economic units & other nonesense

if someone else has already touched on this idea, my apologies, I didn't read the entire thread...we can fuss about it or buy beers....either way it will add up to the same thing.

Using units as city improvements, more rightly said, as city-terrain units. Not gettting rid of the tried-n-true mines/irragation/roads, but adding civilain units which will non-mobile stand around your city, adding econ/production/food.

Throw in major war-weariness when they get killed...something the human player always seems to have an advantage over the AI with, it lets bombing/lethal bombing become an economic weapon rather than a tactical one.

for flavor the unit could look like a farm/factory/bank/theatre disctrict etc. which will cause the modded red-light-district unit to be made within hours of release. It makes protecting your cities more an investment....

...as well as lets scenerio's have major impact with plauges/diasters...when all your farms are drying up, your banks are nonfunctional due to lack of personnel...a dead teller isn't a productive teller. I do agree with zulu returning to the days of being able to ship-food to cities....yeah we all built mega science cities to see how many folks we could stuff into it before the rioting was non-stop. but it was a fun if not too realastic thing in the earlier civ games....though with his additional thoughts on supply lines you could do terrible things to another player if you cut his shipping tracks.

think about NY or ATL or any major city if the trucks/trains couldn't get through. How many cigarettes are in the local convience store...and how long do they last if the russians are at the gate?

adding random-generated AI strats would also help, based on the better player strats....so you don't run into the same-ole-same-ole with every invasion. I'd limit the railroad to a finite number of movement points, mostly to help the AI out,since they don't drive a railroad spike to the doors of a city, then unload fresh units from the factory towns.

I really like the unit-creation ability of improvements in Conquests, I'd take it further where you can/need to build an entire infra structure to support heavy industry/science/ more than a simple temple/cath/joy house combo...but that way you could have detroit which was at one time producing planes/trains/tanks and cannon fodder for the war effort...taking civ into a modern war-game rather than the old empire game it was based on without losing the easy-to-play flavor/ease of use of the game itself.

Last note, and this is to the gaming industry as a whole, more than sid n the boys....we'd like smarter AI with more playablity...yeah I know you need to release a new title every quarter to stay competive, but figgerin' Civ's long lasting record, we'd like more substance over style please. if we wanted to non-braining gaming we'd be on a game-system....but civ players are the children (and grandchildren) of the old time wargamers who sat in greenland playing rules no one could master and with all that is possible in cpu use since the orginal civ came out, can't we have one game on the market for thinkers rather than folks who want to look at the pretty pictures?...we promise to buy every single addon that comes out, if you treat us with the respect we'd like to see.

I really like your style, micmc!

Those city-improvement-nonsense-units are something new, I must admit. I can't really make up my mind about these ... In theory, yes, but in practice? How much more micromanagement it would bring, how much tedious work in general. Should I somehow be protecting each of those? This is something worth developing further, though!

Foodshipping would be nice, although it should be made with care. A simple system of "transport x amount of food from city Y to city Z" would be nice. No transport units that you'd have to manage, nor any trade routes. Perhaps some sort of trade-line could be allowed, so that the food-transportation-routes could be pillaged... The transportation should begin automatically again, though. Perhaps a unit sitting on the trade route would just not allow the food to pass, but when the unit is killed, the trading continues - automatically with no boring micromanagement involved...

The railroad question is the oldest question there is. It does seem odd that my units can go infinite times across my continent, while my plains can only re-base once - not to mention all my ships snailing around..

Good ideas, there

You are rigth, newly founed cities should'nt be able to build a tank rigth there and there. The city will first need a work force which will work in factories, this factoreis will need a power soucer, material and supervisors and so on.
This will give the game more deepth, founding a city wouldn't intanly mean more money, more power because for it to give you a revenue it will need to be a certain size, then a garrison to make the citizens pay because of fear to the troops, then tax collectors to collect tax. All of this will first cost you money, but as time passes you will recover it... an invesment.
Further more cities will be depandand in each other, the small cities could give their extra food to the big cities in return the big cities provide the little ones with services, like enginiers who build will build a school in the city, an aqueduct and so on, you just do go at it trying to build an 457 mile long aqueduct.

Hello I am playing Civilization from CIV 1. I have one sugestion.
It would be great to have option in the game that we can set the limit for development of "new age" military units. For example the last unit to be let in the Middle Ages, as a final military development. Whith modern military units start getting boring ... I think the game would have been much interesting. Thanks!

Hi @Sevaljevic !!!
I also play Civ from Civ I !!!!
You can use a mod like this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=880843004
which stops the era at a specified one.
P.S. I have use this mod only once or twice long time ago, so I don't know how it behaves with GS and the latest patch, but infixo (the creator) ceeps his mods up to date !!!

micmc said:

if someone else has already touched on this idea, my apologies, I didn't read the entire thread...we can fuss about it or buy beers....either way it will add up to the same thing.

Using units as city improvements, more rightly said, as city-terrain units. Not gettting rid of the tried-n-true mines/irragation/roads, but adding civilain units which will non-mobile stand around your city, adding econ/production/food.

Throw in major war-weariness when they get killed...something the human player always seems to have an advantage over the AI with, it lets bombing/lethal bombing become an economic weapon rather than a tactical one.

for flavor the unit could look like a farm/factory/bank/theatre disctrict etc. which will cause the modded red-light-district unit to be made within hours of release. It makes protecting your cities more an investment....

...as well as lets scenerio's have major impact with plauges/diasters...when all your farms are drying up, your banks are nonfunctional due to lack of personnel...a dead teller isn't a productive teller. I do agree with zulu returning to the days of being able to ship-food to cities....yeah we all built mega science cities to see how many folks we could stuff into it before the rioting was non-stop. but it was a fun if not too realastic thing in the earlier civ games....though with his additional thoughts on supply lines you could do terrible things to another player if you cut his shipping tracks.

think about NY or ATL or any major city if the trucks/trains couldn't get through. How many cigarettes are in the local convience store...and how long do they last if the russians are at the gate?.

Click to expand...

Another way of using 'population' to enhance or focus city effects is Specialists, which were everywhere in Civ V and have been seriously downgraded in Civ VI. I'm all for bringing them back: make each Population Point in the city represent a point working the tiles around the city, and another part working the Buildings/Districts inside the city. Give each building a variable number of 'slots' for Specialists, make those variable with changes in Technology, Civic, Government Type, Era, whatever, and the possibilities for 'focusing' your city become almost limitless.
Alternatively, we could go outside the Civ model and use Endless Legend's style of allowing the city to automatically work all tiles adjacent to a City Center or District, and use the Population Points as Specialists enhancing the output from either the tiles or the Buildings.

Supply to a city is something Civ has really abstracted, and has actually not modeled well. All the recent debates about the lameness of coastal cities in Civ VI is because Civ doesn't model the major advantage of cities with access to sea or river transport: from the start of the game, practically, they could bring in food from far away by boat. Any city without water transport could only get food from as far away as a pack animal or cart could travel, which, even with a decent road, is less than 150 kilometers. Before railroads, there were no large cities anywhere in the world that did not have water transportation access. Really big cities had major water transport Improvements - Rome built roads especially to bring in food from major ports around the Bay of Naples, Beijing in China had a 2000 km-long canal so that boats could haul thousands of tons of rice and grain up from the Yangtze plains/flood plains. When that canal was cut by drought in the 17th century, there was major famine in Beijing, and when military blockade cut the sea supply of grain through the Baltic in the 1620s to western Europe, EVERY major seaport from England to the Low Countries suffered immediately (there are records from London, Amsterdam, Antwerp confirming this)

micmc said:

iadding random-generated AI strats would also help, based on the better player strats....so you don't run into the same-ole-same-ole with every invasion. I'd limit the railroad to a finite number of movement points, mostly to help the AI out,since they don't drive a railroad spike to the doors of a city, then unload fresh units from the factory towns..
I really like the unit-creation ability of improvements in Conquests, I'd take it further where you can/need to build an entire infra structure to support heavy industry/science/ more than a simple temple/cath/joy house combo...but that way you could have detroit which was at one time producing planes/trains/tanks and cannon fodder for the war effort...taking civ into a modern war-game rather than the old empire game it was based on without losing the easy-to-play flavor/ease of use of the game itself..

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Random Changes to Civs has to be handled carefully to avoid degenerating into Complete Fantasy, but there are lots of Random Events that changed what Civs did that could be applied. The EU game has "Events and Decisions", for instance, which based on which way you respond to a random event, could change some aspect of what your Civ is like for a short time. Something like that could be enlarged and Expanded, so that things like Natural Disasters, Climate Changes (which have been going on throughout history, not just in the past 100 years), Human Events, Religions, Ideologies, Assassinations (of Leaders or Great people) or some Disruptive Idea popularized by somebody the government wasn't keeping a close enough eye on (They don't have to be labeled Voltaire, Tom Paine, Robespierre, Torquemada, or Karl Marx, but if you saw any of those in your Civ, Beware!). How you react to these should have specific effects on your Civ.

And Requirements for some units/constructions are long, long overdue. My two favorite examples (because, hey, I'm a military historian) are the Battleship and the Tank. There were over 50 'Civs" in the world in 1900 - 1940, but only 7 countries had built their own Battleships by 1918 (12 years after the first Battleship was launched) (FYI, they were Britain, USA, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Austria) and by 1940, only 5 Civs had the capability to design and build Medium (20 tons or heavier) tanks (Britain, USA, France, Germany, Russia) - lots of others were designing and building light tanks, but by 1945 even Japan, fighting for its life, could not produce a medium tank, nor did Italy despite great exertion manage to manufacture a medium weight armored vehicle before it collapsed in 1943.
The same examples could be given for Railroads, the first Improvement that required massive amounts of iron, steel, coal, industrial expertise and capital to produce: railroads all over the world were built by British-supplied workers and engineers, locomotives were exported from Britain and the USA, and by 1900, 75 years after railroads started, only Britain, USA, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, and Russia were building all their own railroad components: countries as diverse as China, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Persia, and Siam were still having their railroads built with rails, cars, locomotives and other components produced in Britain, USA, or other 'railroad' countries.

In Civ VI terms, a Harbor District with a Dockyard adjacent to an Industrial District with a Factory should be required to build a Battleship (or, later, an Aircraft Carrier), and an Industrial District with a Factory and Power should be required, at a minimum, to build Tanks or Modern Armor - or maybe even a specialized 'Factory' for Tanks/Modern Armor only. Railroads should also require a Factory and lots of Iron and Coal to maintain, until later Tech allows you to 'electrify' them and use Power Plants or Oil.

All, and probably some other elements in the game, should require major industrial investment to build and to maintain: air travel relies on major specialized industrial concerns, for instance, and provision of the specialized freight carrying ships from the middle of the 20th century on (Modern-Atomic Eras) also relies on Battleship-type Dockyard/Industrial facilities.

micmc said:

Last note, and this is to the gaming industry as a whole, more than sid n the boys....we'd like smarter AI with more playablity...yeah I know you need to release a new title every quarter to stay competive, but figgerin' Civ's long lasting record, we'd like more substance over style please. if we wanted to non-braining gaming we'd be on a game-system....but civ players are the children (and grandchildren) of the old time wargamers who sat in greenland playing rules no one could master and with all that is possible in cpu use since the orginal civ came out, can't we have one game on the market for thinkers rather than folks who want to look at the pretty pictures?...we promise to buy every single addon that comes out, if you treat us with the respect we'd like to see.

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I started gaming playing Tactics II and the original Gettysburg board game in 1962: I am the original parent/grandparent that played the board games - and then the miniatures games, and now the computer games
I'll add to your points: Don't waste your development money and time and resources on animated leaders that have no effect on game-play and get keyed through or turned off after the second or third time you see them. Apply those resources to stuff that's actually in the game or on the map: more varied Unit Graphics, Buildings, City Styles, Terrain variations, and special in-game effects: animated railroads with smoke-belching steam locomotives hauling trains across the map, turning into diesels in the Atomic Era and sleek "Bullet Train" types in the Information Era. If you want to keep/add Eye Candy, at least make it Eye Candy that we can actually see while we play the game, not just a distraction when we have to talk to another Civ Leader.

Boris Gudenuf said:

Disruptive Idea popularized by somebody the government wasn't keeping a close enough eye on (They don't have to be labeled Voltaire, Tom Paine, Robespierre, Torquemada, or Karl Marx, but if you saw any of those in your Civ, Beware!). How you react to these should have specific effects on your Civ.

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That would be pretty cool if any type of Great Person point you collect would go into some Great Disruptor pool. The dark age policies would be more appropriate as abilities you get from GD's then some optional policies.

micmc said:

if someone else has already touched on this idea, my apologies, I didn't read the entire thread...we can fuss about it or buy beers....

Click to expand...

Let's go for the beers then !