Praetyre
King
Firstly, some background: I have long been planning and developing a private project aimed at being a sort of "grand sandbox campaign" for C2C, with a greatly modified time scale and a fully decked out Giant Earth Map scenario with 8 starting civs, expanding out via Revolutions and Barbarian Civs.
One of the major, if not the primary feature of this scenario has been altering the costs of technologies so that a dominant, competent player under ideal conditions can speed through the tech tree in a more or less historically accurate (era-wise) manner. Another factor, however, has seriously complicated this goal. That is the factor of population growth.
The growth factor for the Eternity game speed in this scenario-cum-modmod is much, much, much, much slower than the default setting of 900. This is due to a combination of three factors:
1: The scenario itself is designed to last 10,000 turns, as opposed to the original Eternity's 4500.
2: The Prehistoric era, during which no city should conceivable exceed 1 population, lasts 1000 turns.
3: The Classical era, seeing as the Ancient era is truncated down to an awkward hybrid of the Chalcolithic and early Sumeria/Egypt/the Indus Valley civilization., is stretched through 2500 turns, partly due to not being able to have turn times less than whole years in BC days, and partly due to the fact that two eras are really being represented (the Mesopotamian/Egyptian era and the Greco-Roman era)
Obviously, a civ with size 20 cities is going to be putting out a lot more
points than some dinky backwater where the common man's understanding of a "city" is size 3. As mentioned, it's based on a good sized civ, but what would be good sized for the time? Well, we could look at the actual city populations, but these are both problematic from a historical perspective (there should be maybe 4 cities size 12 by 0 BC, which is a pain in the gluteus maximus to achieve while allowing Babylon and Egypt to not have the population density of a bad RPG. Inconsistent with the building thresholds (I don't know about you, but I've never heard of a town with 150,000 people). This could mean two things:
1. The populations are just plain off, seeing as (AFAIK) they haven't been edited from vanilla civ as they have no effect except as a little number.
2. Cities in Civ/C2C do *not* represent individual metropolitan areas, but entire national subdivisions, as a general rule.
As an example of how the the second principle would operate, let us apply it to the good old US of A. If the city of Houston represented only the metropolitan area of Houston, it would be a size 22 city (or 5,738,000 people in civ terms, which is the closest size to the real life Houston metro-area's 5,946,800). If, however, Houston was taken to represent the entire State of Texas, it would be a far larger size 37 city, or 24,601,000, which again is the closest size to Texas's 25,145,561. There would still be exceptions to the rule under this second assumption (Tokyo and New York City occupying such a vast majority of their subdivisions population, economy and culture).
There is obviously a world of difference between a size 22 and 37 city, and as such the chosen model of city-representation will greatly influence the desired growth rate. For another illustration of this concept, a recent game of mine had an India stretching into parts of Southeast Asia with a population of 50,000,000 around 300 AD. This is smaller than a proper empire of the time would be (Rome with it's 70,000,000, and compare that with the Subcontinent and Southeast Asia's fertility and population), but only in terms of total population. If we use the metropolitan model, this civilization, most of whom's cities are well in excess of size 25, is about 1700 years too early.
If one chooses to go with the metropolitan model, I propose a restructuring (a purely cosmetic one, and one I'm entirely willing to do under my own power) of the populations represented by each city size. Searching, however, doesn't seem to indicate what file sets these numbers, so I'd welcome any information on the matter.
Here's a little table to show the proposed new population numbers (bold numbers are my replacements):
1 1000 (1000)
2 6000 (2000)
3 21000 (4000))
4 48000 (8000)
5 90000 (16,000
6 150000 (20,000)
7 232000 (30,000)
8 337000 (40,000)
9 469000 (50,000)
10 630000 (75,000)
11 823000 (100,000)
12 1051000 (150,000)
13 1315000 (200,000)
14 1618000 (250,000)
15 1963000 (300,000)
16 2352000 (350,000)
17 2787000 (400,000)
18 3271000 (450,000)
19 3806000 (500,000)
20 4394000 (550,000)
21 5037000 (600,000)
22 5738000 (700,000)
23 6498000 (800,000)
24 7321000 (900,000)
25 8207000 (1,000,000)
26 9160000 (1,250,000)
27 10181000 (1,500,000
28 11273000 (1,750,000)
29 12436000 (2,000,000)
30 13675000 (3,000,000)
31 14990000 (4,000,000)
33 17858000 (5,000,000)
32 16384000 (6,000,000)
34 19415000 (7,000,000)
35 21056000 (8,000,000)
36 22784000 (10,000,000)
37 24601000 (15,000,000)
38 26509000 (20,000,000)
39 28508000 (25,000,000)
40 30603000 (30,000,000)
From 40 upwards, it would just keep increasing in intervals of 5,000,000 for every new pop point, though I doubt anybody would be able to create a miniature Coruscant. This new method would also make playtesting of my scenario under the metro-model significantly easier, as I'm terrible with numbers, let alone mentally noting them for such purposes.
This next paragraph is specifically related to my project, but may be of use to those planning similar historical scenarios, so feel free to skip:
Assuming the metro-model, I am going to create a temporary stopgap against excessive population growth in the form of an arbitrary cap that would begin at 1 and be gradually increased by specific technological advances. This cap would be discontinued as soon as a full disease and plague system was implemented. These technologies would be as follows:
Sedentary Lifestyle: Raises cap from 1 To 6
City Planning: Raises cap from 6 to 13
Sanitation: Raises cap from 13 to 25
Assembly Line: Raises cap from 25 to 29
Industrialism: Raises cap from 29 to 37
Globalization: Eliminates cap
Is this possible, and if so, what would need to be done, file wise, to do so? I know Civ V restricts city size based on the presence of buildings like Aqueducts and Hospitals, I know SMAC did the same with Habitation Domes, but I'm not sure if Civ IV can do it with techs.
Finally, on a more minor but still related note, there seems to be a glut of
bloat in the form of a gazillion buildings granting hard :health bonuses:. I love the wide representation given to the various periphery effects of the myriad buildings this mod has, but I think a percentage based boost would both be more balanced and more realistic. After all, a hard cap essentially implies a fixed, unchanging supply, whereas percentages imply that, for instance, your Most Serene Order Of The Yellow Hat Monastery Of Xinjiang is expanding to keep up with your population, rather than just sitting there doling out herbal remedies in the boonies. Keep the bonuses the health and sanitation (hospital, aqueduct, sewers, etc.) give, and if there's any building that simply screams out for a health-per-citizen bonus to counteract the negative health effects of overcrowding, it's housing, so that in order for a looksie too.
One of the major, if not the primary feature of this scenario has been altering the costs of technologies so that a dominant, competent player under ideal conditions can speed through the tech tree in a more or less historically accurate (era-wise) manner. Another factor, however, has seriously complicated this goal. That is the factor of population growth.
The growth factor for the Eternity game speed in this scenario-cum-modmod is much, much, much, much slower than the default setting of 900. This is due to a combination of three factors:
1: The scenario itself is designed to last 10,000 turns, as opposed to the original Eternity's 4500.
2: The Prehistoric era, during which no city should conceivable exceed 1 population, lasts 1000 turns.
3: The Classical era, seeing as the Ancient era is truncated down to an awkward hybrid of the Chalcolithic and early Sumeria/Egypt/the Indus Valley civilization., is stretched through 2500 turns, partly due to not being able to have turn times less than whole years in BC days, and partly due to the fact that two eras are really being represented (the Mesopotamian/Egyptian era and the Greco-Roman era)
Obviously, a civ with size 20 cities is going to be putting out a lot more
points than some dinky backwater where the common man's understanding of a "city" is size 3. As mentioned, it's based on a good sized civ, but what would be good sized for the time? Well, we could look at the actual city populations, but these are both problematic from a historical perspective (there should be maybe 4 cities size 12 by 0 BC, which is a pain in the gluteus maximus to achieve while allowing Babylon and Egypt to not have the population density of a bad RPG. Inconsistent with the building thresholds (I don't know about you, but I've never heard of a town with 150,000 people). This could mean two things:1. The populations are just plain off, seeing as (AFAIK) they haven't been edited from vanilla civ as they have no effect except as a little number.
2. Cities in Civ/C2C do *not* represent individual metropolitan areas, but entire national subdivisions, as a general rule.
As an example of how the the second principle would operate, let us apply it to the good old US of A. If the city of Houston represented only the metropolitan area of Houston, it would be a size 22 city (or 5,738,000 people in civ terms, which is the closest size to the real life Houston metro-area's 5,946,800). If, however, Houston was taken to represent the entire State of Texas, it would be a far larger size 37 city, or 24,601,000, which again is the closest size to Texas's 25,145,561. There would still be exceptions to the rule under this second assumption (Tokyo and New York City occupying such a vast majority of their subdivisions population, economy and culture).
There is obviously a world of difference between a size 22 and 37 city, and as such the chosen model of city-representation will greatly influence the desired growth rate. For another illustration of this concept, a recent game of mine had an India stretching into parts of Southeast Asia with a population of 50,000,000 around 300 AD. This is smaller than a proper empire of the time would be (Rome with it's 70,000,000, and compare that with the Subcontinent and Southeast Asia's fertility and population), but only in terms of total population. If we use the metropolitan model, this civilization, most of whom's cities are well in excess of size 25, is about 1700 years too early.
If one chooses to go with the metropolitan model, I propose a restructuring (a purely cosmetic one, and one I'm entirely willing to do under my own power) of the populations represented by each city size. Searching, however, doesn't seem to indicate what file sets these numbers, so I'd welcome any information on the matter.
Here's a little table to show the proposed new population numbers (bold numbers are my replacements):
1 1000 (1000)
2 6000 (2000)
3 21000 (4000))
4 48000 (8000)
5 90000 (16,000
6 150000 (20,000)
7 232000 (30,000)
8 337000 (40,000)
9 469000 (50,000)
10 630000 (75,000)
11 823000 (100,000)
12 1051000 (150,000)
13 1315000 (200,000)
14 1618000 (250,000)
15 1963000 (300,000)
16 2352000 (350,000)
17 2787000 (400,000)
18 3271000 (450,000)
19 3806000 (500,000)
20 4394000 (550,000)
21 5037000 (600,000)
22 5738000 (700,000)
23 6498000 (800,000)
24 7321000 (900,000)
25 8207000 (1,000,000)
26 9160000 (1,250,000)
27 10181000 (1,500,000
28 11273000 (1,750,000)
29 12436000 (2,000,000)
30 13675000 (3,000,000)
31 14990000 (4,000,000)
33 17858000 (5,000,000)
32 16384000 (6,000,000)
34 19415000 (7,000,000)
35 21056000 (8,000,000)
36 22784000 (10,000,000)
37 24601000 (15,000,000)
38 26509000 (20,000,000)
39 28508000 (25,000,000)
40 30603000 (30,000,000)
From 40 upwards, it would just keep increasing in intervals of 5,000,000 for every new pop point, though I doubt anybody would be able to create a miniature Coruscant. This new method would also make playtesting of my scenario under the metro-model significantly easier, as I'm terrible with numbers, let alone mentally noting them for such purposes.
This next paragraph is specifically related to my project, but may be of use to those planning similar historical scenarios, so feel free to skip:
Assuming the metro-model, I am going to create a temporary stopgap against excessive population growth in the form of an arbitrary cap that would begin at 1 and be gradually increased by specific technological advances. This cap would be discontinued as soon as a full disease and plague system was implemented. These technologies would be as follows:
Sedentary Lifestyle: Raises cap from 1 To 6
City Planning: Raises cap from 6 to 13
Sanitation: Raises cap from 13 to 25
Assembly Line: Raises cap from 25 to 29
Industrialism: Raises cap from 29 to 37
Globalization: Eliminates cap
Is this possible, and if so, what would need to be done, file wise, to do so? I know Civ V restricts city size based on the presence of buildings like Aqueducts and Hospitals, I know SMAC did the same with Habitation Domes, but I'm not sure if Civ IV can do it with techs.
Finally, on a more minor but still related note, there seems to be a glut of
bloat in the form of a gazillion buildings granting hard :health bonuses:. I love the wide representation given to the various periphery effects of the myriad buildings this mod has, but I think a percentage based boost would both be more balanced and more realistic. After all, a hard cap essentially implies a fixed, unchanging supply, whereas percentages imply that, for instance, your Most Serene Order Of The Yellow Hat Monastery Of Xinjiang is expanding to keep up with your population, rather than just sitting there doling out herbal remedies in the boonies. Keep the bonuses the health and sanitation (hospital, aqueduct, sewers, etc.) give, and if there's any building that simply screams out for a health-per-citizen bonus to counteract the negative health effects of overcrowding, it's housing, so that in order for a looksie too.
Although the suggestion was that it may be possible with SDK programming.
