Migrations, Evacuations, and Quarantines

[wakiki]

Well, thescaryworker, I haven't played majesty. I don't like the concept too much, but perhaps it works better than I would think. It would depend on how many methods you could use to get them to do what you want. In any case, the more ideas the better, no matter who agrees with them (I even mention ideas that I come up with that I don't like, in my threads ).

I really like the idea of using traderoutes as migration routes, Arturus. This adds a fair amount of depth and realism to this idea, and is extremely simple to understand.

It would probably be more practical to simply pillage roads surrounding the city, rather than surround it with military

As for harbors and airports, you gave me a new idea. I think that air and sea units should have a "Blockade" command. Sea units would have to be directly next to the city to issue it. When a naval unit was issued the blockade command, it would be as if it were fortified, except it would have no defensive bonus. Instead, it would prevent luxuries, strategic resources, and evacuation of citizens by sea. Note: you wouldn't have to fully surround a city with naval units to do this, just have one on blockade mode. Air units would be able to execute blockade missions (within some sort of operational range), preventing evacuation and transfer of resources by air. (The mobile SAM is a good idea too)

While I was typing the above paragraph, I thought of something else. The problem that I saw would be that if a city had roads, sea, and air routes, it would be too much trouble to fully blockade the city. Then I thought, the more migration routes a city had, the faster people could evacuate! So, if a city had roads and an airport, it could evacuate 2 citizens per turn. Perhaps railroads should add an evacuation bonus as well. So, if a city had Railroads, a Harbor, and an Airport, you could evacuate 4 people per turn. This would mean that even if an attacking player doesn't have any air units nearby, it would still be worth using a ship to blockade simply to reduce the rate of evacuation. Each individual blockade method would be useful even if you can't fully blockade a city.

This also makes airports more useful. Who on earth uses airports to transport resources on Civ3? I never have. Why would I leave a city roadless and rely on an airport? Using airports to evacuate would give them an awesome side effect. (in addition to building veteran air units)

Also, perhaps certain land units should be able to blockade a city. If the city had railroads, you would have to use two to fully blockade it (if you used one, it would reduce evacuation rate by 1). I'm not sure which land units should be able to do this. This could be a useful add-on for Guerillas, or something.

On a random note: I don't currently like the way you set up roads and railroads in Civ3. Seeing every square linked to all 8 adjacent squares looks pretty stupid to me

 

[schwanenfeldii]

I really like this idea, I would love to see it in civ IV. What I like most is what would happen during a war when you capture a bunch of enemy cities. Rather than having culture flipping, you'd see the captured cities decrease in population as their citizens flee to their old civilization (and surrounding civilizations). This creates the feeling of refugees without having to build any external mechanism for it.

I would completely drop any sort of flipping like the Texas scenario you mentioned though. I would rather say that if a city gets all the way to zero population, it should cease to exist, and the borders should change accordingly.

One question I have is should citizens still starve if they have the option of moving to another city? If you don't allow them to starve, you end up with an exploitable situation, where you can purposely starve citizens to get them to leave. If you do let them starve you end up with an annoying situation where people move to a city, and then starve, only to have more people move in to replace them. Such a city would really annoy me because it drains citizens from the cities which can support a larger population. Maybe you should allow citizens to starve, but also provide a way to prevent any migration into a city.

 

[wakiki]

Heh, the Texas thing actually had nothing to do with migration. The idea was, if an enemy province went into anarchy, and did not rejoin their civ, then it would be like it's own nation. If they revolted because they like you better than their former owners, you could annex them. I don't know why I mentioned it in this thread though

You bring up a good point about starvation. I think what would fix it would be if migration happened at slow rates. Like, 1 citizen would migrated every 4-6 turns. So, if a a city was starving, people would still die, but every five turns or so one would leave instead. I actually intended it to be this way from the start, but I don't think my point came across that way Only evacuations and deportations would be faster methods, natural migration would happen very slowly.

There would also be some exceptions to slow migration: if a city is maxed (size 12 before hospitals, for example) and its food storage box filled, it would instantly migrate a citizen out and get back to size 12. This would replace building workers and merging them into other cities (a method which adds micromanagement and also feels ridiculous).

As for the zero size city thing, I kind of like the idea, since it's just an empty city with a bunch of military units in it. I like the re-orienting of culture though. Perhaps it would just have zero culture, and if the enemy border swallowed it, well that's that. It would still exist, and your military could hold the city and any walls / other bonuses. But if the size zero city lies in your enemy's border, your citizens couldn't migrate to it yet, perhaps?

 

[mhIdA]

I really like the idea of migration and deportation, since it bring a more dynamic game. So in general I agree with it.
I support the idea of a city who cannot have a large population due haven't aquedut, hospital or when a city are in starvation. To prevent a city purposely be in starvation, but don't eliminate only after 4, 5 turns build automatically a migrate. Then is send it to other city or we could automate the process to find a city who hostage it.
The evacuation I think it really only works from industrial age, due that the civs are not modernize sufficientlly to do a thing like that before. Until that could be an automatic process like migration, but it happens when a city is under attack or close to that.