How City Connections Ought To Work

[tman2000]

God knows how they work now, but I think I know how they should work.

I've wanted a feature where you can customize where town food yields go, so you can stop supporting already large cities with low marginal growth rates, or alternatively, send all your food to such cities to help them grow faster. In order for this to not be totally ridiculous, I think there should be range limits and the best way to implement this considering the smaller size of some maps is so that you can send some food to a maximum range, and then as you get into a progressively smaller radius, you can send more (i.e.: food to 10 tiles, 50% to 20, limit of 10% of a town's food to a city up to 30 tiles away). This begs the question, how should settlement connections work in this context?

I think there should be a minimum connection range related to the trade route max range, and if a settlement is founded within this range of another settlement, they automatically connect by the shortest route possible to one existing settlement (being aware of open borders policies). Thus, connections can get cut off by loss of borders and don't automatically restore.

These connections are made once and only once. So, in this default situation, the distance from one town to a city will be the number of tiles the road takes up as it meanders to settlements on its way to that town. If this puts a city out of range for food delivery, then you can use a merchant to form a direct connection. Think of a triangle, where the indirect, default connection are the two sides, and the direct connection is a shorter total length hypotenuse.

On top of this, to give more logic and control to the hub town concept, a town will add a distance modifier to all its connections based on the number of connections it has. That is, town A gets -1 calculated route distance per connection greater than 1. So, if town A has 4 connections (even if they were established by default) to towns B, C, D and city F, of lengths 8,7,12,6, then the modification of -3 makes those lengths be calculated as 5,4,9,3. This means the route from town B to city F used to be 8+6=14, but now it's 5+3=8 and therefore underneath the 10 tile 100% food range. The thematic logic is that these natural hub towns have more caravan support infrastructure and experience and they are transporting goods more efficiently.

This system will make connections more logical, more of a sub game in themselves, and support the premise of customized and strategic disbursement of food to cities. It will also fix hub towns.

Sea routes should function in a similar vein. This "all connected to all, but not all the time, and it's often bugged" connections system needs to go.

Logical connections also creates a gameplay stratum that can support added content like non-settlement trade outposts in special scenarios like silk roads.

Trading towns will differ from hub towns in that they extend connection range without requiring multiple connections. If you do multiple connections to a trading town, you may make its natural route distance boost irrelevant, while missing out on the influence bonus from hub towns. That would be the trade off.

 

[tman2000]

One day, instead of just connecting any of your settlements to a foreign settlement to get their resources, with improved city connection logic, you ought to be able to really pick which of your cities connects to the foreign resources you want. Most ideally, the only effect is on the gold yields the route produces. So you would always get the resources from that foreign settlement to slot into any connected settlement, but if your origin settlement has better resources there's a higher gold yield you can also receive.

This would make you want to work on extending range through hub towns.

 

[protocol7]

It should be some simple to understand rule. Within 10 tiles? Connected. Water in between? Then fishing quay required (maybe renamed to trading port) and still 10 tiles. Ports and rail stations provide upgrades based on same rule.

 

[tman2000]

I mean, what I said is pretty simple if it's not bugged and if there's a menu interface showing city distances and displaying distance modifiers properly. Along with a map layer showing connections, color coded with bonuses.

It's a game, I'd like control over what my empire is doing in one of the central mechanics.

 

[Krikkit1]

It should be some simple to understand rule. Within 10 tiles? Connected. Water in between? Then fishing quay required (maybe renamed to trading port) and still 10 tiles. Ports and rail stations provide upgrades based on same rule.

Auto Connection:
Water(Quay/Wharf/Port) to (Quay/Warf/Port) should be 30 tiles over water (can mix and match... but those buildings should be labeled "Naval Trade Connectors")
Over land 10

if both connections are there a road will still be built

That would be fine (merchant can make an additional connections based on Trade Route Length... 10-15-20 or 30-45-60 with Trade route boosts from gameplay included)

To make rail connection
Rail-Rail 10 overland
Rail+Port-Rail+Port 60 Over Water (ie anywhere to anywhere... but need Port not Warf or Quay)
if both connections are there an overland RR will still be built

Food automatically split between all cities within 1 direct connection
Resources shared over multiple connections

 

[tman2000]

Auto Connection:
Water(Quay/Wharf/Port) to (Quay/Warf/Port) should be 30 tiles over water (can mix and match... but those buildings should be labeled "Naval Trade Connectors")
Over land 10

if both connections are there a road will still be built

That would be fine (merchant can make an additional connections based on Trade Route Length... 10-15-20 or 30-45-60 with Trade route boosts from gameplay included)

To make rail connection
Rail-Rail 10 overland
Rail+Port-Rail+Port 60 Over Water (ie anywhere to anywhere... but need Port not Warf or Quay)
if both connections are there an overland RR will still be built

Food automatically split between all cities within 1 direct connection
Resources shared over multiple connections

If this is the case, I would like any auto connection to only connect to the nearest settlement and all additional connection require a merchant. Something consistent and logical and meaningful. I also very highly prefer having settlements with multiple connections create trade route distance reduction for all of its routes, to encourage the creation of hubs and to make the use of merchants worthwhile.

Your auto food split is fine, but I would like the ability to use military units to raid my own connections to shut them down if preferred.

 

[Krikkit1]

If this is the case, I would like any auto connection to only connect to the nearest settlement and all additional connection require a merchant. Something consistent and logical and meaningful. I also very highly prefer having settlements with multiple connections create trade route distance reduction for all of its routes, to encourage the creation of hubs and to make the use of merchants worthwhile.

Your auto food split is fine, but I would like the ability to use military units to raid my own connections to shut them down if preferred.

That would be too micromanagy

 

[tman2000]

That would be too micromanagy

Not really, merchants already exist to create connections. It's not that much to merely manage food flows from towns to cities to prioritize growth. In modern, you can just let food distribute evenly, and if it's not working out, use a merchant to connect directly.

 

[Krikkit1]

Not really, merchants already exist to create connections. It's not that much to merely manage food flows from towns to cities to prioritize growth. In modern, you can just let food distribute evenly, and if it's not working out, use a merchant to connect directly.

The point is most connections should form automatically.

 

[King Flevance]

I think it would be cool if it were as easy as a button in the town menu. You push it, all possible cities pop up in a list. Next to the city name, it shows your % precalculated to that city. You pick the city what city you want. Connection established.

 

[Yzman]

I hate connections currently. They are needlessly confusing. Also, why does my capital need to be connected to rail network for factories? Seems like a useless requirement. I think a lot of the potential complicatedness comes from needing a capital connection, as opposed to just allowing cities to be connected to each other.

 

[tman2000]

The point is most connections should form automatically.

Yes, first connections form automatically to the nearest settlement. However, with the addition of disbursing food a certain way, you may have to make additional connections to improve efficiency of transport, which will stack and provide multiplicative benefit.

 

[Krikkit1]

Yes, first connections form automatically to the nearest settlement. However, with the addition of disbursing food a certain way, you may have to make additional connections to improve efficiency of transport, which will stack and provide multiplicative benefit.

That’s the micromanagy bit. Food should automatically go to every city the town could directly connect to.

 

[tman2000]

That’s the micromanagy bit. Food should automatically go to every city the town could directly connect to.

I feel like by definition, having a town/city dichotomy should allow for micromanagement. You're not managing the food in each town, you're managing one network empire wide. It's the equivalent of a Civ 6 specialist screen but for the entire empire rather than one city at a time.

 

[Pfeffersack]

For a start, it would be just good to have a place where you can see to which other places on of your town is directly connected. Currently picking the town specialization giving extra influence is a combination of tedious counting and guessing. I regulary misscalculate.

 

[King Flevance]

I feel like this whole discussion could be a cool way to implement logistics into the tech tree/civic tree. I would personally love it if when you assign a town specialization to a town, you are required to pick a city within range to connect to. Trade town that increases range could help you make a far connection. If you are unable to connect to any cities due to range, the town cannot be specialized. Then in the tech tree, you can have techs unlock further trade range for towns/cities but also maybe more possible connections for towns.

This idea would need expanded upon as I am just making it up as I type, but you would want it to plug into the merchant trade route system well so not to be confusing. This is totally possible though, but it could mean not allowing resources to be shared from a town until a connection is established. (Perhaps connections need to be possible before specialization) But you would want it to be a simple in design as trade routes in 4x games can easily get murky and/or too much tedium. I like Civ 7's "set it and forget it" mentality and think it is very possible to do that with connections.

I do not like automated connections for resource management. If I want Pompeii's food to go to Rome, I should be able to choose that, not randomly have it go to Massilia because the game chooses it instead. A pitfall of some resource management games is that the villagers being ignorant of the best place to store resources can sour the game. Anyone who has played Banished is familiar with this. The point of the game is for me to be able to say "put the resource right there" pending there is no intentional reason I should not be allowed to put the resource there as a limitation. Not because the game says "here I will just do this for you". If you are going to automate decisions, I need to agree with them most if not all of the time. Civ 7 is certainly not there.

 

[Melkus]

For a start, it would be just good to have a place where you can see to which other places on of your town is directly connected. Currently picking the town specialization giving extra influence is a combination of tedious counting and guessing. I regulary misscalculate.

This mod actually does the job: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/enhanced-town-focus-info.31969/ (Still hard to understand the logic behind influence hubs, but it predicts correctly somehow)

 

[tman2000]

I feel like this whole discussion could be a cool way to implement logistics into the tech tree/civic tree. I would personally love it if when you assign a town specialization to a town, you are required to pick a city within range to connect to. Trade town that increases range could help you make a far connection. If you are unable to connect to any cities due to range, the town cannot be specialized. Then in the tech tree, you can have techs unlock further trade range for towns/cities but also maybe more possible connections for towns.

So, again with the civ 7 UI and civilopedia train wreck, but some of that is already in the game. Befriending commercial independent powers has a per city-state suzerain trade route boost that basically eliminates trade route range on the default map size.

But we're totally on the same page about manual logistics. People complain about micromanagement, but managing city connections is the equivalent to managing only one city screen from a previous civ game. That's fine. The problem used to be managing dozens of them.

 

[Pfeffersack]

This mod actually does the job: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/enhanced-town-focus-info.31969/ (Still hard to understand the logic behind influence hubs, but it predicts correctly somehow)

Thanks...I found out that the City Hall mod by @beezany does provide the info as well (plus adding other useful things, like a one click-repair of disaster damage)

 

[beezany]

thanks for the shout-out @Pfeffersack! there are also a couple of map tooltip mods that provide information about connected settlements. my Map Trix mod shows a brief summary (number of connected cities and towns) when you hover over a city center. and TCS Improved Plot Tooltip by @thecrazyscot shows the entire list, if you prefer something more verbose.

i investigated this in depth to figure out why Hub Town bonuses were so hard to predict & sent the info to support. if you're interested in that specific aspect of town connections, you can find it in the civ bug tracker here (and upvote it, if you like):
Hub Town Focus Grants Inaccurate Influence With 5 or More Settlements Connected