Cities with character

In Civ 1-3, all the cities wind up being pretty much the same, i.e., the only thing that really distinguishes one big city from another is which Wonders each has. By the late game, you've built all possible improvements, or at least, all the ones you want, and then its simply a matter of which cities can churn out a Modern Armor in 2 turns and which take 3.

I'd like Civ 4 to move in a direction where individual cities have a bit more character, as in real life, cities have strengths, weakness, and a bit of "personality" For example, here in the USA, Detroit is known for automobiles, L.A. is known for movies and movie stars, and so on. Even smaller cities can become known for being centers of particular ideas/products/etc.

I'm not sure how this would be best implemented, but one thing that would be nice is if there were enough city improvements that every city didn't build every single one. Also, have some improvements with certain requirements to be built or certain limitations on usefulness such that you can build or want to build them in some cities but not others. Currently, harbors and offshor platforms can only be built in coastal cities, and aqueducts are only necessary in cities that aren't on rivers: how about some improvements that are only possible/useful near other terrain types. Ski Resorts where there are mountains, Cattle Stockyards where there are plains, National Parks where there are forests, etc. More small wonders, that can only be built in a single city, would also help make individual cities more unique.

I'm not saying they should go overboard on the number of improvements and wonders - I understand that more is not always better. But it gets a little dull when every city has exactly the same set of improvements. Maybe other people have some other ideas about how to make it so that different parts of your empire have a little personality of their own? Suggest away, please....

What about city-specific celebrations (when in the right state of happiness of course)? Such as a Mardi Gras for a New Orleans-like city or a Carnival for a Rio de Janeiro-esque city. This would have an effect of a small amount of additional 'culture', assuming they decide to use a similar model Civ IV. Other than that, I'm not sure it is really necessary to have improvements more specific than what is already implemented in Civ III. That works fairly well already. Think about it. Most cities have aqueducts, courthouses, churches, no matter where you go. It's the local wonders and unique festivities that usually differentiate a city or region.

edit: If they decide to do something like this, then make sure 'Easter Fire' is a default celebration for any city named Graz.

I've thought about this a bit more. A city would get its city-specific festival by staying in WLTK day for 3 consecutive turns. Once that culture is assigned however, it never goes away and increments slowly, no matter what the mood or allegiance of the city is (although it might reset if the city is captured).

These festivals might be determined by geographic conditions:
1. Plains/grassland cities - 'Children of the Corn' parades and such.
2. Cows/horses resource - Stockheed.
3. Coastal cities or cities with rivers - Carnival, Waterfront celebrations, Seafood festivals.

and so on

City Name specific celebrations:

Pensacola - Festival of Five Flags
Graz - Easter Fire
Washigton D.C. - Cherry Blossoms
New Orleans - Mardi Gras
Berlin - Love Parade

There is some real potential here.

Originally posted by Flak
Most cities have aqueducts, courthouses, churches, no matter where you go. It's the local wonders and unique festivities that usually differentiate a city or region.

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Yes, true, and I certainly don't want to get rid of the common improvements, just add some more that don't get built in every city. I guess more small wonders is easiest way to go, and your "city-specific celebration" is an interesting idea as well. I just find it boring to have dozens of big cities that are all essentially identical. Also, in Civ 3, I often run out of buildings to build and start creating more workers and military units than I really need just so my cities are doing something more useful that "Wealth." It's be nice to have a few more "optional" improvements that you wouldn't feel compelled to make in every city but that would give you something to build in big cities that had made everything else on the list. Perhaps some improvements that did nothing except increase culture... museums, art galleries, etc.

And please, let the city graphics on the main map be a little more varied, so that all cities of the same size don't look identical. Some people have suggested having the icon actually show what improvements (or at least wonders) were in the city, and that would be awesome, but something simpler would be to just have more than one icon per city-size (that'd be easier for modders, too).

The title of the thread intrigued me, but I don't see how city specific celebrations really add anything to game play. I wouldn't do anything different while playing the Americans just because St. Louis has Mardi Gras instead of WLTKD.

Graphics modifications would be great to add character and urban sprawl. I think all tiles with improvements should have cultural and/or age specific flavor so there is more separating the look of your land from your neighbors than a colored border line.

I think some city character is possible by using combinations of improvements and specialists (science cities, production cities, economic cities, etc...) so perhaps more could be done on this end. Perhaps different improvements could add different specialists - a colleseum could make athletes available to the city, for example.

The danger here is in making civ 4 the same as civ 3 but with more stuff.

judgement: Good idea. Do you think, in order to accomplish your idea, that we need less cities (eg 3-8 instead of 8-40) in an avarage civ game? In civ3 cities are spreaded all over the world. I dont like that.

One of my ideas was to abonden the idea that cities build something. It is just predictibale. You will always build a temple, marketplace, etc. It is just boring.
Must admit I don't know something new to come with.

I like the idea, but it may be difficult to implement, as you suggested. What if you could build "small small wonders", namely unique improvements? They would be like normal improvements, but only be build into one city - and would not be nearly as powerful as the small wonders, and could perhaps not be build by all civs.

I also like the idea of connecting improvements more closely into terrain. On the other hand, I wouldn't want the city improvements list to become too long. Every sort of little building like stables and shopping malls and ski-resorts and hotels would soon overwhelm in number. This is certainly an idea worth pondering, though.

I wouldn't go as far as someone, who suggested that every city should become like a mini sim city!

its a pretty neato idea but i think implenting it would be rather hard and complicated

in civ2 i used to build the 2 wonders that double scient output in the same city + library university etc

that was cool

Originally posted by Shyrramar
I like the idea, but it may be difficult to implement, as you suggested. What if you could build "small small wonders", namely unique improvements? They would be like normal improvements, but only be build into one city - and would not be nearly as powerful as the small wonders, and could perhaps not be build by all civs.

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Yes, thats the sort of thing I'm talking about.

On the other hand, I wouldn't want the city improvements list to become too long. Every sort of little building like stables and shopping malls and ski-resorts and hotels would soon overwhelm in number.

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I agree, this list should not get too long.

Another example of a terrain-dependant improvement already in he game occurred to me: Hydro Plants can only be built in cities on rivers. It'd certainly be cool to have a few other terrain-dependant improvements, and some that relate to some terrain besides rivers and coasts.

As a big fan of SimCity as well as the Civ series (I got hooked way back when on the old Nintendo SimCity), I think a really cool feature would be to be able to customize and develop your cities on a very detailed level, maybe not as detailed as SimCity4, but something at least as good as 2000 or 3000. Ideas might be that when your population increased in a city, you would be able to expand it more, but customized to your taste and preferences. The city simulation mode could be optional, since the Civ games already have so much going on that if you're not careful you can lost track of what you were doing. I also think it would be cool to have the cities reflect their actual appearance on the main map instead of having two or three generic city graphics for all cities regardless of population or improvements/wonders. Also, in the later stages of the game, like the industrial and modern ages, i think it would be more appropriate to have suburbs and metropolitan areas rather than irrigation and mines. They'd still have the same effect, but the appearance could change in relation to the era.

Didn't have time to read all the posts so if i was repeating anyone else's ideas, my apologies.
BassDude

City-specific celebrations, more varied city graphics and improvement choices based on terrain sound fine. Real-World cities do have unique character. It fits well with the concept of minor nations, making all those little countries special in some way.

The idea of an integrated SimCity-type modelling programme, though, might be going just a bit too far. Imagine a virtual world with hundreds, even thousands, of cities - can they ALL run simultaneously at that level of complexity?? Along with the various random events and extra ecological details which many people, including myself, seem to want... before long, you'd need a supercomputer. Each turn of the game could end up lasting for HOURS, especially in the modern age.

I mean, where can it end? Having individual Sims living within each city?

If the global-scale focus of the Civilization series is to maintained, let's not go down to single streets and houses -and let's not force our PCs' processors to melt, either.

Good idea, towns could have attributes. One town maybe touristy like Paris, Las Vegas or Niagara Falls, other towns maybe more high tech like a Silicon Valley, others maybe be more industrial, maybe a religious centres like Mecca or Jerusalem.

Maybe you could choose the attribute when the city is founded.

Perhaps the SimCity reference wasn't quite accurate... I realize that having so many simultaneous simulations would be impractical. Something simpler that would allow you to customize your cities more to your own tastes would be fun though, in appearance as well as function.
On that train of thought, I think an interesting concept to be kicked around might be separating the city economies from the national economy, at least on some levels. For example, I think it should be possible to create city improvements as well as military units at the same time. It seems unrealistic to assume that since a city is building a library, they can't find the time or resources to train a soldier. Maybe have military under the control and production of some sort of national system, whereas other improvements could be under the local systems?

Pounder said:

Good idea, towns could have attributes. One town maybe touristy like Paris, Las Vegas or Niagara Falls, other towns maybe more high tech like a Silicon Valley, others maybe be more industrial, maybe a religious centres like Mecca or Jerusalem.

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Since the designers have already said they'll be increasing the role of religion in the game, it would be interesting to see how that would relate to the idea of religious centers. Certainly many civs have certains cities that some religion or other considers especially important, and this isn't represented all that well by having identical temples and cathedrals in all your cities. At very least I hope we can expect more Small Wonders that relate to the new "religious" aspects of the game.

Maybe you could choose the attribute when the city is founded.

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I think I'd prefer if the attributes of the city developed based on what you built in a city, etc., rather than being chosen at founding.

In Civ I the city view was different for each city, reflecting which terrain squares were being worked.
In Civ II the city changed as it grew, and the City Improvements were randomly placed about the terrain.
In Civ III the city terrain changed according to where you founded your city.

I'd like to see these features combined for Civ IV, with the added feature of showing the different terrain types around the city.
This would give each city a unique look, without the necessity of adding new Improvements (which is going to happen, anyway) or adding multiple buildings for each Improvement, which will multiply game size.

Buildings associated to culture?

There are five different cultures in Civ. At the cost of a great deal of complexity, the designers could come up with culturally-linked names for each type of building (e.g. Temple, Church, Mosque etc...) Each one performs the same function but the name and appearance is different.

The building type available varies based on the dominant population of the city, so while the German cities build Churches, the German Civ's conquered Greek city (pre-dominantly Greek) will build Temples -- until the dominant population shifts to Germans.

Once built, a building retains the name until sold or destroyed. When re-built it will be the current dominant style.

A frontier city with lots of shifting ownership like Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul would feature older Mediterranean and and newer African architecture, making the city more interesting to look at than average.

The downside would be memorizing all those different names for the same functions.

OK, this is another reason why I would like to see the ability to build multiple copies of a given improvement in a single city.
Basically, as the game progresses beyond the ancient era, it should be beneficial for cities to 'specialise'-perhaps according to prevalent resources and terrain. So some cities might become mercantile/commercial hubs (like Venice), as a result of being on a major trade nexus. Another city might become a centre of science and education, like Cambridge, Oxford, Yale and Harvard-or even Silicon Valley. Other cities could, by dint of their proximity to strategic resources, become major industrial heartlands. Cities in especially fertile regions might become bread-baskets, whilst other cities could become 'Cultural Meccas'-like Los Angeles, Stratford-upon-Avon or Florence.
As a city specialises, its demography will alter to match it. So industrial centres will become the homes of the working-class, wheras highly cultured cities become home to the wealthy and affluent!
Of course, multiple copies of improvements also give a good way for small nations to keep pace with the more expansionist and land-grabbing civs from the early game, and helps pin back the 'bigger is better' philosophy.

Anyway, just a thought.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Hello judgement,

Great idea!
I think it is not so hard to do this. Just limit the #improvements can be built and yes as Aussie Lurker has suggested allow multiple builds of the same improvements... So player can gear the city into certain type.
Immagine you are allowed to build exactly 25 improvements (including wonders). If you choose to build 3 factories in a city (and assume its effect is accumulative), you know that will be an industrial type of city ...becuase there is limited room for you to emphasize on other thing...

Hello Aussie Lurker,

Immagine I build 5 times of wall as an improvement and you are hitting me hard with your force...
Your idea sure brings new live to CIV4...

OK, obviously there are certain types of improvements that could NOT be built multiple times. These would be indicated in both the civilopedia AND the editor. I actually got this idea from a great game called 'Birth of the Federation', and it worked on much the same premise. Knowledge, food, energy and production improvements could be built multiple times, but certain improvements could be built only ONCE per planet! In addition, when you got a new tech, you could upgrade your improvements, with the cost being equivalent to how many of these improvements you had AND to what tech level you were upgrading them!
Needless to say, I LOVED this Game!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.