Diverting City Production

[warpstorm]

If you have to deal with corruption, you may as well just send units and disband them.

 

[slothman]

Except that's too complicated compared for real life.

 

[warpstorm]

How complicated is it to set up a rally point? Takes about two seconds per city.

 

[yoshi]

If you have to deal with corruption, you may as well just send units and disband them.

Yeah...that's really the equivilant of everything that's been said up to now....sigh. Why do I even bother?

 

[slothman]

I have an addendum to this older thread. I have two cities almost right next to each other only 10 or so squares away. The first is in the middle of a flood plain/desert area. With all the flood plains irrigated and the rest mined it still has 7 specialists doing very little, esentially 14 extra food. The other city is right next to a mountain range. All non-mountains are irrigated and the mounts mined. It only has enough food to go up to size 17. I still need 6 food. There's no way of fixing this. It doesn't make any sense. In real life terms maybe this will help. Phoenix has a population of 1.04 million (1998 est.) It has no rivers or lakes nearby except a couple small canals. How can a city in the middle of the desert grow that big. It must ship it's food in. Similarly cities like Denver are large but in mountain ranges. That shouldn't be possible either. Cairo is on a flood plain/desert and large which makes sence. Others on the Nile are smaller. Shipping food makes sence. Just ask Allied Trucking.

 

[yoshi]

Yes, geographic location should not have much of an effect in the later game except that it's expensive to 'ship goods.'There is no justification that I can think of for having a city-state setup by the Industrial Age.
An as I said before, there is a limit to the amount of Production that can be diverted to a single city so well-placed cities will still have a significant advantage. Placement of cities has sometiimes been for strategic purposes. For instance, placing the capital of Spain (Madrid) in the middle of the country meant that the city initially was insignificant whereas due to imports, the city is now massive.
Diverting Production just interconnects cities more than they are now. It's only fair for players to want to transfer food/shields between cities, so to Firaxis I say: give it to them already.

Personally, I like that it would allow for the placement strategic coastal cities (cities that build ships for access to remote Oceans/Seas) without the need for them to have a large population.

The general idea though is just to give you that extra 3 food you wanted or just enough shields to make the city a little more productive...and you pay through the nose for it. Sounds fair to me.


As I said, the AI should be able to handle this because it's really just aquestion of supply and demand. Micromanagement would be quite low with only a few minor chnages to the interface.
So aside from Bamspeedy's comments about the problem of when the program counts diverted production into the city's production (which seems like a minor problem that could be easily overcome), there's really not much against this concept. So if you're interested in this stuff, all I can say is...post it.


...I feel like a bloody salesman!

 

[Bamspeedy]

...I feel like a bloody salesman!

I've been thinking about asking you for the last week or so if that was your occupation.

Micromanagement would be quite low

There already is too much micromanagement in the game, IMO. Depends how tedious you want to be.

which seems like a minor problem that could be easily overcome

How do you know? You say that everything 'would just take a few minutes' to program.

Shipping food makes sence.

There are plenty of things that would make sense because of what happens in reality, but it shakes the very foundation/principle of the game. Game play and strategy is more important than realism.
If you want to stick with realism, then I'll ask you:

Is every single mountain in the Rockies being mined right now?

How come there isn't metropolises all over the place in Alaska, the Canadian territories and Siberia? Sure, there is a few cities here and there, but it is still very lightly populated.

How come Civ3's cities can only be built so close (no closer than 2 tiles)? In real life cities can be as close together as they want to be.
Why are cities maxed out in territory size (20 tiles)?

Why would a new luxury mulitply the number of people happy? (you would get more happy, but it wouldn't be a mulitplying effect, there would be diminishing effects for each new 'flavor')

Why would building a wonder instantly add a new building to every city?

Why can't you use roads in enemy territory just as easily (or nearly as easily) as the roads in your own territory?

I don't recall any person in history waving his magic wand and make something like the pyramids suddenly appear overnight (great leaders).

Screw realism!

AI should be able to handle this because it's really just aquestion of supply and demand

Get the AI to properly balance mines and irrigation for just 1 city before you start trying to get it to exchange food/shields in between multiple cities. Every AI in any video game is just given certain 'guidelines' to follow. It only follows the pre-set guidelines it has been programmed for, but can't adjust to many situations (or learn from it). I can foresee some situations where them sending food/shields to other cities will be the worst move for them due to the exact circumstances. The AI doesn't take corruption into consideration, so I feel the AI would do silly things like take the production/food from their best cities and sending it to cities that won't benefit (either at all, or very little). The AI can not see to the future and plan accordingly. The AI can not see 'the big picture'. The AI won't be that smart for many years, so don't blame the programmers, blame it on the current state of technology.

 

[yoshi]

There already is too much micromanagement in the game, IMO. Depends how tedious you want to be.

Civ3 has the lowest amount of micromanagment (in proportion to its scope) that I have ever seen in a game --if it got any simpler, toddlers could play it. As I said before, Diverting shields/food would almost as simple as telling a unit to go to a specific city (and it wouldn't clutter up the F1 screen). Tedious is having to deal with every stupid, insignificant problems that the City Governor doesn't know how to deal with. Tedious is having to waste hours waiting for the game's turns to go by. This would only require a bit more thought to be put into city management, but I don't see why it would be tedious.

How do you know?

It's a logical assumption, and I don't see why something as trivial as that should be reason enough to trash this idea.

There are plenty of things that would make sense because of what happens in reality, but it shakes the very foundation/principle of the game. Game play and strategy is more important than realism.

Reality is not my primary reason for proposing this. Being able to transfer stuff between cities makes sense because if they form part of the same civ then they need to be able to cooperate. It makes sense because if you can produce use terrain output in one city, why not another at a cost (shipping)?
Players want this because it gives more of those options you're always talking about. Your cities won't be limited to what they can produce and nothing else --kind of like city states. This is not much of a problem in earlier ages but in by the Modern Age, inter-city cooperation (i.e. fully functional state) is dearly needed. What's the point of having all that cool technology if you're still functioning at the city-state level? By the later ages, to have city placement still be the determining factor of whether that city thrives or not is to ignore economy, culture, ect. If you can afford to make a mining town bigger, then so be it. If you can afford to make a farming town more productive, then so bloody be it. The reason Diverting Production would not be worth your while in the early ages is because most civs would simply not be able to afford it --this is representative of their developing state.

The AI won't be that smart for many years, so don't blame the programmers, blame it on the current state of technology.

Getting the AI to divert stuff just means it has to take output of that city vs the output of all other cities into account. It compares what it needs with what it's got and then with what it wants (e.g. more units, better economy, growth, ect.) with what it can afford. It means that it has to know math (i.e. it needs a calculator). If it didn't already have one, the AI civs would be a mess because it wouldn't know how to balance taxes/science/luxuries. Whether it knows how to balance maintenance costs or just builds stuff until it disbands/sells off is another question I don't have the answer to --the fact that the AI rarely ever has any gold could be an indication that it doesn't take maintenance into account. If that's the case then what can I say except that designers should have put more into the AI instead of messing around with the glitchy Multiplayer so much.

Personally, even if the AI weren't to know how to use this feature, I would still want it in. Perhaps limiting it a lot and skyrocketing the cost of diverting would prevent it from becoming a player exploit. After all, the AI can't handle other stuff and there isn't a balance problem. As long as the AI can continue to barf up loads and loads of units (regardless of whether it knows what it's doing or not), players will be happy.


I think enough players have asked for this feature or something like it to justify it being added into the game somehow.

 

[warpstorm]

My opinion on this is that it makes logical sense to be able divert production and food to some extent (maybe progressive based on technology), but it would make the game too easy for the human player. I could also make the counter-argument that the railroads represent this to a degree already.

Having said that, I have to reiterate one of BamSpeedy's earlier points. The AI can't figure out how to manage one city effectively yet. Reread this and think about it. The AI is a mess that doesn't know how to effectively manage the resources it does have. In general, I can easily get 25% more production out of a city than the AI can. (As an experiment set all you cities to governor control and all your workers to automatic, and see how well the AI manages resources - or play a game with debug on)

What I would want before something that makes it easier for the human to win is for the AI to use what it currently has better. If they spent the time to do this, every difficulty level would be a good bit harder as the AI would have about 25% more of whatever resource (food/shields/gold) they are emphasizing for that city.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Tedious is having to deal with every stupid, insignificant problems that the City Governor doesn't know how to deal with. Tedious is having to waste hours waiting for the game's turns to go by. This would only require a bit more thought to be put into city management, but I don't see why it would be tedious.

By tedious I mean doing things that are obvious to do, time consuming but for little payback. Each little thing you do may not be really worth the time by itself, but if you combine all those little things together it adds up tremendously to your production/growth/commerce.

Tedious:

Barb farming-sending units back and forth an area waiting for barb camps to reappear so that you can get 25 or 50 gold everytime you clear the camp. Or simply parking military units all around the camp so your units get easy promotions to elite status.

Workers-still manually controlling them late in the game.

Trade-Squeezing every last single gold piece you can get out of a deal

Selling maps to every civ every turn. Checking with every civ, every turn to see if they have a new tech.

City management-every turn looking at the city to see it's food/shield output and rearrange citizens accordingly ("oh, I only need 7 more shields for this project and the city is producing 10 shields, so for this 1 turn, I will take some citizens off of some shield tiles and put them on coastal/river tiles for more food or commerce", or switching around the tiles that cities could share.

Diverting production-Same as above only you have to go around finding a city that needs those 3 excess shields for just that 1 turn.

These things are 'no-brainers' to do if you want to run at maximum efficiency, but are time consuming or 'tedious'. They don't require any skill or strategy at all, just time and patience.

 

[Bamspeedy]

In general, I can easily get 25% more production out of a city than the AI can.

I bet it's closer to 50%. Look at this screenshot and notice the 'checkerboard' style of choosing mines or irrigation.

It's a logical assumption, and I don't see why something as trivial as that should be reason enough to trash this idea.

Logical assumption? Now I really want to know what your occupation is, so I can start making 'logical assumptions' about how easy your job is. And I didn't mean to make it sound like I was using that point to trash your idea, I'm just curious why you use that argument for every single one of your ideas.

with what it can afford.

The AI currently has problems being able to afford to upgrade their obsolete units. Please don't make that problem even worse.

instead of messing around with the glitchy Multiplayer so much.

More people wanted multiplayer than an idea like this. You first devote your resources to what most people want before engaging in the extras that an extreme minority want.

 

[Qitai]

Food only perhaps and if it is ever implemented. Do it the Orion 2 way, build feighter and forget, nothing more complicated then that. As for the shield, just let it roll over. I like that aspect of Orion 2 very much.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

OK guys, though I still want to be able to divert production and Food the way it has been described by Yoshi, Spiffor and myself, it does seem that we might be able, in C3:C, to at least simulate an internal trade in production materials! This is how I see it working:

Have all of your big 'production' improvements produce a 'commodity' unit every X turns (no attack, no defense-fairly high movement). Some might even require an appropriate resource in the city radius! For instance, you might have an 'Oil Refinery' resource, which requires oil in your city radius (or just requires oil?!) This refinery produces a 'Petrochemicals' unit every X turns. You can then ship these 'units' to distant cities and disband them for their production shields (and in a much more 'realistic' fashion that disbanding military units for the same effect'! In addition, you could put a 'princess' flag on them which grants you gold if you ship them into an appropriate city! OK, I realise that it is still highly 'abstract', but no more so than the whole production shields system. It also requires some degree of micromanagement-though not nearly as much as the old Civ2 Caravans did! Lastly, you can't make them produce food when you bring them to a city-only gold or VP's (which I hope they'll consider changing)-and until we are allowed to trade units, this commodity trading will remain limited to internal trade networks ONLY!!! On the upside, though, they will be vulnerable to capture or even destruction by enemy civs-the more so, the greater the distance you send them- a factor which might increase the role of naval units in the game !!
Anyway, not perfect, but definitely a step in the right direction, I reckon !!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Hygro]

Aussie, you have a very clever idea!!!

In fact, it's so clever I'm going to put that into a mod in the event that I get in an epic modding mood again like I was last year

 

[yoshi]

In a way you can already do this by building a'production unit' that requires x resource to be built and can be captured. I have tended to use such units in certain Civ2 scenarios --only minus the required resource. It's a user friendly idea but getting the AI to use such 'units' properly would pose a challenge.


I was thinking of a way of simplifying transferring production so that it would just automatically increase the number of shields in each city by 1 pers city (that's connected by road). So if you have 4 cities, each city gets 3 shields (minus 1 city).
If you have 10 cities, each gets 9 shields. If you have 42 cities, each city gets 41 shields. Added shields are affected by corruption so that the effect of corruption is not nullified. Essentially pooling resources. A max limit on the # of shields would be added so that a civ with 100+ cities would not have 100+ shields in each city. One problem with setting a limitation is that all cities will end up having similar rates. Perhaps a limit based on city size (e.g. towns have x limit, cities have x limit, metropolises have x limit).

It's not what I would prefer, but it skips the probelms associated with the AI --the effect would be automatic for all players alike thus the human would have no advantage over the AI in this respect. Would also save on mesisng around to much with the program just to get the AI to understand how to use the 'Diverting' feature.

I'm not sure what the effect on Food would be though. 1 extra food per city perhaps?

Any thoughts?

 

[slothman]

Aussie_Lurker, That sounds like an interest idea. Of course the problem is that I have to manually have it go to the city and disband it. It would be even better if there was a "goto and disband" job for units similar to the "goto" one now. Plus it gets tedious to repeatedly do it after every build.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

True enough, Slothman! Like I said, I STILL want the other system that has been discussed here, and at Apolyton, but this seems like a nice interim step, so to speak ! Rather than have to disband these units for shields, it would probably be better if you got the shields as a reward as soon as it entered your city! That way you can just do either goto, or set a rally point for these units, and then forget about them (at least until such time as you want to send them elsewhere).

As for your idea, Yoshi, I once suggested that, rather than an actual transport of food and production, as we have always suggested, perhaps it could be based on the number of cities connected to your capital via a road and/or RR!
I'm not sure exactly how my idea went, but I think it was that a city, when connected to the internal trade network, via a road, recieved +1 shields/commerce/food for every 8 cities also connected via road (the 8 is just a number I plucked out of the air). RR's, on the other hand, would give you the +1 bonus for every 6 cities similarly connected to the trade network. So, for example, lets say you have a Civ with 18 cities AND your capital, and half of them are connected to the trade netword by road, and the other half by rail, this means that all of your connected cities would get a +3 bonus to production/food and commerce (+1 for the road cities, and +2 for your RR cities)-to simulate the internal movement of such goods. In addition, under this system, every nation you are trading with would give you a bonus of +1 shields/commerce/food-if they have greater than 12 cities in their internal trade network and vice versa-to reflect the ongoing 'commodity' trade going on behind the scenes of your resource and luxury trades. As I hinted above, this is a bare bones idea, but on the surface it has several advantages

1) It retains the importance of good city placement, whilst giving you a method of overcoming city corruption AND starvation whilst a new city becomes established.

2) It adds another incentive for a Civ to build up ALL of it's internal and external trade networks-whilst simultaneously giving an extra incentive for enemy civs to pillage these networks, and lay seige to the cities which are at their hubs!

3) It discourages the awful RR sprawl so common to the late game, as the bonuses you recieve for RR's are not dependant on how many RR's you have connecting your city, but the total number of cities connected by even a SINGLE RR!!

4) It helps to simulate the internal and external trade of what I have described as 'COMMODITIES' (i.e. raw and processed construction materials, food and fuels) without increasing micromanagement-plus it is a system which I feel the AI can be adapted to exploit well!

Anyway, sorry for the VERY long post, guys, but Yoshi did want to know what thoughts we had !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Bamspeedy]

but on the surface it has several advantages

And disadvantages:

1. The bigger civs become even stronger.

2. ICS. Need I say more?

 

[yoshi]

The only thing I'm concerned about is too many cities getting too much production. Although corruption does away with this problem, what about Democracies which have no corruption?

Aussie_Lurker's idea is lacking in one respect: the 'Murmansk effect' is no longer possible (see above); i.e. specifically diverting production to strategic ports is not an option.

Otherwise, the idea of more cities = more of everything for everyone (minus corruption) is a great concept because it creates the effect of truely interconnected societies.

I was thinking that in addition to Aussie_Lurker's proposal, there should be a possibility of buying shields/food and sending them to another city's shield/food box. Unlike diverting shields it's just a single turn process that instantely adds shields/food. Essentially functions like Civ2 Caravans but without the unit.

Example:

You click "Export" in the city screen (or right-click on the city and select "Export").

You get a prompt with the Domestic Advisor asking you, "What shall we export?" You select Shields or Food.

A list of all connected cities appears.

You select one.

A pop-up appears of the Domestic Advisor asking you with that stupid worried face, "Are you sure you want to export x shields/food to x city at a cost of x gold?" You select "Yes, and get a move on!" or "On second thought, cancel the export."

If you select 'yes,' all the shields/food in giver city will appear in the reciever city. (Effect lasts one turn so giver city cannot build anything for 1 turn and has its growth restricted.) Gold is removed from treasury (note: action is cancelled if you do not have enough gold).

People playing Civ2 really wanted the Caravan ability of adding shields to the shield box for Wonders to be applied to any form of production. It's only reasonable to add it to Civ3 --but at a cost of gold rather than the cost of building a Caravan.

The only problem with this is of course that it gives the human an advantage over the AI as programmers would probably have trouble getting the AI to use this feature. Then again, the Civ2 AI had this problem and nobody complained.

AND that all-important initial city placement strategy is virtually unaffected.


About Bamspeedy's comment concerning the bigger civs having an advantage:
Although this is always a problem when coming up with empire-wide game enhancements, the effects of corruption do decrease the advantage significantely --small civs have less production but they also have less corruption so in proportion, they have more production than bigger civs.

 

[Bamspeedy]

About Bamspeedy's comment concerning the bigger civs having an advantage:
Although this is always a problem when coming up with empire-wide game enhancements, the effects of corruption do decrease the advantage significantely --small civs have less production but they also have less corruption so in proportion, they have more production than bigger civs.

No they don't. Bigger civs always have more production (if terrain is equal), regardless of corruption levels (except in maybe communism in some extreme cases).

If you build a new city it increases corruption for the cities further away from the new city to the palace, not to the cities closer to it. So there is no penalty whatsoever to adding cities to the fringes/outer rim of your empire (in fact, you do become stronger). Giving bonuses based on # of cities multiplies this effect.

To discourage the ICS part of it, make it so the bonus only applies to metropolises, not towns or cities.

what about Democracies which have no corruption?

Democracies have corruption.

the 'Murmansk effect' is no longer possible

Who really cares if you can't build a city like Murmansk? Accept the game concept, that if you build in a shield-poor area, you are going to be producing few shields!

Otherwise, the idea of more cities = more of everything for everyone (minus corruption) is a great concept because it creates the effect of truely interconnected societies.

Well, yes you have to give a player at least some benefit to becoming bigger (and not penalize them, making it even harder). But you don't want to make it too dang easy for the person who is winning, or just happened to start on the largest landmass. The game currently does give bonuses for more cities which I feel is pretty well balanced.

The only problem with this is of course that it gives the human an advantage over the AI as programmers would probably have trouble getting the AI to use this feature. Then again, the Civ2 AI had this problem and nobody complained.

Of course, 'nobody' complained. Many players don't complain about something that gives themselves (and not their opponent) an advantage. I want a challenge, dammit!

there should be a possibility of buying shields/food and sending them to another city's shield/food box

Build and disband military units. (sending shields from one city to another)
Cash-rush. (pay for shields)
Build workers to join other cities. (exchanging food at the expense of shields).