Slower Expansion

I hate how the whole known world seems to be settled in the ancient age. I think it would be much more fun if after a few cities, the corruption would start to get so high that a city could break away from your civ. There would be improvements to remedy this in the long run, but then you wouldn't just have to concentrate on settling as many cities as possible (and the AI doing the same) during the beginning of the game. Also, this would make colonies actually useful.

I like the way Rhye dealt with this issue in his Rhye's Of Civilization...
Settlers are extremely expensive and upgrade to even more expensive versions at key techs, making construction of a city more than a trivial matter as it is in the basic game.

that would make for more interesting colonization races and conflicts in the middle and industrial ages (maybe the penalty for extra cities could be decreased or removed after navigation). it would also put more emphasis on city placement and quality rather than sheer numbers. however this might all but eliminate ancient wars - ie. how does the city restriction work on captured cities?

another idea for colonies: rather than being built on top of the resource, they could gather them from one square ajacent. then after x turns of existence they would turn into size one cities

@General Porkins: Very good idea! But I suggest a modification...
We can build colonies only on resources but it has a nine-square radius. After x turn you could make it into a city by paying an amount or you could wait a longer time to get the city free and automatical. What do you think about that?

To solve this problem, make a city limit for each government or age. Make that number, and the number of cities I have, available so I know when I will start incurring penalties for going over. Penalties will be increased corruption and increased unhappiness, such that going too far over the limit will result in catastophe, like civil war or simply so much corruption and unhappiness that the civ can not function. Certain improvements could help against such penalties, or could increase the city limit.

I also like the idea of adding functions to colonies. Give them a small radius, like cities have, but that cannot grow. No culture in a colony, no growth or limited growth, no produciton. They can harvest resources, including gold, in the area for your civ and provide defense bonuses for troops as a fort does. They can become cities after a certain time. If built on the coast, they act as ports and provide for overseas trade.

The only problem with this idea is now colonies will be popping up everywhere and will cover the earth! My solution would be every 4 or 5 colonies counts as a city toward your city limit or each colony requires gold upkeep to help limit the number of colonies each civ builds.

vizurok, thanks for the upgrade on my idea. capslock has also added some good thoughts to it as well. to aid in the prevention of colonies popping up everywhere, perhaps rather than have it as a worker function, there could be a separate colonist unit, which would cost more than a worker but less than a settler (15-20 shields under the civ3 system). there could also be an increased chance of an aggressive barbarian uprising in the vicinity of a colony, as well as a small chance of disease/harsh winter etc (depending on surrounding terrain) or something that would cause the colony to be wiped out.

How about this. No settlers. Period

Replace them all with colonies.

It is quite clear from history that cities were NEVER settled on purpose; all of them were colonies that over time developed into cities, OR were founded basically through a fortuitous and serendipitous occurrence. Not on purpose.

Colonies are on purpose. Rather than a resource gathering system, they should be what a city must be at first. They CAN gather resources (including food, but that is another story) and ship them back to the capital (which would be founded in the normal manner). The colonies would (every five turns) go through a random test to see if they turn into cities. The balance would be against them, at a ratio of 2 to 5 that they would develop.

You could recruit troops from a colony (also another story), and it would serve all the basing functions that a city would (port, fort, etc) but would be unable to build the little goodies (markets, walls, barracks).

It makes more sense if you understand my ideas behind food and troops, but I think that it makes more sense than settling cities just like that. The random develop would let you choose the site, but not the time.

And ya, Rhye does have the best solution I have seen. Check his thing out in the mod section.

Never do this

Originally posted by Aeon221
How about this. No settlers. Period

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Terrible idea. Founding new cities is fun.

It is quite clear from history that cities were NEVER settled on purpose; all of them were colonies that over time developed into cities, OR were founded basically through a fortuitous and serendipitous occurrence. Not on purpose.

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It is quite clear from history that you are quite wrong about this. Cities were founded many times on purpose, from ancient phonecian and greek times to the expansion of America westward. You might have gotten away with your statement if you had said usually not founded on purpose, but you said never, and even had the chutzpah to put it all in caps, and that makes your statement pretty ridiculous.

Colonies are on purpose. Rather than a resource gathering system, they should be what a city must be at first. They CAN gather resources (including food, but that is another story) and ship them back to the capital (which would be founded in the normal manner). The colonies would (every five turns) go through a random test to see if they turn into cities. The balance would be against them, at a ratio of 2 to 5 that they would develop.

You could recruit troops from a colony (also another story), and it would serve all the basing functions that a city would (port, fort, etc) but would be unable to build the little goodies (markets, walls, barracks).

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Why can't a colony build a wall or barracks? Those were the first things built in most colonies! In fact a lot of colonies were primarily military outposts that consisted of a wall, a barracks, and not much else.And of course, if a colony could build these things (which would be realistic) then it wouldn't really be any different from a small town... in other words, you'd have the current system, which I think is perfectly fine.

The random develop would let you choose the site, but not the time.

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Why would we want to remove control from the player? The whole point of the game is to control the development of your civilization - it kind of defeats the purpose if you make everything random instead.

I'm sorry, but I think that removing settlers is simply a terrible idea. For that matter, I don't mind at all that the entire world is settled by the ancient age... historically, the whole world was inhabited by people long before 3000 BC! By the middle ages (in real life) there were no longer big unsettled patches of land- expansion at that point came through conquest. In fact, even ancient civs like the Roman Empire didn't expand into uninhabited territory: they had to conquer rivals as they went. Some of those would be considered "barbarians" but others, like the Etruscans, had a well developed culture.

If you want to slow down expansion by putting more people in the way (more barbarians, or "minor civs," or whatever) that's fine, I'd totally support that idea. But slowing down expansion by making it harder (or impossible!?!) to found new cities is not my idea of how to make the game more fun! And corruption is already one of the most-complained-about parts of Civ 3 - limiting early expansion using corruption would just make things worse!