Quick Question regarding cities

Ashdrake

Chieftain
Joined
Dec 16, 2008
Messages
58
Hello.

I have this very ODD feeling that in a version of civilization you could set the money/beakers/culture sliders for each city, while now if you touch the sliders in the city you automatically touch the total sliders (so if you in a city change it to 90% science 10% culture) then all cities are 90% science 10 culture.
Is there anyway to bring that functionality back (becoz it"S AWESOME to be able to micro manage each city, for ex: your wealth building city should just produce wealth and not science beakers, etc)

Although i dont remember in what version of CIV i encountered that functionality...
 
I don't think even Alpha Centauri allowed this, nor do I think its a good gameplay feature. If the whole of one city's income could be ALL turned into gold then that is all you would need to fund your whole empire. This is less challenging than trying to run 90% science with a small number of gold specialising cities.
 
actually, I think it would a nice idea. not sure how it would work out in practice of course, but I like the thinking.
 
I don't think even Alpha Centauri allowed this, nor do I think its a good gameplay feature. If the whole of one city's income could be ALL turned into gold then that is all you would need to fund your whole empire. This is less challenging than trying to run 90% science with a small number of gold specialising cities.

How would it be less challenging. Instead of having 6 cities with lots of cottages (and the upgrades) and building both science and money increasing buildings, you have 6 cities with lots of cottages and one builds money increasing buildings while the others build science increasing buildings. You still have to make sure you are making enough gold but not too much and you still have to adjust sliders (possibly in multiple cities) to keep things balanced like you want. The only difference will be saved production on some buildings that you won't need. That's production that could go to other buildings or units.

This option has never been in any of the Civ games but would be cool. It would be nice to see it in Vanilla BTS too, but I doubt it will be changed since it's only minor and has very little effect.
 
it's only minor and has very little effect.
What? How could you say that? That would completely change around empire planning for good! The AI would have to be taught how to specialize or it would be worthless, and even with that the game would become so much easier to manage, with a lot less time spent worrying about micromanaging your cities' gold and science outputs. Binary research, which I really don't like, makes a huge difference, and something like this would dwarf the changes that makes.
 
How would it be less challenging. Instead of having 6 cities with lots of cottages (and the upgrades) and building both science and money increasing buildings, you have 6 cities with lots of cottages and one builds money increasing buildings while the others build science increasing buildings. You still have to make sure you are making enough gold but not too much and you still have to adjust sliders (possibly in multiple cities) to keep things balanced like you want. The only difference will be saved production on some buildings that you won't need. That's production that could go to other buildings or units.

This option has never been in any of the Civ games but would be cool. It would be nice to see it in Vanilla BTS too, but I doubt it will be changed since it's only minor and has very little effect.

But you never have 6 cities with both money and science buildings. Thats a waste of hammers. One of the cities is full of Merchants and Priests with Money buildings. You need to find ways to generate gold that are independent of the Science slider (Market, Gambling house, specialists, Kilmorph). I find this more interesting and is in fact less micromanagement once you're above a certain number of cities.

It would be an interesting effect for a National Wonder to make one city independent of the normal Science rate but I would hate to manage every cities rate individually.


Edit: Does binary research even exist anymore with more decimal points?
 
What? How could you say that? That would completely change around empire planning for good! The AI would have to be taught how to specialize or it would be worthless, and even with that the game would become so much easier to manage, with a lot less time spent worrying about micromanaging your cities' gold and science outputs. Binary research, which I really don't like, makes a huge difference, and something like this would dwarf the changes that makes.

Completely change empire planning? Easier to manage? Less micromanagement? I know the AI would have to be taught how to use it but the effect it would have on the game would be minor.

How are empires are planned and managed now:
Build a bunch of cities, makes some of them production cities, make some commerce cities and make a couple others specialized in other areas. Build both research and gold increasing buildings in all commerce cities. Adjust the one single global gold and research sliders as needed (every turn if you are obsessive, every few turns if you just like micro, every once in a while if you don't care).

How empires would be planned and managed if the sliders were changed:
Build a bunch of cities, makes some of them production cities, make some commerce cities and make a couple others specialized in other areas. Designate one or two of the commerce cities as gold producers and make the rest research producers. Build gold increasing buildings in the gold producing cities and research increasing buildings in the research producing cities. Adjust the multiple city gold and research sliders as needed (every turn if you are obsessive, every few turns if you just like micro, every once in a while if you don't care).

So you build cities in the same locations and you build the same number of commerce producing cities. You do get to save on building some buildings in your commerce cities since you would be able to customize down to research vs. gold, but thats not all that much and would have only a minimal effect on the game. You also now have to adjust multiple sliders instead of only the global sliders. While this would mean better balancing of gold and research, it would also mean much more microing than would be required with the global sliders.

Given that the time and effort that would be required of the team to make this change though, I doubt we'll ever see it.

But you never have 6 cities with both money and science buildings. Thats a waste of hammers. One of the cities is full of Merchants and Priests with Money buildings. You need to find ways to generate gold that are independent of the Science slider (Market, Gambling house, specialists, Kilmorph). I find this more interesting and is in fact less micromanagement once you're above a certain number of cities.QUOTE]

That sounds like a waste of commerce to me. You have your slider set at say 60% research and yet you have one city that you don't build research boosting buildings? I build both gold and research boosting buildings in all my commerce cities. This maximizes both my research and my gold. Now I do have specialists of various kinds in cities depending on how much extra gold I'm needing vs how much extra research.

Changing the slider to individual cities would effect this minimally.
 
IMO that option would make the sliders themselves redundant. In other words being able to do that would be contrary to the reason the sliders exist, which is not only to split up your :commerce: but to simulate a national budget. Your :commerce: represents the taxes collected. Flavorwise, your suggestion (while it sounds fun!) would essentially let the 'Governor' of each city be in control of all taxes collected in said city, which would quickly lead to lots of rebellions and a beakdown of your nation. That's why I believe it will not be implemented.
 
Letting city governors control taxation would be quite appropriate under the City States civic, and only completely inappropriate under Godking.
 
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