Every city improvement has these:
1. Maximum per city: The maximum number of these improvements allowed per city.
Hmm... I think you can just have a flag "unique" or not.
If unique (ex: a wall, or a city hall), you can obviously create only one).
If several (ex: a factory), it will be limited by maintenance cost and citizens anyway. I don't see how you cna justify "there can be only 3 factories" in a city, whatever the nubmer of citizens.
2. Effects: What does the improvement do? For example, a Barracks gives a bonus to experience to units built at this city.
I think effect are overrated. You should skip that and have only useless improvment.
3. Minimum citizens required: The minimum number of citizens needed for this improvement to work.
4. Maximum citizens allowed: The maximum number of citizens allowed to work in this particular improvement.
5. Effect per citizen: Same as "#2 Effects" above, except on a per citizen basis.
I think it's to complex, and doesn't go well with 1. that suppose several items can be built. You should either:
- Make one improvment (factory), and then have a variable maintenance/output (every citizen working in a factory cost 2/turn, but increase production by 25%, or rather produce 10 units of good)
- Or make several improvement, each one can have one citizens. If you want to put 5 citizens in factories, build 5 factories.
Mixing both methods is to complex. Like "For each factory you can have between 1 and 5 citizens working in it"... Even more micromanagement, and it's not clear.
For example, for each citizen working in a library, there is a +25% bonus to science in the city.
That's a poor exemple, and a good one at the same time. A poor exemple, because it's not people who work at the library that increase the science, it's the number of people who can go on read in the library.
This lead to the good exemple, you have to differentiate between two kinds of improvment.
The improvements where people work (factories, farms, commercial office, etc), where you should have 1 factory / people working in it (more factories: waste of money, not enough workforce, not enough factories = unemployment). But this requires some micromanagement.
The support improvements, like the library, which can increase the output, but on a fraction of citizens. Like each library can work for 5 citizens.
If you have 10 citizens, you need 2 library to gain +25% If you have only one library, you have only +10%.
6. Cost: Same as what it means in Civ 1-3. But this can be any kind of produceable, such as food, material, or commerce.
7. Maintenance per turn: Same as what it means in Civ 1-3, except the maintenance costs may be any produceable.
Sounds good.
8. Requirements: It might be nothing, a technology, another building, a unit in the city, or whatever.
Ok
The reason for all that is to make cities be specialized like they are today, and also to create a sort of RPG like quality to cities. In Civilization, all of my cities eventually ended up being the same.
Sounds good, but beware of not introducing to many micromanagement.
