On the topic of City Package and Unpackage

[kaspergm]

The initial idea was for each age to be a separate game, generated from data of previous one. So using current civ's regional assets is kind of "default" implementation, while tracking previous civs is additional work. Especially if style of older buildings will be kept in conquered settlements too (which means history of each settlement needs to be saved for all ages).

Yeah, I can follow that, but ... no surprise people felt game lost continuity and immersability, if that was the design approach.

 

[MutilationWave]

I didn't even think of it before but now I need conquered settlements to keep their style. I guess I just don't pay attention to the style when the settlement is covered in units during war.

 

[ehecatzin]

Historically, one of the reasons most cities were limited in size was the ability to build defensive structures around the perimeter. A larger city inherently meant that you needed more material, manpower, and time to build walls. Only the most prosperous and important cities (i.e. Rome, Constantinople, Beijing, Kyoto, etc.) warranted expansive wall systems due to the sheer expense of them.

For Civ 7, what I’d like to see is the urban core having a larger capacity, with expansion beyond that before the modern era requiring a great deal of investment and focus on the part of the player.

Fortifications and sieges is one of those things that could use a lot of improvement. I dislike how you build walls from city center out, I'd really like to see wall construction that looks at rings, or a number if districts you could surround, the larger the longer it takes, costs, and higher maintenance it takes.

Right now wall construction is something you do a bit at the time when you've got nothing else to queue, and it's the more annoying because we can't queue it, it has to be done 1 at the time.

alsoFiraxis please let us wall rural and wonders. Cmon.

Only semi-related, but something I do wish was the case (and correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure it's not currently) is that upon age rollover, buildings from the previous age kept their models from when you were your previous civ,

This, it really takes away from the history in layers concept,

As far as I remember the feature to keep previous style was suggested to Firaxis and they reported that they are working on it.

awesome, good to hear that they are working on int

I didn't even think of it before but now I need conquered settlements to keep their style. I guess I just don't pay attention to the style when the settlement is covered in units during war.

I'd love to see something like that, but I guess it would also have to be tied to some other mechanics to be worth it, perhaphs pops (in this case pops with culture) could come back later on.

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Now to bring it back to packed or unpacked, I hope that once they implement the collapse mode, one thing I'd like to see is the ability for quarters with overbuildable buildings to be scrapped for materials and turned into rural, or the ability to build wonders and unbique improvements on top of them. It would allow for:

• More compact cities overall
• Era appropiate wonders in the inner city rings
• respeccing cities into certain roles.

 

[Krikkit1]

Fortifications and sieges is one of those things that could use a lot of improvement. I dislike how you build walls from city center out, I'd really like to see wall construction that looks at rings, or a number if districts you could surround, the larger the longer it takes, costs, and higher maintenance it takes.

Right now wall construction is something you do a bit at the time when you've got nothing else to queue, and it's the more annoying because we can't queue it, it has to be done 1 at the time.

alsoFiraxis please let us wall rural and wonders. Cmon.


This, it really takes away from the history in layers concept,


awesome, good to hear that they are working on int

I'd love to see something like that, but I guess it would also have to be tied to some other mechanics to be worth it, perhaphs pops (in this case pops with culture) could come back later on.

----

Now to bring it back to packed or unpacked, I hope that once they implement the collapse mode, one thing I'd like to see is the ability for quarters with overbuildable buildings to be scrapped for materials and turned into rural, or the ability to build wonders and unbique improvements on top of them. It would allow for:

• More compact cities overall
• Era appropiate wonders in the inner city rings
• respeccing cities into certain roles.

The problem with the last one is the need for all districts to be connected to the city center. It would work with Wonders (since they “chain” districts). I could see certain Districts marked as “Abandonable” if they were on the edge and only connected to 1 other district.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Getting back into civ7 to test out the latest patch, I do see some advantages to unpacking cities. You get a sense of the growth of your cities. And there is some strategy in where to place districts rather than just choosing the next building to build. And of course, on larger maps, urban sprawl is less of an issue. So unpacked cities might not be all that bad if cities were more compact. I actually don't mind urban sprawl in the Antiquity Age. It is later in the Modern Age where it becomes an issue because it makes the map so ugly and confusing. But in the Antiquity Age, there is plenty of space between cities and towns.

Perhaps the game needs a rule that you cannot build in the second ring around the city center until your city reaches a certain population. This could help slow down urban sprawl. Another thing the game could do is maybe incentivize adding a second building to a district instead of starting a new district. Unless I am missing something, I feel like the only real advantage of adding a second building is getting more yields in a single tile when you are trying to go for the science legacy path in the Exploration Agw. And also, there can be instances where adding the second building provides better yields than starting a new district, depending on the terrain. Incentivizing players to delay starting a new district would also help to keep cities more compact. Maybe the game could reward overbuilding more so that players would have more reasons to overbuild rather than add a new district. This would also help delay urban sprawl.

I think reducing urban sprawl would help with readibility because cities would not mesh together so it would easier to see where one city ends and another begins and there would be fewer districts so it would be easier to find buildings.

 

[UWHabs]

Getting back into civ7 to test out the latest patch, I do see some advantages to unpacking cities. You get a sense of the growth of your cities. And there is some strategy in where to place districts rather than just choosing the next building to build. And of course, on larger maps, urban sprawl is less of an issue. So unpacked cities might not be all that bad if cities were more compact. I actually don't mind urban sprawl in the Antiquity Age. It is later in the Modern Age where it becomes an issue because it makes the map so ugly and confusing. But in the Antiquity Age, there is plenty of space between cities and towns.

Perhaps the game needs a rule that you cannot build in the second ring around the city center until your city reaches a certain population. This could help slow down urban sprawl. Another thing the game could do is maybe incentivize adding a second building to a district instead of starting a new district. Unless I am missing something, I feel like the only real advantage of adding a second building is getting more yields in a single tile when you are trying to go for the science legacy path in the Exploration Agw. And also, there can be instances where adding the second building provides better yields than starting a new district, depending on the terrain. Incentivizing players to delay starting a new district would also help to keep cities more compact. Maybe the game could reward overbuilding more so that players would have more reasons to overbuild rather than add a new district. This would also help delay urban sprawl.

I think reducing urban sprawl would help with readibility because cities would not mesh together so it would easier to see where one city ends and another begins and there would be fewer districts so it would be easier to find buildings.

I wouldn't hate if there was just a global bonus for quarters of 1 of each yield (happiness, food, production, gold, science, culture). It wouldn't be a hard cap for sprawl, but might be enough to make sure to complete those quarters and not stretch every tile.

For later eras, you get the weird decisions where you have to decide between overbuilding tiles vs sprawling to new ones. I think since they changed buildings to retain more base yields, it becomes a bit more valuable to keep those tiles. I often in the modern era would rather not overbuild my dungeon, unless if that tile already has some specialists. Those little extra yields add up.

 

[Krikkit1]

I wouldn't hate if there was just a global bonus for quarters of 1 of each yield (happiness, food, production, gold, science, culture). It wouldn't be a hard cap for sprawl, but might be enough to make sure to complete those quarters and not stretch every tile.

For later eras, you get the weird decisions where you have to decide between overbuilding tiles vs sprawling to new ones. I think since they changed buildings to retain more base yields, it becomes a bit more valuable to keep those tiles. I often in the modern era would rather not overbuild my dungeon, unless if that tile already has some specialists. Those little extra yields add up.

Possibly give each building +1 of it’s primary yield if in a Quarter (so 2 science buildings means +2 science, a science and a food together gets +1 science +1food)

Also since obsolete ones don't count for a Quarter it would make overbuilding more valuable.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Again, I suspect the Civ VII system of building walls per tile is a reaction to Civ VI's Only Walls around Military and City Center tiles, which left most of the city visually (graphically) unprotected by any Walls at all.

The main problem I see is that Civ VII went for the most simple of systems: you build walls around an entire tile, regardless of how many other walls that tile ties into. This is simply wrong, because city walls were just that: Walls around a city, and in only a very few cases were they also used to divide up districts/areas within a city, and fequently then only by chance. For an example see the preserved medieval/renaissance city of Rothenburg-ob-Tauber in Germany, where numerous city streets go through city gates in the middle of the town because the town expanded beyond the original walls - but even there the walls themselves got overgrown with new buildings and lost a lot of their defensive purposes - only the walls encircling the city were preserved and maintained.

The other problem is that Civ VII does not have any model for separate Fortresses as part of a city defense: separate concentrations of defensive construction like in-city castles, keeps, citadels or fortified residences and palaces that augmented the over-all city defenses by providing defenses for specific elements like the Royal Family, treasury, or just a Last Ditch to defend that part of the city population that could squeeze into it. Without any representation of these structures, the individual walled tiles festooning the city had to serve as alternatives, for which they do a poor job.

To get only the city walls shown as they should be, though, would either require a much more complex algorithm to tell the game how to extend walls only around the tile sides with rural/urban interface or have the player build walls by tile side instead of complete tile - which could almost be the Poster Child for micro-management of construction and not anything that I would want to play personally.

Cities sometimes outgrew their walls, which lead to portions being outside it Civ6 style

I miss the old civ 4 maintenance cost. There were always some games where you tried to spread too wide too fast, and basically it tanked your economy too much. If converting another settlement to a city made every building in every other city rise by 1gpt, suddenly there's a real upkeep cost to maintaining cities.

It was a very important balancing mechanic that is sorely missed

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Cities sometimes outgrew their walls, which lead to portions being outside it Civ6 style



It was a very important balancing mechanic that is sorely missed

Unless there was a continuous enemy presence, cities always outgrew their walls: see Rothenburg-ob-Tauber, the preserved renaissance town in Germany, where old city gates are everywhere inside the town, because it kept outgrowing them and they got incorporated into other buildings.

Which would be a neat effect, but prbably more trouble than it would be worth.

Maintenance of almost everything was another continuous background problem to every human settlement, and could be used to limit all kinds of human player abuses:

1. Building walls everywhere? You have to pay to maintain timber, earth, stone, or rammed earth structures or they fall down. You also have to pay some kind of garrison for them, or they have no defensive effect at all. And when you start building the bastioned late renaissance 'walls' they include hundreds of cannon and you have to provide those (not cheap!) and also provide continuing supplies of powder and shot. These structures ate up a lot of government's spending, and should in the game.

2. Even if the majority of structures inside and outside of a city are built by the working inhabitants, you have to provide tax collectors, clerks, administrative overhead to get anything out of them, and the relative efficiency of those groups varies enormously over the ages. One overlooked reason for the 'fall of Rome' was that their tax collection system was so incredibly inefficient that it took a population of 50,000,000 to maintain an army of about 500,000. By 1914 the country of France, about the same number of people, supported an army of 3,000,000 with far more expensive requirements in weapons, equipment, and ammunition. Model those inefficiencies in the game and it would severely limit a lot of what the players try to do to game the system - but that's also why those difficulties will probably not be modeled.

3. The maintenance costs of military/naval units are already in the game, but the cost of maintaining their camps, forts, garrison areas, training areas, etc is not. And the maintenance costs of the units are Fixed, which in fact they were not - it cost a lot more to maintain a British garrison in northwestern India than it did back in England, and modeling those 'sliding costs' would go a long way to showing the real cost of maintaining colonies and distant footholds all over the map.

 

[PauI]

my take on towns vs cities (made a post on the official discord a few months ago)

 

[Krikkit1]

my take on towns vs cities (made a post on the official discord a few months ago)

Exactly
in terms of “filler buildings” (on both Rural+Urban tiles)
I’d say
Town:1
City:2+#specialists

 

[UWHabs]

That would help clear some clutter away, and give a little extra visual distinction. You'd get some weird cases like a city becomes a town on age transition, although maybe you could have those "extra" houses become rundown or overgrown buildings.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I found this 3D timelapse of Paris from 300 BC to 2025 AD:

I think it illustrates that city unpacking should only really be a big thing in the Modern Age, maybe starting a little bit at the end of the Exploration Age. In fact, it could make the Modern Age more distinct from past Ages if city unpacking was a feature unique to the Modern Age. It would further highlight the sense of technological and cultural progress as cities would start small and become these sprawling metros in the Modern Age.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I found this 3D timelapse of Paris from 300 BC to 2025 AD:

I think it illustrates that city unpacking should only really be a big thing in the Modern Age, maybe starting a little bit at the end of the Exploration Age. In fact, it could make the Modern Age more distinct from past Ages if city unpacking was a feature unique to the Modern Age. It would further highlight the sense of technological and cultural progress as cities would start small and become these sprawling metros in the Modern Age.

From standpoint of historical simulation - probably. But from gameplay, switching mechanics mid-game would be awful.

 

[Monene]

If they've already allowed themselves to experiment in one way, it doesn't matter if they continue doing so. I support the idea of further differentiating the three eras; this better justifies their existence and makes modernity a period clearly based on urban expansion while maintaining a certain relevance

 

[kaspergm]

From standpoint of historical simulation - probably. But from gameplay, switching mechanics mid-game would be awful.

I agree, but I think it goes to show that a system where Ancient Era = 1st ring only for urban districts, Exploration Era = 2nd ring included, and Modern Era = all three rings allows urban districts would be worth trying. Whether warehouse buildings need to fall outside this restriction I can't say, the whole concept of warehouse buildings is still weird for me and imo. needs a complete rethinking, cf. previous discussions.

 

[Gorbles]

Limiting building in the first two Ages greatly limits build depth and diversity.

Where does that go? What replaces it?

 

[kaspergm]

Limiting building in the first two Ages greatly limits build depth and diversity.

Where does that go? What replaces it?

Is that a problem? I mean, where you even supposed to build every building in every city in every era? Of course I'm coloured by my Civ6 logic here, but I don't see it as a problem, quite on the contrary, I see it as a benefit that you have to make meaningful choices, just like with districts in Civ6: I've unlocked a new speciality district, but which one do I need most - Campus, Commercial Hub or Holy Site? Building Campus may give me a technological edge but mean I lose out on founding my own religion, building Commercial Hub may boost my economy allowing me to rush buy things I would otherwise have to hard produce, etc.

Not sure I follow you on the "limits diversity" part. Quite on the contrary, doesn't limiting buildings in each city feet into MORE diversity, in that you need to develop your cities in different directions to cover all the bases?

 

[stealth_nsk]

I agree, but I think it goes to show that a system where Ancient Era = 1st ring only for urban districts, Exploration Era = 2nd ring included, and Modern Era = all three rings allows urban districts would be worth trying. Whether warehouse buildings need to fall outside this restriction I can't say, the whole concept of warehouse buildings is still weird for me and imo. needs a complete rethinking, cf. previous discussions.

Potentially it's possible, but it's not compatible with the idea of adjacency bonuses.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I found this 3D timelapse of Paris from 300 BC to 2025 AD:

I think it illustrates that city unpacking should only really be a big thing in the Modern Age, maybe starting a little bit at the end of the Exploration Age. In fact, it could make the Modern Age more distinct from past Ages if city unpacking was a feature unique to the Modern Age. It would further highlight the sense of technological and cultural progress as cities would start small and become these sprawling metros in the Modern Age.

I would argue the opposite, that it shows that the city 'footprint' on the map varies dramatically from Antiquity right up to Modern. Paris, in fact, makes a very good example of this:
The Gaulic settlement was originally entirely on the island in the Seine - still called the "Island of the City" in French 2800 years later.
By the late Roman period - during which, by the way, it was never the capital of any Roman province, just an 'ordinary' Romano-Gallic city - the city covered nearly 10 times the area of the original island, almost entirely on one bank of the river.
The settlement and area then contracted severely - by over half - after the collapse of the Roman Imperium and through the first 500 years or so to the medieval period.
But just before the game's Modern Age starts (late 17th - early 18th century) the city expanded again on both sides of the river, covering a larger area than it ever did in Antiquity.
And after that it remains that size until the last quarter of the 19th century, when it starts expanding again and continues expanding until the present.

In other words, city expansion occurs in all three of the game's ages, and to show that expansion from island to the river bank locations would not be possible without allowing the city urban area to cover more than one tile even in late Antiquity.

BUT what it also illustrates is that there are very definite physical limits on the maximum size of the urban area: from approximately 1325 CE to 1789 CE the population of urban Paris grew from 200,000 to over 600,000, but the physical limits of the urban area remained virtually the same because the technology of transportation didn't change appreciably so there were very distinct limits on how big a city could physically get and still be accessible to its inhabitants. The last surge of map-size increase took place after the steam engine/internal combustion engine changed transportation technology to remove that limit almost entirely.

All of which means that multiple-tile cities are quite possible even in Antiquity, but there should also be limits on the maximum size/number of tiles that a city can have, and those could be based on either specific Technologies or (more simply) on the Ages. No city before artificially-powered transport (engines steam or petroleum-powered) should probably be more than 3 tiles across without some special terrain: navigable rivers, lakes allowing water transport to extend the city's reach. Another possibility would be to allow certain constructions to spread the city to a new tile: the establishment of the University of Paris in the middle ages also established a new district of the city around it as it attracted student and other housing, inns, taverns, and the new printing industry all around it.