Aerial warfare and airport dynamics in Civilization VII?

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

From a military perspective there needs to be more non-military targets for planes to target. Blowing up a railroad, dam, or power plant should have a crippling effect on a modern war effort.

Airplane production shouldn't be at an airport, it should be 3rd tier IZ building.

I would make a runway a separate district from a civilian or military airport facility, because I love districts.

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

I will take a crack at the economic and cultural basics.

Ports, rail yards, and airports, probably in that order, should cover shipping and trade, with a certain allowance for representation of semis. Civ VI gets this right with Harbors, and railroads grant efficiency to trade routes, but the aerodrome focuses on air units at the expense of other dimensions. Perhaps rail yards and semis could be folded into Commercial Hubs, but there is already a lot abstracted there. I like how Humankind scales trade route expense from sea to land to air.

As for culture, just look at Europe and Northeast Asia. Train stations and airports should increase tourism by 100% apiece. One could even consider giving tourism to train stations by era like little Industrial Era wonders. As for North America, hmm... perhaps a policy called Car Culture would suffice: 5% boost to most yields at the expense of emissions per city, no tourism from train stations, and -50% tourism from airports. I like how in Civ V late-game tourism from cities consolidates around Hotels and Airports, the latter of which do a good job tackling tourism and military capacity but fall short on commerce. Airports in Humankind embody commerce and military applications while also opening the territory up to foreign Influence, though Influence does not translate cleanly into Civilization's culture/tourism.

I reserve judgment on districts as a game mechanic, but I will say the lifespan of Civ VI has only proven how many urban functions (especially airports) have been exported beyond city limits. It can also feel uniquely rewarding to build megalopolises in Civ VI versus more or less inevitable in Humankind or even Old World.

On a side note, this is really taking me back to custom rail and highway design from SimCity 4 with the Network Addon Mod...

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I will take a crack at the economic and cultural basics.

Ports, rail yards, and airports, probably in that order, should cover shipping and trade, with a certain allowance for representation of semis. Civ VI gets this right with Harbors, and railroads grant efficiency to trade routes, but the aerodrome focuses on air units at the expense of other dimensions. Perhaps rail yards and semis could be folded into Commercial Hubs, but there is already a lot abstracted there. I like how Humankind scales trade route expense from sea to land to air.

As for culture, just look at Europe and Northeast Asia. Train stations and airports should increase tourism by 100% apiece. One could even consider giving tourism to train stations by era like little Industrial Era wonders. As for North America, hmm... perhaps a policy called Car Culture would suffice: 5% boost to most yields at the expense of emissions per city, no tourism from train stations, and -50% tourism from airports. I like how in Civ V late-game tourism from cities consolidates around Hotels and Airports, the latter of which do a good job tackling tourism and military capacity but fall short on commerce. Airports in Humankind embody commerce and military applications while also opening the territory up to foreign Influence, though Influence does not translate cleanly into Civilization's culture/tourism.

I reserve judgment on districts as a game mechanic, but I will say the lifespan of Civ VI has only proven how many urban functions (especially airports) have been exported beyond city limits. It can also feel uniquely rewarding to build megalopolises in Civ VI versus more or less inevitable in Humankind or even Old World.

On a side note, this is really taking me back to custom rail and highway design from SimCity 4 with the Network Addon Mod...

Just a couple of additions from an old railroad buff:

First, railroads in North America were majorly into the Tourism side of things, with Railroad Hotels in several National Parks and parks/entertainment areas reachable only by railroad outside of many cities. Everything from day trips to Atlantic City from New York to major vacations to places like Sarasota or Niagra Falls were by railroad, and the railroads promoted them extensively.

Second, one major addition to the Trade system that has never been modeled in Civ games is the Containerization that started in the late 1950s (Atomic) and is now the majority of all non-bulk goods traded. Standardized shipping containers that could be sealed at the source, moved by truck, rail, ship or even air cargo, revolutionized shipping, allowed cargo to be handled faster and more safely than ever before. The Container Terminal could be a new Building in a Harbor or Commercial District or a new District by itself that provides major bonuses to shipping from all the other types of transport: Airports, Harbors, or railroads. Alternatively, Container Port and Container Terminal could be 'structures' in Harbor, Aerodrome and Commercial Hub districts that allow mutliplication of trade bonuses based on the number of different types of shipping in the city. Any city with a major Airport, Harbor, and railroad terminal should reap huge benefits from containerized trade.

 

[BuchiTaton]

In the last two 'Eras', roughly 1940 to present day, the line monoplane - jet - drone should actually be monoplane - jet strike aircraft - UAV, because the trend even by 1940 was for the 1 - 3 seat 1 - 2 engine aircraft to have both the traditional pursuit/fighter capabilities of air attack, escort, interception and also an increasing Ground Attack tactical and operational level capability.

After all, as early as 1941 German, Soviet and British single-engine 'fighters' could also carry bombs and rockets for use against ground targets, and of course every one of them also built dedicated ground attack aircraft in that category: the Ju-87 Stuka 2 seat, single engine aircfaft, the IL-2 Sturmovik 1 - 2 seat, single engine armored aircraft and the later Marks of the Hurricane fighter that were increasingly used for ground attack duties. By 1944 the principle danger from the air to the German Wehrmacht was not bombers, it was 'Jabos' - Jagdbombern or 'Fighter-Bombers' like the American P-47 that could carry up to 2 tons of bombs and strafe ground targets with 8 12.7mm machineguns - more bomb load than the average 2-engine bomber of 1939!

Similarly, after the first generation of jet fighters in the 1950s, most of the modern 1 - 2 seat jet 'fighters' are actually multi-purpose Strike aircraft, capable of carrying munitions loads for use against both air and ground (or sea) targets. The F-16 is a good example, originally planned as a fighter aircraft but now more often used to attack ground targets since the USA hasn't had a real air threat to its forces since WWII.

True, but especially the last part once again show us that historical reality have relevant elements that CIV portrait poorly (or not at all), and are beyond the capabilities of the game to abstract in a balanced and (subjetively*) entertaining way. I mean, ideally the average game should be designed to not have a historical USA-like world's superpower in the last 2-3 eras each match. That would make late game predictable, repetitive and boring. In the same way late militar units barely used for being too expensive, unnecessary extravagances that change role/ballance each few turns could be historical but seems as pointless and awfull gameplay design.

So the idea of reduce the ground strike aspect of Fighter have a gameplay justification revaluing not just Fighters themselves but also Bombers and Helicopters as units with more clear functions. For example the design of AoE2 is more limited, simple and straightfoward in roles and bonus than AoE3, in the later there are way more unique units and mixed roles plus tons of techs and customizable deck cards for additional variations. Despite all this AoE2 is by far still a more popular and ballanced game than AoE3. Roles and bonus are oversimplifications and many times barely historical, but the pirority is to be gameplay usefull.

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

My understanding is North American railroads both promoted existing attractions and developed their own. Can you imagine how players would react if building rail on unimproved tiles rolled a chance of up to five tourism? It could be interesting to introduce some rail-national park tourism boost.

Containerization is a great idea, and the Container Terminal would make a great Tier 3 building in the current setup. I am unsure whether it would be better to have a late-game district or late-game infrastructure. It would be easier to achieve proximity of three districts than four. I am emboldened by Humankind to imagine a Train Station district, so perhaps the tiered infrastructure would be Passenger Service, Container Terminal, and High-Speed Rail. While I am district-happy, why not separate Commercial Hubs from a Financial District? The former could keep markets into a new shipping function, whereas the latter could have a Mint-Bank-Stock Exchange progression. I like the idea of containerization offering a bunch of multipliers and possibly incentivizing late-game district development to exploit them. Of course, if we had ports, train stations, commercial hubs, financial districts, and commercial airports, we would be in fairly desperate need of counterweight to all that trade income!

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

My understanding is North American railroads both promoted existing attractions and developed their own. Can you imagine how players would react if building rail on unimproved tiles rolled a chance of up to five tourism? It could be interesting to introduce some rail-national park tourism boost.

Containerization is a great idea, and the Container Terminal would make a great Tier 3 building in the current setup. I am unsure whether it would be better to have a late-game district or late-game infrastructure. It would be easier to achieve proximity of three districts than four. I am emboldened by Humankind to imagine a Train Station district, so perhaps the tiered infrastructure would be Passenger Service, Container Terminal, and High-Speed Rail. While I am district-happy, why not separate Commercial Hubs from a Financial District? The former could keep markets into a new shipping function, whereas the latter could have a Mint-Bank-Stock Exchange progression. I like the idea of containerization offering a bunch of multipliers and possibly incentivizing late-game district development to exploit them. Of course, if we had ports, train stations, commercial hubs, financial districts, and commercial airports, we would be in fairly desperate need of counterweight to all that trade income!

Given the huge footprint on the ground of railroad yards, passenger terminals, freight handling facilities, etc, a separate Railroad District would be easy to justify - more easily than some of the other Districts, in fact. I suggest that the 'buildings' in it could be:
Passenger Terminal - adds Gold, Tourism
Marshaling Yard - increases Production, Trade
Container Terminal - massively increases Trade, Gold, Production

High-Speed Rail's big expense comes from the precision required in the track itself. My understanding from construction in Germany in the 1990s was that a kilometer of High peed rail costed out at the same expense as a kilometer of mutli-lane Autobahn - both designed for 100+ kph travel. Instead of placing the change/upgrade in the Railroad District, then, it should be a massive investment in the rail lines between the cities. BUT that investment might pay off in, say, the ability to share population, production, and food between any cities so connected, essentially extending the 'city radius' to the length of the High Speed rail line.

Separating Commercial and Financial Districts is an interesting idea. Presumably, then, Commercial District would emphasize Trade, Financial Banking and direct Gold Supply. The problem I could see is that a separate Financial District only appears really in the Industrial Era when it became necessary to concentrate and exploit capital in huge amounts to construct things like Canals and Railroads, both Improvements that required as much capital investment as Wonders previously.
That means that a new division of Buildings between the two might be necessary. Tentatively:
Commercial Hub District:
Market - general Gold in city
Caravanserai - adds Trade Route, Gold from Trade Routes?
Bank - more Gold?

Financial District:
Investment Bank - easier building of structures in other Districts
Stock Exchange - easier building of Improvements, Wonders, more Gold generally
Central State Bank - allows Production to be pooled between cities?

Just thoughts based on historical antecedents, which the game does not have to follow . . .

 

[pineappledan]

I've felt for a long time that the intermodal container revolution in the 50s ought to be it's own tech for a long time. It's not glamorous, but the complete restructuring of global logistics in such a short timescale is one of the most consequential things to come out of the late 20th century.

 

[rocksinmypath]

Airports (and improvements to the overall transportation network building experience) can help solve the issue of late-game slog. I believe late-game slog happens because Civ is a monotonically inflating bag of mini-games. As your empire grows, your role as the leader should evolve, but in Civ, it's more appropriate to say your role expands. When you start a game with one city, it's as if you're the chief of a small tribe. When you have four cities, you should act like the king of a small kingdom. Instead, it feels like you have some duties of a king, but you also have to carry out the tasks of chiefs of four different tribes. There needs to be a way of phasing out certain mini-games and re-adjusting the scale of others as your empire outgrows them, so that at each stage of the game, you're only focusing on things that deserve your attention.

Cooperation between cities on projects can provide a natural re-scaling mechanism. Being able to group multiple cities will make 20-city empires much more manageable. The purpose of building and improving transportation between cities will be to enable and expand inter-city cooperation. Because it's crucial to making Civ less tedious, the transportation mini-game has to span the entire duration of a game. That would mean that it has to be purposeful. Being able to group cities would be a big quality-of-life improvement, but there has to be stronger motivation, which can come from:

1. Desire to produce things more quickly

What is the relative value between production and gold? Most things that can be bought with production can be bought with gold at 4x production, but this doesn't necessarily mean 1 production is worth 4 gold. There are many reasons for this. Not everything that can be bought with production can be bought with gold and vice versa to a lesser extent. Various bonuses (e.g. policy cards, monumentality golden age) apply to the two currencies differently. Even without these differences, however, I still think the ratio wouldn't be 4:1. In fact, it would probably more favourably to gold than that because gold yielded by all cities aggregates to a single pool. If you had to get monuments in four cities, and each city yielded four times as much gold as production, you would get more culture by purchasing each monument with gold as soon as you have enough gold than to build all four with production. The same concept can be applied to the question of whether it's better to have one city with 40 production or four cities with 10 production each. Even if inter-city collaboration requires investment up-front and may not lead to 100% production efficiency, the investment may still be worthwhile. I suspect the investment becomes more tempting as production increases. If it only takes each city 2 turns to produce a new building, a 25% reduction in overall production might not be acceptable. If it takes a city 20 turns to produce a new building, even with a 25% penalty, a four-city complex can produce three buildings in as many turns.

2. Better performance due to sharing of amenities

In Civ 6, certain buildings provide amenities to cities within a certain number of tiles. This effect can be modified so that only cities that are connected and are within certain distances can share amenities. As connections between cities improve, amenities can be shared across a wider region.

3. Benefits of having cities (or provinces) with large population

Cities that work together can be recognized as an individual unit as far as effects related to population go. Bonuses that require large population (e.g. Rationalism policy card) will be easier to take advantage of.


The process of building a network should also change. Currently, early game, you can only build roads with traders, which are hard to get. I'm not really sure if it makes sense for road-building to be so tightly coupled with trading, especially since road-building should be an important mini-game on its own. I do like how traders require up-front investment and high-level execution from the player and that the game takes care of the trivial detail of what route the trader takes. I think it probably makes more sense to just replace the trader's road-building function with a "Build Road" project that two cities collaborate on. When rail technology gets unlocked, you can run "Build Train Station" in cities you want to connect via rail and then run the "Build Railway" collaboration project in cities that you'd like to connect. For water transport, you have to build harbours and just unlock necessary technologies to allow ships to travel farther and across the deep ocean. Similarly for air transport, you have to build airports to enable air connection between cities. In order to maximize the efficiency of collaboration, you'll want to provide all available modes of transportation to your cities as the benefits stack.

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

High-Speed Rail's big expense comes from the precision required in the track itself. My understanding from construction in Germany in the 1990s was that a kilometer of High peed rail costed out at the same expense as a kilometer of mutli-lane Autobahn - both designed for 100+ kph travel. Instead of placing the change/upgrade in the Railroad District, then, it should be a massive investment in the rail lines between the cities. BUT that investment might pay off in, say, the ability to share population, production, and food between any cities so connected, essentially extending the 'city radius' to the length of the High Speed rail line.

I can definitely see the visual appeal of HSR links between cities, and I like your attention to the investment side of things. It makes me wonder whether there is untapped potential in late-game megalopolitan configurations. I like having distinct tall cities, but HSR links could allow for pooling as you describe and perhaps other synergies while cutting down on city micro. At the same time, the way HSR competes with domestic air travel in China and Japan, for instance, reinforces my sense it can also give a flat tourism bonus. Maybe this could be dynamic, with each city connected by HSR increasing the bonus based on local population, tourism, and commerce.

As for the Commercial/Financial districts, a Caravanserai or Entrepôt would work for the second tier. The final Commercial tier could be an abstract center of containerized trucking. I quite like your idea that the Financial district would focus on investment and accounting for ballooning infrastructure and wonder costs. It would provide a nice counterweight to the one-stop shop of industrialization by saying that capital needs to come from somewhere. It could also allow the player to leverage other yields aside from production to tackle wonders, green districts, and improvements.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I can definitely see the visual appeal of HSR links between cities, and I like your attention to the investment side of things. It makes me wonder whether there is untapped potential in late-game megalopolitan configurations. I like having distinct tall cities, but HSR links could allow for pooling as you describe and perhaps other synergies while cutting down on city micro. At the same time, the way HSR competes with domestic air travel in China and Japan, for instance, reinforces my sense it can also give a flat tourism bonus. Maybe this could be dynamic, with each city connected by HSR increasing the bonus based on local population, tourism, and commerce.

One of the few things that Humankind got right was the spread of Monster Cities - Megalopolises, in the late 20th century. Unfortunately, they allowed you to do it much, much, much too early.

Making, say, the extension of Districts past the second tier from the City Center impossible (drop any adjacency bonuses down to the Buildings, not the Districts, to avoid the idiotic configurations Civ VI is stuck with now) until late game Transportation Technology (Light Rail, Monorail, High Speed Rail, Flying Cars, whatever) but thereafter allow the cities to explode in size and merge into Urban Conglomerations like coastal China, northwestern Europe or the 'corridor' from New York to Washington on the US northeast coast. Cities since the automobile and efficient mass transit have taken on an entirely different set of problems, now related to Urban Sprawl rather than Urban Concentration. The game should reflect that.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Separating Commercial and Financial Districts is an interesting idea. Presumably, then, Commercial District would emphasize Trade, Financial Banking and direct Gold Supply. The problem I could see is that a separate Financial District only appears really in the Industrial Era when it became necessary to concentrate and exploit capital in huge amounts to construct things like Canals and Railroads, both Improvements that required as much capital investment as Wonders previously.
That means that a new division of Buildings between the two might be necessary. Tentatively:
Commercial Hub District:
Market - general Gold in city
Caravanserai - adds Trade Route, Gold from Trade Routes?
Bank - more Gold?

Financial District:
Investment Bank - easier building of structures in other Districts
Stock Exchange - easier building of Improvements, Wonders, more Gold generally
Central State Bank - allows Production to be pooled between cities?

Just thoughts based on historical antecedents, which the game does not have to follow . . .

1. What are optimal city radious ? 3 or 4?
2. What about Mint?
3. Is this central state bank a national wonder buildable using district slot or what?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

1. What are optimal city radious ? 3 or 4?
2. What about Mint?
3. Is this central state bank a national wonder buildable using district slot or what?

City Radius changes throughout history. For most of history, with the only transportation means being foot or animal, it was very small. You can walk the circuit of the ancient city walls of Athens in an afternoon: the whole city was less than 8 kilometers from longest side to side. The modern city stretches 50 kilometers across the Attic peninsula: run a modern recreation of the ancient Marathon march and you breathe automobile exhaust for the entire distance - and probably spend most of it stuck in traffic.
So, in game terms, I'd be Draconian: a city can have Districts that all must be adjacent to the City Center, unless there is a navigable River going through/past the City Center, in which case you can extend one more tile along the river(s). Stretching the city out by another tile making the city stretch more than 3 tiles straight line over land) would not be possible until either you build canals to carry people and goods more efficiently OR you reach the Industrial Era with more efficient carriages, coaches, wagons and roads and then the mid-Industrial with Railroads, which start to allow a general stretching out of the city.

Mint is an excellent spice: I had some in my spaghetti sauce last night.
- Or do you mean the Source of Coinage from Classical Era on? This makes Silver, and to a lesser extent Gold, more valuable as sources for coins, and coins make all Trade and Market activity much more efficient and so dramatically increases wealth to the state from trade and markets, but Mints do not, by themselves, increase the concentration and availability and movement of Capital: for that you need Banks that can move 'money' long distances through artificial instruments ('letters of credit', checks, etc) and, especially, Stock Markets that make it both possible and desirable for individuals all over the state to place their coin into instruments (stocks in companies, Bonds) and so make all that loose coin available as Capital to be invested in Big Things like building canals, railroads, steel mills, etc.

Capital/Stock Markets are an indispensable requirement for building Railroads and the other massive infrastructure made technologically possible by the Industrial Revolution. State Banks controlling the money supply and investment to a greater or lesser extent were the instrument by which governments tapped into this flow of Capital and kept it from running off the rails (the long and dismal history of stock market failures, panics, recessions, depressions, etc in the USA is largely due to the fact that the US had no State Bank mechanism for most of its history and to this day has a large group of capitalists/investors who will go to any length to avoid any control by a State Bank over their activities)

State Bank could be a National Wonder, a Structure in the Capital's City Center (next to the Palace), or even a Civic action - it depends on how Civ VII handles things.

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

Playing with the city radius could add quite some depth the whole length of the game albeit at the expense of being dependent on the tile system. For instance, cities could start with a single tile radius with the ability to expand to freshwater tiles. Technologies could unlock types of tiles, additional range, and further mechanics. Sailing, for instance, could permit expansion into coastal waters. In the Classical Era, cities linked by a small trade network could possibly transfer production at a small rate, not unlike the district projects we currently have. Perhaps then one could transfer yields from one trade network to another, first via coastal links, but then globally with ocean navigation.

Industrialization and railroad would transform the domestic trade networks. Possibly, a trade network would only need a few Financial/Industrial Districts to reach critical mass. Railroad could also allow trade networks to merge into larger regions. Airports also serve a commuter purpose, so perhaps they could work with HSR to merge cities, but I think the trade network concept could already cut down on micro.

The converse of this would be a foreign trade mechanism that links trade networks, such that the Classical Era could already see large trade zones, profitable but vulnerable to conflict. Global trade could take off with ocean navigation or when all trade zones are linked, for instance, and then containerization would reward infrastructure investments.

I could also see a situation like Civ VI where the city tiles are unrestricted in expansion, but the player is restricted in which tiles a city can actually use. In that case, the unused tiles could contribute lessened yields as generic territory to be reclaimed later.