Civ4 with the same lousy civ growth system?

[HourlyDaily]

Apatheist, I agree with your ideas.

I was thinking about countries such as Japan and Germany were the Birth Rate is actually going backwards - a modern trend that is a slow down mechanism due to lifestyle factors (and unintentionally good for overpopulation) , but in Civ (and rightly so) modern medicines give you an increased birth rate. The sad situation in 3rd world countries is affected by the appallingly high death rate in real life.

Questions:
1. Does anyone think we can accurately represent these factors in a civ game, given that the economic model that it probably depends on will probably not be sophisticated enough to do it?

2. Does anyone actually want these things represented in-game?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, if it helps, I reckon the way the system will work is as follows (to expand on my earlier post):

1) Cities with Health of 0 will probably not grow. Cities with +'ve health will grow, those with -'ve health will probably grow much more slowly then, eventually, decline

2) The base time it takes for a city to increase its population will probably drop as the city population increases (so, a size 1 city with +1 health might take 40-50 turns to grow, wheras a size 2 city-with the same amount of health-might only take 30-35 turns to grow).

3) However, if population grows beyond a certain number-without appropriate underlying infrastructure-then health will decline, thus increasing the number of turns required for population growth-due to overcrowding.

4) Citizen unhappiness may well have a similar impact on health, as will pollution and 'disease'.

5) I theorise that all units-including workers and settlers-will probably have a variable 'health', not Population, cost. This means that larger cities, with higher base growth rates, can probably support a larger decline in their 'health' than their smaller, more rural cousins. Additionally, this fact may well lead to larger cities almost automatically being used as a source of workers and settlers-thus partly simulating emigration effects on city population.

6) I predict that, aside from food diversity, access to food will play a role in city health-not population growth directly. However, whether it will be capped, contribute on a 1 to 1 basis, or whether food units will move from city to city I am totally uncertain!!
Anyway, that is just more wild speculation on my part, but if it proves correct, then I will be very much satisfied with these alterations.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Oh and, BTW TruePurple. People aren't abusing you and your ideas, so I think you should have the decency not to abuse those whose ideas you don't agree with. If you disagree with them, then fine, state your disagreement and leave it at that. Just a friendly suggestion, please don't take offense

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[TruePurple]

I haven't heard anyone abuse my ideas, nor have I abused anyone elses. In this thread I haven't really stated any ideas, just needed improvements for civ4. Offense? Why would I take offense to the idea noone abusing anyone elses ideas? Kind of out of the blue though.

I would appreciate it though if people were to stay on topic. I mean to launch into a whole idea of a food distribution system, that really should have been in the ideas forum first. Also, somewhat more specific in feedback, in places

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, its just your responses to Apatheist and Marla sound a little....terse to me! Maybe thats just a problem with electronic mail-there is no sense of tone.
Anyway, I have remained pretty much on-topic at all times. Just check out my theorising on health and population for civ4 in the preceding post as proof.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[TruePurple]

I know you have, aussie. I would like to get a better idea on what your basing your theories on. Would you please show us how you get from point A to B to C to a intricate theory of whats going to be in civ4?

As far as Marla and Apatheist.
Marla dragged the topic into something completely different, which was made even more irritating by people who acted like it was right on topic. I tried to get people back on the issue but I felt ignored. I also wasn't sure how many people even know what the topic was.

@Apathiest
If your going to dispute my suggestions, please be more specific in your feedback.

Do you not believe the current growth system is very flawed causing games all about expansion/creating as many cities as you can as fast as you can and less about "developing a civilization"? Do you not believe military units are treated as disposable and not as part of the population? Can you justify either position?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, all I really have is my 'gut feeling', Truepurple. After all the only thing we know, with certainty, is that Health is going to determine population growth-not food-and that fresh water and food diversity increase health, whilst pollution causing improvements reduce health. The rest is me extrapolating. For instance, if buildings can increase/decrease health, then why not units? It makes more sense for them to cost health, rather than population. It also makes sense that the basic, underlying growth rate (in turns) of a city of a given size would remain constant, with health acting as a 'divider' of that base time.
Consider the following example of why units costing health is better than population points:

Lets say you have City A (Population 6, health +4-growth in 10 turns) and City B (Population 10, health +2, growth in 6 turns). Now, with a population cost system, City A could only support 6 units before it ceases to exist (even without settlers), wheras city B could support 10. However, with the health cost system, city A could support 4 units without any actual loss of population-but population growth would halt until those units were returned. City B could only support 2 units before population growth slows to a halt. As I said, though, any city these units are disbanded in would experience a sudden gain in health and, therefore, population growth-which would reflect the 'Baby Boom' which we saw after WWII. To me, this just makes so much sense, as it gives you much finer control over the effects of raising an army from amongst your own people.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Che Guava]

...For instance, if buildings can increase/decrease health, then why not units? It makes more sense for them to cost health, rather than population...

Makes sense to me! After all, by building military units, aren't you just removing the healthiest (male) citizens from your cities? Which brings me to another point: not all of your population is fit for war. In the CityA/CityB scenario you mentioned (the first one, based on the population removal concept) you could basically clear your entire city to build units, thus sending women, children, the sick and the elderly to front! Not to say that this hasn't been done in history ( I seem to recall a children's crusade), but for most societies, ancient or modern, I would say only 25% of the population at most is fit for battle. Substracting health from a city instead of population just sems to make more sense to me....

 

[Urederra]

@Aussie...

And how do you think that food fit in the equation? If floodplains provide food and rivers and lakes provide health, How can it affect in city growth without being redundant?

And how the Philosophical trait and its 100 % civilization's birthrate will affect the population's growth?

Could it be that health affect birth rate and food affect growth? So, lets say that there still is a food bin you have to fill in in order for the city to increase a population point. Lets suppose that you have to fill in the 20 spots, like in Civ III, to grow and you produce a extra +2 food every turn. In civ III, the city will grow in 10 turns. In Civ IV the city will grow in 10 turns only if you have 100 % birthrate, but in 15 turns if you birthrate is 75 %.

Birthrate will be affected by health, and maybe, there will be a death rate, which will be affected by health as well.

This is a quick thought. It might need to be finetuned. I have to do some work now (I am at my workplace )

Nice posts aussie. Bye.

 

[apatheist]

1 is not excessive, you want to deal with 5 or 10 times more units then you need to? Who wants to be dealing with that many units? What would it accomplish?

It would allow using population for units without making it prohibitively expensive in terms of population.

Are you saying you want a pop head to represant more people at larger size? What purpose does that serve? That number is just meaningless decoration.

Yes. If it was linear, then a city in 3900 BC would have 10,000 people and 1 pop, and a city in 2000 AD would have 10,000,000 people and 1,000 pop points. The game would require extensive modification to allow that disparity in head count without being unbalanced.

 

[TruePurple]

Civ3 is linear according to your definition as the pop number is nothing more then meaningless decoration, that does not effect the game in any way. What, the game desperately needs a 10 mill number listed for larger towns in order to be fun? "Realism" you say? Your going to defend the current system with one of its weakest points?

If we are going to get into discussion of specific methods, please move it over to the more realistic growth system thread. I mentioned some ways of head =more pop # other then then the meaningless civ 3 method of equatng a pop number with each civ size. A better method is listed there where the population number is actually connected to your real pop size.

If your worried that some of those ideas wouldn't create large enough pop # to make for 10 mill pop cities you seem to value so much. We could tweak my ideas so it does, or better yet have an actual pop number and a fake one tied to city pop head size like civ 3. People could choose which number they want to see. Just as long as the actual pop grows according to how many people you have, that is the functional pop number.

1 pop head would not be prohibatively expensive. Your thinking in terms of a civ3 game where people make huge SoD. The whole idea is for everyone to produce less units, providing more game stratagy and less tedium, as it is very tedius to move all those units.

Also defending units could be resident in the town, working even as they stay readied to defend the town in case of attack.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

As I said in an earlier post Urederra, my gut feeling is that surplus food will tie into health in some way, but how is the really tricky question ! I can't see it being 1 to 1 because-as Apatheist rightly pointed out-it would be no different from the old food=population system. If you want my theory, I believe that access to a diverse range of foods will be more important to citizen health than the amount of 'food units' provided by all your tiles. Why? Because Firaxis has made it clear that city specialisation (and Great People) are going to be very important to the game, and this degree of specialisation will be very hard if you still have to work food-bearing tiles in order to maintain your population growth. If you can maintain that growth-however-simply by access to multiple food sources from other cities, then mega-specialisation will be possible. Therefore, I speculate that any health bonus from surplus food will be both non-linear and capped in some way (and possibly with food transport thrown in).
As for the Philosophical trait, I reckon this will either be a bonus to the actual health of your cities (so +2 health for another civ would be +4 for a Philosophical Civ), or it relates to a bonus to the time between population boosts.
That said, however, your theory makes a heck of a lot of sense too . All I really know is that I firmly believe that its gonna be interesting, no matter which theory turns out to be correct!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[apatheist]

I'm hoping that all of the health factors have diminishing returns with respect to the number of people in a city. A city with population 5 with 20 food would be much healthier than a city of population 10 with 20 food (all else being equal). Ditto for types of food. A city with population 5 with potatoes and apples would be healthier than a city with population 10 with potatoes, apples, spinach, and mushrooms. Every additional "unit" of health or population comes with a higher cost in terms of food quantity, food diversity, fresh water, health improvement, etc. requirements.