always thought of cities as provincial capitals

I've always thought of cities as provincial capitals

Oh yeah, without a single doubt. Otherwise this isn't world conquest, it's "Little ring of islands" conquest.

not sure i even understand what is being proposed..."slots"? "master Slots"?-"subordinate slots" (queen bee and sterilized female wrkers)
"City Heart"? Sounds like an attempt to feminize the game. Limits roads....
lol oh you mean stop them long penetrating....
"Absolute Defense" ...(no means no)
"Looks"....ect.
I suggest that if the idea is to make the game less male oriented (in so far as it's coding- graphics- theories- which are probably done by males) or to infuse a bit of the feminine perspective- then that may be an interesting aspect no one really talks about- cause they are so wrapped up in the mechanics- they forget the true genesis (impulse)

I have an idea like this, one of your advisors has an option to "draw" province borders. this way a govenor could control the provence and handle building taxes or whatever you want him to handle. And as an added bounes your military advisor could grant you a war planer witch helps you plan wars and tells you strategic objectives, improvments to destroy, routs to take, number of units needed, the amount of turns you should take to win the war befor it realy escalates, and any knowlage you have about enemy troop streangh, position ect...

It would be a completely different game, one that could reach its full potential if designed around this concept. If Meiers and Reynolds worked on it I would probably buy it.

not sure i even understand what is being proposed..."slots"? "master Slots"?-"subordinate slots" (queen bee and sterilized female wrkers)
"City Heart"? Sounds like an attempt to feminize the game. Limits roads....
lol oh you mean stop them long penetrating....
"Absolute Defense" ...(no means no)
"Looks"....ect.
I suggest that if the idea is to make the game less male oriented (in so far as it's coding- graphics- theories- which are probably done by males) or to infuse a bit of the feminine perspective- then that may be an interesting aspect no one really talks about- cause they are so wrapped up in the mechanics- they forget the true genesis (impulse)

:eek:

Err, nope, I pretty much just meant a risk-style map. *backs away slowly*

EDIT: The master slot of the province would hold 1 city center, and the province, depending on size, would have a number of additional slots. These would roughly correspond to worked terrain tiles as of now. All absolute defense meant was that they couldn't just "run past" your defense to damage things(unless this was an abstract special ability).

Why not provinces?

Because it would be a different game, is the simple answer. For instance there would be no more maneuvering of troops in the same way as civ, it would just be province - to - province battles. Tile improvements, things like roads the way they are now etc ... it would all have to be changed, the whole game.

I suggest that you can draw your provinces on the map, so your province holds several cities. Make one city provincial capital and it acts like it has Civ3's Forbidden Palace.
Example: You have 30 cities, you carve your territory up in, let's say, 6 provinces with each 5 cities.
Provinces as a replacement for cities is a bad idea, because you want to see your cities, not some provincialborders And risk-style provinces is twice as bad because CivIV should stick to a tile-based grid and something like Risk or Europa Universalis. It wouldn't be civ anymore

I would be satisfied with an option to build something of a forbidden palace as a normal city improvement, provided the city is large enough. For instance, you set up a colony overseas, designate a 'capital' for it by building a provincial capital building. This way you can decentralize your power a bit without having the hassle of drawing out borders within your empire. Upside: less corruption in that colony (or whatever they're doing in civ4 now). Downside: since you centralized power there, if the city is capture, you run the risk of other cities around it (in the same 'province') laying down thier arms and surrendering to the invading power.

Why not provinces?

Because it would be a different game, is the simple answer. For instance there would be no more maneuvering of troops in the same way as civ, it would just be province - to - province battles. Tile improvements, things like roads the way they are now etc ... it would all have to be changed, the whole game.

There would still be maneuvering of troops, (depending on world wide # of provinces) but it would be less. You would still have an empire builder game, the nature of gameplay would change, but it did that when they added borders in Civ3, or when they added (and removed) terraforming in Civ2. Changing the focus away from tactical military mauevers would be a good thing.

In Imperialism, the map is made up of provinces, but the provinces are made up of tiles. This means that the rails you build can duck in and out of provinces if you so desire. They then generalized on the armies, assuming the resident forces covered the whole province, but who's to say you couldn't put the armies directly on the map's tiles?

Or we could take an the approach similar to the one taken by Massive Assault. Again, the map is divided into provinces (countries) and these are divided into tiles. This time, the units ARE on the map's tiles, and the presence of an enemy unit in ANY tile belonging to a country/province means that whole country cannot get its production income or build anything. Of course, MA has a couple quirks in that you can't have multiple units in the same space, and they can't even move over each other, but it's intended to be a tactical game anyway.

It would be good to take a few concepts from MA and put them into Civ. Would make playing historical scenarios something more than a horrific experience.

I was thinking about something like this for several mod ideas. What im hoping its possible to do is 'draw' cities with fixed borders, and make them static. Thats my hope anyways.

I'd just like it if I could group cities and issue them all the same orders. Then call the group the name of the province and then have the province (group) name show up somewhere in the middlish area of the province. No special map lines or bonuses just an easier way to issue the same order to a large portion of my empire, rather then one city at a time. Not particularily nessicary on a small map but on larger ones it would be a boon.

Of course I'd be happy with the Alpha Centauri ability to name landmarks and then just pretend I have provinces, or Mt. Fuji somewhere in my borders. I used to have great battles with my friends over naming landmarks outside of all of our borders. Fun times.