Death to the BFC!!!!

[the343danny]

All these huge boulders were moved from the quarries down the Nile on huge rafts. They had to be pulled across land on top of logs. They had to be hoisted atop the pyramid on ramps with the help of force multiplying mechanisms. The workers had to build their own dwellings near the construction site from scratch.

Now tell me where timber is needed in all this.

According to something I watched about the sphinx, one of the most significant things was how they managed to build such things even though the tools will get dull quickly, and needed reshaping very very often, where the wood can come in. Perhaps it was similar with the pyramids.

 

[AlphaShard]

Wow. That's a lot of tiles to work. I really hope they get rid of the "assign different citizens to work each tile" micromanagement nonsense.

Just add up the resources of all tiles in the radius, divide by that number of tiles, then multiply by the city size. That would really cut down on the annoying work we have to do.

I actually enjoy telling my cities what tiles to work.

 

[OwieB2003]

Now tell me where timber is needed in all this.

Uh, real question? Hmm. From what the specials on TV said the timber was used to help move the huge stone blocks uphill...up-pyramid...up-whatever. Easier to move a two-ton block of granite over wood than it is over stone/sand/muddy clay. Blocks of wood about the size of your arm, maybe thicker, got placed on the ground spaced so that the weight of the stone didn't crush the wood immediately, and you had one more than what was needed I think, so you could place it in front, move the block, then grab the freed wood at the rear and repeat the process until the stone was where it needed to be.

 

[Tusked]

Uh, real question? Hmm. From what the specials on TV said the timber was used to help move the huge stone blocks uphill...up-pyramid...up-whatever. Easier to move a two-ton block of granite over wood than it is over stone/sand/muddy clay. Blocks of wood about the size of your arm, maybe thicker, got placed on the ground spaced so that the weight of the stone didn't crush the wood immediately, and you had one more than what was needed I think, so you could place it in front, move the block, then grab the freed wood at the rear and repeat the process until the stone was where it needed to be.

(rhetorical question)

 

[Shadowcrow]

Me to! To justify Civ5 as more than a rework of Civ4; I want to see more dynamics, more decisions to be made which have a significant impact on things yet to come, more ways to play, more circumstances to overcome, and especially more variety from game to game. I read hints towards the increase of playing styles in Civ5. It's starting to sound like we can actually play a diplomacy game. The Social thing intrigues me. Perhaps Economy will also be in better focus for Civ5. Would be great to play Civ with the expanded dynamics of civil, social, economic, scientific, and military development. Expanding the productivity of a cities fat ring sounds like civil development to me. I'm trying not to get my hopes up (once bitten, twice shy) but I can't help wondering if Civ5 will be the epitome of the series.

I might be suggestign somethign a bit far, btu especially in regards to the economy, I want "economic civics" to give us differing levels of control over certain economic variables, like governments do in real life, like interest rates, or budgetary spending.
Just an idea.

 

[Willowmound]

...we end up spending hours simply mapping out how we intend to settle a given area

We do?

 

[Lucky The Fox]

I wonder if this new mechanic will make it so Aqueducts allow you to work the second hex ring and Hospitals to work the third? Cities would start out working one ring and then must build the appropriate improvement in order to expand? I think I'd like that better than the method of halting city growth.

Eugh. Please no. Civ IV finally got it right with its health system.

 

[BlackSpy]

All these huge boulders were moved from the quarries down the Nile on huge rafts. They had to be pulled across land on top of logs. They had to be hoisted atop the pyramid on ramps with the help of force multiplying mechanisms. The workers had to build their own dwellings near the construction site from scratch.

Now tell me where timber is needed in all this.

In the scaffolds at the quarry?

 

[Earthling]

This news was in the other thread; I'm opposed though because I think it's going only exactly one way: The game is going to be made smaller and dumbified. Combined with one-unit-per tile, removing other features and all, I have a feeling we're going to see CivRev-ish stuff, like games where your mighty "Empire" is like three cities. 3-radius cities would be ridiculous for the late game and encourage turtling the whole time, and I object on those grounds alone -but I think the problem is that they're going to be removing the epic feel/late game that I and many of us players like anyway. (note: I don't hate the Kurios. It should go without saying this and things below are a tremendous difference against the regular civ game, which should have different balance/realism)

Does really make me wish I had the time/effort to put into making my own civ4 mod though. For instance, I agree with:

Civ 4 seems to revolve so heavily around these ridiculous unrealistic metagames of religion, specialists, civics, wonders and so on. Specialist economies, chop-rushing wonders, lightbulbing certain techs and tech-brokering. It's all very meta-gamey and has nothing in common with what would be a plausible, real-life strategy for an empire.

How exactly can you speed up the pyramids by chopping down trees? They are made out of wood, not stone! And how exactly does your stone quarry multiply the benefit you get out of chopping down those trees?

Specialist "Economy:" I consider this mostly a bug/exploit in vanilla civ

Chopping - a broken mechanic that more than anything else in the game justified much of civ 4's broken balance/AI. I'd put it back to like 10 hammers, reduce early game bonuses, everyone's the better. It's worthless in itself, only a reason to make the human able to compete against higher-imbalanced AI.

Tech as a whole is just a little unrealistic; but the diplomacy side isn't ideal, yes, because of the AI/AI restrictions again.

 

[Ituralde]

According to at least one of the game reviews out, cities will work all hexes within three of the city. That is a LOT of hexes (6 + 12 + 18 = 36!). But it also means the end of the big fat cross! Personally, I'm not sure how to deal with that.

On the one hand, the BFC has been the bane of proper city settlement ever since Civ started. Always with the overlapping, or the leaving tiles unworked. Oy!

On the other hand, the BFC is what keeps us from predictable, repetitive patterns of city settlement. It's precisely because we have to figure out where to overlap and where to leave no coverage that we end up spending hours simply mapping out how we intend to settle a given area (only for the stupid AI countries to dink in and mess it up with a city that will never grow past size 5!).

So what think you? Is this a good thing, or a bad thing????

I like the Hexes no mistake, but you are not the first one that has mentioned that circular cities will make positioning so easy that it will be boring.
I wondered if this is true so I sat down with my MS Paint and downloaded some Hex structure graphic from the internet, filled it in a little with 'land' and 'sea' and pretended I was placing cities there.

Even with a tiny landmass I wasn't able to position my 'cities' in a way where I
a) used all the tiles available AND
b) had NO overlap whatsoever.

So just curious, where are you getting this idea from?

Edit: Added Picture to illustrate my point.
And for simpilicities sake I just went withtwo tiles out not three.

 

[Mannu]

I think there should be a tech or, more likely, a civil policy that would allow you to transition from only working tiles within a city radius to working all tiles within your border. Maybe Nationalism?

Another civil policy could allow you to decide whether resources are apportioned to the nearest city, or split evenly and distributed between all cities in the Civ. Maybe Communism?

If this isn't in the game, I'm hoping it can be modded in. I always hated that I had cities overlapping and tiles that could never ever be worked. Not being able to position cities optimally on a random map caused me to restart many many many games.

In fact, I'd rather we do away with fat cross and city radius. If we can choose what tiles are within our national borders, we should be able to choose what tiles a city works. Then cities could be placed as they were historically, for premium trade opportunities and for defense.

 

[Mathalamus]

i kinda like it, but working 36 hexes can make the population quite high. i assume they will scale back the population to compensate.

..on the other hand, having a 360 population city is now possible. if you cheat.

 

[axi]

The island in your map is too small for 2 3hex-radius cities. One such city could cover it.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Actually, an idea they could do is remove the idea of "Working the Hexes" altogether.

ie Hexes only produce something if they have some 'special' resource. (now the special resources would have to be more common, say 1 in every 3-4 tiles.. but that would simplify the micromanagement a lot)

So you would place a city to get those special resources.

 

[Ituralde]

The island in your map is too small for 2 3hex-radius cities. One such city could cover it.

Like I said, I restricted myself to 2hex-radius cities so I wouldn't have to draw as much.
But my main point stands independent of 2hex or 3hex radius. You still have overlap and can't work every tile just because the BFC has been replaced by circles.

 

[Razorwing]

In a way it would be interesting to have a building like, say, Mass Transit that you have to build before making use of hexes in the outermost circle. But that would put off their development until the modern age, and by then - if one has played a successful game - those hexes are probably not very important. At least not if one uses Civ IV as a comparison, in which I tent to control half the world by 1300 AD on Monarch level (through near-constant warfare).

But it would be nice to have modern buildings that let you work a fourth ring, like the mentioned Mass Transit for land squares and, say, a Ferry for ocean squares. That would let you access left-over squares which may not be that important but should still show signs of belonging to a civilization by being worked on.

 

[sbrylski06]

i kinda like it, but working 36 hexes can make the population quite high. i assume they will scale back the population to compensate.

..on the other hand, having a 360 population city is now possible. if you cheat.

I'll bet it will be really hard and cost a lot of money to try and grow a city to 36 tiles. Remember, there's no ring expansion, each city gains one tile at a time, which can be pushed along by spending gold.

Its not going to be strategically beneficial to spend money to grow a city over every tile. Maybe maintenance is tied to city size? And instead of cities overlapping you'll choose as the cities grow who takes which tile. So you won't have an empire of circular cities, rather irregular shaped cities that are able to pick and choose the terrain in the region best for there specialization, and also fill in your entire empire with worked tiles for once.

Like this island:

 

[Mannu]

This is what I was getting at. It would be so awesome if cities didn't overlap anymore, but I don't think you are spending to get tiles for a city, but for the civ. I could be wrong and that would be awesome.

 

[Ituralde]

Yet another shift away from a concept that was pretty much set in the earlier incarnations of Civ. It does sound good though and would make a lot of sense and be a ncie tie in with the irregular expansion we keep hearing about!

 

[MethanalCHO]

They used wooden paddles to spank the slaves when they were naughty.

Um...

The pyramids weren't built with slaves. They were built by the public, who "paid" their debts by working on the Pyramids for a few weeks. It's like paying off your credit card by spending your August fixing potholes in the highway.