Diverting City Production

[yoshi]

I thought of a way of using shields from one city in another. Have the production diverted to another city that is connected by road. The further away the two cities, the more gold it costs you (transportation of labour/goods/ect.).

For instance, if you have a city producing a Wonder, you can add shields form other cites to speed things up a bit. If your smaller cities are fairly useless by themselves, you can divert their production to a larger city thus centering unit/improvement production on that city.

I initially thought that the 'Rally Production' addition intended for C3C was this. Turns out it that as far as I can tell it just means you can set all unit rally points simultaneously, or something to that effect (I guess that was to be expected).

Capturing small cities would now be of greater advantage as you could divert their production to your larger cities. Cutting off cities would cause an enemy to lose production.
To give you an example using a WW2 Europe scenario:
Germans capture French cities. They divert production from these cities to Germany. The Allies re-capture the French cities, so the Germans lose a critical production bonus. Resistance Forces pillaging (or Allied Bombers bombing) roads would have a similar effect.

Note that there would be a limit set (alterable through the Editor) as to the maximum number of shields that can be diverted to a single city --so as not have cities with 300 shields-- and on the number of shields that can be used for this purpose by the city doing the diverting.

I think that this is probably the most realistic thread I've posted yet (aside from 'Individual Unit Maintenance Cost'). It's simple. It does something that most players want. It's very strategic. And it probably wouldn't require extensive modifications to Civ3's core program to implement.

I can definitely see this being included into Conquests. What do you think?

[P.S. Here's to Xen's request for a Byzantine Cataphract unit!]

 

[slothman]

Great. Now allow food as well. Mainly to have "extra" irrigation useful and to fix the "1 extra food" problem. Plus it would be good for wonder building so it's not just a "who has the most shields in 1 city" race. Having the limit gov-specific would be even better. Now Democracies have a limit of only 200 shields since people want to keep stuff local while depositism can have 500 for quick WOW rushes.

P.S. Now Xen will post more about how the Byzantines aren't perfect, argg.

P.P.S. Keep those ideas comming. I like 'em.

 

[yoshi]

Now allow food as well.

Glad you mentioned it. Lots of people have asked for that and if you have onbe it seems fair that you have the other.

Having the limit gov-specific would be even better.

Definitely. Any addition that makes governments more unique should be worth considering.

Keep those ideas comming. I like 'em.

Beauty.

I really think I hit the jackpot here (but I will wait to hear more replies before I go patting myself on the back) --not to mention that I'm sure someone already thought of this addition at some point. I await more replies.

[P.S. Yes, best not to tempt fate.]

 

[casual_moose]

hoe eould transport the shields though? maybey right click on the city and you could choose how much and where?

 

[TheNiceOne]

I don't think such an idea is very good. First, I don't think it will open up much new, interesting game play.

Mostly what it will achieve is that exact city positioning is less crucial, and that is a very bad thing IMHO. Sweating over city placement, wanting to get the city adjacent to a river, but also reach those cow squares etc. while maintaining the right spacing to other cities are among the most fun and interesting challenges in the game IMHO, and this suggestion will take a bit away from that.

Also, this will be hard to implement - both to get a good user interface, and to get the AI to use it intelligently. So I don't want Firaxis to spend time on it.

 

[yoshi]

...this suggestion will take a bit away from that.

I can't speak for most , but personally I rather dislike having to suffer the consequences of building a city in the wrong place for the entire game. Maintaining the right spacing, between cities has always been a real pain in the a$$ for many players (esspecially in scenarios), so this addition would alliviate this problem without eliminating the need for good city positioning all together. In the early game, you only have a few meager cities anyway so there would be little or no change here. There would probably be an associated tech flag that allows for these options to become available later in the game.

Also, this will be hard to implement - both to get a good user interface, and to get the AI to use it intelligently.

No more difficult than some of the additions meant to be in C3C. I don't see why the interface would be difficult, it would probably be similar to the 'Go To Which City' Unit Order --you just select 'Divert Production,' a pop-up appears with a list of cities, you select one, the pop-up with the Domestic Advisor appears asking, "Diverting Production from x city to x city will cost us x gold. Do you wish to proceed?," you select "Yes" and a pre-set percentage of the selected city's shields are diverted to the target city. Simple as that. (That should answer Casual Moose's question as well.)
As for the AI, if they can get it to go and Sacrifice Workers for Culture then they could definitley do this.

I don't see what the problem is. I should think almost all players would find an addition like this useful if not great --for both scenarios AND the core game.

 

[Pirate]

Originally posted by yoshi
...Note that there would be a limit set (alterable through the Editor) as to the maximum number of shields that can be diverted to a single city --so as not have cities with 300 shields-- and on the number of shields that can be used for this purpose by the city doing the diverting...

Perhaps the maximum is a percentage of the base number of shields that city is already producing. That way you can't divert 200 shields to a size 1 city that wouldn't have the infrastructure to handle it. I don't think changing the max for each government is such a good idea - every time you switch governments you would have to redo all your diversions.

 

[slothman]

I would probably still do the "city adjusting" part to get the right squares in it. It's also more realistic for some things like wonders and totally corrupt cities.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Great idea Yoshi, and one which would be especially good for the 'Age of Sail' C3C scenario !!! After all, aside from population pressures, the European powers also settled the "New World" in order to exploit its VAST natural resources, like timber and minerals-much of this went back to the relatively resource-starved cities of Europe!!!
The best way I could see the maximum transfer rates working, for both food and production, would be to have 1-2 techs, per age, which gradually increase the maximum amount of shields/food you can move about.
For example, in the Ancient Age, you might only be able to divert 2 shields, and no food, out of your cities. When you gain a specific tech, this might increase to 4 shields/0 food. Then 8 shields/2 food, 16 shields/4 food and so on-into the modern age!! In addition to choosing a city to move your shields/food to, you should have a choice, on the list, to move it to the trade advisor screen. That way, when you go and trade resources with another Civ, you would also be able to trade in commodities AS WELL!!! A feature which I have felt has long been lacking in the Civ series!!!

EDIT: BTW, a cities corruption should also have an impact on diverted shields/food! For instance, if you divert 6 shields to a city with corruption/waste of about 4, then you should lose 2 shields in the transfer (the remaining 2 shields having been 'lost' in transit !) This makes moving shields to other cities a slightly calculated risk, because you don't get them back if you shift those shields back to the city that originally provided them!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[slothman]

You wouldn't shift them back you just wouldn't let them leave in the first place. The problem with corrupting the trade is full-corruption cities still won't be any good. Unless the loss was the same as the better of the 2 cities. Also make it all moddable! Firaxis often gets the values right but not always.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

My point is that, say you have a city with 6 shields of production, but FOUR corruption/waste!! You want to build a courthouse in you city, so that you can deal with the rampant corruption but, with SO MUCH starting corruption, it'll simply take TOO long to build!! With this system, you might move 8 shields from other, more productive, cities in order to boost production. The 4 corruption, though, means that your city only gets 6 of the 8 shields you send it!! The rest is simply lost to the 'Black Market'!! For simplicity's sake, I think that you should lose 1/2 your cities corruption value, rounded up, from imported production (and food)

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[yoshi]

...every time you switch governments you would have to redo all your diversions.

Its assumed that number of shields dverted will adapt to limit set by the new government. This seems logical enough since the better your govt., the better you production/food transfer rate.

I would probably still do the "city adjusting" part to get the right squares in it. It's also more realistic for some things like wonders and totally corrupt cities.

"City adjusting" would have the same effect in the early game as shield/food diversion would be highly ineffective at that point anyway; i.e good placement would be just as important as it is now at that stage of the game.
I don't understand the realism/corruption part. Please clarify.

...techs, per age, which gradually increase the maximum amount of shields/food you can move about.

That seems logical enough since higher stages of development imply higher transfer rates. This would require new tech flags; e.g. "Allows Production Transferring," "Increases Production Transfer by 50%," ect.

That way, when you go and trade resources with another Civ, you would also be able to trade in commodities AS WELL!!!

Definitely. I would assume that Commodity Trading would work as follows:
Select "Divert Production" in Bargaining screen.
Other civ offers x in exchange for your diverting shields/food to x city.
Deal lasts x turns.
Transfer works exactly as it would between friendly cites, only you can't re-divert until the deal is over (or is cancelled either through renegotiation or war).

BTW, a cities corruption should also have an impact on diverted shields/food!

Naturally.

Also make it all moddable! Firaxis often gets the values right but not always.

Agree with both.

You want to build a courthouse in you city, so that you can deal with the rampant corruption but, with SO MUCH starting corruption, it'll simply take TOO long to build!!

This addition would be an incentive to keeping corruption under control and at the same time could compensate for waste due to corruption in cases like that.

-------------------------------------------
I'm liking these replies. Keep them coming.

 

[slothman]

The problem with corruption from the far city is that "bad" cities even with resource trade might not get enough to be reasonable. Maybe the average of the source and dest cities. If the loss on the trade is related too much to the far city then it isn't that much better.

 

[yoshi]

If there is too much corruption in a city for the diverted shields to be effective, then the city is simply to corrupt to be worth the expense of transferring production there. If cities are too corrupt, they are practically useless from a production standpoint. The diverted shields lost to corruption are proportional to this. In other words, if the city's gone bad, then it suffers the consequences. I can't see why this is a game problem --unless you're saying that corruption in general is too problematic?

 

[slothman]

It's only problematic in the distance factor. The core cities aren't bad. But being average of the 2 would still be good.

 

[EddyG17]

i good example of this thread is Brazilia brazil new capital

 

[yoshi]

It's only problematic in the distance factor. The core cities aren't bad. But being average of the 2 would still be good.

Sorry, I forgot about one thing. Part of the reason for being able to divert shields is so that little cities in remote regions can build units, defenses, ect. This is usually the case with strategic ports: although they aren't useful as population centers, they serve a strategic purpose (e.g. Murmansk, Russia --small pop. but very important naval port...particularly for Subs which can pass beneath the frozen ice in winter months). [see my thread on Ice/subs in this forum]
Another example would be the diverting of production by the Soviets to small towns in the Ural mountains during WW2.
So you're right to see corruption as being problematic in the distance factor.
Setting a minimum level of shields in a city (as a result of corruption) might be an answer. (?)

i good example of this thread is Brazilia brazil new capital

Well, Diverting Production/Food doesn't include building an entire artificial lake in the middle of the city --not to mention that citizens living there (only because they work there) have to order everything from outside the city and have it choppered in! Diplomats used to love being stationed in the old capital Rio but now they have to go to the center of the jungle...let's just say you won't bump in to too many diplomats if you're ever unlucky enough to go to Brazilia. If you were to reproduce Brazilia in Civ3, you would have to divert every aspect of a city including the citizens --by force!
What were they thinking?!
...But yes, I see your point.


On a related topic, I was reading an interesting post on Immigration that has just recently been posted in this same forum. The problem was overpopulation as a result of the flood of immigrants from less developed civs to the most prosperous cities of a highly develpped civ. The only way to deal with this would be to really to lower the Food Consumption of Citizens or Increase tile output. But, if you were to Divert Food to those cities from less prosperous cities, you could deal with overpopulation and dedicate their surrounding tiles to better use like Commerce and Production --even production could be Diverted so as to alow the city to be productive while being able to dedicate its tiles purely to Commerce. That's basically how it works in reality.
Judging by how well it applies itself to the simple Civ3 interface, --Diverting Production/Food seems to really be something worth considering for Civ3. With a little polishing up, I think this could be a winner. I can't think of any good reason why not, can you?

If you want to know more about what I was talking about, you can find the 'Immigration' thread in the 'C3C Requests' forum: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=1246474#post1246474

 

[Bamspeedy]

I think that this is probably the most realistic thread I've posted yet

I really think I hit the jackpot here (but I will wait to hear more replies before I go patting myself on the back)

Don't pat yourself on the back too hard and hurt yourself.

Transferring food between cities has been brought up many times, it's only natural that people would want to use shields this way too.

IMO, It would reduce the skill and strategy needed for the game, but increase micromanagement. I don't know of too many people who want a game that is easier to win, but requires more tedium.

I can definitely see this being included into Conquests. What do you think?

Who knows, maybe it will, but I doubt it. Maybe if some of your recent 'great ideas' would have been brought up MONTHS ago. I wouldn't doubt it if the instruction manuals are already printed for Conquests. Kind of late to totally change the way city production works isn't it?

But I'm sure they will at least consider this for Civ4.

It's simple... And it probably wouldn't require extensive modifications to Civ3's core program to implement.

No more difficult than some of the additions meant to be in C3C. I don't see why the interface would be difficult, it would probably be similar to the 'Go To Which City' Unit Order --you just select 'Divert Production,' a pop-up appears with a list of cities, you select one, the pop-up with the Domestic Advisor appears asking, "Diverting Production from x city to x city will cost us x gold. Do you wish to proceed?," you select "Yes" and a pre-set percentage of the selected city's shields are diverted to the target city. Simple as that. (That should answer Casual Moose's question as well.)
As for the AI, if they can get it to go and Sacrifice Workers for Culture then they could definitley do this.

Programming the shields to transfer from one city to another IS more difficult than just giving new units a 'go-to' order (rally production).
And harder than simply telling the AI "If it has a slave, then sacrifice it".
The AI doesn't know how to micromanage food/shields as it is, how is it going to micromanage sending those food/shields between cities?

You would need to change the whole city production process. Currently the game cycles through the cities 1 by 1 to figure out it's production output each turn. Your suggestion works fine I guess if you are sending shields from City A to City B, as the game can take out say 3 shields from city A as it processed it's turn, then add it to City B when it is City B's turn. But what if you go from City B to City A? The 3 shields from City B gets taken out, but City A has already processed it's turn, so doesn't get the shields (until the next turn? or does it miss out on shields?). If you make the game cycle back to city A to check if it got shields diverted from other cities you may have the problem of a city building 2 things in 1 turn (in addition to slower/longer turns). You can have some serious problems/bugs. You have to cycle through the cities to ensure the city did produce what you told it to 'divert' before ending your turn, in the case that during the AI's turn they pillaged your mines, or some other disaster didn't happen to your civ/city that ruined/dropped your production.

 

[yoshi]

Don't pat yourself on the back too hard and hurt yourself.

Heh. Yeah, it's just that I'm really keen on this one as it would really enhance the strategic element of city production; i.e. cities would not be limited the output of their own tiles and small strategiccites could be beefed up as they well should be. (I notice you didn't mention anything about that strategic element which is one of the main justifications for this 'idea.')

IMO, It would reduce the skill and strategy needed for the game, but increase micromanagement. I don't know of too many people who want a game that is easier to win, but requires more tedium.

If by easier, you mean less limited in terms of city-related strategy then yes, this will make the game easier. When you say skill and strategy, are you referring to the placment of cities? Because that's the only strategic element that would be degraded by 'diverting.' As I said in a previous post, the fact that you have to suffer as a result of settling in the wrong place is absurd --putting aside a map where there aren't enough good tiles anywhere (desert). Reality doesn't work that way so why should Civ3 if it can be changed?

Who knows, maybe it will, but I doubt it. Maybe if some of your recent 'great ideas' would have been brought up MONTHS ago.

Clearly it won't but that certainly isn't because these issues failed to be addressed (by players at least). As you said, the idea of transferring production/food has been brought up many times in the past. That goes for a good many other equally reasonable things that are not in Conquests (or it's never been mentioned once). Yet they seem to have the budget to dedicate to plenty of useless scenarios. Initially, I thought Civ3 was a work in progress where they would gradually phase in new stuff that is reallly above and beyond anything in Civ2 (like diverting shields, for instance), but two expansions later that does not seem to be the case. Judging by the progress of Civ3 thus far, I think I could post ideas like this till the cows come home and would probably never get a response, let alone have it considered for inclusion into the next expansion. Civ3 is not a leap from Civ2, let's face it. It's a souped up copy of it. The engine may be different, but the rules, concepts, ect. remain all to familiar. No BIG changes (like diverting production, for instance) have been made, nor does there seem to be any interest on the part of designers to go in that direction.

The AI doesn't know how to micromanage food/shields as it is, how is it going to micromanage sending those food/shields between cities?

I figure that isn't meant to be uplifting so I'll just say that it's shameful that Civ3's AI is the way it is. Unless Conquest's "Improved AI" is a real change for the better, this is a major obstacle that every new idea will have to face, so I can't see any of these proposed concepts leading to anything untill the issues with the AI are dealt with.

Part of the reason why I post this stuff is because it should be recognised just as the many great ideas posted on this and other forums should be.
And I still say that if other developers tried their hand at civilization-style games, more advancement would take place --monopolies don't tend to be very innovative.

 

[brianshapiro]

what did you think of my idea in this thread
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=63576
of creating a pool of resources/shields/food connected by road or railroad

2. POOL OF FOOD, RESOURCES, AND SHIELDS

a. All cities connected with roads should have access to half the food, resources, and shields that are extra and available from all surrounding cities. This creates a tier system: say one city is surrounded by two, and has twelve extra food, each of those gets six extra food, and the original city six extra. Then say, each of those cities is surrounded by two, so each of those gets three extra food, ad the two original cities only three extra themselves. If I'm right, this works out in a way where distance factors in.
b. All cities connected with railroads should have access to all the food, resources, and shields. No tier system in place, this divides everything evenly between railroad connected cities.
c. Extra of course, means shields, food, and resources, not in use by the other cities, so any city can usurp priority of them if needed. So this doesnt mean that the original city that is producing is stuck with the low number equal division through railroad, any of the cities can usurp the extra shields if needed.