Taking advantage of all land plots and resources

It's just stupid when you have 4 grassland plots, all with Grain, and because they're outside the city ring, you can only use the bonus from one of them because you have the grain resource.

Or, you have dozens of workshops in tiles outside the city ring and they sit there doing nothing.

On the other hand, you can fuel infinite units with ONE source of oil. So the wars on oil were useless if you had just one oil resource. And ONE source of coal can produce power for your 50 city civ for thousands of years.

When you multiples of a resource, it's useless to keep building more resource improvements if they are OUTSIDE the city range.

How it should be:

For plots:
-A plot outside any city's range with an improvement should give a +1 bonus of the appropriate kind (food, hammers or commerce) and give it to the nearest city (farm would give food, workshop hammers, mills commerce, etc). If 2 or more cities are at the same distance of the plot, you can choose to which one you give the bonus.

For resources:
-Each resource with improvement and road can be given the following place to go:
--->The nearest city (automatic)
--->Any city in your empire or ally's empire (in this case, it gives you a diplo bonus of +1) to which you have a trade route
--->The resource market (a market where you put your surplus resources and sell them to your opponents, for a minimum price, who will then bid, all of this in the same turn, then the highest bid will be added to your account every turn. You could also bid in other markets and gain those resources from them, but you/they can at anytime get the resource back. and stop trading to whatever is paying for it)

-Each resource multiple provides the bonus to the city to where it is attached, and attaching the same resource various times increases the bonus by simply adding it (ex: Rice gives +2 Health; 4 Rice give +8 Health)

Importing/Exporting food/hammers:
-Each city can import food or hammers to other city, and receive food or hammers exported from other cities. This can be done internally or negotiated with other civs.

I think this would make the game better and more realistic. Your thoughts?

I forgot to post the following:

Limited production using some types of resource:
-ONE source of coal can only supply ONE city with power.
-ONE source of oil can only supply 25 units. When this cap is reached, the player cannot build any more tanks, aircraft, or other units that need Oil.
-Other examples which I can't remember right now.

There, complete.

EXTRA SUGGESTION NOT WORTH ITS OWN THREAD:
-After you research Mass Media, you can see the whole world and border, city and terrain improvement changes, and when you research Satellites the Fog of War disappears.

pesgores said:

I forgot to post the following:

Limited production using some types of resource:
-ONE source of coal can only supply ONE city with power.
-ONE source of oil can only supply 25 units. When this cap is reached, the player cannot build any more tanks, aircraft, or other units that need Oil.
-Other examples which I can't remember right now.

There, complete.

Click to expand...

on resources and plots i will comment later

pesgores said:

EXTRA SUGGESTION NOT WORTH ITS OWN THREAD:
-After you research Mass Media, you can see the whole world and border, city and terrain improvement changes, and when you research Satellites the Fog of War disappears.

Click to expand...

as to the removal of FoW as i remember in CtP there was such wonder: it opened the whole map and removed FoW. i never got used to 1-hour turns though
so -> NO, definitely NO

and the second reason being:
removing the FoW removes the layer of Espionage and uncertainty from civ, which i do think is good.

Hail said:

and the second reason being:
removing the FoW removes the layer of Espionage and uncertainty from civ, which i do think is good.

Click to expand...

The FOW is an essential part of the game. Otherwise, you would know where every unit on the globe is. A better suggestion: Satellites which display units in a particular region.

It's not exactly true to say that resources outside of cities cannot be used. They are added to the resources you have, although they do not give the bonus for being worked.

I disagree that a city should be able to use tiles outside of its BFC. It may be more realistic, but if you allow cities to use outside tiles, you will end up with huge empire sprawl supported by mega cities, with little regard for effective use of land. Limiting the number of tiles that can be worked limits to potential of a city, which is essential for game balance. You need cities that are small to be able to at least be within a reasonable distance in terms of productivity, commerce and food to larger cities. Otherwise, why would it be viable to build cities later in the game? They would essentially be useless.

As for resources giving additive bonuses, well, it may sound like a good idea, but it would be horrific for game balance. You would have all of those cities with multiple plantations of the same resource giving absolutely massive bonuses, turning the results of a game towards being based purely on geographical location.

Camikaze said:

I disagree that a city should be able to use tiles outside of its BFC. It may be more realistic, but if you allow cities to use outside tiles, you will end up with huge empire sprawl supported by mega cities, with little regard for effective use of land. Limiting the number of tiles that can be worked limits to potential of a city, which is essential for game balance. You need cities that are small to be able to at least be within a reasonable distance in terms of productivity, commerce and food to larger cities. Otherwise, why would it be viable to build cities later in the game? They would essentially be useless.

Click to expand...

Actually I think the distance between cities would be decided pretty organically. Too close and you can't make them productive, too far and you're not utilising large numbers of tiles until the end of the game. Limiting cities to 20 tiles is as arbitrary as limiting stacks to 20 units would be.

That is how it currently is; too close and you can't make them productive, too far and you're not utilising large numbers of tiles. If you allowed for the use of all tiles, no matter whether or not they were in your city range, then you would have your cities far apart, to get the most use out of tiles for an individual city. To create mega-cities.

Camikaze said:

That is how it currently is; too close and you can't make them productive, too far and you're not utilising large numbers of tiles. If you allowed for the use of all tiles, no matter whether or not they were in your city range, then you would have your cities far apart, to get the most use out of tiles for an individual city. To create mega-cities.

Click to expand...

Well that would be one strategy. Think of the opportunity cost though!

The opportunity cost would be greatly lessened through this, though, is my point, Currently, there is a massive opportunity cost involved in spreading out your cities. If this system were to be implemented, that opportunity cost would be greatly reduced, as you would be able to get some use out of the tiles that you would otherwise not be able to use at all.

Still not convinced it's a problem. Would be interesting to see a prototype with the BFC removed to see how it worked out

Well let's take two situations. Everything is identical, but one is using the current system and one is using this proposed system.

Under the current system, two tiles separated by a far distance would result in the waste of a large number of tiles that would go un-utilised, in between the two cities, outside of their BFC's. This is a large opportunity cost.

Under the proposed system, those two cities can partially use those other tiles, so they are not being completely waster. So there is not a large opportunity cost.

Hence, under the proposed system, further separated cities would be encouraged much more (or discouraged much less) than under the current system.

Camikaze said:

(or discouraged much less)

Click to expand...

There's the rub - how much discouragement do players need?

Gangor said:

There's the rub - how much discouragement do players need?

Click to expand...

Enough to stop them from not spreading their cities out as far as possible (given transport limitations). Which is what is in the current system.

From another thread - interesting that you have a different view depending on what's being arbitrarily limited.

Camikaze said:

Not an arbitrary maximum though. Repeat after me: thou shalt not impose arbitrarily capped penalties. Thou shalt at all times make penalties on stacks exponential.

Click to expand...

Surely it would be possible to also limit city spread organically.

Why not incorporate a waste/corruption/spoil mechanism(which should affect all yeild, therefore food yield would also be effected).. Tiles farther away from a city have some of their yield wasted due to the costs and the ilk of having a city utilize tiles far away. Obviously doing this in a way that was balanced would be an issue.

Perhaps the degree this affect kicked in would be affected by tech/buildings/city-size/traits. So in the ancient age it may very well be anything outside the first square away may begin suffering yield lose(perhaps like the Despotism penalty in Civ 3).

Gangor said:

From another thread - interesting that you have a different view depending on what's being arbitrarily limited.

Surely it would be possible to also limit city spread organically.

Click to expand...

The only arbitrary limit on city placement currently is that they must be at least two tiles apart, and the system in the OP would only discourage that further. I hardly think that that arbitrary limit on city placement is comparable to the arbitrary limit proposed in the other thread, though.

I'm actually a little confused as to what arbitrary limit you think I'm promoting here, because the aforementioned city placement limit is the only one that I can see. Note that under the current system, civs are not arbitrarily stopped from building a city as far away as possible; they still can, but they face stiff penalties. That is the type of penalty I do like. An increasing (whether exponential or linear, depending on the circumstance) penalty, not an arbitrary penalty.

Still the bonus wouldn't be that big, just a small "Hey, I am here, I am being worked, make it worth my while!". Why wouldn't a player want lots of cities? Higher production on all tiles in BFC and more places to produce units.

You could get a better production:city ratio with less cities, though. So you wouldn't be incurring as much financial loss for the same or higher productivity. You would hardly have to build more than one city, really, so long as you controlled a lot of territory (get it to Legendary cultural status).

Why not charge gold to work tiles outside BFC.
One tile outside 1 gold
two tiles outside 2 gold
etc
And perhaps have to have a road to the tile and have railway tech also

Then they would be fairly useless, given that they would only give about that much in return anyway.