Specializing cities

Rwn

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During my games of C2C I found myself building mostly the same thing in every city, save for a few ones specific to terrain (river/ocean mainly) or resource and the occasional wonder. The build order is quite similar and my cities end up looking all alike when sufficiently developed.

I'd find very interesting if there was a way to make them more different by specializing them; here's a system I have in mind.


* Specialization buildings

When the city reaches pop level 2, 6 and 13, it gains access to a "specialization building" which offers various bonuses and unlocks buildings. Each specialization building is mutually exclusive with the others from the same level.

Specialization at level 2
* Production city: bonus to :hammers:, unlocks several buildings that provide :hammers:. This is the kind of specialization you chose for a city to make it very productive.
* Vibrant city: bonus to :food:, unlocks several buildings that provide
:food:. This is the kind of specialization you chose for a city to make it grow fast and far.
* Military outpost: bonus to defenses, unlocks several buildings that increase defense, damage attackers and make it more difficult to conquer. This is the kind of specialization you chose for a city on a strategic location or near a neighboring civ.

The first two specializations offer long-term boosts to the city (productive cities will get more buildings, vibrant cities will be larger), the latter will maybe make the city itself a bit less powerful on the long run, but is something you definitely want to consider if the city was built in a tense location.


Specialization at level 6

Whatever the city chose for its first specialization, it can chose any of the following specialization building at level 6:

- Training city, which provides a :hammers: boost to unit production and unlocks access to buildings unlocking or improving certain combat-focused units
- Manufacturing city, which provides a :hammers: boost to building production and unlocks access to many "finished products" manufacturing buildings (iron wares, etc.)
- Trade city, which provides a :commerce: boost as well as unlocks access to buildings and units related to trade (merchants, caravans, etc.) and trade routes
- Cultural city, which increases the cultural output of the city and unlocks cultural-related buildings and units (bard...)
- Port city, which unlocks advanced harbor buildings and ships.

The idea here is to give a strong orientation of what the city's main role and contribution will be in the empire.


Specialization at level 13

Finally, the city can chose another specialization at level 13:
- Educational city, which can provide bonuses to :science:, but also to the xp of units trained there
- Financial city, which mainly provides bonuses to :gold: output from any source
- Lifestyle city, which provides :health:, happiness, specialists, etc. to make the city more focused on specialists than terrain

Which buildings and units can be built in a city will depend on its specializations, with a significant core number, especially those that have resource requirement, that can be built anywhere (ex. library, walls...), some that will require one specialization (ex. high walls for a military outpost, theater for a cultural city) and a few that will require a combination of specializations (ex. forge will require production + manufacturing, military academy will require training + educational).

What I'd like to do also is to have the buildings giving the various "low importance" manufactured resources (such as hats, etc.) require 2 or 3 specializations, so that you won't be able to manufacture everything everywhere: either you have to specialize your cities differently or you have to trade them with other civilizations. To make up for that, each manufacturing buildings could provide several resources at once so you have some to trade. As there are 3*5*3 = 45 different orientations for cities (far too much for one civ, at least early on), trading those resources will be useful anyway.

It's of course possible to change specialization at any time by selling the specialization building and building another (for example turning a military outpost in a production city once the border is no longer a threat) but this isn't something you'll want to do too often since it will deactivate all the buildings the deleted specialization allowed.


* But I don't like not having access to all the buildings!

Well, that's already the case ;)
But if that's something important to some players, there are three things I can think of that can alleviate that pain.

1/ Add a "generalist" specialization at each level. That specialization unlocks every building normally exclusive to the other specializations, but you don't get the other benefits of the specialization (and might even get some light penalties).
2/ Allow one city in the empire to stay generalist. That city will be able to build any building (except for the other restrictions such as resources or coast, of course). It could be the capital and/or another city through a national wonder.
3/ Activate or deactivate the whole specialization mechanism depending on the civic you chose. Civics that deactivate specialization will offer less benefits to compensate.


* Terrain-dependent specialization

On the long run, something I'd also like to improve is the impact of the terrain around the city (I talked about it in another thread), so that the base bonus of terrain (improved or not) is higher, while most building would provide benefits under the form of +%, not directly +ressource.


Any thoughts?
 
I have had similar thoughts but not expressed them well on the threads. I think the types of specialisation available to you should be spread across the tech tree. None until Specialization which would open up Farming, Fishing, Mining, and Trade/Commercial. At Monarchy perhaps Military Training. Then more at City Planning eg Health Spa.

edit many of my comments about the early part of the tech tree are based on what I think may be in when we gat Nomads working. For example you wont have cities until near Sedentary Lifestyle. Your Nomadic Tribe units will have a build screen associated with them but it wont be the same as the city screen.
 
I like it :goodjob:

A lot of players have complained about the huge building list anyways so that would be a nice system to reduce the clutter a bit.

But I'd also specialize cities at techs more than pop sizes. I don't think you had manufacturing cities prior the middle ages; most what you needed was produced quite lokally I guess.


Also, how would a vibrant city get its food? Maybe you need a farming city for that. And than have a food importer building that requires 1 food exporter building in your empire, like cathedrals require temples.
 
There is evidence for manufacturing cities way back in the ancient era. I don't just mean mining camps that swap gold or gems for food etc. Some towns were known for sculpture others further back for stone carved vessels - drinking beakers and the like.
 
Interesting. I find the game funnest when I specialize my cities. I find that my bigger cities regardless of specialization will have most buildings anyway. That seems realistic to me. Think about a Capital city in any other country and it will pretty much have as big a tourist, industrial or commercial base as cities maybe more renowned for these things...

I don't quite understand the OP's point though. There is nothing stopping you from specializing in any city currently I try to grow my capital so that it can pump out settlers and workers then I build hammer city, a gold city, a military city and so on... actually pretty much the specialization the OP mentions.

There are certain buildings every city needs so extreme specialization would be unrealistic anyway.

If there is one thing preventing specialization it is the population requirements for some buildings. For example I would love to be able to pop down a coastal city and start a Shipwright immediately instead of having to wait for pop 6.

When you think about it the fact that a city is small is a handicap already- no need to rub it in!
 
Auto-specialisation seems like an interesting idea, especially if it reduces building clutter and allows you to concentrate on all industry, culture, science etc.
 
This is a fascinating area alright.

Is anybody familiar with Sim City Societies- a really underestimated game.

Anyhow it worked on the basis of properties like production/wealth/ spirituality etc.

Each building had a value for each property or esle required a certain amount of a property

In CIV this could mean you couldnt build a higher end industrial building for example until you had X amount of producivity already or a Cathedral until you X amount of sprituality.

I am not explaining very well but it allowed for great fun in specialising... and although I am sure a thousands times more complicated to implement would work well here I think
 
Alternatively, a property like "Civic Score" could be used.

For example, a city would gain Civic Score as population grows and with certain buildings like Town Hall.

Ecah building though would consume a cerain number of these points.

So take a Forge and a Market as being of equivalent values. A City with lets say 1,000 Civic points might need to choose which path to go, commercial or industrial if each building cost 600 Civic Points.......

Just Ideas!!
 
I have experimented with a system similar to the Civ IV mod "Total War" in that you need x Spirituality in a city/nation to be able to build the religious buildings. It looks like a good way to go and would easily be supported by the Property system we already have.

The idea is that founding a religion is not enough. You also have to put effort into that religion. The more you put in the more buildings you have access to. For example National Spirituality is the measure of a particular religion in your nation.
Founding or having the religion spread to your nation gives you 1-3 points.
Having it as your State Religion gives you 1-3 points.

At 6 points you can build temples and the Shrine. (If you have the other requirements).
At 13 points you can build Cathedrals.​

There are variations between the religions based on their basis of belief Animism, Pantheism, Polytheism, Monotheism etc.

Early on you can get points for assigning animals to ideas eg the Cycle of Life - Birth, Youth and Death (Leopard, Snake and Vulture in some early mid-eastern traditions).

I am still experimenting. :D
 
There are in fact two main objectives behind this idea:
- Force to specialize cities so that you can't have supercities with about every possible building and that only slightly differ from each other. The player will have to make more drastic choices in how they develop each city, I believe that's a good thing to make games more challenging and interesting.
- Reduce building clutter without removing buildings. With specializations, you chose what your city will be good with, which will unlock the buildings you'll probably want to build while hiding those that you probably won't build anyway.


I tried a simple modmod to test the idea (not that I don't like the "civic points" idea, but that would be much more complicated to implement ;) ), here's what the it does:

* You can chose one of the following at city level >=1
Specialization in Gathering and Basic Production gives a +10% building production and unlocks most +:hammers: buildings.
Specialization in Farming and Hunting unlocks most +:food: buildings.
Specialization in Military gives a +10% unit production and unlocks most defensive buildings.

* You can chose one of the following at city level >=3
Specialization in Education and Training unlocks several education and +XP buildings
Specialization in Craftmanship unlocks most small buildings that give manufactured resources
Specialization in Trading and Commerce unlocks several buildings improving :commerce: and trade routes

* You can chose one of the following at city level >=6
Specialization as a Financial Center gives a +10% :gold: output and unlocks buildings increasing :gold: output
Specialization as a Manufacturing Center unlocks advanced manufacturing buildings
Specialization as a Portuary Center unlocks many sea-related buildings
Specialization as an Arts Center gives a +10% :culture: output and unlocks buildings increasing :culture: output
Specialization as a Science Center gives a +10% :science: output and unlocks buildings increasing :science: output


Some buildings require two specializations (of course from two different tiers).

Here are some basic rules I followed to determine which buildings are unlocked and which are not, in addition to the broad categories above:
* Buildings that require a vicinity bonus do not require a specialization in addition. It's already difficult enough to build them.
* Every building should be buildable some way, so you shouldn't have a building having as prerequisites Craftmanship + another building which itself requires Trading and Commerce.
* Religious buildings have no specialization prerequisite (yet?).
* Most "important" buildings you'll probably want in any city do not require any specialization - buildings providing :health:, stone tool maker, village hall, etc. This goes as well for some buildings that could belong to a specific category but remain unlocked to avoid excess specialization (library, market, walls...).



Some issues I'm aware of:

- Specialization prerequisites have been done for buildings up to Medieval era; the last specialization categories (the "centers") unlock very few buildings yet. I want to test things first before going further.

- As there are less buildings available, you'll probably run out of buildings to build. I think all building costs should be at least doubled to have a more interesting game; I don't know how to do that in a modmod, but you can tweak GameSpeedInfo.xml in XML/GameInfo and set <iConstructPercent> to double its current value in whatever speed you want to play. At some point it'd probably be useful to review all building costs (and output).


Future plans:

- Complete the unlocks further than Medieval era
- Tweak the output of buildings to keep the game interesting and challenging
- Change how manufactured resources work:
* Significantly increase the cost of manufacturing buildings (except the early huts) so you can't build them all in one city
* Early huts would only provide a local bonus to the city, workshops would provide one resource for your trade network, plants/factories would provide several resources to trade them with your neighbours
- Make cities more dependent on the terrain around them (increase terrain output, decrease building output)


Still, if there are people interested in testing this modmod I'd be happy to get some feedback!
Just extract the files into Modules/My_Mods/SpecializedCities. It probably requires starting a brand new game.

View attachment SpecializedCities.7z
 
City specialization is already in game through available city resources and terrain as well as through wonders that can greatly boost one aspect of a city. This could perhaps be expanded through regular buildings with more pronounced pros. VS cons. and more interesting building requirements.

Like negative :science: % at the benefit of :hammers:
 
City specialization is already in game through available city resources and terrain as well as through wonders that can greatly boost one aspect of a city. This could perhaps be expanded through regular buildings with more pronounced pros. VS cons. and more interesting building requirements.

Like negative :science: % at the benefit of :hammers:

My experience is that terrain contributes in fact little to city specialization compared to which buildings are there; resources contribute a bit (through direct terrain output and unlocking specific buildings), but the specific buildings only have a limited effect - they typically provide a bit of :food: or :gold: and provide a resource that is available to the whole empire, so any building requiring/benefiting from it can be built anywhere.

Also, requiring a specialization to unlock buildings helps managing the number of buildings available at any given time...
 
My experience is that terrain contributes in fact little to city specialization compared to which buildings are there; resources contribute a bit (through direct terrain output and unlocking specific buildings), but the specific buildings only have a limited effect - they typically provide a bit of :food: or :gold: and provide a resource that is available to the whole empire, so any building requiring/benefiting from it can be built anywhere.

Also, requiring a specialization to unlock buildings helps managing the number of buildings available at any given time...

That's my experience of terrain as well, I was merely thinking of the potential that terrain could have as a system if enhanced in some way. e.g. more terrain specific buildings, perhaps some that even increase yield of some terrain at the expense of others.

I don't disagree that there should be more requirement for buildings, techs, resources, terrain, features and other buildings.
small examples:
-lumber camp &#8594; palisade
-Carpenters workshop &#8594; a bunch of buildings
-and so on, only more creative and though trough. ^^
 
and provide a resource that is available to the whole empire, so any building requiring/benefiting from it can be built anywhere.

Good point.

Maybe they should only provide - local (City) benefits, until a later trade tech is discovered.
 
Good point.

Maybe they should only provide - local (City) benefits, until a later trade tech is discovered.

Tried this, it did not work well at that time.

To be available in the city resource panel it needs to be tradable which means is is available to every city connected to that city.

To be in the vicinity it also needs to be tradable.

The solution was to have one building that requires the resource in the vicinity and produces another resource. Then have two sets of buildings one that requires the initial building in the city and the other set that requires the produced resource when it becomes tradable.
 
I like the city specialization concept but what bugs me about it is that you only have a few choices each level and can't select it later if needed. That sentence was really messed up so I try it in an example:

If you chose Gathering and Basic production at level one, you can never ever specialize your city to military again (unless I got you wrong). Between your (first few) pop 1 cities and the first pop 13 city are 2 eras. That's tens of tousends of years! Your people may changed their mind in between.

What I'd suggest is a system similar to developing leaders:
At certain points (let it be pop 1, 6 and 13 etc...) you can select a certain specialisation. The ones available depent on tech, maybe pop size and terrains/resources.
Techs can obsolete or enhance your specializations. Gathering would be mostly obsolete in the late Modern era while I can see huge manufacturing boosts in the Industrial era onwards.
You could also have multiple tiers of specialization with increasing benefits, but actually I like your combination idea much better :goodjob:

I also agree on the building (cost) review. We had a formula for buildings depending on where they are placed in the tech tree, but for me these should only be used as guide lines, rather than fixed values. IE a Basketball field should not be more expensive to build than a factory...

Regarding the manufacturing buildings, I think your idea is very interesting, but this would totally kill early trading. Instead, I'd push the resource volume mod a bit more where pop consumes your goods. Let's say, you need 1 shoe for every pop you have. If you produce more, you have access to shoes in all of your cities and if you produce less than none of your citizens have access to shoes (to make it easier). They just fight about them and only few of them gets them at all. You can trade excessive with your allies. A hut could produce 5, a workshop 20 and a factory 100.
 
Maybe something like that:
On every era you can build 4 main building which open for you another more specialized builds:
- industrial district which opens workshops/factories etc.
- science district which opens libraries/universities etc.
- culutural district which opens theatres etc.
- living district which opens food production buildings

Other buildings like temples, government buildings etc. can be build without districts.

You can build all of these districts in city but they are veeery expensive and only great and developed cities can have more then one or two of these.
 
The current set will not hamper the AI to much but the more complex you make it the more it will hamper the AI unless you include code to help the AI. If I remember correctly the AI only looks at the current city when choosing what to build. This may lead them to build all the cities with the same specializations.
 
Does anybody else use "upgraded costs"?

I do but don't know if it makes any difference. The idea according to the hover over info is exactly what the OP might be looking for- a greater tactical element to which buildings are chosen
 
First of all, thanks to you all for your ideas and feedback! :)


I like the city specialization concept but what bugs me about it is that you only have a few choices each level and can't select it later if needed. That sentence was really messed up so I try it in an example:

If you chose Gathering and Basic production at level one, you can never ever specialize your city to military again (unless I got you wrong). Between your (first few) pop 1 cities and the first pop 13 city are 2 eras. That's tens of tousends of years! Your people may changed their mind in between.

Unless I misunderstood you, you can change your specialization: sell your specialization (ctrl-A) and build another. Of course the penalty is that all the buildings unlocked by the deleted specialty are deactivated (unless you switch again later).


What I'd suggest is a system similar to developing leaders:
At certain points (let it be pop 1, 6 and 13 etc...) you can select a certain specialisation. The ones available depent on tech, maybe pop size and terrains/resources. Techs can obsolete or enhance your specializations. Gathering would be mostly obsolete in the late Modern era while I can see huge manufacturing boosts in the Industrial era onwards.
You could also have multiple tiers of specialization with increasing benefits, but actually I like your combination idea much better :goodjob:

I like the idea of specialization depending on terrain/resources! I'll try to see if I can do something clever with that without being too constraining.

My view was that specializations, even early ones, should remain relevant even in the late game - Gathering and Basic production is thus a prerequisite for buildings such as the Pulley wheel or (together with Crafting) for the various smelters. The tier 3 specialization come relatively late because there aren't really any building they unlock early on. Unlike what it may look, they don't replace or make early specializations irrelevant; Manufacturing for example may extend a bit on what Crafting does, but many Crafting's buildings remain exclusive to this specialization - think of jewellery, which even today isn't really "manufactured".


Regarding the manufacturing buildings, I think your idea is very interesting, but this would totally kill early trading. Instead, I'd push the resource volume mod a bit more where pop consumes your goods. Let's say, you need 1 shoe for every pop you have. If you produce more, you have access to shoes in all of your cities and if you produce less than none of your citizens have access to shoes (to make it easier). They just fight about them and only few of them gets them at all. You can trade excessive with your allies. A hut could produce 5, a workshop 20 and a factory 100.

The objective on the opposite is to make early trading more relevant - in my experience I was able to manufacture everything and only raw material/resources were relevant to trade.
I don't know about the "resource volume" mod, but it looks like it'd be able to achieve something close to what I wanted in a better way - if it's going to be implemented at some point it would probably work better.


Maybe something like that:
On every era you can build 4 main building which open for you another more specialized builds:
- industrial district which opens workshops/factories etc.
- science district which opens libraries/universities etc.
- culutural district which opens theatres etc.
- living district which opens food production buildings

Other buildings like temples, government buildings etc. can be build without districts.

You can build all of these districts in city but they are veeery expensive and only great and developed cities can have more then one or two of these.

That's a good idea actually! You *could* multispecialize cities, but it would be difficult so usually you'd be better sticking to a few. Only very developed cities could achieve that.

I don't want to put a too high cost on specialization though (since some are available early on), while production quickly increase over the game so I fear that "late" cities might be able to multispecialize too easily.

A good solution would be to increase the price of each specialization depending on how many you already have, though I'm not sure if that's easily doable in xml?


The current set will not hamper the AI to much but the more complex you make it the more it will hamper the AI unless you include code to help the AI. If I remember correctly the AI only looks at the current city when choosing what to build. This may lead them to build all the cities with the same specializations.

I was hoping that by giving specialization bonuses consistent with the specialization (such as +:food: for the food specialization), the AI would pick it where it is relevant (i.e. pick the +:food: where it wants more :food:, which also unlocks further buildings providing more food). What I'm mostly afraid of is that it'd chose more or less always the same specialization - even chosing randomly each time would be better than that.




Does anybody else use "upgraded costs"?

I do but don't know if it makes any difference. The idea according to the hover over info is exactly what the OP might be looking for- a greater tactical element to which buildings are chosen


It effectively increases building and unit cost (look at GameSpeedInfo.xml if you want the precise numbers). I don't like really it because it doesn't change what you're going to produce in your cities - still all the cheap production and food ones first, then the cheap craft ones etc. because the return on investment on those is always higher, with or without increased cost. In order words, your building queue doesn't change much, it's just longer to complete - OK, until a certain point where you'll have to make choices (i.e. don't build barracks everywhere but focus on a few military cities).
 
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