One thing I've never understood is why towns have no drawbacks. The +5 commerce makes them a requirement for nearly every city and they only get stronger late-game. High concentrations of people have always lead to rapid spread of disease, so I would like to see the following:

Every town and village produce +1 :yuck:
Towns produce +2 :yuck: after Industrialism
Environmentalism gets an added bonus of +1:health: per villiage and +2:health: per town.

Thoughts?

I'd add to that an added risk of plague. Towns confuse me too. Surely they should contribute to everything but also take away stuff? Like use up one food and add unhealthiness and unhappiness but give culture, hammers and commerce?

You can't mess with something as fundamental to civ as cottages, it would alter the game to drastically.

Just now cottages are overpowered. I think that unhealthiness will be really good penalty. In any case- Rhye probably won't include it so I would like to see a modcomp made by somebody :P

I'd say put it this way:

Cottages: stay as they are.
Hamlets: stay as they are.
Villages: +1:yuck: until discovery of medicine, otherwise the same.
Towns: +1:yuck:, -1:food: and +1:hammers:, rises to +2:yuck: and +2:hammers: after discovery of industrialism, back to +1:yuck: with discovery of medicine. Otherwise the same.

This should work well (as far as I can tell).

EDIT: To make up for this, towns produce +1:hammers:, rising to +2:hammers: after the discovery of industrialism.

Just now cottages are overpowered. I think that unhealthiness will be really good penalty. In any case- Rhye probably won't include it so I would like to see a modcomp made by somebody :P
Vishaing might put it into Rhye's of Civilization Expanded if we can persuade him to.

I'd say put it this way:

Cottages: stay as they are.
Hamlets: stay as they are.
Villages: +1:yuck: until discovery of medicine, otherwise the same.
Towns: +1:yuck:, -1:food: and +1:hammers:, rises to +2:yuck: and +2:hammers: after discovery of industrialism, back to +1:yuck: with discovery of medicine. Otherwise the same.

This should work well (as far as I can tell).

EDIT: To make up for this, towns produce +1:hammers:, rising to +2:hammers: after the discovery of industrialism.

The idea behind the health was to balance growth. Think of it this way:

An irrigated grassland after Biology can be farmed to support the worker and a specialist. This same tile can have a town placed on it for 9 gold (5 for Town, +2 from Printing Press and +2 from Free Speech) with no specialist. Even the with representation, 6 beakers is much less than 9 commerce. To balance this, we through in the growth restrictions. Adding in a production bonus just adds to the imbalance.

I agree, just a flat unhealthyness would be easiest to use in order to balance it...

An irrigated grassland after Biology can be farmed to support the worker and a specialist. This same tile can have a town placed on it for 9 gold (5 for Town, +2 from Printing Press and +2 from Free Speech) with no specialist. Even the with representation, 6 beakers is much less than 9 commerce. To balance this, we through in the growth restrictions. Adding in a production bonus just adds to the imbalance.

6 beakers isn't so bad once you throw in the great people, however. I think giving plague a small chance of shrinking hamlets, villages, and towns would be enough to balance off the benefits of using cottages.

Vishaing might put it into Rhye's of Civilization Expanded if we can persuade him to.

You say that like you might need to persuade me. ;) I personally really like this idea, as it could add a whole new level of strategy to improvements, and also will maybe stop the dreaded 'cottage spam' that seems to happen. hmmm, perhaps such benefits should be applied to other improvements. For instance farms might provide health while mines provide unhealthiness? I'm probably thinking too hard about this as it is.

Although I have a question about a change i have long since been thinking of. This change would be purely cosmetic, but I am considering altering some of the improvement code to change how stuff is named and how it looks. IE I would like to take some of the buildings from the town, and scatter them around for instance, a mine, and rename the overall improvement to 'mining town'. What are your feelings on this. Purely cosmetic, but I never really liked the idea of 'building mines' as opposed to 'founding towns dedicated to mining.'

plagues attacking villages? hmmmm. should be simple to make that, just a python check to see if the city working the tile has the plague, if the tile has a village/town, and then a random percent (likely around 10) that the village/town is reduced a level.

6 beakers isn't so bad once you throw in the great people, however. I think giving plague a small chance of shrinking hamlets, villages, and towns would be enough to balance off the benefits of using cottages.

I was counting the 6 beakers from the one specialist you get from working a farm.

EDIT: I went back, read what I posted and realized it was confusing. One farm producing 4 food will support the citizen working the tile and one specialist. Assuming you have Representation as your government civic, that specialist will produce, at best, 6 :beaker: or 3:gold:+3:science:. If you're running any other civic (which is likely) you're only getting a 3 bonus. A cottage on the same tile will yield 7:commerce:, 9:commerce and 1:hammers: if we run the right civics. This means it's ridiculous to build farms on anything but a resource that requires it. Mines are up in the air, but the +1:hammer: Bonus from Universal Sufferage means a town on a hill will only produce one less :hammers: than a mine+railroad.

plagues attacking villages? hmmmm. should be simple to make that, just a python check to see if the city working the tile has the plague, if the tile has a village/town, and then a random percent (likely around 10) that the village/town is reduced a level.

IIRC, this already happens.

Plagues do affect them already.

A correction to my above post:

It seems I either remembered incorrectly or the values are changed from vanilla. Towns will max out at 7 commerce, giving them a 1 commerce edge over the maxed out Farms. I'll have to think about this after I get some sleep.