More model musings for resources, production, and growth

[Synergy67]

MORE MODEL MUSINGS FOR RESOURCES, PRODUCTION, AND GROWTH

Does anyone else agree that the simplistic extensive mining of grasslands, plains, deserts, hills, and mountains needs to be done away with? I find it both conceptually and visually annoying. Surely there is a better way to generate and to represent production for cities. Or how about the boring way that the only other thing you can do with flatlands is to irrigate them?

I am having ongoing brainstorms about radically altering the way of generating shields and food for cities. Bear with me...the results are lengthy and detailed, though not too convoluted. I think a system incorporating ideas like I’ve assembled here would work beautifully and still not actually be that complicated in gameplay, but much more flexible, varied, fun, strategic, and logical. I am going to post this in several parts as necessary, breaking it into sections.

RESOURCES IN GENERAL:

•*Resources would be much more plentiful and varied (as they are in the real world). They would appear in the appropriate terrain and climate-appropriate regions of the world. They would often be concentrated into various regional veins and areas, rather than randomly polka-dotted across the whole map to try to give some of everything to everyone.

• All resources are useful for local city production and commerce with appropriate variations in what they specifically generate. Some resources can even generate science, as we shall see.

• Resources found in hills or mountains could include various kinds of minerals, stone, and marble, a diversity of metals, and various precious stones. Many have fairly similar production value, but some like coal, aluminum, uranium, and iron have high production (shield) value. Some metals have extra commercial value along with industrial value: gold (the most), silver, and copper...maybe platinum too? These would generate more gold than other metals.

• New resources pop up over time (much more diversely and frequently, and change the dynamics and production of your cities continually. New sources of known resources continue to reveal themselves all the time as well. Some kinds of resources do tap out in time and probably will sooner or later the longer used. The same resource could be rediscovered in the same tile eventually, considering that one tile side is supposedly thirtysomething miles long.

• Some resources continue to be needed throughout your nation to build certain units or improvements and could be traded to other nations if you have enough to spare. Such resources are now quantified however. Each source of iron enables you to begin building X number of swordsmen on any one turn, for instance. If you want to increase the number of cities building swordsmen, you will have to secure additional sources of iron. Resources will not be an all-or-nothing proposition any more, but some are more limited and regional, so will still require trading to acquire.

• Because most resources are much more numerous, you are likely to have a number of iron sources in your hills and mountains upon the discovery of iron in your empire. But you have to get cities and workers to them as usual to put it to work for you. Some regions will be poor in iron, but rich in gold or horses or whatever. Trading will result, as usual. It will be quantified instead of all or nothing now however. It will be automatic within your nation according to its needs and to simulate internal commerce.

• Luxuries (which increase happiness and trade possibilties) also generate appropriate levels of production and commerce locally.

 

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HOW RESOURCES GENERATE SHIELDS

• Resources generate production, in that they yield some combination of base materials to build other things from, useable tools, weapons, products, or luxuries. They also create jobs to extract and process them. All this production resulting is represented by shields. Most shields under this model are now tied to resources rather than basic terrain types by themselves. Note that forests are considered a resource (timber) upon terrain (plains or grassland).

•*No hill or mountain tile would generate shields for a city without a visible resource being present, and these would be relatively dispersed, especially in early ages when few resources or known or able to be processed. Most hills or mountains therefore, at any one time would not be minable and productive, just as you do not see most hills or mountains being mined today. Maybe one to three near a city in early times would show resources. These increase with new techs, time, and city size.

• The citizens which represent your city size do not work one tile each any longer. Rather, any tile that is accessible to the “reach” of the city (within its border of influence) is automatically populated and “worked”, starting at the lowest density. This is not the ridiculous advantage it at first sounds. Keep reading.

•*Early cities only have one radius of squares to work, a 3x3 grid of 9 tiles in Civ IV. You begin at the lowest level of production. Grasslands and plains generate one shield each as a default (because of the farming-related work and needed supplies that farming them creates locally), along with the lowest level of food. The scale of shields and food and number of shields needed to build things has to be increased for this model from what we are used to. The fact that your city radius is one square out in all directions says that these lands are occupied by various citizens around the town who all contribute something to that region and city. They are very sparsely populated at first, so each square has the lowest production level possible for a size one population.

•*Building a road to a tile generating shields doubles its shield production. A road makes it easier to get more raw materials or food or tools to and from the city, and faster, facilitating both commerce (doubles gold from gold-generating, but not all tiles) and industry. As you will see, roads become much more important, and worth protecting if you want to keep production and commerce up. Losing a road to an iron mine (or worse, to a string of them) can cause the production and income of a large city to plummet. It is not necessary to road non-productive tiles any longer, and railroads should only be used to contstruct fast travel routes between cities, not to increase food or shields any further.

• In earliest times, mining is limited in ability. Building a mine doubles shields generated by a minable resource. Remember, mines can only be built on resources found in hills or mountains, and possibly on something like saltpeter in the desert. Later on, as technology improves, mining can be upgraded to yield more shields. A worker can upgrade a mine in fewer turns than building a new mine. Alternately, the new advance simply increases mining production automatically. This would happen at least two to three times over the ages. The next increase in mining technlogy would increase the total shields the mine itself generates to four times, and the third six times the base rate (which is one, two with a road).

• Forests are a resource which generates the familiar two shields initially, four with roads. In early eras, forests are by far the most commonly used source of production as a result. In the early years of forests generating most available shields, many cities will have similar productive output ability. A city surrounded by forest is actually the most productive early city, but it will be limited in ultimate growth capacity. Hills (at least in certain climates) can be forested in this model, so forested hills (which would be quite common) can also generate shields. Later, when resources are found on such hills, the hill can be mined after chopping the forest (which does not yield a shield bonus in itself).

• On the coast, accessibility to food and resources in water would depend on water depth and your current seafaring techonology to reach it, as well as your current sea-related technologies (fishing/whaling/fishery and other related technologies might be good to add to the tech tree). Fisheries or maybe just a fishing fleet would be a sea tile improvement and would help generate shields for sea tiles as well, whales being the most productive until the discovery of oil probably. Building an offshore rig on an oil resource would be highly productive and highly lucrative, but the rig would be costly.

 

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CITY IMPROVEMENTS AND PRODUCTION


• Various kinds of processing facilities are built either as city improvements or right upon the site of the resource (such as mines) to increase production for the appropriate resources. Lumbermills double the shields gained by each forest tile. Blacksmiths double shield production yielded from various metals. Obviously, a mined and roaded source of iron to a city with a blacksmith would be very productive, as it should be. Building a coal plant would generate production from the coal mining around that city. Salt and saltpeter would need a collecting facility built on the resource to increase its production (this may or may not be a “mine”). Salt is a food and luxury item mostly of commercial value and would be found in infrequent places around lakes usually. Saltpeter might not generate as much production as metals or lumber, but would have surely have more excellent trade and commercial value being a resource needed for military units. And so forth. You can see the kind of diversity of production/commerce, etc. these different resources would create.

• Some of these processing buildings would also be prerequisites to build units that use certain resources, along with the roads to them we are used to. You could really see a rush to get a blacksmith shop built once you find iron by a city so you can build swordsmen. The iron, processed by your local blacksmith (later by your factory or even later by your steel plant), would then be available to transport and be automatically available wherever in your empire you want to build units requiring iron as long as it is connected by roads or harbors (and later by airports).

• Saltpeter and iron and horses would all need to be in production around your empire (or imported) in sufficient quantity to keep building troops or railroads that need them. But, just like saltpeter is said to become much more available by the time of riflemen, it would physically become more common as a resource in the terrain, popping up in more and more locations to be exploited with roads and mining (or whatever extracts saltpeter).

One good reason to build cities around otherwise not very useful desert areas would be for the saltpeter increasingly found there to make sure you always have enough for your gunpowder needs, which last all the way into the modern era. Even modern armor uses gunpowder in its artillery. This makes each city and its resources more and more critical to plan, maintain, and defend all through time. When a city is outdated because it no longer offers useful resources for the era, or they are all used up, it might lose its industry and its population and become a virtual ghost town, not unlike the real world. If new resources appeared nearby, it might grow in population again. More on population growth modeling later.

•*A city by a vein of gold or iron might have a string of mines in its hills and be highly productive and profitable (and desirable...expect fights over such a location). An average city might have only one to three minable resources around it in early years, increasing as technology improves to discover uses for more substances and the means to extract and process them. Cities will come to vary much more greatly in how productive they can become depending on local resources. Mines will be much more infrequent overall, especially in earlier ages, but become much more productive individually as well as worth protecting, because losing one often means losing a good chunk of your city’s productive ability.

• You can see that, as in real life, as resources change and deplete, and as technology changes, production doesn’t multiply automatically on your old coal plant or factory or mill necessarily. Some facilities will be outdated and become entirely defunct perhaps. An existing factory or mill could maybe be upgraded, like units, for less cost than an entirely new one. But your old coal plant is not going to continue to generate and multiply your coal mine shields if your coal sources go away for that city. But coal tends to run in veins and you are likely to have several hills or mountains with coal in a region, as well as new sources popping up. Also, as technology changes and coal is no longer used much, its commerical value may drop greatly, and possibly its productive value as well.

• As industrial ages progress and new resources like aluminum and uranium are found and mined, shield output can really increase dramatically when these are mined whereas lumber shields are going to remain relatively small under any circumstances, though a city in the forest could do quite decently with a lumber industry alone for quite some time. The dormancy and regrowth of forests is reflected in lower overall shield output than mines as well as the time it takes between turns anyway (years).

• After the Renaissance era, the discovery of fossils in a hill could generate science and shields for a city as scientists set up camp to unearth and study them. In that case, a worker would build a research camp at the fossil resource--a dig site if you will. Wouldn’t that be fun, charming, and useful? It would also contribute to your culture at the same time. You might have to research an appropriate optional science tech to have fossils appear on the map...not a necessary tech to have, but useful if it serves your needs. Similarly, discovering ancient ruins might generate production and science in a grassland tile if you want to study that ancient culture. Building a museum might enhance that particular resource as well.

• One possible extra degree of complexity and versatility could be introduced, but might incur too much micromanagement:

Over time, shipping raw materials around becomes more affordable and feasible. By the industrial era, you could conceivably ship ores or metals to a city you want to make an industrial powerhouse with a diversity of factories already built, etc. to actually process it and therefore get most of the shields from that resource. If a model could be created how shipping resources from local tiles to other cities might work (some shields would still go to the local city--after all they mine it and move it around to some degree), this could really give one eventual strategic power to decide how to shape and fashion each city industrially. This is probably too much to expect for the next couple of Civ games at least, but I could see it being introduced at some point if it could be done in a way not to have to micromanage too much.

 

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CITY GROWTH AND ITS AFFECT UPON PRODUCTION

•*Recall that under this model, every accessible tile within a city’s radius is considered populated and therefore worked, or at least potentially worked. What changes is population density and resulting production derived from each tile area. Each population increase in a city adds one more shield to any tile generating a shield. (All grassland, plains, forests, and resource-bearing tiles within a city’s range of access). More population is now working the lands within the square of a city’s territory, and so increases the shields yielded. They are not going to go work just this one little tile area over here, but are to some degree working all the lands within a certain distance of the city...a more realistic representation of how a city grows and how people use the land.

• When population hits certain key peak levels, a city would expand its square of influence one more tile out in all directions, basically like the cultural border in Civ III. This represents reachable and worked tiles for that city. Anywhere there is overlap with other cities, you use the city manager to designate which city is working that tile. The difference is that, the next mew tier of tiles out starts like the inner ring with the minimum shields of production per tile till improved, and the inner ring of tiles ceases to gain in shield increase with added population. Now the second ring out grows in one shield each per shield-bearing tile with each growth in population until they max out as well (at whatever number of shields per tile works right or matches population). Some other model might work better to represent the cumulative, but limited amount of yield possible per tile of land overall. This is just one idea at the moment.

•*Another option for population working the land is this: each citizen reprenting one population is put to work on one tile as in the Civ III model, but citizens can be doubled up on any tile, as some tiles (some hills and mountains, desert, etc.) will not be yielding any shields or food at all. Perhaps up to three or four workers could work any one tile and double, triple, and quadruple its base food or production value accordingly in addition to roads or other improvements that also increase production. Obviously this needs a reaonable cap as well as resources and food are not infinite in one area. I’d have to think about that a bit to imagine where that would be. These are the kinds of details the actual programmers and testers could figure out.

• This model also includes a different basis for population growth rather than food supply, and would also include the idea of immigrants moving to cities with jobs, culture, commerce, and locations that make them desirable. (Cities on rivers or beaches in warm climates are more desirable than ones in deserts and the arctic or away from water for instance). More on how food contributes to this later.

Culture would help draw, grow, and maintain population for each city rather than be the solitary direct means to expand it’s size of influence (which is really its range of workable terrain). So, in building culture in a city, you still indirectly expand its influence by making it more desirable and therefore drawing more people to the city, causing the population to grow faster. Early on, you might still need that temple in a town to bring in more people to grow enough to get that iron mine in the hills more productive with the added population...or to bring it within workable range by expanding the borders. People--immigrants, are considered to be citizens from surrounding countryside regions coming into cities, and will also be your own citizens leaving other cities of yours or from other nations based on city and nation desirability factors. Birthrate is also factored into this, but where these new citizens appear ultimately depends more on where citizens will have work and want to live. Obviously cultural strength figures strongly into this overall. Cities can both grow and shrink in this way, even as your overall national population typically continues to grow.

• The border of influence a city can develop should be as large as the population might create perhaps with no caps other than the other inherent limits on size. Conceivably, a very powerful and desirable city in a prime location could technically have a very high population and therefore a radius of workable tiles many squares out. Practically, however, unless it is very far from any other cities, it will not be able to work them all. Other cities will already be claiming them. A city is not infinitely able to supply jobs or culture, and crowding and pollution become factors limiting city desirability and population. It’s radius of accessible tiles grows and shrinks with its population alone, but its cultural effects are calculated separately (though not shown as a graphical border any longer). Cultural strength could still affect borders between nations (which city gets more nearby overlapping tiles to work), as well as the city region based on population. This greater expanding model for cities will allow cities within your national borders to eventually utilize resources much further away than before. Most cities would be able to grow large enough to pop their borders at least twice, meaning more than 21 tiles to utilize potentially. If not, a city farther off might have a much larger population enabling it to get at those faraway unused tiles closer to a smaller city unable to get to them. The basic result is that eventually, any tile within your borders is going to be accessible and useable.

• Offshore platforms would only be built for oil resources found in the ocean, but can be set up like occupied colonies far offshore beyond your city radius if otherwise unclaimed and in non-territorial waters. Their shields and commerce generated would go to the nearest city, or possibly to whatever city with a harbor (and refinery?) you choose to ship the oil to. You’d have to build the specific oil-handling port or refinery, to do this perhaps. This would be one exception to the city radius accessibility rule and functions basically like a colony that gives you production as well as the resource itself.

 

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HOW FOOD PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION WORKS


• In unconnected cities, food is limited to its immediate local food supply until some means of trading with the city are established--a port, road, or airport.

• Once connected to another city, food is communally available between all connected cities. In early ages, there is a transportation penalty of some kind representing the increased likelihood of highway robbery and food spoilage when shipped. Shipping penalties diminish with time and technology. Rather than having to micromanage this, some basic controls in way of sliders or something could be used to determine how much food your are willing to ship around to other cities or sell as a commodity to other nations, and how much of that is lost in transit. This way, you can feed any city with little immediate local food sources as necessary.

• City growth is no longer tied to food production directly. Instead, as long as you have sufficient food resources to feed the present population, growth is possible in terms of birthrate. Birthrate is affected by some degree by excess food supply, but birthrate is also affected by your government system, whether or how much much you are at war, your nation’s level of health and other factors like maybe even a factoring of the climates of your land holdings. And birthrate is only part of what contributes to city growth. Much of it comes from internal and international immigration. All population grows faster when happier, another incentive to focus on luxuries and favorable governments and ending wars sooner. An enemy cutting off supply routes to a city population sustained by importing food could cause rapid starvation in that city, so it increases the strategy of protecting supply routes as well.

• The food scale, like the shield scale, will have to be adjusted, keep in mind. Unimproved food tiles generate a base amount of food like the present setup of floodplains, grassland, and plains (3/2/1). Animal resources would also add food to the base rate, but also would usually add shields and commerce, because they invite other kinds of industry based on all the things you can do with animals including making clothes of hides and furs, or pillows out of feathers or ivory from elephants, whales, & walruses, or whatever.

•*Building a road to a food-producing tile does not increase its food output, but it does enable that food to go into the national food pool. Food-producing tiles can be farmed to double the food output. They can also be irrigated to again double the food output. Much farmland cannot be irrigated readily for a long time, however. Farming land serves as a sort of intermediate level of food increase away from fresh water sources. Irrigation would only reach so far from a fresh water source till the invention of electricity, with one or more intermediate increases in range caused by Construction, etc. This means that for a good part of the game, you will have to strategically secure enough food sources for your nation in high yield areas along lakes, rivers, and coasts (fishing is good food). You have to balance this with other cities which may be almost entirely generating shields but little food. Climate and even natural disasters or drought will continue to affect and alter your food production in various regions. Double irrigation might also be possible like in Civilization II if by that time, the food model seems to warrant it to keep growing cities sufficiently. This too could either be added by more worker action or an automatic upgrade at the discovery of refrigeration or whatever.

• Lowlands can also be used for cattle (perhaps a cow, sheep, or chicken icon would appear on the grassland instead of irrigation or farmland as an improvement). Cattle perhaps could not be established on floodplains. Cattle would add shields and food to flatlands, but not as much food as farming and irrigating.

•*If the resource system is quantified rather than all or nothing based on one source, horses would have to be raised and kept on some of your plains or grassland too, as long as you need horses. Horses would not add food to a tile, so horses represent a food tile sacrificed to the horse resource. You could still get the base food value from the tile. Each horse farm would enable the beginning of building X number of horse-based units in a turn. Because animals can be bred, once you have horses being bred somewhere in your land, you can keep breeding them wherever you want to raise them thereafter. Early on, horses might be hard to come by the first time and expensive for that initial trade. If you lack enough land to graze horses AND feed your population (you live in jungle which you haven’t mowed down much of yet or the desert or the arctic), you will have to continue to trade horses for some time and use all your available farmland for food.

•*Bare hills can be terrace-farmed and irrigated to form rice paddies and vineyards, etc.) Because hills can be forested in this model (as a heck of a lot of them are in the real world), forests would have to be removed from such hills in order to make farmland out of them. Irrigating them would not be possible until later developments in technology, or the degree of effective irrigation would have to wait for new technology, like the increasing effectiveness of mines in stages as I already proposed. I miss the irrigated hills from Civ II! An irrigated hill might only be possible next to a fresh water source until later eras or the discovery of electricity. You can still grow crops on other hills, but don’t get the irrigation bonus. But a farmed hill doubles a base value of one food to two food.

• All tiles within a city’s grid range immediately generate their available food based on tile type along with improvements or any food resources like wheat or cattle which increase base food production of the tile. One food per each eligible tile around a city (nine possible tiles at first) represents the lowest level of food a city generates. The typical base amount is obviously often more than the three or so food normal for a new city in Civ III. Each pop growth of a city adds one more food to each food-bearing tile’s harvest, representing more population to farm the tiles and generate more overall crops. To see the full details how this population system works, refer to the city growth and expansion model proposed under the shield discussion prior. Food increase does cap out at some reasonable point for each tile as does shield production.

• Remember that every food-bearing shield within a city’s range also generates one shield at the minimum, more if a shield-bearing resourse is present. This is because any land worked is generating some kind of industry (tools are needed and secondary businesses are created to accommodate farmers and the transportation of food, straw is used to make mud bricks used in construction, etc.) This translates into some amount of shields for any city. Remember also that low-land food-bearing tiles cannot be mined.

• A granary, instead of halving food storage required for growth under the old model, doubles food production from the city’s tiles (more food can be grown, harvested and stored longer). Stables might double the output from raising horses near a city. In the middle ages, a mill might help in grinding grain, and will double food production again. Other food-processing plants like slaughterhouses or feedlots might double both the productive value and the food value generated from local livestock on tiles. Other technology developments in each age might also double food output from crops and/or cattle as efficiency increases, if necessary.


• One of the main points of having all these different kinds of food and production resources is to cause much more diversity (and fun) in choosing what to build and grow and promote in different city locations and regions. One city will have farms and cattle and accompanying facilities in the city (you don’t need a granary in every city everywhere any more). Another city will be a massive gold-generating commercial powerhouse because of a string of nearby goldmines. Another city will be massively productive due to a few iron and coal mines nearby. One city might just raise horses in its grasslands, safely tucked away in the very center of your nation where it would be hard to pillage. You can choose the location of your horse breeding, unlike where you are going to find iron and saltpeter.

• Farming regions are going to be much less productive shieldwise overall than industrial regions. It will be harder to build as many things in them, and they may lag in size due to less internal industry (jobs) and less culture, in contrast to how they balloon in size under the current model where food is all that matters.