Multiple buildings per city

[knigh+]

I have played civ1,2,3,4, and am looking forward to 5. But one thing bugs me in every version:

IRL big cities can have multiple banks, universities, factories, theaters etc. But in civ, the citizens of even the biggest metropolis must do their grocery shopping from the same single shop. Why not have the ability to build multiple buildings of the same type in a city?

In each city, there can be a maximum number of each building type depending on city size: for example you can be allowed to add a maximum of (size/3) groceries, (size/5) banks, (size/8) hospitals and factories, (size/10) universities, (size/15) airports and harbors, to the regular single building.

This can be balanced in two ways:

Way1: the bonus from each additional building is significantly less (half, for example) than the previous one. So if one building gives 50% bonus, two give 75%, three give 87%, four give 94%, five give 97%....Of course building costs or bonuses might need adjustment.

Way2: the cost of building each additional building is significantly larger (like constructing additional buildings in Final Frontier scenario in civ4).

Either way, after a while adding the same building won't be feasible at all.

This would bring many additional game decisions: In regular civ, you first produce your factory, then other buildings or units - with this modification you have to decide whether you should produce an additional factory or other things.

 

[mjs0]

...but the marketplace already scales according to the size/affluence of the city...because the bonus is a percentage rather than a fixed value.

IMHO this would be a valid complaint if the buildings in question gave a fixed bonus, but since they give a % bonus it seems to me that we are dealing with an abstraction and 'building' a marketplace is actually more like the city putting in place the infrastructure, regulations, zoning, business taxes etc etc to allow, and benefit from, 'shops' in this city.

In this abstraction the actual 'shops' are built by investors according to the needs of the city, so the number of actual 'shops' increases as the size of the city increases. The investors make money on the 'shops' and get taxed on that profit, which is constantly increasing as the city grows/becomes more affluent, and so the city always get a bonus of 50% (from the taxes on the profits and the taxes on the regulated commerce) rather than a fixed sum of gold.

The only buildings on the list that do not really fit this model are the airport and the hospital. The airport doesn't bother me because very few cities have more than one airport. The hospital is more bothersome but in that case I would suggest it is covered by the 'gameplay trumps realism' card as dealing with unhealthiness is supposed to be a challenge and allowing multiple hospitals would make controlling it too easy.