Integrated Interface for Civ 4

Before I get to the integration, let me state my original idea:

It occurred to me how interesting the terrain could look if there were actually graphical representations of city workers on the map, outside of the city screen. It could streamline inter-city square management since every city's worked squares can be displayed at once. These representations would also complement the graphics of any terrain improvements already on the map, making the terrain look so much more urbanized by the start of the industrial era. Yet by no means am I advocating cluttering up the terrain; these representations should not obscure the natural identities of any squares (note that all this time I have not actually mentioned specifically how I think these graphics should look like, because I don't know!).

The effect on gameplay can potentially be dramatic, for no longer is everything somehow concentrated in a "city center." For example, it will no longer be sufficient simply to defend one spot, namely the "city square," while the rest of the city radius is exposed. While this may make defense more difficult, for me it answers the question of "How can your citizens still so invulnerably continue to work squares even with the dangerous proximity of enemy units?" In other words, killing the citizens of a city is now much easier--simply attack a square that is being worked (a side issue will be whether these squares can defend themselves). Combat is now much more interesting in that now parts of a city can be occupied, without necessarily having the owner of the city change hands. Progress towards capturing cities would be measured in a completely different way!

Now what about the integration of interface I talked about earlier? Well, as I contemplated representing the worked squares of cities on the map, I came upon simply throwing the idea of a city screen out altogether. Wouldn't it streamline gameplay if all the city information and settings could be displayed as a sidebar, perhaps? I personally don't like switching into "city screen" mode a couple dozen times a turn, and I think it could be more convenient in this new format. For example, I could switch a production, reassign a city worker, move a unit, and then check that the unit now defends some vital production spot of another city. I have not quite thought of exactly where I would relocate all of the features of the city screen (that might even be Atari's or Firaxis's job).

I welcome all comments, suggestions, and questions on that and any other part of this article.

If I understand the idea correctly then I like this idea.

Let's say that the upper quadrant of a tile is used to display a citizen working that tile. No problem so far... the difficulty comes when that tile is threatened. How do you represent the presence of the city garrison?

For the sake of argument let's say that we have a city of pop 6 under Monarchy with a garrison of two Spearmen. How do you assign the garrison to the worked tiles? On a strict "this tile is threatened" so we'll move our garrrison to this tile to counter the threat or spread the garrison across all worked tiles such that each tile has effectively 1/3 Spearmen defending it?

Hopefully my post comes across as liking the idea in theory but not sure how it will work in practice


Ted

Excellent! Changing theory is trickier than changing technical details.

My original intention is that the "city square" would have no special status other than determining who owns the city. In other words, a unit needs to be on the threatened square in order to defend it! Sticking a horde of defenders in the "city square" will definitely protect that square, but that square only. I know this would mean more units, stretched into a line of defense, would become necessary, but it has simply never made sense to me what the point is of protecting the "city center" and letting the rest of the city go to ruin. In reality, a city (and almost any position at all) is defended by a line of defense, and no position is a singularity, particularly not a city.

Hope that clarifies this a bit. All suggestions as to better implementation are welcome!

The idea is interesting but it still needs work. It could allow many things like cities larger than 21 squares though. And if you have a revolt some citizens might build a barricade between some citizens and others.

I like it! How about basing civs not on cities but on territories or provinces or whatever we'd call them, made up of any number of tiles, possibly containing one or more important cities? Territories could vary in size and shape, maybe functioning best around the 21-tile size. We could say every territory needs a capital, so, capture that tile and the local government falls. This approach would show civs without cities, civs with sprawling (multi-tile) cities, vast worthless territories of mountain and desert, and many dense little provinces packed into fertile regions.

Exactly! A nice side effect of eliminating the city screen is that there is no longer that limit of squares that were able to fit into the city screen--in other words, massive cities are now possible, as well as cities that do not quite fit the 21-tile "city radius" pattern. I have long found it irritating when a particular resource is located just outside of the neat little 21-tile radius, although it is definitely within a reasonable range of the city. Just as annoying is watching all the excess population build up only to become tax collectors or scientists, when just outside of their little technical border is rich terrain demanding to be worked. This "free expansion" would solve these problems easily.

slothman brings up a good idea--in a civil disorder, it is possible to see specifically which tiles are being unruly, and various interesting effects such as the revolting populace barricading itself could distinguish that area from the rest.

Sean Lindstrom also has an excellent idea concerning cityless civs. Various "settlements" (I will explain that next) could be loosely grouped into provinces or territories, with a capital that determines ownership of the province. Since provincial borders are determined by governments, capturing a provincial capital will be more of a toppling of the provincial government, but not necessarily a guaranteed transfer of the entire province's territory to the captors.

With this new system would come a revision of how settlers work. First, I would lower their population cost to one, as it was never clear to me what happened to the other population point since new cities begin at population one and not two. Then, I would give them essentially three different build functions--build a city, build a settlement, or build a provincial capital. The city and provincial capital builds are self-explanatory, but "Build a Settlement" orders the settler to settle down on a square and work it. In other words, it is the new method of settlers to "join city," since there is now clearly no point to somehow "joining" on the city square. Once a settlement is established, however, it will automatically join the province it is in, but can later be absorbed by a city. A long established civ will therefore tend to have a number of provinces with both cities and settlements in it. What a diversification of urbanization! Such a system would not only allow more accurate depictions of civs (when scenario makers dive into the picture), it will actually become possible to see and guide the evolution of cities that has been missing in Civ. And these subtle gradations will allow players to pursue different strategies of urbanization, to great effect.

Any suggestions, comments, and/or questions are welcome!

I like the idea of a city and its hinterland (the region that supports that particular city) being more realistic and fluid. I also am annoyed in the current system when I have to open the city window just to see what tiles are being worked. The current system of a central walled city surrounded by farms is great for cities up to the industrial revolution. The basic 21 squares model should change after industrialization to allow cities to expand along transportation routes. It should be eliminated completely in the modern era in exchange for a nationwide support system. This would change military strategy to allow for a unit-centered zone of control rather than a city-centered model (the current cultural boundary system). You guys are onto something here.

This is beginning to look like every population unit may be uprooted and migrated, like regular map-based units, to specific tiles, not necessarily cities. That would well reflect the industrial revolution rush of agricultural workers into cities as technology took over their jobs. You'd have a horde of displaced farmers (settlers/workers) popping out of the agricultural tiles, to colonise new lands or go to war or join the unemployed in cities. That's a lot of management for the player though! Population migration (at least the mundane automation like we now see in city screen worker allocation) would have to automate nicely for this to be playable.

I suppose invading armies would often prefer not to burden themselves by attempting to patriate every populated tile they marched through. So those ladies in the rice fields remain under the "conquered" civ's control until assimilated.

I do think the city square should stay, just not as the only location of population. Its ridiculous that all Sioux or Mongols in this game live in cities. On the other hand, we should need cities and only cities for multiplying trade and generating science.

You can trace the origin of the city screen back to Sid's venerable Railroad Tycoon, where most action took place on a main map, but clicking any train station brought up a tweak screen for that particular stop.

What could happen is that each "city", which is just a region of tiles, could get bigger and bigger having maybe 40 tiles in it. Eventually a new "city" sprouts on an occupied tile which gets it's own tiles to work. Here's a bad diagram:
(C=city, x=tile worked)
turn 1:
x
xCx

turn 10:
xxx
xCxxxx
xxxxx

turn 20:
xxx x
xCxxxCxx
xxxxxxx

Of course settlers would still be used to create cities far away.

i don't like this idea, if it ain't broke don't fix it. [btw in case your still wondering about where the second person from a setteler goes, when you look at a city you'll see that the city is always bieng worked. this is where the extra guy goes, he is an invisable guy/gal working the city square, governing it, montering it's production] really the current system is fine as it is. and if i understand this correctly, this sorta eliminates culure. what happens when two (or more) different civs want to work a tile. what determines who gets a resource? whoever gets to the tile first? this plan seems to make more headaches than streamlining, if ain't broke, don't fix it, the screen is fine as it is

@Pirate

Yes, this system would allow cities to expand according to practical need, without the 21-tile radius restriction. But what might you mean by a "unit-centered zone of control rather than a city-centered model"? Also, I am not sure exactly how you imagine a "nationwide support system" for the modern era. Those do sound like good ideas though, so please clarify if possible. Thanks!


@Sean Lindstrom

Wow, actually I did not even originally intend to take the idea that far! My initial proposal was to simply have city workers physically exist on the map, and then have them possibly be parts of provinces and not necessarily always cities. The original "build city" ability would be extended to "build provincial capital" as well (actually I would not mind even allowing settlements to be designated as provincial capitals or city centers, although the reverse would not be possible), and the "build settlement" feature simply allows the more productive tiles to be worked from the very start. With that, I am not sure if I should allow these settlements to move around, once they are established, since that could allow too much micromanagement. But what if players want to micromanage to the effect that they are now? Well, since this system allows the player to specifically select tiles to be worked, then the player can just build a horde of settlers (now costing only one population) and "settle" spots they would like to see worked. As the city population increases, more settlements will be automatically generated, but these settlements would tend to be near city centers, unless it was provincial population increase (then the settlement will tend to be somewhere in the province). Although I understand how this system could easily allow population migration, which would enrich the Civ experience considerably, I have yet to figure out a way to implement it in a way that avoids bogging down gameplay. As for conquering, I think the number of settlements that are part of the captured province or city should depend on the cultural strength of the province or city. Also, I definitely think the city square must stay--only that it should not be as important and represent as much as it does now.


@ slothman

I do think there should be a way to limit the growth of cities, and your idea (if I have interpreted it correctly) to have parts of overly massive cities break away and form their own city is excellent. However, I do not think there should be a hard limit. Instead, culture should be the determinant for whether a city's citizens can be culturally united enough to maintain itself under a single local government.


@ ybbor

Ah! That explanation for the second population point is logical for the current model, although not for what I am proposing here.

Anyway, I would greatly welcome any suggestions as to making this idea better if you don't like it now. Unfortunately, I would have to disagree with you if you don't like this simply because "it ain't broke" and therefore "don't fix it" with something like this. Now, I certainly don't think the current city screen feature is broken at all, but I think it could easily use some improvements (such as these). I know this revamping of something that works brings with it risks of gameplay turning for the worse, but there would never be progress without experimentation, so I hope you will give this proposal a chance and perhaps suggest ways to help ensure that gameplay is helped, not hindered, through implementing this.

As for culture, I actually did not even mention culture in any posts in this thread (except for this one, of course). As mentioned in the replies above, culture would actually play a very important, perhaps even more so than current, role. The primary difference in determining the cultural borders is that this new system would have a more irregular pattern of expansion. Settlements would still factor into the determination of cultural borders (although to a lesser extent), just like cities currently do. So when two different civs want to work a tile, it simply depends on (1) whoever's cultural borders encompasss that spot and (2) if the spot is unclaimed, yes, whoever gets there first!

Finally, I would like to say that the ability to check city screen information without having to constantly enter city screens is what will be streamlining, in terms of interface; as for this new urbanization model, well, I really don't know if it would "streamline" gameplay. It might slightly reduce city worker reallocation times.

Originally posted by Trade-peror
@Pirate

Yes, this system would allow cities to expand according to practical need, without the 21-tile radius restriction. But what might you mean by a "unit-centered zone of control rather than a city-centered model"? Also, I am not sure exactly how you imagine a "nationwide support system" for the modern era. Those do sound like good ideas though, so please clarify if possible. Thanks!

Click to expand...

I'll start with the "nationwide support system". After the development of the automobile, sanitation, corporation, or some combination of techs that make sense, it becomes practical that a city is not supported by the farms immediately surrounding it as it was for ancient cities. Instead, all cities connected to the trade network of roads or railroads (or superhighways if they want to bring that concept back- which they should) automatically pool their food (and shields?) into a national repository- each city then uses as much as it needs, allowing much bigger cities to be supported by the surplus of smaller cities. If there is a national surplus, it becomes a tradeable commodity with other civs. In this way, each era shift comes with a major change in gameplay to keep it interesting. I've often heard comments like "the game gets boring past the landgrab phase (usually before industrial era).

As for "unit centered" zones of control, this would also change in the modern ages. In the ancient eras, taking a territory meant holding the cities. In the modern era, cities are so spread out warfare means holding territory. So a unit centered zone of control means units can carve out pieces of territory from the other's control and losing a city center wouldn't mean losing all the culture associated with it. In the modern era you have to fight for every square.

Excellent! The "nationwide support system you suggested bears remarkable semblance to my ideas for a new trade system, discussed here . You will see that I go even farther with the trading food, shields, luxuries, and strategics idea. By the way, I think this interface combined with that trade system, my suggestions for the UN (discussed here ), and my ideas for the role of kings (discussed here ), could result in a very interesting Civ 4. I am perfectly aware that modern and even late industrial games get boring; with these new models, gameplay will actually evolve fundamentally, era by era.

As for the "unit centered" zones of control, I am not sure. I think I might have covered something similar in my extensive replies to other people (2 posts before this one). If I haven't, then please elaborate your idea. It sounds like what I may ultimately be aiming for!

so culture only matters when 2 civs want a tile? and i assume who gets a resource is determined by who works it? and if a city culture flips, i assume only some citizens would (the closest to opposing culture?

Actually, I go into more detail about culture's importance in my replies to Sean Lindstrom and slothman. Instead of repeating myself and wasting a lot of space, please read those, unless you already have, and ask more questions if you would like clarification.

As for culture flipping, yes, I think it should be possible for only a portion of a city to flip, in particular, the outlying settlements far from the more culturally united city center. In other words, culture flipping will now be a more frequent but more gradual process; an occasional fluctuation of a few squares between the borders of two cultural competitors should be expectable, unlike in Civ3, where after milennia an entire city, which is a fairly large chunk of land, capitulates to an opposing culture.

Any other suggestions and questions are welcome!

IIRC, opposing civs in (pre-culture) Civ2 got to work tiles by precedent, so whoever allocated workers there first had rights so long as they kept working it. Additionally, the presence of a civ's unit on a tile would automatically kick foreign (city pop) workers off, and allow that occupying civ to use the tile. This may not have been so among peace treaty civs, I don't remember.

In the original Civilisation board game, most tiles supported on-board population tokens (apart from cities); fertile tiles supporting several of these tokens. The intriguing part was that opposing, even desperately competing civs could share the fertility of a single tile, so a fertility-3 tile might be happily occupied by 2 Assyrians, 1 Egyptian, and then 2 roaming Babylonians settle down and cause a shortage, changing the demographic. More interesting yet, civs might posses agricultural advances that provided their own population more food off the same base fertility, or otherwise changed the way population increase or food shortage was resolved. Population encroachment was aggressive, a matter of life and death. This was how wars were fought in that game.

I think it was Yasser Arafat who said his greatest weapon is the womb of a Palestinian woman.

Civilisation the board game inspired the first computer game by the same name, but, as I said before, it was stuffed into the Railroad Tycoon engine. and so badly mangled. Still we loved it. Can a modern interface do today what Sid Meier tried to do 13 years ago?

Interesting. The original Civilization board game had "population stacking," then? Actually that was an idea I was thinking of possibly incorporating (after the discovery of the "dumbbell tenement" or skyscrapers, or something), but then temporarily shrugged off, since I could not think of any good reason to have more than one population on each tile. This revelation (I only began playing Civ with Civ2, and only discovered the existence of the board games only a few months ago) prompts a reconsideration. Most intriguing, however, is that that was "how wars were fought in the game." Could you please explain that in greater detail? I am so curious, because it is such an unheard of (for me, at least) angle of looking at things!

Also, I have never played Railroad Tycoon, so I do not know how it was "so badly mangled," but I would like to know about that too, in case I may inadvertently be badly mangling it now!

Finally, what exactly did Sid Meier try to do 13 years ago? Sorry, I never played the original Civ or the board games, as I mentioned, and I have a feeling that it was easiest to see Sid's ultimate objective in the originals, and less so in Civ2 and Civ3. Please excuse and dispel my ignorance! Thanks!

Here's a comprehensive review of Advanced Civilization , as this game was republished under a distinctive name to avoid confusion with the first PC game Civilization, by Sid Meier.

Avalon Hill, the publisher, then put out a computerised replica of the board game! I hadn't known that. I don't think the board game would play well as a direct translation to PC, though (especially before the days if internet!), and in any case the computerised release bombed.

Screenshot:


You'll note the tiles are regions. Those coloured circles on the map are fertility values - how much food a tile can produce.

One food supports one population. Each turn, population basically doubles, players get to move (usually to an adjacent tile), then overpopulation is resolved away. So for most of the game, the map's brimming over with more people than it can support. An aggressive player would try to concentrate surplus population into enemy territory, driving the original inhabitants to flight or starvation/cultural oblivion. And that's basically how war is waged. Some technologies like "metalworking" give advantage here, but peaceful technologies like "monotheism" are better, on the epochal time scale, for inflicting genocide.

Tiles where cities have been built support no population. In fact, every city requires 2 population on the map for its own upkeep (this is why players want a robust population on-board). Cities fall often, in this game, and contain no lasting works.

That's way off the track Sid Meier's game took. See, he used the Railroad Tycoon game engine for his Civilization game, and so train stations became cities. The post office you could build inside the station became the Civilization granary, and so on. The big mangling flaw here is that all the important stuff - temples, food, gold, citizens, etc. - doesn't really exist on the map but in those parallel worlds of the city screens. Only units exist on the Civ Earth.

What Sid tried to do 13 years ago was make a game inspired by the board game Civilization, and he succeeded. In the process he built a crippling flaw into the game, by having cities, as entities apart from the map, containing everything. Cities contain even the farms and mines and fisheries around them.

I think a fundamental change of the role cities play is needed. I don't know how to do it. The problem's inexorable, it seems. We keep nailing stuff onto the game to make up for this problem.

Well, I'm glad you're thinking overhaul, Trade-peror.

I like the idea and I'd like to throw in my own interface pet peeve. While in city mode, you can scroll through all of your other cities by using the arrows up top, but you cant do the same w/leaders, and if you play huge maps, it's a bit of a pain to keep clicking back to the Foreign Advisors screen, then- you have to re-arrange the leaderheads to get the ones you want to see on the screen in order to look at alliances, foreign wars, etc. Bah!

idea: stick the leaderheads on the map, with the option to show trade/military relationships on the map as well.

The advisors are a big part of the game, but perhaps the actual Foreign Advisor screen could have deeper stats, such as population, disease, literacy rate, etc.

I didnt mean to go off-topic, but the thread inspired me

@Sean Lindstrom

A very interesting board game, indeed, Advanced Civilization, and it well explains the whole "city on a square" idea. Thanks for looking it up, now everything is clear! The "city on a square" idea worked for the board game, considering the small number of squares and low level of detail, but becomes increasingly awkward as technology allows more squares and each square soon no longer represents the large amount of land that the original "square" did. Certainly such an antiquated system must be fixed.

@skorn

Sticking leaderheads and Foreign Advisor information on the map is interesting, but I am not exactly sure where that would go. A sidebar, perhaps? The city screen information will already have a sidebar of its own, to be activated only when a city is being selected, and I do not know if every advisor should have some kind of space on the screen. Might that possibly clog the screen borders a little? I personally do not see too much need to rapidly refer to the foreign advisor (except for the leader heads, to contact that AI) while I am in the midst of commanding units or managing cities. Perhaps you could better explain to me how having all of the Foreign Advisor's info at hand would be very convenient while moving units or managing cities.

By the way, I do feel that the Foreign Advisor should provide more data--demographics and a table of relationships among the AIs would be extremely helpful.