CommandoBob
AbstractArt
I love my cities. I love to build them, see them grow, and see them reproduce. I enjoy the way my color expands on the map, especially as it sweeps the world on the replay. I know right now that my culture is better than any of my neighbors, even if they dont think so. They will. Some will agree to this all on their on and free themselves from their loutish leadership to follow my enlightened way of wisdom and guidance. Others must be convinced. I have good convincers. A small few must be removed, but only for the encouragement of others.
Yet sometimes I have so many cities that I lose track of how many I do have. There are times when my city count grows faster than tribbles. Or I am planning for a cultural rush victory, which requires many cities, and I want to exactly how many centers of erudite sophistication I have. More often, however, I desire to gloat and revel in the knowledge that I have convinced these learned people by my culture and conquered these brutes by my combined arms.
And I found a way that lets me do this.
The Ordinal City Naming Convention gets its name because we are going to keep count of the number of cities we have by how we name the cities. We are going to order our cities as we name them. It has only a few basic rules.
The few basic rules
1. Cities we make have a two or three digit number in front of the city name. For example, if we are the Greeks, when we found our first city, the suggested name is Athens This is not the name we will use. Instead, change the name to 01 Athens. The second city will not be Sparta but 02 Sparta. Thermopylae becomes 03 Thermopylae and Corinth morphs to 04 Corinth. And we do this for each city we plant.
2. Cities that we acquire by culture flips we rename slightly. Should Anyang of China be the first city that decides to be Greek, we rename it to c01 Anyang. Later, when the German people of Frankfurt trade their Panzers for Hoplites, we dub the new city c02 Frankfurt.
3. Cities that we conquer we also rename slightly. When the hovel of Sabratha is taken from Carthage and added to Greece, we tweak the name to x27 Sabratha, indicating that it was the 27th city to be liberated by the Gentle Greek Giants. x41 Rome shows that almighty home of Caesar was felled sometime after the demise of Sabratha.
4. To keep the gloating going, we will add the name of the former owners of our new cities to the city name. Thus, c01 Anyang would become c01 Anyang (China), c02 Frankfurt changes to c02 Frankfurt (Germany), x27 Sabratha displays as x27 Sabratha (Carthage) and x41 Rome shows up as x41 Rome (Rome).
5. We use the number sign (#) to indicate that a city was the original capital of its people. Thus x41 Rome (Rome) becomes x41 Rome (Rome#).
5a. If we really want to know which city has a conquered wonder, we can also put that in the city name, following the Civ name. If space permits, we can even indicate which wonder it is. x41 Rome (Rome#) could then become x41 Rome (Rome# ToE). If we only wanted to know that Rome had a wonder we would use x41 Rome (Rome# W).
5b. If we want to know where we have built a small wonder, we can modify our city name also. Once Delphi has completed our Heroic Epic, we can rename it to 05 Delphi HE or 05 Delphi w.
But keep in mind that the city name can only be 23 characters long (PTW).
* * * Geek alert * * *
The name of the city is stored as a string, including the numbers we are putting into that name. When programming languages read a string, they begin on the left and go to the right, one character/letter at a time. Which does lead to some strange sorting results. For example, if we named our first four cities like so:
1 Washington
11 Philadelphia
12 New York
2 BostonWe look at this and think the computer is messed up. We see 1 as one, 11 as eleven, 12 as twelve and 2 as two. The computer sees the 1 as one, the 11 as one-one, the 12 as one-two and the 2 as two. It then sorts them one, one-one, one-two and two because two is always greater than one.
Which is why the first cities built should be named with zero-one (01), zero-two (02), zero-three (03), etc, because one is greater than zero. Should you plan to build over a hundred cities, start with zero-zero-one (001), zero-zero-two (002) zero-one-zero (010), zero-one-one (011), etc.
* * * End of Geek Alert * * *
Benefits
The biggest benefit to me is that I can quickly determine how many cities I have in my illustrious empire very quickly. When I am curious, I type Go-To-City and my list appears before me. The cities I built are all together and numbered, the cities that converted are all together and numbered and the cities that were conquered are all together and numbered. Just add them up. This is much easier than typing Go-To-City, counting how many cities are in one column and then multiplying that number by the number of columns. (Is it fourteen or fifteen to a column and do I have six or seven columns? Wheres the calculator?)
Now if the Espionage screen would only tell me how many cities everyone else had left (without clicking and clicking) ...
Yet sometimes I have so many cities that I lose track of how many I do have. There are times when my city count grows faster than tribbles. Or I am planning for a cultural rush victory, which requires many cities, and I want to exactly how many centers of erudite sophistication I have. More often, however, I desire to gloat and revel in the knowledge that I have convinced these learned people by my culture and conquered these brutes by my combined arms.
And I found a way that lets me do this.
The Ordinal City Naming Convention gets its name because we are going to keep count of the number of cities we have by how we name the cities. We are going to order our cities as we name them. It has only a few basic rules.
The few basic rules
1. Cities we make have a two or three digit number in front of the city name. For example, if we are the Greeks, when we found our first city, the suggested name is Athens This is not the name we will use. Instead, change the name to 01 Athens. The second city will not be Sparta but 02 Sparta. Thermopylae becomes 03 Thermopylae and Corinth morphs to 04 Corinth. And we do this for each city we plant.
2. Cities that we acquire by culture flips we rename slightly. Should Anyang of China be the first city that decides to be Greek, we rename it to c01 Anyang. Later, when the German people of Frankfurt trade their Panzers for Hoplites, we dub the new city c02 Frankfurt.
3. Cities that we conquer we also rename slightly. When the hovel of Sabratha is taken from Carthage and added to Greece, we tweak the name to x27 Sabratha, indicating that it was the 27th city to be liberated by the Gentle Greek Giants. x41 Rome shows that almighty home of Caesar was felled sometime after the demise of Sabratha.
4. To keep the gloating going, we will add the name of the former owners of our new cities to the city name. Thus, c01 Anyang would become c01 Anyang (China), c02 Frankfurt changes to c02 Frankfurt (Germany), x27 Sabratha displays as x27 Sabratha (Carthage) and x41 Rome shows up as x41 Rome (Rome).
5. We use the number sign (#) to indicate that a city was the original capital of its people. Thus x41 Rome (Rome) becomes x41 Rome (Rome#).
5a. If we really want to know which city has a conquered wonder, we can also put that in the city name, following the Civ name. If space permits, we can even indicate which wonder it is. x41 Rome (Rome#) could then become x41 Rome (Rome# ToE). If we only wanted to know that Rome had a wonder we would use x41 Rome (Rome# W).
5b. If we want to know where we have built a small wonder, we can modify our city name also. Once Delphi has completed our Heroic Epic, we can rename it to 05 Delphi HE or 05 Delphi w.
But keep in mind that the city name can only be 23 characters long (PTW).
* * * Geek alert * * *
The name of the city is stored as a string, including the numbers we are putting into that name. When programming languages read a string, they begin on the left and go to the right, one character/letter at a time. Which does lead to some strange sorting results. For example, if we named our first four cities like so:
1 Washington
12 New York
2 Boston
11 Philadelphia
When we press Go-To-City they appear in this order:12 New York
2 Boston
11 Philadelphia
1 Washington
11 Philadelphia
12 New York
2 Boston
Which is why the first cities built should be named with zero-one (01), zero-two (02), zero-three (03), etc, because one is greater than zero. Should you plan to build over a hundred cities, start with zero-zero-one (001), zero-zero-two (002) zero-one-zero (010), zero-one-one (011), etc.
* * * End of Geek Alert * * *
Benefits
The biggest benefit to me is that I can quickly determine how many cities I have in my illustrious empire very quickly. When I am curious, I type Go-To-City and my list appears before me. The cities I built are all together and numbered, the cities that converted are all together and numbered and the cities that were conquered are all together and numbered. Just add them up. This is much easier than typing Go-To-City, counting how many cities are in one column and then multiplying that number by the number of columns. (Is it fourteen or fifteen to a column and do I have six or seven columns? Wheres the calculator?)
Now if the Espionage screen would only tell me how many cities everyone else had left (without clicking and clicking) ...
