Citizens working tiles vs. being specialists

[silversheep]

I find it unrealistic how most of the workers in Civ are actually working the land. In modern times (after industrialization) very FEW people actually directly work the land as farmers or miners. When cities grow large in Civ2-4, they can have specialists- scientists, merchants, etc. However, in most instances, they still make up the minority of the citizens. While it is true that all food comes from working the land/sea, the same cannot be said of production and commerce.

I suggest the following:
-(Agricultural Revolution) Near modern times, allow one citizen to work more than one tile, in order to free up citizens to be specialists. (Of course, this has to be carefully planned so industrialized civs don't get too huge an advantage over nonindustrialized ones.) This could replace the system where RRing gives more food (in Civ3, I don't know if this is true for Civ4).
-Once a factory, etc. is built, we can assign citizens to work in factories. These would be the primary source of production in the industrial period, rather than from workers working mountains. We could assign citizens to be workers before industrial era too, but the amount of production wouldn't be as large.
-Maybe we could distinguish between raw materials and production- the mining mts, etc. contribute to the raw materials, which act as a limiting factor for total production, but the production is mostly from citizens assigned to production rather that to a tile. (Then again this might be too complicated.)

Discuss!

 

[Ahriman]

I haven't really played vanilla Civ in ages (too many mods that are better), but I always found that cities could support pretty large populations, and so definitely used more specialists than at lower tech levels.

The game economy isn't really designed around post-industrial tech levels, but an system that *was* would do pretty poorly for earlier time periods, where land and labor really were the means of production for most of the economy.

If you want a better model of an industrial economy and a game that models the transition, try Victoria.

But I don't think such a system will work well in civ.

Also, see this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=355884

 

[Insanity_X]

*slaps OP*

first of all having 'free' population would be insane. post 'agricultural revolution' It wouldnt happen as you describe, you'd either get a size five city working like a size 10 city (i.e. working 10 tiles) which would be rediculous (as well as making slavery overpowered (whip away half my population for no cost in productivity? hell yes) in terms of ballance.

Also, we have the ability to get extra food to free up citizens for specialists. It's called improved tile yields (working a four food tile means you can make one farmer a specialist) as well as sending them to work in a factory (we call this revolutionary idea 'specialists' in the case of a factory you get engineers (in CIV, at least)).

Not to mention that by the late game in CIV, tiles have a higher yield than specialists anyway (which is another reason why an agricultural revolution WOULD be overpowered).