Civ4 with the same lousy civ growth system?

[TruePurple]

Just in case the developers have stopped visiting the idea forum I figured I'd post a inquiry here. The other stuff, religion and all that stuff is just peripheral. I want more basic civ stuff fixed/improved. Like its food=people growth system.

I'm not the only one who dislikes that system and for me its nearly a deal breaker. I've bought civ2, civ3 and SMAC, if this most basic element hasn't been improved in civ4 the rest can't be that great. The rest like religion and stuff is more window dressing.

What is the planned civ4 city growth system and how much of that can be changed at this point?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=126101

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, TruePurple, you may or may not be glad to hear that city growth is now determined by HEALTH . This, in turn, is dictated by a number of different factors-such as access to fresh water, pollution, the Philosophical Leader Trait and diversity of food sources. I also speculate that happiness, overcrowding, technology, civics settings and amount of food surplus/famine will also impact on city health. I fear that the details are still a little sketchy, but that it can honestly be said that it won't be a simple 'I have 20 food in my stores, so now my population goes up by 1' system.
Wish I could be of more help.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[TruePurple]

No food= people is music to my ears! The rest sounds intriguing though vague.

BTW, what are the names of posters who actual work for the makers of civ4?

Also, how far along are they in the development/what scale of ideas can they still implement?

Do you know if war units will come from (as in subtract from) the general population and will likewise require food support?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Hi TruePurple. Soren Johnson and Jesse Smith are the two people I have seen most often here at CFC. As for development, its about 4 months away from release, so they are probably about to enter the final stages of polishing and graphics/interface improvements. That said, if the game lives up to the hype, then this will be the MOST moddable civ game ever, meaning that even if your ideas don't make it into the vanilla game, someone here will almost certainly be able to add it for you. Also, things which don't get into the vanilla game can also end up in expansions-so it is always worth posting ideas, hence the Ideas and Suggestion thread for Civ4.
Anyway, hope that helps.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Carver]

and diversity of food sources.

This is the one that I think will really change the system for the better. It's not what some ppl asked for; such as having farming cities (towns) that sent food to the major cities, but it's similar. The size of your cities will no longer be dictated (in large part) by the tiles around them, but by what you have access to throughout your civ. Big improvement!

 

[Meleager]

Well, TruePurple, you may or may not be glad to hear that city growth is now determined by HEALTH.

Has this been explictitly stated, or is it just your understanding?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I am pretty certain that I have heard it said in at least 2 or 3 developer interviews-where they explicitly state that population growth is now determined by city health. Please don't ask me to remember which ones, though, because I can't . They also explicitly said that diversity of food sources will be a key determinant of health (along with fresh water).

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Meleager]

I am pretty certain that I have heard it said in at least 2 or 3 developer interviews-where they explicitly state that population growth is now determined by city health. Please don't ask me to remember which ones, though, because I can't . They also explicitly said that diversity of food sources will be a key determinant of health (along with fresh water).

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I just skimmed the pre-release info the closest i could find is this...

The bigger your city gets, the unhealthier it becomes. And that can take a toll on the population, as the city will eventually begin to starve. You can combat this by building certain types of buildings, such as aqueducts and hospitals. However improvements such as Factories tend to decrease the city's health status.

This sound like desease in civ3. But It has effectively the same end effect (limiting city growth). So I guess you could say your right.

 

[Urederra]

So, how do the improvements work now? Are they only to collect the resources you have in the square, fish, crabs, wheat, etc. or they also increase the population's health? Pastures, plantations, fishing nets and wineries had to be created to collect the improvements on the tile? An non improved tile with a fish in it helps to increase your health and therefore, your growth or you have to work it to obtain benefits from it?

Sorry, I am so confused now.

In civrules's pre-release information you can see a chart that says that if you build a farm over wheat or corn you obtain +1 food. and a windmill will give you +1 food and +2 gold. What does that mean? How does that is translated into health and growth?

It seems to me that you still can improve your tiles to collect more food, then I still see a relation between the food you produce and the population growth. Maybe the difference is that now the growth is not linear, but rather the growth rate is a multiplication of the food you produce by the types of food you have, something like luxuries and happy faces in Civ III.

Then, how do you add health into the equation? Is it like corruption? Is the bigger the city, the more unhealthy, up to a point that it cannot grow any more unless you obtain more food variety? So, Does food variety help in city growth and health in two different ways or just increase health and city growth is still a linear relation (with multiplying factors or not) of the total amount of food you collect in the city?


It is gonna be the first time ever I read the manual BEFORE playing a game

 

[Sullla]

I'm with you Urederra. Civ3 had it nice and simple - mine, irrigate, build roads. That was it! Now Civ4's supposed to have something like 20 different tile improvements - what do they all do? I'm so (pleasantly) confused!

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

OK, at the risk of leaping totally into the dark, I am going to try and show you how I think it might work.

You have a city, which might have a health of 0. At this health level the city neither grows nor declines in population. If you have a fresh water source nearby, then this gives you +2 health which might give you-say-a starting growth rate of 1 population every 20 turns (with +1 giving 1/40 turns).
Now, say you have a jungle or desert, I reckon that this kind of terrain may give you a -1 Health rating (representing their harsh environment/diseases) which will slow the rate of population growth.
Each additional type of food that this city gets hold of will further boost its health, thus reducing further the number of turns needed for the population to grow. Additionally, I believe that when you have more food than what your population needs to survive, then the surplus will in some way translate into bonus health. Lastly, when your city exceeds certain population thresholds-or when it's people are unhappy or the city is polluted-then you will get health penalties which can-if they are extreme-force your population into decline. Improvements such as aqueducts, hospitals and recycling plants, therefore, will probably each give something like a +1 or +2 health bonus-to either offset an existing penalty to growth, or simply to boost growth still further.
I also wouldn't be suprised if certain civics choices, unit creation and tile improvements change your city's health too.
Anyway, thats my speculation on the issue but, as has been stated, it looks like I'm gonna be playing a LOT of tutorial games and looking over the manual quite a lot!!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[TruePurple]

I hope your wrong about that aussie. Larger cities should grow faster (because their are more people)

 

[jwijn]

Well, TruePurple, you may or may not be glad to hear that city growth is now determined by HEALTH . This, in turn, is dictated by a number of different factors-such as access to fresh water, pollution, the Philosophical Leader Trait and diversity of food sources. I also speculate that happiness, overcrowding, technology, civics settings and amount of food surplus/famine will also impact on city health. I fear that the details are still a little sketchy, but that it can honestly be said that it won't be a simple 'I have 20 food in my stores, so now my population goes up by 1' system.
Wish I could be of more help.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Access to fresh water, eh? Hopefully we will have ways of making it "un-fresh," if you catch my drift...

 

[Meleager]

OK, at the risk of leaping totally into the dark, I am going to try and show you how I think it might work.

You have a city, which might have a health of 0. At this health level the city neither grows nor declines in population. If you have a fresh water source nearby, then this gives you +2 health which might give you-say-a starting growth rate of 1 population every 20 turns (with +1 giving 1/40 turns).
Now, say you have a jungle or desert, I reckon that this kind of terrain may give you a -1 Health rating (representing their harsh environment/diseases) which will slow the rate of population growth.
Each additional type of food that this city gets hold of will further boost its health, thus reducing further the number of turns needed for the population to grow. Additionally, I believe that when you have more food than what your population needs to survive, then the surplus will in some way translate into bonus health. Lastly, when your city exceeds certain population thresholds-or when it's people are unhappy or the city is polluted-then you will get health penalties which can-if they are extreme-force your population into decline. Improvements such as aqueducts, hospitals and recycling plants, therefore, will probably each give something like a +1 or +2 health bonus-to either offset an existing penalty to growth, or simply to boost growth still further.
I also wouldn't be suprised if certain civics choices, unit creation and tile improvements change your city's health too.
Anyway, thats my speculation on the issue but, as has been stated, it looks like I'm gonna be playing a LOT of tutorial games and looking over the manual quite a lot!!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

tiles still have food values. I think that health has an effect on the number of people which die rather then are born.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

So, when HEALTH is low you're population will boom just like in real life?

Oh, it'll be the other way around

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Part of the confusion, or at least if I understand it correctly, is that food does two things now:

1. It works like it always did, providing a food bonus. (What this food bonus does exactly may be different, or may not.)

2. Food also functions as a "health resource", the same way Civ 3 luxuries function as a "happiness resource". To get this benefit, you need variety. (And it's implied that it works the same as Civ 3 luxuries. So connect "fish" of some kind to a city via the road/harbor network, and you get the health benefit.

Another way to think of it is like this. In Civ 3, "health" was represented by disease on flood plain and jungles, city size caps without aquaducts and hospitals, and pollution. Note that all three of those were discrete, mostly hard-coded elements. Now that "health" has been promoted to first class status as a game element, much more can relate to it--including access to food.

 

[apatheist]

Additionally, I believe that when you have more food than what your population needs to survive, then the surplus will in some way translate into bonus health.

I hope this is not true. That's too much like the old bad ways. Good: limited food limiting growth. Bad: unlimited food enhancing growth. There should be a point at which additional food does nothing.

I hope your wrong about that aussie. Larger cities should grow faster (because their are more people)

That may be, but Civ population points are non-linear (at least in previous versions). It still doesn't work exactly with the way they've done it in previous Civ versions, but if they made the population some exponent of the number of population points, it would cancel out the exponential growth rate. i.e., if a city of pop 1 had 10,000; pop 2 had 20,000; pop 3 had 40,000; and pop 4 had 80,000; 6% growth/turn would result in an increase by 1 pop point over 12 turns for each of those.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

The main point is that it is more overpopulation than simply high population which causes negative health. So long as your underlying infrastructure is in place, then high population cities will continue to grow-its only if you lack these that I reckon health will drop.
As for my food to health hypothesis-I am OK with it if, as you suggested Apatheist, it is capped at some point (and if it isn't a 1 to 1 ratio).

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[TruePurple]

if they made the population some exponent of the number of population points

You mean 'made the population growth some exponent'...?

it would cancel out the exponential growth rate. i.e., if a city of pop 1 had 10,000; pop 2 had 20,000; pop 3 had 40,000; and pop 4 had 80,000; 6% growth/turn would result in an increase by 1 pop point over 12 turns for each of those.

Your a hard fella to understand, by "each of these" do you mean each unit of population? Basically suggesting 1 pop unit created for every pop unit every 12 years at 6% growth? A population doubling in 12 years (did you mean to say turns?) sounds like more then 6% growth, even if it means per year.

 

[HourlyDaily]

Quote jwijn:

" Access to fresh water, eh? Hopefully we will have ways of making it "un-fresh," if you catch my drift..."


I knew I shouldn't have burned down your city hall...