Improvements outside 3 tiles?

[bbbt]

I'm not sure being able to work the 4th ring would actually be that OP. You'd get some extra resources/luxuries to grab, but that's about it. I mean you'd have to have an insanely large city to work all those tiles, and it would be very hard to grow it fast enough too do before the end of the game. I mean, you need like a 35 person city now to work all the tiles with 3 rings, and that's even without any specialists. It's pretty rare that I even have more than one or two cities above 30 by the end of the game.

 

[CaptainPatch]

... you'd have to have an insanely large city to work all those tiles, and it would be very hard to grow it fast enough too do before the end of the game.

That would hardly ever be the case. Nearly every city has at least a few worthless tiles. Like several mountain tiles, with maybe a half-dozen desert tiles as well. If you could place something like a Iron mine or a lumber mill in a forest tile in the fourth ring, why would you bother to assign a citizen to work a worthless hex?

 

[bbbt]

That would hardly ever be the case. Nearly every city has at least a few worthless tiles. Like several mountain tiles, with maybe a half-dozen desert tiles as well. If you could place something like a Iron mine or a lumber mill in a forest tile in the fourth ring, why would you bother to assign a citizen to work a worthless hex?

True, but I don't think most cities even work all their useful tiles. An average 25 pop city with maybe 3-4 specialists (or more) is what, only working about 2/3rds it's available tiles? So unless you're really working the food and trade routes to get the city sizes up, you'll likely always have usefulish tiles you're not even working.

I'm not saying that a 4th ring wouldn't be useful, just that it's not terribly OP - you might get a slightly more food/production because you can work an extra deer/cow/luxury over a generic grassland but that's about it. The limiting factor is the rate of growth for the city - I've rarely had cities that maxed out there growth rate, or even that used all of their available useful tiles (as specialists tend to be more useful).

 

[CaptainPatch]

Hmm. A Fully expanded city actually has a 6-tile radius. (Build the Great Wall on a landlocked city that has no nearby neighbors and you'll eventually see what I mean.) I can see the rationale that the city only really works the 3-tile radius. What the 6-tile radius is showing is the entire "metro" area. Resources outside of three tiles is most likely going to the suburbs and satellite communities that factor into the overall metropolis. That is, the goods never make it to the central marketplace.

So, rather than working any >3-radius tile, perhaps some gold adjustment to reflect how some of the suburbs and satellite communities contribute to the overall local economy? And be able to boost that amount by having city workers improve tiles further than 3 away (which they can already do, but only by affecting the Luxuries tally or Strategic resource stockpile).