Should the maritime city state's bonus change with the age?

[Minor Annoyance]

As in my understanding, the basic principal of the infinite city sprawl strategy worked like this:

Build as many cities as possible and keep them at population 2.
Feed them entirely with food from maritime CS allies.
Build libraries and use your two population as scientists.
Get lots of Great scientists for free technologies.

I'm sure there's more to it than that because you'd need money from somewhere, but the nearly free scientists were the unbalancing factor as I understand it, because that is what they got rid of in the last patch. All the libraries scientist slots in the library were removed.

I thought a better change would be the maritime city states. The gifts the city states give you are supposed to increase the later the age you are in. Cultural CS increase up until industrial age.
So my idea was, to not have the extra food for every city bonus kick in until a later age. Then there could still be scientist specialist slots but there wouldn't be the possibility of so many free scientist early on.
I was going to just try it out since it would be so easy to distribute the mod as see what people thought. Make the capital food bonus higher to start and have the every city bonus come in later, but Maritime city states have a setting for pre-and post renaissance bonus for friend status, but no different age bonus settings for allies.

As it is, it can't be done, so I've posted it here to see if people think it might work, assuming Firaxis would make such a change or change the code so it would be possible to make the change.

 

[Rusty Edge]

I think that a Maritime city state should provide less food, but gift the occaisional ship.

 

[Camikaze]

What Rusty Edge says is a good idea, although then a more appropriate name for them would be 'militaristic maritime' city states.

As for the OP- What are the precise bonuses that you would propose? I can't help but think that if you were increasing the bonus with every age, by the time you got to the Modern Era, it would have to be a pretty big bonus. There is only so much room to move.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I'm not really suggesting increases at all. I'm suggesting it only give food to the capital until the renaissance when it will give food to every city. The food bonus for the capital would have to be higher at the start so it is still valuable to befriend them when the don't give to every city yet.
I think it's better than removing library scientist slots, and also it makes logical sense. Could you really transport food around the world with medieval transportation? Maybe you could, I don't know.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well I'd say
Food to the Capital
+
Happiness in Renaissance (Trade)

 

[hambridger]

I have an idea.
Instead of receiving an amount/city, which makes ICS so favorable, give a set amount that is divided amongst cities.
So say the bonus is 3/6 for friend/ally in the first age. So if you were allies, your cities would receive 6/(# cites) food. Let's also keep a bonus for the capital, so say twice the food bonus.
So for example with one ally maritime CS and 3 cities, the capital would receive 6/3 * 2 = 4 food, and the other cities 6/3 = 2 food (8 total bonus). With only a capital, it would receive 6/1 * 2 = 12 bonus food. Notice how more cities not only reduces the total bonus food, but also the food/city. This would allow players to more freely choose an empire size and have important decisions about when to expand.

 

[Camikaze]

Welcome to the forums, hambridger.

That would seem a good way of doing it. It would fit in with cultural and militaristic city states in providing a set bonus rather than one based on number of cities.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Having a set amount of food given and distributed is probably the best solution, but the problem is how to distribute it if you have more cities than the food given? Giving it to the smallest cities is fine, until they grow and aren't the smallest cities anymore. What if then they go into starvation, then later regain the extra food. You could have cities going up and down between two populations. Or if a lot of them are the same population which one gets the food? There would have to be some some criteria other than population so it wouldn't be random which cities got food.

 

[Camikaze]

Maybe you could choose where the food goes? So you get a set amount of food, and then you can direct it as you please.

 

[SpearMan153]

Yes maritime CS should give a fixed amount of food to the capital that you can then choose to distribute to other cities.

They would (imo) need to be trade route connected and probably should have a granary as well

I'm going to have a crack at modding this in the near future - just need to work up enough motivation to learn the modding system instead of just playing the game.

The idea is that a city with granary and trade route connection can import or export surplus food. Exported food goes to the capitial which will also need a granary.

This would require a fairly simple ui change on the city view and I'd want to add an overview screen where you could manage all your food transfers in the one place.

You could then extend this to trade food between civs - surplus food in capital is tradeable.

The mechanics should be straight foward to implement, the trick of course is getting the ai to use the system effectively.

This would of course drastically change city growth etc as we know it... If things get too silly a good transfer/gold cost trade off could be added to balance this out.

Also toying with the idea of transferable production...

 

[Namaspamus]

Having a set amount of food given and distributed is probably the best solution, but the problem is how to distribute it if you have more cities than the food given? Giving it to the smallest cities is fine, until they grow and aren't the smallest cities anymore. What if then they go into starvation, then later regain the extra food. You could have cities going up and down between two populations. Or if a lot of them are the same population which one gets the food? There would have to be some some criteria other than population so it wouldn't be random which cities got food.

Maybe you could choose where the food goes? So you get a set amount of food, and then you can direct it as you please.

A possibility: when you become allied to a maritime CS, a little symbol (could be a fish) appears at the right of your cursor with a number (for the number of cities who can benefit from the extra food). You click on the labels of cities you want to feed, the number goes down and the symbol now appears on the city labels.
If you want to change where the food goes later, clicking on the symbol on the label would remove it from the city and add it again, with the number one beside it, to the cursor, so you can give it to another city. If the city is going to starve and the governor can't fix it, you're warned.

And I agree the bonus from cultural CS should go up with time.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Simplest idea...

round down(Total CS Food/Number of cities)= bonus to all cities

Remainder=Total CS food-bonus to all cities*#cities=Number of cities that get 1 additional bonus food (goes to biggest cities).