Mega Cities

[acluewithout]

Mega Cities

I'd like the ability late game to upgrade some Cities into “Mega Cities”. These would require significant investment to build and would be capped to one per continent and x total (based on map size). They would in turn significantly boost your economy and be required to run certain projects or build certain infrastructure.

Mega Cities would unlock via the Culture Tree. But there bonuses would unlock via the Science Tree. Because you’re limited by how many you can build, the Player and AI will have to compete to build them or, failing that, conquer them, creating real strategic incentives for having colonial cities and late game conquest.

Idea

• Mega Cities unlock at Nuclear Program(Civics Tree).
  
  
• You can upgrade a city to a Mega City provided it has: Population of at least 12, is a Capital City, Holy City or has a Government Plaza, has at least five Districts of any type (including two Neighbourhoods), and must be built within 6 tiles of at least two Sea Ports (can be owned by other Civs).
  
  
• To upgrade a Mega City you must first complete the project “Urban Investment”. Once that is complete, you then get the option to upgrade by spending gold. Upgrading your Capital would be slightly cheaper, and Democracy would have an exclusive Policy Card that would also reduce the cost further. There would also be great Engineers who could reduce the cost to upgrade.

• AI / players could slow down other Civs building Mega Cities via World Congress and Spy missions.
  
  
• There can only be a maximum of two Mega Cities per Continent (the second Mega City on a continent costs twice as much to upgrade). There is also a total global maximum number of Mega Cities based on map size. There would be an initial global cap based on map size, and then that cap would (maybe) increase by +1 in the Atomic, Information and Future Eras.
  
  
• Completing a Mega City would give you a once off Era Score bonus. You also have an additional +1 Diplomatic Victory and +10% Tourism for each Mega City you hold (regardless of whether you founded the City or not).

• Mega Cities would provide +1 trade route, would have additional housing and loyalty, gain all tiles up to its third ring, gain buffed Specialists and additional defence. Mega Cities can always buy new districts with gold or faith. Mega Cities would also gain bonus food and gold for all bonus resources within 6 tiles of the City.

• If a Mega City sends a trade route to another City, the trade route will apply additional religious pressure and will also increase loyalty pressure on the target City.

• Mega Cities would also buff cities within 6 tiles (e.g. additional amenities / loyalty, boost science / great people from universities and other tier three buildings etc.) – including Cities of foreign Civs!
  
  
• Mega Cities would have unique projects you could run that would unlock via the Tech Tree. These projects would include establishing certain “Industries” or "Corporations" which would permanently grant you additional strategic resources or new amenities provided you control that City. Certain high value Wonders could also only be built in a Mega City and certain key late game districts could only be built within 6 tiles of a District (e.g. Space Port). You could only build GDRs or Rock Bands in a Mega City.

• Mega Cities would have a high base power requirement, otherwise they would suffer significant unhappiness. They would also have a high Gold Maintenance cost. They would also be highly vulnerable to disloyalty in a Dark Age. Building and holding Mega Cities would therefore put your economy under significant stress.

• Mega Cities would maybe require late game tech / Civic and Production / Gold / Faith costs to be revised to ensure the additional benefits of Mega Cities are balanced. Bonuses for Mega Cities would also have to maybe balanced a bit, particularly based on what unique projects and or Wonders they might get.

Gameplay benefits

• Creates two different sorts of cities – Mega Cities and normal Cities – which would provide more variety on the map.
  
  
• Create more incentive for at least a few “tall cities”. Also, slight incentive to have more Coastal Cities as pre-requisites include being near Sea Ports.
  
  
• Create more incentive to have Colonial Cities (because there can only be one Mega City per Continent) and more incentive for late game conquest (because you’ll want to grab additional Mega Cities). Ideally, there would also be some mechanic for having vassal cities, so you'd have other ways to capture other player's Mega Cities beyond just blunt conquest.
  
  
• Makes late game Civics and Techs more important, because you need to unlock Mega Cities and run key late game projects.

• Creates a mechanic that allows for Corporations and economic victory.

 

[Sostratus]

Gonna tie in a couple ideas that have been floating around here for a while. I promise this meandering stream of consciousness will get to the OP.

Piece 1: City Specializations
Do you ever get irked that a campus in Cityville is the same as a campus in Townsberg? Do you wish you could really throw the city's lot in with a particular area?
Well, many people over the years have suggested some sort of way to specialize a city by selecting or declaring a specialty for it. Here's a loose cut at the idea: at size 10, a city can be given a specialization.
There would loosely one for each district (HS, campus, TS, CH, harbor, IZ, EC/WP, encampment, possibly some special cases.) You can only declare it once and it cannot be changed.
There's a few potential upsides.
Better specialists! This city gets extra yield from specialists in its focus, and +2 specialists of that type to boot!
The city also gets +100% district adj for that district. (+1/2 amenity for the EC/WP; Encampment gains some bonus like +5 ranged attack strength.)
A map effect. This might be something simple, like extra production from mines & quarries over resources for an industrial focused city, city defense HP for a encampment focus, etc. This is to help tie in the map with these choices.

A suite of policy cards would also be introduced that aid particular specialized cities. For example, the "Factory Towns" card may grant factories in Industrial specialized cities +3 production & Housing (local.)
I also think a specialization for "generic" or growth (aqueduct/neighborhood) wouldn't be a bad idea, as well as a special one for the government plaza.

At size 20 you can add another specialization (size 30, 40, ... maybe, depending on how strong you make them. If they were relatively minor then I would probably do 10,15,20,25 instead to give big cities lower marginal effort.) This is to encourage quality in your cities!
The idea is that now a big city literally has a better district than a tundra outpost, helping counter city spammers if and only if you place districts well. (or are big enough to support the specialists.)

Ideally this might cost you something too, so you don't necessarily want to do it willy nilly.

Piece 2: Megacity/Megalopolis
At size 20 a city could choose to pick the specialization Megacity.* The reason i use the term megalopolis is because I think a really cool effect which I have never thought of a great way to put into the game is this:
Start from the city center- Every district contiguous with that city center gets the bonus.
Example: Every contiguous district gets +2 gold, and also gains a flag as part of the megalopolis, which gives 0.5 (food?) per adjacent megalopolis district.
So you'd basically designate a city center and want to work out how to build a giant mass of urbanization spreading out from it. Wonders could be incorporated with a +tourism boost. The original city center gets +5 housing. Because of how the game counts districts this means you could spread through other city centers and actually go really crazy with it. The reason I include the +0.5 yield per adj megalopolis district is to incentivize players to build large clusters instead of thin snaky lines.
The reason i put food in for it is so you could offset the loss of food from terrain when you inevitably pave over everything. Gold would work too, depending on what the static piece is (+1 housing? +2 production?)

One may note the only district you can truly spam is a neighborhood. Why do you think I suggested including a generic growth specialization affecting them?
*Subject to restrictions similar to the OP for balance.

This way you sort of end up with an emergent sprawl where specialization map effects sort of push your megalopolis away from certain areas and towards other.

~~~~~
Bonus:
I would also have specializations be a requisite for National Wonders
Put these bad boys back into the game. Again, one for each district. Mostly focused on providing +% modifiers and small area regional effects to really help boost tall ish empires. Whether they are essentially a t4 building, or their own tile, I'm not sure. Reqs would be something like "Must have this city specialized in X area. Must have X district in the lesser of N cities, or all cities." (N being based on map size.) So small empires can still get them up faster but big empires wouldn't be totally locked out.
As an example:
Ironworks. +20% production in this city. +6 production to all cities within 6 tiles.
Ruhr valley is already taken, which is like the ideal National Wonder. So this one is more like a super factory.

The idea here is that they have some map interaction so you want to plan them out a little. The CH wonder would be a trade route bonus. Harbor would be naval/maritime. In the future era you could have a special Arcology wonder for growth specialized cities.

 

[acluewithout]

@Sostratus You did not disappoint.

I really like the idea of the Mega City spilling out as you run districts from the city center.

If you want to specialise cities, I think another way to do it would be to rework governors (particularly as they are already sort of a mechanism for specialising cities).

• Basically, keep the same basic mechanic (you assign governors) but make the Governors "Great Families" (e.g Rockerfellas).
• Great Families would have similar bonuses to what they have now, but you could select them more than once and each "level" (maybe renamed "prestige" instead of titles) and would add housing.
• The time it takes to move a family to a new City would also increase each era, so you could only really move them around early game.
• (I'd also get rid of Victor and Amani, and make there sort of a Governor and Diplomat unit that you also buy via Prestige instead of buying and promoting Great Families. I'd also let the Diplomat be assigned to other Civs if you want. Both units would now work more like Spies, ie assign to a City, random promotions.)
• You'd also have Policy Cards that buff Specialists in Cities that have a Great Family.
• Later in the game, Great Families would convert into Great Companies, but the change would be largely cosmetic (although maybe some Policy Cards tied to the change).

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Some very, very interesting ideas here, Congratulations to you both!

My only 'quibble' is that the Late Game has already been 'buffed' in GS and it was and is largely a waste of resources IMHO until they get the rest of the game reworked so that there is a reason to play that far - when people brag about getting Domination or Cultural Victories by Turn 250 - 300, what's the point of new units, mechanisms, etc. that don't kick in until later?

That aside, I'd like to add a few suggestions to the concept.
1. The explosive growth of Megacities (definition: Metro area of 10,000,000 or more according to the OED ) is, I think, related to the ability to pour resources into them from much greater distances than before, so I'd consider making the radius of workable tiles for a Megalopolis/Megacity be greater than for a regular city. Perhaps 4 from the City Center, or even the currently normal 3, but measured from the nearest District instead of the City Center. In addition, the requirement to be within 6 tiles of a Seacoast city I would change slightly: City Center of the Megacity must be within 8 tiles of 2 Cities with Harbors and Seaports AND connected to the Megacity by Railroads/Modern Roads. On the other hand, the Influence of the Districts/Buildings/Wonders in a Megacity should extend 8 tiles (twice the normal 'range' for a regular city).
2. Another possibility is to extend the Influence of the Megacity according to Infrastructure:
Seaport Building in the Megacity extends and increases Cultural/Religious Influence to any city with a Trade Route to that Seaport/Harbor
Airport Building in the Megacity extends/increases Religious/Cultural Influence to any other city with an Aerodrome District.
Having either or both of those Building/District combinations also increases Population Growth in the Megacity, because most of that growth is going to come from people migrating to the Urban Area, not birthrate.
3. Among the 'specialized' Infrastructure that could be associated with a Megacity (perhaps at different levels as @Sostratus suggested: Pop 10, 20, 30 +):
Arcology - (District) an advanced Neighborhood, providing extra population growth, Housing, Culture, Loyalty.
Greenbelt/Urban Ecology (Policy Card or Project) providing Amenity, Food.
Gentrification (Project or multi-District 'Building') Adds Housing to a specified District that normally doesn't provide it, like Campus, City Center, Commercial Hub, Encampment, Entertainment Complex, Holy Site, etc. Also provides Amenity bonus for each 'Gentrified' District. - Realistically, this could also be applied to regular Cities in the Atomic/Information Eras.
4. Another point is that Megacities draw resources and exert Influence regardless of political boundaries, so they should affect and get Resources/Influences from City States and 'foreign' Civ Cities as well as from their own Civ. Think of a Megacity, once established, as a Semi-Black Hole that starts dragging Resources to it, and also emanates Influences in all directions.
This, in turn, would reinforce the competition to get one established to reap the benefits in the last 2 - 3 Eras of the game before your Neighbor/Opponent beats you to it and starts Influencing your own cities!.

Elsewhere I've posted about making City Radius a very different mechanism once Railroads on land and Steamships on seas are developed, because, IRL, cities could draw Resources from virtually any distance instead of being limited to the local environment. Establish that mechanism in the game, and it dovetails nicely with the Megacity: Trade Routes from across the globe will generate more Gold, Production, Food to the Megacity and more Influence, Gold and Production from it.

Last point to consider. While the first Megacity by modern definition was in the Modern Era (London, New York City metropolitan areas), as far back as the early Classical Eras there were individual cities that had some of the same types of Influence: Babylon around 600 BCE may have been close to 1,000,000 population, and Rome in the early Imperial years certainly reached or exceeded 1,000,000 population when the average city was under 100,000.
In those cases, many of the Megacity Mechanisms would apply: Have to reach, say, 10 or 12 Population, have to have Harbor access, have to be Holy Cities/Capitals (Better yet, have to be Both a Holy City and a Capital) number of them per continent should be limited to avoid Over Tall early development. On the other hand, cities like Rome or Babylon extended their Influence in Cultural and other affairs far beyond that of 'ordinary' cities.
Work up an "Early Megacity" set of mechanics, and you add some real city development competition to the early game, encourage Tall Play which is now very much Discouraged by the game, and thus add more variety to the game for 6 - 7 Eras instead of just the last 2 - 3.

 

[Sostratus]

My theory about the gameplay of Civ6 is that the change to having districts and wonders on the map was an incredibly smart one, because it leads to the kind of planning and executing that make civ games addicting.
But this phase of the game stops roughly in the middle ages, renaissance, depending on when you settle your "sphere." So my idea was that there should be more of the early game building phenomenon, in the later parts of the game.

This definitely means things like railroads, canals, neighborhoods, factories, and power, should be very prominent. In my dream industrialization, a civ would gain the abilities to undergo a radical transformation of how it looks and the source of its yields. So where the early game has you building improvements on empty land, now you'd be building improvements over already improved land. And I think it should be done in a way that requires population concentration (not necessarily all in one city, but a lot of pops living in one area, as opposed to a blanket of 4 pop outposts.)
On the other hand, we want things to be relatively simple mechanically so players don't have to consult the rulebooks every turn. Hence the concept of a megalopolis forming - it's simple (uses existing district rules) and requires population concentration (district capacity) but doesn't necessarily force you to have wide spaced, large cities - since the megacity effect could flow through other city centers. It's sort of up to the player how they want to work that.

But I don't see why the joy of building infrastructure over otherwise virgin terrain couldn't be extended to building infrastructure over infrastructure.

 

[acluewithout]

@Sostratus Spot on.

@Boris Gudenuff I agree the game would need to slow down a bit to make Mega Cities worthwhile. Buy hey. Can't fix everything in one thread.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

@Sostratus Spot on.

@Boris Gudenuff I agree the game would need to slow down a bit to make Mega Cities worthwhile. Buy hey. Can't fix everything in one thread.

If you make Mega Cities interesting enough, gamers will slow down just to get a chance to play with them (I can't think of another reason why picts of GDRs in games were posted on this Forum so fast) - like disabling all Victory Types except Science Victory and then never building a Library or Campus anywhere!

On the other hand, make it harder to conquer cities in the early and mid-game, and introduce some kind of Counter Culture (Ideology, Nationalism, Fundamentalist Religion?) to slow down the Cultural Blitzkrieg, and the game should naturally slow down enough to make the Modern/Atomic/Information Eras actually get played in most games. . .

But, as you say, that's a whole other set of Threads!

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

My theory about the gameplay of Civ6 is that the change to having districts and wonders on the map was an incredibly smart one, because it leads to the kind of planning and executing that make civ games addicting.
But this phase of the game stops roughly in the middle ages, renaissance, depending on when you settle your "sphere." So my idea was that there should be more of the early game building phenomenon, in the later parts of the game.

This definitely means things like railroads, canals, neighborhoods, factories, and power, should be very prominent. In my dream industrialization, a civ would gain the abilities to undergo a radical transformation of how it looks and the source of its yields. So where the early game has you building improvements on empty land, now you'd be building improvements over already improved land. And I think it should be done in a way that requires population concentration (not necessarily all in one city, but a lot of pops living in one area, as opposed to a blanket of 4 pop outposts.)
On the other hand, we want things to be relatively simple mechanically so players don't have to consult the rulebooks every turn. Hence the concept of a megalopolis forming - it's simple (uses existing district rules) and requires population concentration (district capacity) but doesn't necessarily force you to have wide spaced, large cities - since the megacity effect could flow through other city centers. It's sort of up to the player how they want to work that.

But I don't see why the joy of building infrastructure over otherwise virgin terrain couldn't be extended to building infrastructure over infrastructure.

The Infrastructure, in the form of Districts, Buildings and Improvements, of the Industrial Era and later is and should be in the game a whole different scale of effort than before. Yes, you can concentrate masses of manpower and effort to build Wonders both World and National in the Ancient and Classical Eras, but in the Industrial Era, countries that had 'industrialized' with Factories and Railroads and steam power applied the equivalent energy and resources Everywhere. The example I've used before is equipping a 5000 man Roman Legion (early Imperial) took about 120 tons of wrought iron/low quality steel for armor and weapons. Building one kilometer of single track railroad - just for the track - took 120 tons of steel. So building even a short railroad (less than 100 kilometers) took more "heavy metal" fabrication than equipping the entire Imperial Roman Army, and that's not counting a couple thousand more tons of steel for the locomotives, cars, fueling and station structures, bridges, etc. to make the railroad run.

Let alone building Industrial Structures like Steel Mills and other factories that dwarfed anything built anywhere in the world before 1800 CE.

The game needs some serious reconsideration of the "Industrial Revolution" and its effect on what the gamer has to do to build the Infrastructure he will need to survive from that point in the game.

And you are absolutely Right in that the entire Look of the game should also change: not just City Centers changing their graphic, but the Districts, the Buildings in them, and, once coal-burning Power Plants become 'normal' the very colors of the countryside change around the cities. If they want to include "Environmental Effects" in the game since GS, then a few London-type coal fogs over the cities and a layer of dark grey grime over all the Buildings would give the gamer and AI something to "scrub clean" in the Modern and Atomic Eras - or see a real Population Crisis in the Information Era as cities become killers - look at the statistics of death rates in places like Shanghai and Delhi (both Mega Cities, by the way) for Worst case examples.

 

[acluewithout]

Just on this note.

I know it's not actually a big deal, but I really wish cities would sprawl more visually. The late game map looks really underwhelming and busy, because nothing really spills outside of the hex borders and across the map.

I was hoping the Civ V visual mod would do that. But, as cool as that mod is, it doesn't do change that feature at all which is a bit sad.

 

[Sostratus]

Let alone building Industrial Structures like Steel Mills and other factories that dwarfed anything built anywhere in the world before 1800 CE.

I deleted it from my previous post but one of my ideas around the ideal industrialization process in civ6 is that to tie together the following:
-competition for resources
-need for economic reorganization (the sources of your economic power need to shift)
-need smooth gameplay: as realistic as it would be, we cannot have riflemen literally massacring all earlier units.
-game's cost scale is very heavy at the end

I think that resource consuming infrastructure could be added. Obviously, I err extremely heavily on the side of simplicity. But my gut says that it would be better from a gameplay perspective to have luxury & strategic (things you can trade for!) be consumed and provide yields in return. The two obsolete strategics - iron and niter- could easily be tier2 IZ buildings that just consume one unit and grant you a ton of production (a steel mill and a chemical plant-perhaps that one can give food and prod a la fertilizer.) And then more when powered. So civs with lots of IZs for industry could consume; smaller civs blessed with strat resources but few IZ sites/power budget could sell these off to others for $$$.
Some limited ability to convert luxury resources into raw yields (food, prod, gold, amenities) that simulate the concept of consumer goods. (For example, split the luxes into like, 5 groups; you choose one group, and now select buildings in your empire- might be the factory, the workshop, the lighthouse, the market, depends- use up those resources to provide benefits.) Keeping it very simple, but forcing players to either try to import/control resources or sell them for big dollars. This is essentially condensed corporations. Because you only want a subset of them, you form natural trading partners and rivals.
The large yields from this would be how you actually afford the modern units and wonders. So essentially, the industrialized civ can produce modern units as fast as a preindustrial civ produces obsolete units, but only if they industrialize. The penalty to living in maori ecoparadise is the big bite out of your economic potential.
The other piece is that all this modern stuff is really expensive to maintain; hence the large new gold sources are sunk into running things.

~~~~

I agree the game would need to slow down a bit to make Mega Cities worthwhile.

If you make Mega Cities interesting enough, gamers will slow down just to get a chance to play with them

Any game that includes an Arcology of some kind, whether it be sim city or civ4 BTS NextWar or stellaris, people go absolutely bananas for them. It's crazy. Besides, what better perk to lock into a future civic, and let the megacity truly be Mega?
Even Civ BE had the Human hive wonder, which is some wacky totalitarian arcology. Just take something like this:

Spoiler :

Which is handy because it can be a land or sea model (one can never forget about our coastal cities) - and pack a bunch of city center skyscrapers onto it for the land model, and you're good to go.

 

[acluewithout]

Side note: God. I'd love Arcologies.

My perfect version of Civ would be the game ending at the near future, sort of just short of where the Expanse starts.

I'd be happy with either a Gibson / Stephenson Cyberpunk feel (complete with hilarious anachronisms) or more anime / mecha feel (which is probably more where Civ is given the GDR).

More side note: I think Ideologies are the way forward for tying together late game industrial and economic gameplay.

You see, Capitalism, Communism etc are really more about how you run your economy than how you run your government. I think Ideologies would be a great hook for determining what bonuses Tier 3 buildings give and or what Facotories do, or how resources and luxuries are distributed in your cities. I think "corporations" would work much better tied to Ideologies and specific industry rather than being their own thing too.

I don't want resources, power and luxuries to get too complicated, but that said I think the idea of luxuries working more like resources and being consumed. I also think resources and power should be a little more required by your empire, rather than being completely optional like they are now.

 

[Sostratus]

I think "corporations" would work much better tied to Ideologies and specific industry rather than being their own thing too.

I don't want resources, power and luxuries to get too complicated, but that said I think the idea of luxuries working more like resources and being consumed.

As appealing as having a broad "manufactured resources" system can be, I ultimately think turning them back into yield (which is the point of having resources to begin with) is a cleaner solution. And I like how it gives the effect of corporations without the complexity of founding and spreading them etc. My idea behind having things split up into a handful sectors was so that up at the top bar, next to uranium, you could put a resource counter that's just the available amount of whatever resources are in the chosen sector. IE, they are consumed as a category, like this building needs 1 of {cocoa, coffee, tea, spices, salt} and not this building needs 1 coffee. (There are 34 luxes, 28 if you exclude zanzibar + great merchant, and 25 if you exclude the sea resources. That could divvy up nicely into 5-6 categories.)

I remember reading all your posts on how colonization etc needs more impetus behind it, which is where I had the idea of consuming luxes as a means to spur trade, with the sectors preventing anyone from wanting to hoard everything they have. Plus it's a mechanic that would work well with the change over to fuel using units, and would really signal "this is industrialization" since suddenly you're looking for access to resources more than building new farms and mines.

 

[acluewithout]

This sounds very cool (assuming I'm understanding what you're saying right).

I like the idea you'd have all these disparate luxes at the start, and then they'd sort of get grouped in the mid / late game, e.g. textiles like dye and cotton, and you'd just consume these sectors rather than specific luxes.

 

[The googles do nothing]

Work up an "Early Megacity" set of mechanics, and you add some real city development competition to the early game, encourage Tall Play which is now very much Discouraged by the game, and thus add more variety to the game for 6 - 7 Eras instead of just the last 2 - 3.

You could only build GDRs or Rock Bands in a Mega City.

Early megacities would experience a 'golden age' with benefits for a number of turns. Then in the information/future age all previous megabytes would experience a revival and be able to produce those game-ending units.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

As appealing as having a broad "manufactured resources" system can be, I ultimately think turning them back into yield (which is the point of having resources to begin with) is a cleaner solution. And I like how it gives the effect of corporations without the complexity of founding and spreading them etc. My idea behind having things split up into a handful sectors was so that up at the top bar, next to uranium, you could put a resource counter that's just the available amount of whatever resources are in the chosen sector. IE, they are consumed as a category, like this building needs 1 of {cocoa, coffee, tea, spices, salt} and not this building needs 1 coffee. (There are 34 luxes, 28 if you exclude zanzibar + great merchant, and 25 if you exclude the sea resources. That could divvy up nicely into 5-6 categories.)

I remember reading all your posts on how colonization etc needs more impetus behind it, which is where I had the idea of consuming luxes as a means to spur trade, with the sectors preventing anyone from wanting to hoard everything they have. Plus it's a mechanic that would work well with the change over to fuel using units, and would really signal "this is industrialization" since suddenly you're looking for access to resources more than building new farms and mines.

I posted interminably on setting up a new Resource system complete with manufactured resources, raw materials, renewable and replaceable resources, Corporations, and so on and on. I still wouldn't mind seeing a lot of that, but a lot of it is also a base for simplifying it into a system of Yields versus Resources as you describe.

First, the "Yields" of importance in the game:
Production
Culture
Science
Gold
Faith
Favor/Diplomatic Points
Loyalty
Amenity/Happiness

Now, for some of these the relationship between Resources and Results is pretty direct: Gold, Production, Loyalty and Amenity/Luxuries can all come directly from utilizing 'raw materials' and processing them in various ways. Science is a little less direct, since it is pushed more by the need for replacements for unavailable resources or the search for a use for materials on hand but under-utilized rather than enhanced directly: having developed refining and alcohol does not mean you are going directly to development of liquid fueled rockets and head for orbit - not for several centuries, anyway.
Faith, I suppose, could be 'boosted' by having Incense, Gold or Sliver for services and votive objects, but religious objects can be made out of almost anything (they were the earliest 'pottery' or clay objects found so far), and you can develop perfectly good services involving Open Heart Surgery Without Anaesthetic that don't require any resources except (temporarily) living captives.
Favor, illogically, has very little direct relationship with Resources. Yes, logically if you are trading needed resources to someone they should be favorably disposed, but that's not the historical record: on 21 June 1941 the Soviet Union was supplying, almost for free, Nazi Germany with a large percentage of Germany's food resources and raw materials, but on 22 June 1941 Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union anyway. China got large numbers of excellent cavalry horses from the Northern Barbarians, but that didn't give the Chinese court or people any warm and fuzzy feelings towards the Barbarians. Ideology, Religion, and pure prejudice seem to override Logic in almost every case.

Another point: the current game mechanic of rigidly defining all resources by type has got to go. A raw material can be used for numerous different purposes, with different yields in both reality and the game, and to turn the individual Resources into Yields later in the game isn't going to work well if Iron is always and forever a Strategic Resource for units and never a Raw Material for Production-Enhancing Steel railroad rails, structural girders, and rebar for bridges. The application of resources should be based on Technology, and potentially almost every Resource should change its application during the game.

Converting Resources into Yields will also require 'reworking' many of the Buildings in the game to become Processors. Specifically related to the Industrial revolution would be a massive enhancing of Factories, since they were the primary 'Engine' for converting Iron, Coal, Cotton, Wool, Silk and other resources into Textiles, Steam Engines, railroads, skyscrapers, and personal automobiles. Possibly, you should at some point be required to Specify the Yield output of an individual Factory: some producing Production, some Culture (radios, music players, etc), Amenities (home appliances, personal automobiles, etc) and some, possibly, very specific Units. Converting Factories from 'peacetime' (Culture, Amenity) to Wartime Yields (Units, Production) should also be a major Decision Point in the game - and will also affect Loyalty: everybody in WWII was worried about the effects lack of 'Amenities' (food rationing, fuel rationing, no consumer goods) would have on their population - it would be nice if the gamer had to deal with some of that, too.

Specific Requirements for Units I bring up because there are a couple of Units in the late game that require massive industrial Infrastructure to build, and IRL were only designed and built by a tiny fraction of the countries in the world.
Two cases in point: Battleships, which up until 1920 (when coal-burning battleships became Obsolete) Battleships had only been built by 7 nations: Britain, USA, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, and Russia,. Japan was building their first battleships, but they were buying the engines, main guns and a lot of the internal machinery from Britain or the USA. The other case is Tanks. In 1940, the 20 - 35 ton medium tank had only been designed and built in any quantity by Britain, Germany, USA, France, and the Soviet Union. 5 nations out of 50+ in the world. Italy, Japan, Sweden, Czechoslovakia and Hungary managed to design and build light tanks, but never built anything larger until (and then only some of them) after WWII.
I suggest that to build a Battleship you need a Shipyard in a Harbor next to an Industrial Zone with a Factory: in other words, you have to invest in some serious infrastructure. On the other hand, the same infrastructure gives you extra Gold, Production, Culture, and possibly Amenity from sea Trade Routes, because you can also build Luxury Liners and Ultra-Large Bulk/Container Ships using the same industry that builds Battleships.
Aircraft Carriers, by the way, are even Worse: even today, only USA, Japan, and Britain have ever built more than 2 aircraft carriers in the entire world.

The massive importance of the automobile and the factories/industrial infrastructure required for it may be another case for Specialized Infrastructure. The automobile provides Amenity, Production, potentially Loyalty (standard of living - the personal automobile is almost a Symbol of same) Gold, but also provided the 'framework' factories for the mass production of tanks and the techniques for mass production of aircraft.

All of which provides, I think, a potential set of mechanisms for requiring a lot of thought, planning, and decision-making to get your Civ through the Industrial Era and out the other side with a chance of competing in the game. The historical examples of the Ottoman Empire, China, Spain, Austria, and Italy show what happens to former 'Great Powers' who don't successfully transit the Industrial Era/Revolution in time. Having that kind of possibility in the game would certainly keep the decisions by the gamer relevant into the last 3 -4 Eras of the game!

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Early megacities would experience a 'golden age' with benefits for a number of turns. Then in the information/future age all previous megabytes would experience a revival and be able to produce those game-ending units.

Interesting. Use the 'Golden Age' - type Bonuses for a single city. Making such bonuses very transient and almost impossible to maintain for more than one Era would also be appropriate, since no Pre-Industrial Era Megacity managed that: political changes (war!), plagues and other Disasters, technological changes (Trade Route nodes changing, Raw Material requirements changing) and just plain Random Events (new religions) all could contribute to drop in population/loss of Megacity status. Rome got hit by all of them, plus destruction of its aqueducts, and went from 1,000,000 or more to 20,000 or less inhabitants!).
This also might allow us to have a genuine 'non-Linear' City development. Gamers do not like the idea of their lovingly-crafted city suddenly losing population unless there is an obvious in-game reason: it gets captured/fought over, you placed it next to an active volcano, etc. However, if Population Loss is only part of losing Mega-City status, and so only applies to one at most of your cities, I think it would be easier to take by the Gaming Community at large.

 

[Sostratus]

Converting Resources into Yields will also require 'reworking' many of the Buildings in the game to become Processors.

No one really wants to have like, a dozen new buildings that all function to just be a flavorful converter of resources into yields. I agree that ideally already existing buildings would be most useful for this (hence sticking to IZ, harbor, CH buildings as potential options, maybe more than one, per category of lux resources.) Because I do think it should spur you to have the needed infrastructure - and not just spam Campus/TS - but I also felt that lux consumption should be something you can almost always, assuming you developed your cities, have extra capacity for. However, I also recognize that one of the big barriers to "Heavy Industry" historically is lots of available land. Monaco is not and will never be the steel capital of the world. So converting old strategics into yields, I thought could have their own special pair of IZ buildings - that way, large empires (or those focused on IZs, at least) would be the consumers, and others would be the suppliers (for a price.) I would definitely stick horses into one of the lux categories (ideally with ivory and some other stuff) so as not to offend any sensibilities with the Glue Factory

But for luxes, again, it might be something where the factory or seaport or stock exhcange or some Industrial+later structure function as being able to consume 1 unit from your chosen category. One could also add a neighborhood district building too. But something to spur players to have to build up cities -> consume resources -> get more resources -> build up cities more -> consume more -> ad infinitum. If you count up the number of instances of lux resource son a map its a huge number - so even getting access to a subset of that means you'll need a significant number of developed cities to reap all the rewards. I'm assuming that at this stage the AI could be programmed to value their desired input a lot and be willing to trade you your desired input for it. Or a ton of gold.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

No one really wants to have like, a dozen new buildings that all function to just be a flavorful converter of resources into yields. I agree that ideally already existing buildings would be most useful for this (hence sticking to IZ, harbor, CH buildings as potential options, maybe more than one, per category of lux resources.) Because I do think it should spur you to have the needed infrastructure - and not just spam Campus/TS - but I also felt that lux consumption should be something you can almost always, assuming you developed your cities, have extra capacity for. However, I also recognize that one of the big barriers to "Heavy Industry" historically is lots of available land. Monaco is not and will never be the steel capital of the world. So converting old strategics into yields, I thought could have their own special pair of IZ buildings - that way, large empires (or those focused on IZs, at least) would be the consumers, and others would be the suppliers (for a price.) I would definitely stick horses into one of the lux categories (ideally with ivory and some other stuff) so as not to offend any sensibilities with the Glue Factory

Actually, Horses are a good example of a Resource with multiple functions. Right now, they are strictly Strategic: can't build cavalry/mounted units without them (Llamas and donkeys are too small, elephants too big, mules too smart, onagers and zebras are Untamable). But they are also among the first draft animals for hauling goods (right around the start of the game in 4000 BCE, in fact), so they have a Production value, they were used to haul plows, so a Food Production value, their carcasses provide leather, bone and sinew for composite bows, shields and other military equipment even if you aren't riding them, and of course they provide Amenity as race horses and even, given the price paid for some thoroughbreds, a potential Trade/Gold value.
Even leaving aside the glue value, which is more of an Equine Motivator than anything else, they are multi-functional Resource - as are just about all the Resources in the game.

But for luxes, again, it might be something where the factory or seaport or stock exhcange or some Industrial+later structure function as being able to consume 1 unit from your chosen category. One could also add a neighborhood district building too. But something to spur players to have to build up cities -> consume resources -> get more resources -> build up cities more -> consume more -> ad infinitum. If you count up the number of instances of lux resource son a map its a huge number - so even getting access to a subset of that means you'll need a significant number of developed cities to reap all the rewards. I'm assuming that at this stage the AI could be programmed to value their desired input a lot and be willing to trade you your desired input for it. Or a ton of gold.

Just about all the things that provide modern (post-Industrial) 'Amenities' are manufactured or in some way run through a Production Process, and not 'natural' - direct from the raw material, or they are being Banned because of changes in the generally-accepted Civics of the Atomic/Information Eras.
That points to a radical reformation of the Amenity-Producing mechanic in the Industrial Era, or from the end of the Industrial Era, and later in the game: at various points in the Civic Tree, Ivory, Fur and Whales are going to be Unacceptable. 'Raw' Dyes, Cotton, Silk will have a tiny fraction of the value in Amenity or Gold or as a Trade Good that dyed cloth, manufactured clothing, printed/patterned wallpaper and other Products have. Grain may be a staple food item, but its Gold/Trade value goes up by orders of magnitude if you run it through a Distillery first.

The trick, as you say, is to avoid burying the Districts and the map under new Buildings each with a single purpose. That's why my own thinking right now is leaning towards being able to Specialize some Buildings for specific Products without adding a new building to the District, which in the late game will all too often require building a new District on an already jammed Map.

Plus, if most of the 'Specializable" Buldings are 3rd Tier, that gives an immediate and pressing need for gamers to build 3rd Tier Buildings and really Develop their Districts, something the game has not provided so far.

So, for a few examples:
1. In the Industrial Era (at Tech: Steam Power, since Tech: Steel is completely misplaced in the Modern Era - somebody tell Firaxis that Bessemer and Open Hearth mass steel making techniques were invented around the time of the US Civil War, not the end of the century) you can designate a Factory as a Steelworks, after which it uses Iron and Coal to produce masses of Production which are applicable all or in part to any city connected to that Factory by Sea or Railroad.
2. In the Modern Era (Tech: Replaceable Parts, for the Mech Agriculture tie-in) you can designate a Granary which is next to a Commercial Hub as a Food Processing Plant (and if you're playing as the USA, rename the city Battle Creek) and it can use Wheat, or Rice to produce Packaged Food - if it also has access to Spices, Cocoa, Citrus, Coffee, Cloves, and/or Cinnamon the value of the Foods goes up, and it's additive: have access to all of them and the Gold value of the food is Massive. The packaging also increases th amount of food actually getting to people, so both Amount of Food and value (Gold) as a Trade Good should go up dramatically.
3. In the Modern Era (also at Replaceable Parts) you can designate a Factory as an Automobile Plant. Using Steel (yeah, you'll need a Steel Plant or imported Steel) and Oil it produces Amenity (personal automobiles), Production (trucking), and Gold, and increases the Tourism value of everything (private tourist travel: National Parks should see a massive increase in 'production') and, when needed, the Amenity, Tourism and Gold production drop to near-Zero, but it can produce Tanks or Modern Armor at a big discount. Later, Aluminum resources can also be used by this plant, increasing all the values. This also increases the 'Production' of Stadiums since they can now host Motocross events and earlier, Arenas get a bonus because they can host auto races.

Because they are relatively static graphic elements, there's no reason Specialized Factories, Granaries, and other buildings could see a change in graphics so they are instantly identifiable on the map.