Concept: CiV's 2nd expansion - Thrive And Prosperity - 4. Health

4. Health

This Concept was initially proposed by CYZ and refined in an interesting discussion.

4.1 General concept

- Each city has a base maximal population of 6 citizen.
- Each different bonus resource will grant an additional +2 max. population.
- If a city has more than one bonus resource of one type, this goes to a national pool.
- These bonus resources can be traded with other civilizations for money or other resources OR
- can be assigned to cities in the own empire, if this city is part of the national trading network (See: 1.2 National trade)
- Other factors that may raise maximal city size by +2 are:

• fresh water
• buildings: aqueduct, sewer (new building), hospital
• the “National Health Agency” a new national wonder. (May grant more than +2, though.)

- With a very late technology, it might be possible to allow unlimited city size. “Penicillin” comes into mind here.


4.1 Consequences of a reached maximal size

- Cities will not stop growing immediately, but every citizen beyond the limit will consume one or two additional food.
- In consequence, city growth will slow down first, but come to a stop later. This point of stagnation can be pushed by heavily investing in food production, though.


4.2 Allocating surplus bonus resources

- As Health is part of the new (national) trading concept, the corresponding screen is a tab in the new “Trade”-Screen.



Picture: The National Trade & Health Screen. There is one resource “fish” allocatable.

- Upper line: available (surplus) bonus resources.
- Dark, filled circles: resource can *not* be changed as it is “physically” located in the city radius.
- White, empty circles: City may receive this bonus resource. Simply click in the circle to do so. The resource will be decreased in the “Available” line, of course.
- White, filled circles: City receives this resource. Click to deallocate the resource.
- As “fresh water” is a map feature, it can not be changed.
- Numbers at the right side: Actual and maximal City size. Red numbers indicate a cities beyond their health limit.


4.3 Remarks

- If there are new bonus resources introduced in the future, it should be no problem to integrate these resources into the screen. Unfortunately, everything will be a little bit more condensed, but it should work nevertheless. The positive side: bigger cities will be possible with less effort.

- Cities with *all* bonus resources may grow to size 18 (even more with the new bonus resources). With fresh water and all buildings it will be 28 and with the national wonder 30 (or even more).
The introduction of the Penicillin Revolution frees “size fetishists” of all limitations.

- It is not intended to have bonus resources in higher values (like strategic resources). Nevertheless, if play testing indicates that there are not enough bonus resources to allow a reasonable city growth, it is possible to introduce higher bonus resource values. I don't think, this should exceed values of 2 (just like uranium), though.

- As this concept is heavily based on CYZ's idea, I don't want to peculate his different approach according unhealthy cities:
CYZ proposes a “disease mechanism”, with plagues braking out in unhealthy cities (with a certain random factor) and spreading to other unhealthy cities. The effect of plagues should be a degreasing city size until a “healthy” size is reached again (and even below this point). The plagues would cease then, again with a certain random factor.

To be honest, I am not overly fond of this approach. My reasons:

• At some point, most of your cities will have reached or excel “unhealthy size”. This is a necessary consequence of the proposed concept. Plagues would be ubiquitous in the result.
• Having to witness a random decline of your empire can be very frustrating for many players. (Civ4 water poisoning, anybody?)
• Negative game mechanisms, that can not be effectively counteracted by the player, are not very fun. You might shovel around bonus resources to raise city health and therefore make the plague more likely to end (maybe even at once!) - but this will lead to tedious micromanagement.
  There might be a new building, like a “drugstore”, to fight plague effects. But if plagues are no thread any more, this would render the whole health concept useless, to some point.

Conclusion: As appealing the plague concept seems to be for some, I strongly recommend the easier and more direct system.

For me, the intuitive [City reached health limit → slower growth rate up to a total stop] works best.



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I agree disease would probably be not as fun for many players, you make good arguements.

I agree with the rest of the idea, though, don't you think perhaps 3 health per bonus resource is better? Otherwise it will be hard to not have unhealthy cities if you're going tall.

Also, I'm not sure if I like the additional food costs as a penalty. So the penalty for overgrowing is limiting growth, just like with happiness...

I'd prefer something that doesn't limit your growth for you, you must monitor it yourself. And if you don't there are negative effects.

Two or three health per bonus resource:
I think, this is something, play testing has to show.
On the other hand: Personally I think, it should be hard to achieve something! If it is too easy, where is the challenge at all? And without challenge, no satisfaction for having mastered it. Of course, it shouldn't be impossible - just need some effort.
In consequence, the necessary precondition is, that there are enough bonus resources on the map to fuel at least the top 5 cities of every civ. (Please remember: with fresh water and buildings alone, you may have size 14 cities! And there are view cities without any local bonus resources.)
For wide empires, it should be easy to have enough bonus resources due to puppets. Tall empires should have enough friends to trade for them. Both ways, it should be easily possible to have at least three size 34 towns (without penicillin, which might solve all "problems" anyway).
Rally, how many of these mega cities do you have, usually? And at which era?

By the way: puppets will not be able to receive bonus resources via national trade and have to relay on local resources. But you want them to stay smaller anyway.

Penalty:
On the pro side of limited growth is, that it will not lead to additional micro management.
What sort of penalty would yo propose? Unhappiness? Something different? Anyway, if it is not growth itself, you will have to limit city growth manually. And, if you assigned some bonus resources, you will have to allow it again. This is tedious micro management!
With a slow down of growth, on the other hand, the problem will simply solve itself:
No health left? -> No growth!
Assigned additional resources/built a new building? -> growth will start again.

This seems to be a very elegant and intuitive solution for me.

I agree the amount of health per resource should be balanced by testing.

I also agree that as a penalty for overgrowing, limiting growth is very elegant. I'd say it's also very easy. I know many people are against more direct negative effects because this would not be fun for the player. But right now it seems I could just ignore health altogether and it wouldn't really mean much. What's the point of managing it if it manages itself?