Proposals: City populations

At the moment, the city population system is fairly unrealistic, with a frankly ludicrous percentage of a modern population "working the land." As anyone with half a brain knows, a minute fraction (generally less than ten percent) of a developed nation's population is "working the land" at any given time. So, I go to propose this system:

First, we must accurately model how things went. Therefore, we must determine how developed nations went from a majority working the land to a small minority. As any observer of history knows, this process began with industrialization, and industrialization can most accurately be modeled by the discovery of Steam Power. So with Steam Power, we make it so that up to four population units per city can work one extra tile. For example, a population ten city (with all twenty squares available to work and for the sake of simplicity assuming no Specialists) would have 14 worked squares.

Then we proceed with other technologies. Railroad should allow up to eight popunits to work an extra tile; that same city would now work 18 tiles.

With Combustion, all popunits can work double tiles, so a city of size 10 would have all tiles worked. A city of size 11 would have 1 Citizen.

With Electricity, each popunit could work one extra tile, and four would have one more tile; with Industrialism, that goes up to every popunit working two tiles. With that, a city of size seven would be able to work every tile; however, it would have to reach size eight before it gets Citizens.

Computers should allow two popunits to work four tiles, in addition to every other popunit working three. Robotics allows every popunit to harvest four tiles, so a population five city would harvest every tile.


Naturally, this leads to a lot of Citizens. This is a good thing, because if you think about it, most modern people are Citizens. However, in order to better model them, I think we should add these things:

1. Education. I'll explain this concept more fully, but I envision Education to be a number like Health or Happiness (but no negatives), created through schools and existing educational buildings. The educational buildings' education values are as follows:
   • Primary School: Provides two units of Education
   • Secondary School: Provides four units of Education
   • University: Provides six units of Education
   • Library: Provides two units of Education
   • Broadcast Tower: Provides two units of Education
   • Monastery: Provides one unit of Education if of State Religion
2. Factories should be revamped. I have other ideas about factories, which I will explain in another thread, but for the moment, suffice it to say that I beleive that there should be three levels of factory, which employ Citizens:
   • Factory: Two Citizens produce +1 Hammers
   • Manufacturing Complex: Four Citizens (in addition to Factory) produce +1 Hammers
   • Industrial Park: Six Citizens (in addition to Factory and Manufacturing Complex) produce +1 Hammers
3. Offices! So important, but totally unnoticed. So I model them thusly:
   • Office Building: Two Citizens produce +1 Commerce, so long as Education is greater than or equal to 2
   • Office Park: Four Citizens (in addition to Office Building) produce +1 Commerce, so long as Education is greater than or equal to six
   • Commercial District: Six Citizens (in addition to Office Building and Office Park) produce +1 Commerce, so long as Education is greater than or equal to twelve

This way, I think, we can really do well, and model real life.

Comments?

*strokes chin at possibilities*

You put a lot of thought into this.

All good stuff from a historical perspective and defintely adds realism, but it's starting to sound like SimCity to me. For a certain kind of player, this isn't necessarily a bad thing though.

I'm sure the micromanagers would love it. Personally, building office parks and high schools in all my cities wouldn't suit my playing style - but to each his own!

What do you do about Specialists though? You're looking at a large number of cities with free citizens, and the chance to really punch up the culture, science, or taxes depending on your specialization. Could make the Cultural Victory more attainable earlier with that system.

A large city (population twenty or so) would have so many citizens that eventually you'd exceed your specialist limit. A size twenty city would have FIFTEEN CITIZENS. Yeah, Cultural would be easier, but eventually, you'd hit the Specialist limit, and you'd just get citizens.

And no, it's NOT like SimCity: you don't have to worry about tax rates, education funding, bus funding, types of schools, school overcrowding, school placement within the city, proximity of work to housing, presence of mass transit to work from homes, traffic congestion, underfunded fire departments, overzealous police officers, garbage disposal, water pollution/filtration, balancing the demand of people for lower taxes with the need for greater services, and on and on and on and on....

Granted, SimCity was a inspiration, but it deals with it on a macro level (like Civ does traditionally) as opposed to SimCity's micro level. You build the school, it provides the Education. You don't have to consider "well, that neighborhood is predominantly occupied by yuppies, so I suppose they'll need an elementary school, whereas that district is solid middle-aged people whose kids are probably about to go into high school, so I'll put one there, and this area has some even older people, so I guess I'll have to put a city college or University somewhere..."

I like the idea, personally. It adds another element to the civilizations that would make it more deep..

yes, but you aren't working the land in the typical sense of the word...how could you be "working" the cottage?

this just seems like far too much MM than necessary ~

factories give +1 hammer?!? to each tile (too much)? overall (too little)??

pholkhero said:

yes, but you aren't working the land in the typical sense of the word...how could you be "working" the cottage?

this just seems like far too much MM than necessary ~

factories give +1 hammer?!? to each tile (too much)? overall (too little)??

Click to expand...

Well, the education system would be good. An education level could afferct any number of things,

Lockesdonkey, this is one of the best ideas I have seen on this forum in quite some time.

I have also been interested in reworking the population distribution system, and I have spelled out my ideas in detail here (though it is actually quite an old thread, I admit...). If I ever get around to updating, I think mixing in some of your ideas (with credit to you of course ) about technology increasing worker yield capacities could be interesting.

Very nice.

pholkhero said:

yes, but you aren't working the land in the typical sense of the word...how could you be "working" the cottage?

this just seems like far too much MM than necessary ~

factories give +1 hammer?!? to each tile (too much)? overall (too little)??

Click to expand...

1. I don't know. But one must admit, a majority of people (in industrialized nations) are neither farmers nor miners, nor do they work in a countryside workshop, nor are they lumberjacks, nor, in fact, do they do very much other than live and work in the city.

2. How?

3. Factories give their current benefit, plus one hammer for up to two Citizens. Manufacturing Complexes give one hammer for the next four Citizens. Industrial Parks give one hammer for the next six Citizens for a total of twelve extra hammers with twelve Citizens. This can be changed; it's just an idea.

Actually the population shown on the screen "15" or "21" does not equal to real city propulations in a proportional way.

In the strategy article forum there is a post of "Demo screen explained", and it has a list of how much real population is represented by a city pop.

For example (can't remember accurately), 1 pop = 1000, 2 pop = 4000, 3 pop = 10000... 20 pop = 10,000,000, etc.

So you are right that only a small portion of the real pop are working on the tiles when the city grows up.

*pictures this system in conjunction with Caste System and Representation*

i must say i like the idea of more population and having that population help "improve" the output of building that exist in ur city. it is a bit more city management but it adds complexities and allows u to specialise some cities more or improve cities that lag in certain areas