City Production and Urbanization

My idea is designed to reduce the advantage players get from MM the citizens in cities. It is also designed to allow cities to work more then 21 tiles.



This grid is the basis for how citizens can work the terrain. Assuming the cultural borders extend as far as needed workers can use terrain in that grid. The Red area marks how far a city of up to size eight can work. The Orange area marks how far a city of up to size twenty-four can use. Here is a little guide.

Red I - Up to eight citizens.
Orange II - Up to twenty-four citizens.
Yellow III - Up to forty-eight citizens.
Green IV - Up to eighty citizens.
Blue V - Up to one-hundred and twenty citizens.

Assuming that a city that uses the red area can have up to eight citizens working, eight tiles are chosen. The total production of food, shields, and trade is calculated. The city gets to use how many citizens out of that eight of the total pot. Example, the city has four citizens and the eight squares normally generate 20 food, 10 shields, and 8 trade. Since that is four citizens out of eight potential, you get half of that possible production. That is 10 food, 5 shields, and 4 trade.
Since you never use all the squares you have access too, you theorhetically can choose which squares to work. To avoid MM advantage for humans, you can now choose what kind of production you want to emphasize.
Imagine the city is size ten. It gets to use all the red and orange area. Now, the cut of production you get is ten out of twenty-four possible. The potential production is the best combination of twenty-four squares for your production goal.
It goes further on, but also, you can produce fractiosn and decimals of food, shields and trade. Non-intergers are just accumulated each turn until integers can be made. This way no more then a fraction of a production point is lost per city.
Also, you can now build a port if you have a road to a coastal tile within a cities workable radius. When the port is finished, a little port graphic appears on the square. This is much how Athens connected itself to the sea after the Persian invasion of Darius.



This is a demonstration on how cities can become metropolitan areas.
In this example A is the Urban area.
B, C, D, E, and F are possible suburbs sites.
For spacing purposes, all cities in a metropolitan system have a eight-tile ZOC directly surroudning them. These ZOC cannot touch each other, as you can see in the illustration.

1) One of the first criteria for B/C/D/E/F to become a suburb is to be in the worker radius of A. That means for D to be in that radius, A would have to have a Metropolitan population of nine or more. For B twenty-five or more. 2) For F fifty or more. For C and E eighty-two or more.
The second criteria is that A be connnected by road or harbour(cross-bay connection) to the suburb.
3) The third criteria is that any suburb of A cannot have more then 1/2 the population of the Urban center.
4) The fourth rule is that the total population of all the suburbs that service the urban center is no more than twice that of the Urban center, or in this case A.

If the population of a suburb rises beyond the 1/2 point, a unit of population will migrate from the suburb to the urban center. Same goes whenever suburban population goes beyond twice urban population.

The population of a suburb works the tiles of the urban center. THis means that if A was 17 citizens, and D was 8, then A would count has having 25 working citizens. This means its working radius would increase to where B was. If B had 7 citizens, then A would have 32 working citizens. This means that A will generate production like it had a population of 32. The food needed to sustain suburbs is automatically shipped back. Growth rates(where excess food goes) of subrubs vs. the urban center can be dictated directly by you. Production and trade stay in the urban center.

The populations of suburbs are still seperate from that of the city for things such as unhappiness due to overpopulation and war-weariness. The metropolitan system will try to spread around its happy faces and entertainers to keep everybody happy. If a suburb riots, only that suburb is affected, although the rioters refuse to go to work. If a suburb is conquered, only that suburb is lost, like any city. Local happiness generators will only export happiness if it is completely used in the suburb. The metropolitan system chooses which suburb or urban center gets a completed building. Non-happiness buildings are utilized by the entire metro system. Growth limit breakers, such as aqueducts and hospitals, are still unique to each urban center or suburb. This will be a major limiting factor for ancient and middle age metropolises, since you need an aqueduct to get to size eight.

Some might say players would start putting settlers in a ring-square pattern around a fast growing city to produce an early metro. This is not a bad thing in my opinion. It would also make ICS easier to clean up in the late game.

Excellent idea, well thought out. I'll have to consider the ramifications, but it looks like you covered all the bases.

I did find a problem. First, I was trying to figure out how population limiting stuctures could affect possible population of a metropolis. Here were my findings:
Before Aqueducts no metropolises can exist. The ZOC of suburbs would be disturbed.
Before Hospitals metropolises are maxed out at thirty-six citizens. This assumes the urban center is maxed at twelve, and surrounding suburbs cannot exceed a combined twenty-four.
After Hospitals food and happiness are the main limiting factors.

What if a middle-aged metro grows beyond taht thirty-six, there is no place for the population to shift. It could either be as it is now, where the population is stagnant or metropolises could not be developed until the urban center had a hospital. I would prefer the first solution.

On Culture:
I have not decided whether metropolises should consolidate all the culture of surrounding into the urban center, or suburbs retain their own culture and cultural growth. Maybe suburbs could send 1/2 of their culture each turn to the urban center. Also, culture generating buildings are unique to suburbs and urban centers, so large metros can generate massive culture each turn.

On Planned Suburbanization:
If you do not like the location of a suburb, you can have it moved to a better square that meets the suburb criteria. Based on the distance and size of population, it will cost a certain amount of shileds. You can also use population growth to create a new suburb, provided it meets conditions. Any suburb can transfer 1 population per turn into a different part of the metropolis. Urban cneters can give away as much population as allowed.

Since marketplaces generate happiness for each part of a metropolis, they can be built in each part of a metro. Banks in suburbs generate 1 gold per citizen and in urban centers have the normal effect. Stock markets only do their thing in the urban center.

Also, I am changing the surburbanization level, since de-urbanization(I know I am making half these words up) was more a product of inproved transportation and skyrocketing population then anything else. This is the maximum level of suburbanization, or the percentage of the metropolitan population in suburbs, after discovering certain techs.

Start of Game - 0%
Construction - 20%
Engineering - 33%
Steam Power - 50%
Motorized Transport - 66%
Mass Transit - 80%

Also, there is a new population cap. Now Mass Transit allows you to build cities past size 24. This puts the maximum metropolis size as follows, based on tech.

Start of Game - 6
Construction - 15
Engineering - 18
Steam Power - 24/48(With Aqueduct/With Hospital)
Motorized Transport - 36/72(With Aqueduct/With Hospital)
Mass Transit - 60/120/Infinite(With Aqueduct/With Hospital/With Mass Transit)

As for suburban sprawl. Once Mass Transit is constructed, the Urban center is not limited by population caps. Supposed you have a size 30 urban center. That means it works all the way to the Yellow. Assume two size 15 cities were in that radius and connected. The Metropolis would have a population of 60. That means it works all the way to the Green. Supposed you picked up three more size 15 cities. The Metropolis would have a population of 90 now. Now it works all the way to the blue and keeps picking up cities. THe main limiting factor is the size of the Urban center. If you kept feeding the urban center from the suburbs, you could continue getting further and further out. THe main factor preventing suburban sprawl is the difficulty of keeping that large a population happy. Theorhetically a well-desinged metropolis could stretch across a few close islands and part of a continent.

Split Production - Because metropolises eventually produce massive amounts of shields, there will now be a method so you don't lose 60 shields a turn in production making tanks. If you produce enough shields to finish an item in one-turn, then you can choose to start another project with the left-over shields. If that project would be finished as well, then you can do the same. This way a super-metro that produces 400 spt can put out 2 or 3 tanks a turn, representing its awesomeness. Also, you could be building two different cathedrals for two different suburbs.