techathon
Member
It sounds like unnecessary micromanagement to me....
Revolutionizing the basic city principle.
- Thread starter HanWuDi
- Start date
This is a visual example of what I see gameplay working like, focusing on exactly how a prefecture will work. I'm still fine tuning in my head how trade and cities specifically will work.
As you can see, I prefer hexes. And this is only a rough demonstration, so I'm skimpy on the number of hexes I'm going to illustrate - I'd suggest provinces should be larger in a real game.
This would be a rough example of how one player's civ would start. In the upper left part of the large continent, you see three farms placed on grassland along side a river, with some hills and forest to the north. The house is the administrative center, because I don't want to try to draw a city in paint. Note that cities can co-exist with other improvements in early periods. Early cities were dinky. Urban sprawl in industrial and modern ages will eat away at the improvements until the cities and suburbs make up the entire tile, but in the ancient era, the city's own tile is its most reliable food supply.
This is the province manager screen. Under tiles you see what your settled tiles are producing and how many people have taken up residence there. All farms currently grow wheat. As more grains are cultivated, you can slide the biodiversity slider on the bottom of the tiles window to tell farms to grow other foods. These foods might be less productive, but would increase the variety in the diet of your citizens, increasing health and happiness.
The resources box totals up all the goods your province has at its disposal, after trade and upkeep. The Cities box is where you disperse your resources among your provinces cities. The trade box shows what trade routes you have between your cities. Since we only have one city, Rome, there is no trade yet.
After a bunch of turns, you see that your workers (not pictured) have cleared land around rome, building three new farms, a woodcutter, and a copper mine.
In the tiles box, you see the mine's tile and woodcutter's tile have been populated to capacity, at least the current capacity due to technology. The biodiversity slider has been increased, so one farm is now growing vegetables. A wheat farm grows 1 wheat per worker at this tech level, but a vegetable farm only grows .5 vegetables, so 3 vegetable farmers grow 1.5
The number you see in the third column under tiles is the amount of food reaching the province capital from the farms, or the amount needed by the non food producing tiles. Notice that the last tile, the wheat farm not adjacent to the capital (you'd be able to see which is which by hovering the cursor over the tile on the map or the tile entry on the tiles box to see the tile light up) is only getting .6 food out of 2 to the capital, because there's no road and it's not on a river. It takes 50% of the food to hire the caravan to move the food one tile to a river (because there's no road yet), and 20% to hire the ships to sail it to the capital. This, of course, is due to the neolithic level of crappy technology at the beginning of the game. Later technology will improve these horrible numbers. But early in the game, we need a second province to make the administration work.
Now you see three cities on the map. Rome was the administrative center of the first prefecture, so you're familiar with this one. Antium is the city on the hills to the east. Cumae is the port to the southwest. Note well, cumae is still in the Rome Prefecture. It serves as a home for fishermen to work the water tiles (the boats due south of it) and recieves food from rome's prefecture. But I want to go to antium to show how trade works now.
Antium is now working Rome's old farm, which wasn't getting more than 30% of its food to rome. It's also working the sheep pasture on the hills it is located in, and the cattle pastures on the plains nearby. These tiles can't support as dense a population as farms, but still produce enough excess food to get cities of some size. Cumae has two trade routes. One, with rome, gives it the copper and timber it will need to build its infrastructure. It also imports fish from cumae, to increase food diversity. Both trade routes require upkeep by the importer in food (later on cash) to pay the traders.
Now, this allows for micromangement for those of us who like to micromanage. However, it doesn't really require it. You can set up your own trade routes, or you can let your city do it itself based on what it needs and what you tell it to do. If you say "build walls" but the city has no stone, it will set up its own trade route to get it. You can say "I want everyone growing cattle in this city," and move everyone off the farms to the pastures, or you can just hit emphasize meat production and the computer will do it itself. You could say "pass x food to rome, let it grow, and keep the other cities in the province small," or you could just hit "emphasize growth: Rome," "emphasise production: cumae." These kinds of emphases already exist in Civ.
Having stripped most of the traditional use of cities from the cities, I'll adress what I see them doing sometime soon.
As you can see, I prefer hexes. And this is only a rough demonstration, so I'm skimpy on the number of hexes I'm going to illustrate - I'd suggest provinces should be larger in a real game.
Spoiler :
This would be a rough example of how one player's civ would start. In the upper left part of the large continent, you see three farms placed on grassland along side a river, with some hills and forest to the north. The house is the administrative center, because I don't want to try to draw a city in paint. Note that cities can co-exist with other improvements in early periods. Early cities were dinky. Urban sprawl in industrial and modern ages will eat away at the improvements until the cities and suburbs make up the entire tile, but in the ancient era, the city's own tile is its most reliable food supply.
Spoiler :
This is the province manager screen. Under tiles you see what your settled tiles are producing and how many people have taken up residence there. All farms currently grow wheat. As more grains are cultivated, you can slide the biodiversity slider on the bottom of the tiles window to tell farms to grow other foods. These foods might be less productive, but would increase the variety in the diet of your citizens, increasing health and happiness.
The resources box totals up all the goods your province has at its disposal, after trade and upkeep. The Cities box is where you disperse your resources among your provinces cities. The trade box shows what trade routes you have between your cities. Since we only have one city, Rome, there is no trade yet.
Spoiler :
After a bunch of turns, you see that your workers (not pictured) have cleared land around rome, building three new farms, a woodcutter, and a copper mine.
Spoiler :
In the tiles box, you see the mine's tile and woodcutter's tile have been populated to capacity, at least the current capacity due to technology. The biodiversity slider has been increased, so one farm is now growing vegetables. A wheat farm grows 1 wheat per worker at this tech level, but a vegetable farm only grows .5 vegetables, so 3 vegetable farmers grow 1.5
The number you see in the third column under tiles is the amount of food reaching the province capital from the farms, or the amount needed by the non food producing tiles. Notice that the last tile, the wheat farm not adjacent to the capital (you'd be able to see which is which by hovering the cursor over the tile on the map or the tile entry on the tiles box to see the tile light up) is only getting .6 food out of 2 to the capital, because there's no road and it's not on a river. It takes 50% of the food to hire the caravan to move the food one tile to a river (because there's no road yet), and 20% to hire the ships to sail it to the capital. This, of course, is due to the neolithic level of crappy technology at the beginning of the game. Later technology will improve these horrible numbers. But early in the game, we need a second province to make the administration work.
Spoiler :
Now you see three cities on the map. Rome was the administrative center of the first prefecture, so you're familiar with this one. Antium is the city on the hills to the east. Cumae is the port to the southwest. Note well, cumae is still in the Rome Prefecture. It serves as a home for fishermen to work the water tiles (the boats due south of it) and recieves food from rome's prefecture. But I want to go to antium to show how trade works now.
Spoiler :
Antium is now working Rome's old farm, which wasn't getting more than 30% of its food to rome. It's also working the sheep pasture on the hills it is located in, and the cattle pastures on the plains nearby. These tiles can't support as dense a population as farms, but still produce enough excess food to get cities of some size. Cumae has two trade routes. One, with rome, gives it the copper and timber it will need to build its infrastructure. It also imports fish from cumae, to increase food diversity. Both trade routes require upkeep by the importer in food (later on cash) to pay the traders.
Now, this allows for micromangement for those of us who like to micromanage. However, it doesn't really require it. You can set up your own trade routes, or you can let your city do it itself based on what it needs and what you tell it to do. If you say "build walls" but the city has no stone, it will set up its own trade route to get it. You can say "I want everyone growing cattle in this city," and move everyone off the farms to the pastures, or you can just hit emphasize meat production and the computer will do it itself. You could say "pass x food to rome, let it grow, and keep the other cities in the province small," or you could just hit "emphasize growth: Rome," "emphasise production: cumae." These kinds of emphases already exist in Civ.
Having stripped most of the traditional use of cities from the cities, I'll adress what I see them doing sometime soon.
On a reasonably unrelated note, perhaps a better way of revolutionising the basic city principle through the implementation of provinces would be to institute some sort of province based system with the current system, so that a group of cities has some benefits from working together, or has some autonomy, or something. Just a thought.
killmeplease
Mk Z on Steam
Hm.. ok theres some beautiful pictures you draw. Maybe i'm getting annoying, but i still cant realize how your ideas are revolutional. Those provinces are no more than civ's ctites with overlapping BFCs. You can modify BFC maximum radius, introduce
, 
and 
distribution and you'll get exactly the same. 
hammers: represents those copper, timber etc materials. of course there could be introduced variety of materials instead of hammers but i personally do not like it).As for population density, it is already there as in plains area you can effectively work only on those plots with food resource on them (cows, sheeps etc). Maybe there should be introduced a cattle breeding ability when player can place additional cow per X plains plots. Or make those animals being units increasing plot yield.
an interesting idea. but i am not sure that present day personal computers are capable of conducting such a calculations (see 'linear programming') fast, especially for a large number of cities (pardon, prefectures) and resources.
You are essentially saying any system where people work tiles and build cities are effectivly the same thing. If this is the case, Sid Meier ought to sue the pants off Settlers of Catan for stealing his idea.
The simple fact that cities and land use are seperated means you place cities in locations for entierly different reasons. That in itself fundimentally alters gameplay. The fact they don't supply their own resources means they are liberated to do entierly different things. Legitimate trade for one.
Find provinces with extra resources
Find province with cheapest trade route
Establish trade route
That's simple enough if you've got an easily accessable list of avalable resources saved in memory somewhere.
The simple fact that cities and land use are seperated means you place cities in locations for entierly different reasons. That in itself fundimentally alters gameplay. The fact they don't supply their own resources means they are liberated to do entierly different things. Legitimate trade for one.
On need resources:
Find provinces with extra resources
Find province with cheapest trade route
Establish trade route
That's simple enough if you've got an easily accessable list of avalable resources saved in memory somewhere.
Naokaukodem
Millenary King
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2003
- Messages
- 4,301
Good job in explaining us your idea. I like it quite. I would prefer squares though, as they would provide a greater amount of close workable tiles.
However, I do not understand why is there 5 places for vegetables and 5 for wheat in the Rome prefecture. There are 6 farms, say 1 wheat farm with a room of 5, and 5 vegetable farms with a room of 5 also? (1 each) Am I right?
EDIT:
That said, I somewhat agree with killmeplease that for now, you are just revolutionizing the way workers, trade and tiles work. (well erm... that's already pretty good I think)
Now I am impatient to see what purpose do you reserve for this new entity you call cities. (and would be agree to call them asso also)
However, I do not understand why is there 5 places for vegetables and 5 for wheat in the Rome prefecture. There are 6 farms, say 1 wheat farm with a room of 5, and 5 vegetable farms with a room of 5 also? (1 each) Am I right?
EDIT:
That said, I somewhat agree with killmeplease that for now, you are just revolutionizing the way workers, trade and tiles work. (well erm... that's already pretty good I think)
Now I am impatient to see what purpose do you reserve for this new entity you call cities. (and would be agree to call them asso also)
I'll read it properly when I have time, so for now I'll comment your nice and understandable illustrations. Would you mind posting the paint file for a blank hex grid? I have one already, but I think yours is prettier. Did you read some of economic model? I had some issues too concerning the usage of sub-par food tiles such as plains, basically by removing the very strict labour intensivity/area intensivity correlation, and allowing other values of population than exactly one citizen to work a tile. I did no attempt to totally rework the city system though, I was more concerned with trade beween cities. I'll come back with more comments when I've got the time.
grandad1982
Deity
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2007
- Messages
- 2,552
I like the food distribution between regions. This was realized in civ2 with trade caravans I seem to recall.
I also like the concept of a flexible region size instead of a fized BFC. You could have the size of the region controled by tech or buildings or spending on law enforcment in a city etc.
I also like the concept of a flexible region size instead of a fized BFC. You could have the size of the region controled by tech or buildings or spending on law enforcment in a city etc.
Are you referring to the "Farm:Vegetable 3/5" under the tiles list? That's not listing the total number of tiles, that's listing the one individual farm, which has room for a total of five farmers. The graphic is supposed to show that the list has been scrolled down and previous farms aren't being displayed. This is how I'm trying to get rid of the one tile, one worker problem of population density. Inferior land quality, like plains and marginal deserts, can support populations of one or two herdsmen, but well irrigated farms can hold up to five farmers, for much more productive and land intensive cultivation.
@Wimsey
I've attached a chopped down version of my template, because I can't add bmp attachments over 500kb (and my template is over 3 mb). If you want to enlarge it, copy the whole thing, zoom in to the edge where you're adding it, and if you're adding it to the bottom, overlap the top and bottom of the complete hexes. If you're adding it to the side, do not overlap the images like you do when adding to the bottom. there is not a spare column, and the hexes will be skinnier there if you do.
Trade between cities is more of what I'm getting at. Creating a secondary system of land management really only exists to free up cities for trade and industrial purposes.
Actually, as I see it, the size of a region is entierly up to you. The catch is, you've got to deal with the penalties for spoilage and trade costs if your infrastructure and technology can't handle the distance.
The City:
As you might have noticed earlier, I've removed the concept of binary resources. Having one copper mine will not support your entire empire, and more importantly, every farm or mine provides a certain kind of resource. All mines will give gold or copper or iron or whatever metal to the province it's situated in.
As you also might have noticed, so far I haven't mentioned hammers (shields for those of us who were around before civ IV) or commerce, only food.
This is where cities come in. Cities will create production by means of raw materials in industry, and will trade these finished materials to cities that lack them. Industry and trade will be taxed, producing your commerce.
Going back to my previous illustrated post, this would be the city screen for Rome at the first stage I pictured, the first two images.
Let's start with Citizen Demographics, to the right of the center map. Currently, your "city" consists basically of the king and his courtiers and slaves. You don't yet have any resources, so there is no reason for citizens to leave their fields and work in your city. Aristocracy is the class of citizens that governs your kingdom. Retainers serve your aristocrats, adding to their happiness. Slaves serve both, adding to the happiness of both. When you build units, you will need to people them from out of your citizen pool. Depending on your civics, you might build workers out of mostly slaves and a few retainers. A military aristocracy civic might allow you to build very strong, well trained units out of your aristocrats (the natural scarcity of aristocrats obviously limiting the number you can effectivly field). If you have levee or corvee, private citizens (we don't have any at this stage yet, we'll get there) could be drafted into service, etc.
Next, see state buildings. Currently, you have your palace. You can build more of these in two ways. One, you can keep back a certain supply of resources for state purposes, and use state laborers (slaves) to build them. Or, if you have a thriving private sector, you can purchase with money the labor of private citizens and private industry, and your private sector will build them.
If you were to hit the little over arrow I've put right next to state buildings, you'd see private buildings. You never mess with these. Private industry will build them themselves as they see fit. Private industry, as with reality, is more organic and productive than state industry, but the catch is, you don't get to dictate what they do, at least not directly. At this stage, since your city has no private citizens, there wouldn't be any.
Resources shows the resources that your province is feeding to your city. Rome is recieving 3.6 wheat, but 2.6 wheat is being eaten by civil servants, so you have a surplus of one. Cities need a food surplus to grow the same way they do in Civ IV, however if you have both a surplus of food and a surplus of raw materials, citizens will begin to move from the fields into the cities seeking employment, at a rate determined by the surpluses and variety of both.
Industry and Trade don't exist yet. You don't have any more cities, and you don't have any resources for industry to work with. This means you have a tax income of zero. This isn't a big problem at the current stage, because you can support a primitive economy with food stipends. Science is produced by citizens depending on two features: amount of educational building in a city (library, university) and wealth of the various classes. Aristocrats are obviously wealthy, but there are no educational buildings, so your 200 aristocrats are producing 10 science. If you had a library, your retainers would be able to produce science as well, and if you had a booming economy, wealthy merchants would be able to educate their children, increasing science.
To be continued...
As you might have noticed earlier, I've removed the concept of binary resources. Having one copper mine will not support your entire empire, and more importantly, every farm or mine provides a certain kind of resource. All mines will give gold or copper or iron or whatever metal to the province it's situated in.
As you also might have noticed, so far I haven't mentioned hammers (shields for those of us who were around before civ IV) or commerce, only food.
This is where cities come in. Cities will create production by means of raw materials in industry, and will trade these finished materials to cities that lack them. Industry and trade will be taxed, producing your commerce.
Spoiler :
Going back to my previous illustrated post, this would be the city screen for Rome at the first stage I pictured, the first two images.
Let's start with Citizen Demographics, to the right of the center map. Currently, your "city" consists basically of the king and his courtiers and slaves. You don't yet have any resources, so there is no reason for citizens to leave their fields and work in your city. Aristocracy is the class of citizens that governs your kingdom. Retainers serve your aristocrats, adding to their happiness. Slaves serve both, adding to the happiness of both. When you build units, you will need to people them from out of your citizen pool. Depending on your civics, you might build workers out of mostly slaves and a few retainers. A military aristocracy civic might allow you to build very strong, well trained units out of your aristocrats (the natural scarcity of aristocrats obviously limiting the number you can effectivly field). If you have levee or corvee, private citizens (we don't have any at this stage yet, we'll get there) could be drafted into service, etc.
Next, see state buildings. Currently, you have your palace. You can build more of these in two ways. One, you can keep back a certain supply of resources for state purposes, and use state laborers (slaves) to build them. Or, if you have a thriving private sector, you can purchase with money the labor of private citizens and private industry, and your private sector will build them.
If you were to hit the little over arrow I've put right next to state buildings, you'd see private buildings. You never mess with these. Private industry will build them themselves as they see fit. Private industry, as with reality, is more organic and productive than state industry, but the catch is, you don't get to dictate what they do, at least not directly. At this stage, since your city has no private citizens, there wouldn't be any.
Resources shows the resources that your province is feeding to your city. Rome is recieving 3.6 wheat, but 2.6 wheat is being eaten by civil servants, so you have a surplus of one. Cities need a food surplus to grow the same way they do in Civ IV, however if you have both a surplus of food and a surplus of raw materials, citizens will begin to move from the fields into the cities seeking employment, at a rate determined by the surpluses and variety of both.
Industry and Trade don't exist yet. You don't have any more cities, and you don't have any resources for industry to work with. This means you have a tax income of zero. This isn't a big problem at the current stage, because you can support a primitive economy with food stipends. Science is produced by citizens depending on two features: amount of educational building in a city (library, university) and wealth of the various classes. Aristocrats are obviously wealthy, but there are no educational buildings, so your 200 aristocrats are producing 10 science. If you had a library, your retainers would be able to produce science as well, and if you had a booming economy, wealthy merchants would be able to educate their children, increasing science.
To be continued...
The City, Part II
We're going to jump ahead to a version of Rome's city screen from the third phase of this scenerio's development.
You've constructed four new state buildings. The granary holds a certain quantity of grains (only grains, no meats or other perishables) in case something awful should happen to one of your farms, so that you won't starve to death while you recover. It doesn't increase city growth speed, but you'll want to avoid starvation at most any cost, because it'll mess up your industry by wiping out skilled workmen. Libraries don't increase science by a flat percent, but they increase the scientific output of the elite classes, and the ease with which lower classes can become literate and produce scientific output. The temple supports a priestly class which makes everyone in the city happy, and of course is literate and produces scientific output. I've toyed with the idea of introducing different kinds of research, done by different classes, so that priests would produce philosophy points, not research points, which would go towards researching things like monotheism, code of laws, monarchy, as opposed to research, which would go to bronze working, machinery, gunpowder. But we'll leave that issue alone for now. Beneath this list you see the buildings you can construct, civ IV style. That's supposed to be a worker, warrior, barracks, and pyramid, but there's only so much I can draw in 144 square pixels with paint.
Under your City Demographics box, you'll see your slaves are angry. This is a good time to explain unrest. Lower classes have an unrest bonus for simply not being free and rich. Upper classes have an unrest bonus for not having luxury resources, especially if you're in frequent contact with a civ that does. Currently, luxury resources are an unknown, so your elites are happy. Your slaves, however, had to build four state buildings, and they aren't being fed anything but bread, so they're angry. The consequences of unhappy citizens break down like this: if your elites, aristocrats, or politicians in later eras become unhappy, expect them to not necesarally follow your orders to the letter, or to appropriate extra goods for their own pleasure. Remeber the senate from Civ II declaring peace behind your back? Well, it won't do that if your politicians are pleased with you under democracy, but if they're generally discontent, expect them to legeslate a lot of stuff without your consent. Now, if your general citizens are discontent, they'll try to avoid paying their taxes, or strike, or whatever means of civil disobedience are avalable to them under your civics. If your slaves are extremely discontent, expect slave revolts. The current level of unhappiness isn't a big deal. Slaves are expected to be unhappy, but if they get down to something like -5, expect to see a few rebels, and if around -10, keep an eye out for sparticus.
Now we have industry. Two of the copper being mined are being released into the private market, which is turning them into bronze tools. You'll see under Resources that you now have one copper left out of the three being trade to rome avalable for state purposes. You can hold back or release as much as you like, at least under a state monopoly civic. All the lumber is being released, into the construction industry. Construction doesn't provide any finished goods for trade, but is necesarry for the city to grow significantly in population or build private buildings. "Food Service," for lack of a better term, means the segment of the economy which preserves and sells food to private citizens. All of these industries have a production tax, which stymies the industry a little, but is a major source of wealth. Make sure not to go broke or bankrupt the industry.
And, lastly, Trade.
Antium does not have its own bronze source, and has a demand for bronze tools. So it has two options. One, it can import copper and start its own bronzeworking industry. Or two, it can import the final product. Because Rome has an established bronzeworking industry, and probably has a forge under private buildings by now, it's more effective to import the tools directly. The copper that's already being shipped to antium is being used in state-owned weaponsmiths, so there's no surplus bronze avalable anyway. So Rome is exporting its bronze tools to antium, and you are taxing the route 10g. If you were in Antium's city screen, you'd see "Bronze Tools from Rome, 10g" as well, but that doesn't mean each city is making 10g, it means the route is making 10g. It's being displayed in both cities because economic buildings on both ends of the route can decrease the trade upkeep. You also see fish being imported from Cumae, the costal city with the fishing boats. You'll want to import many varieties of food into your capital, mostly to feed to your aristocracy.
Now, the last point.
Strategic locations are necesarry to keep trade costs down and to open routes that would otherwise not be avalable. Very few ships are able to sail both rivers and open oceans. This is why, historically, anywhere you find the mouth of a river, you'll find a human settlement. Cities like cumae, on both a river and the sea, will be able to build huge ocean harbors and smaller ports on the river, to facilitate efficient trade of inland goods with oversea harbors. These ports will require large merchant populations to maintain, leading to important trade cities growing to enormous sizes, like modern cities do, and becoming huge revenue sources as you tax their trade.
Examples. Ancient corinth became the fourth largest city in the Roman Empire and a commercial powerhouse because ships could offload their goods on one side of the Isthmus of Corinth and other ships could pick them up again on the other side, so that sailers could avoid trying to navigate around the somewhat dangerous southern coast of the Peleponesus. America bought New Orleans because we wanted a port to facilitate trade between ships that traded on the Mississippi and oceangoing vessles. And countless cities were founded on trade routes to place tarrifs on trade between two distant trading partners. Venice ruled the Medeterranian for centuries because it was stinking rich off all the trade it facilitated betwen Europe and the Middle east, trade that civ cannot represent.
In this system, well developed cities will decrease the upkeep required by trade routes (upkeep exacted by losing a percentage of the total trade), so you will build cities on major trade routes, on strategic river points, and on strategic harbors. You will be able to import a luxury resource from an exotic source across the sea to your east, and they'll probably charge you a small fortune for it, but then you'll turn around and sell it to your trade partners without well developed ports to your west, at an exorbitant price, and make a killing. Remember, you're opponant's elite will get very unhappy if they see their trade partners showing off your great luxuries that they don't have, and soon leaders from everywhere will feel compelled to pay fortunes to you if you can keep a good monopoly. This is the kind of trade missing from Civ and this is what I propose we add.
We're going to jump ahead to a version of Rome's city screen from the third phase of this scenerio's development.
Spoiler :
You've constructed four new state buildings. The granary holds a certain quantity of grains (only grains, no meats or other perishables) in case something awful should happen to one of your farms, so that you won't starve to death while you recover. It doesn't increase city growth speed, but you'll want to avoid starvation at most any cost, because it'll mess up your industry by wiping out skilled workmen. Libraries don't increase science by a flat percent, but they increase the scientific output of the elite classes, and the ease with which lower classes can become literate and produce scientific output. The temple supports a priestly class which makes everyone in the city happy, and of course is literate and produces scientific output. I've toyed with the idea of introducing different kinds of research, done by different classes, so that priests would produce philosophy points, not research points, which would go towards researching things like monotheism, code of laws, monarchy, as opposed to research, which would go to bronze working, machinery, gunpowder. But we'll leave that issue alone for now. Beneath this list you see the buildings you can construct, civ IV style. That's supposed to be a worker, warrior, barracks, and pyramid, but there's only so much I can draw in 144 square pixels with paint.
Under your City Demographics box, you'll see your slaves are angry. This is a good time to explain unrest. Lower classes have an unrest bonus for simply not being free and rich. Upper classes have an unrest bonus for not having luxury resources, especially if you're in frequent contact with a civ that does. Currently, luxury resources are an unknown, so your elites are happy. Your slaves, however, had to build four state buildings, and they aren't being fed anything but bread, so they're angry. The consequences of unhappy citizens break down like this: if your elites, aristocrats, or politicians in later eras become unhappy, expect them to not necesarally follow your orders to the letter, or to appropriate extra goods for their own pleasure. Remeber the senate from Civ II declaring peace behind your back? Well, it won't do that if your politicians are pleased with you under democracy, but if they're generally discontent, expect them to legeslate a lot of stuff without your consent. Now, if your general citizens are discontent, they'll try to avoid paying their taxes, or strike, or whatever means of civil disobedience are avalable to them under your civics. If your slaves are extremely discontent, expect slave revolts. The current level of unhappiness isn't a big deal. Slaves are expected to be unhappy, but if they get down to something like -5, expect to see a few rebels, and if around -10, keep an eye out for sparticus.
Now we have industry. Two of the copper being mined are being released into the private market, which is turning them into bronze tools. You'll see under Resources that you now have one copper left out of the three being trade to rome avalable for state purposes. You can hold back or release as much as you like, at least under a state monopoly civic. All the lumber is being released, into the construction industry. Construction doesn't provide any finished goods for trade, but is necesarry for the city to grow significantly in population or build private buildings. "Food Service," for lack of a better term, means the segment of the economy which preserves and sells food to private citizens. All of these industries have a production tax, which stymies the industry a little, but is a major source of wealth. Make sure not to go broke or bankrupt the industry.
And, lastly, Trade.
Antium does not have its own bronze source, and has a demand for bronze tools. So it has two options. One, it can import copper and start its own bronzeworking industry. Or two, it can import the final product. Because Rome has an established bronzeworking industry, and probably has a forge under private buildings by now, it's more effective to import the tools directly. The copper that's already being shipped to antium is being used in state-owned weaponsmiths, so there's no surplus bronze avalable anyway. So Rome is exporting its bronze tools to antium, and you are taxing the route 10g. If you were in Antium's city screen, you'd see "Bronze Tools from Rome, 10g" as well, but that doesn't mean each city is making 10g, it means the route is making 10g. It's being displayed in both cities because economic buildings on both ends of the route can decrease the trade upkeep. You also see fish being imported from Cumae, the costal city with the fishing boats. You'll want to import many varieties of food into your capital, mostly to feed to your aristocracy.
Now, the last point.
Strategic locations are necesarry to keep trade costs down and to open routes that would otherwise not be avalable. Very few ships are able to sail both rivers and open oceans. This is why, historically, anywhere you find the mouth of a river, you'll find a human settlement. Cities like cumae, on both a river and the sea, will be able to build huge ocean harbors and smaller ports on the river, to facilitate efficient trade of inland goods with oversea harbors. These ports will require large merchant populations to maintain, leading to important trade cities growing to enormous sizes, like modern cities do, and becoming huge revenue sources as you tax their trade.
Examples. Ancient corinth became the fourth largest city in the Roman Empire and a commercial powerhouse because ships could offload their goods on one side of the Isthmus of Corinth and other ships could pick them up again on the other side, so that sailers could avoid trying to navigate around the somewhat dangerous southern coast of the Peleponesus. America bought New Orleans because we wanted a port to facilitate trade between ships that traded on the Mississippi and oceangoing vessles. And countless cities were founded on trade routes to place tarrifs on trade between two distant trading partners. Venice ruled the Medeterranian for centuries because it was stinking rich off all the trade it facilitated betwen Europe and the Middle east, trade that civ cannot represent.
In this system, well developed cities will decrease the upkeep required by trade routes (upkeep exacted by losing a percentage of the total trade), so you will build cities on major trade routes, on strategic river points, and on strategic harbors. You will be able to import a luxury resource from an exotic source across the sea to your east, and they'll probably charge you a small fortune for it, but then you'll turn around and sell it to your trade partners without well developed ports to your west, at an exorbitant price, and make a killing. Remember, you're opponant's elite will get very unhappy if they see their trade partners showing off your great luxuries that they don't have, and soon leaders from everywhere will feel compelled to pay fortunes to you if you can keep a good monopoly. This is the kind of trade missing from Civ and this is what I propose we add.
I'm not a fan of culture. I've always believed that territory should be claimed on the basis of what degree of settlement you have in a given area. So this would be an example of how I see territory working.
In this system, every city claims the six tiles within a radius of one simply for existing. Remember, I'm doing this small to save myself time illustrating things, and in a real game, I'd propose it grabbing 2 automatically. As it grows, it would establish claims over land even farther away. Farms will automatically claim the tile they're located in (improvements do not need to be built in your territory: usually, their being build will be the reason for your territorial claim), and if they're very densly populated, they'll claim adjacent tiles.
The four original farms are the only farms large enough to claim adjacent territory on this map. Otherwise, all land is being claimed by cities.
You'll also note that there's now another civ to the east. This is going to be Persia. And we're going to have a war with them. But first, you need units. And to train units, you'll need a state weaponsmith industry. Fortunately, we have one in Antium.
Where you saw Industry in the last city screen, you now see State Industry. The arrow next to State Industry toggles the two screens. You'll notice you're withholding the copper and iron and timber and some of the cows (for leather), and your state monopoly of weaponsmithing is creating weapons with which to equip your new units. These can be traded to cities that need them, but we won't do that, since Antium is the nearest city to the enemy, so we can just train our troops here. Now, if you have sufficient numbers of the right citizens and the armor and weapons to outfit them, you can train troops in antium by pressing the production buttons under the State Buildings box.
However, notice that the only unit that can be built is currently the warrior (the yellow man with the club). Why is it you can't build anything to use your Iron Weapons? Because you haven't set it up yet.
Unlike previous civs, where researching technology gives you access to new units, in this system, technology gives you access to new forms of weapons and armor and training, which you combine as you see fit into a certain number of units in the Armory.
In the upper left corner of the armory, you see buttons for shock troops, defenders, cavalry, missile units, and siege weapons. When you select one of these buttons, you see on the left side of the screen the various kinds of troops you have set up. At this technological stage, your military logistics allow you to train two different kinds of shock troops. The warrior is obsolete, so you're going to configure an entierly new kind of unit, the swordsman.
We set the primary weapon to be the Iron Sword, but no one has produced any iron armor at the moment, so we'll have to deal with bronze. We could set a secondary weapon that would give the swordsman an extra advantage (like a bow to inflict first strikes), but that would increase the necesarry training time, so we'll skip it.
Next to the weapons, we set the kinds of skills we want to train the unit with. Formation allows the swordsman to enter tight and loose formations if assaulted by archers or cavalry, like a roman legion. (This can be countered by attacking with archers and horses at the same time, or horse archers, as happened in the Battle of Carrhae). March increases movement speed slightly.
Once you set up a unit, it will aquire a name based on equipment and training, you can build it off the city screen the same as in civ IV. This unit, being a Roman Unit equipped with swords and trained in formation and march would be titled a "Centurion" or "Legionairre."
When you slightly reconfigure a unit (such as, change that old bronze armor to iron armor), you'll need to pay for retraining and upgrade all units soon, or they'll be obsolete in the new army and be disbanded. In the case of major changes or deletion of a unit, all units of the old model will be disbanded.
The bottom of the screen shows the total cost in people and armor, the upkeep costs, and the time your people will need to train after a unit is comissioned. The bottom right box shows the total sum you have of each resource in each city.
The way I figure it, this system gives you the latitude to create what you need to deal with a certain opponant, while at the same time being simple enough to be managable. You set up your unit once, and then mass produce with the click of a button, until you don't want it anymore. In this way, you have the ability to raise and train an army of troops especially designed to take out a military superpower. Example:
The king of Persia has innumerable armies that ought to be able to take out any kingdom. However you, Alexander the Great, train a specific unit, the Hoplite, equipped with enormous spears, to use a specific formation, the Phalanx, which allows you to plow through the enemy before they get close to you. This force equalizing tactic brings a military superpower to its knees, because it wasn't prepared to deal with a kind of warfare it hadn't seen before.
Spoiler :
In this system, every city claims the six tiles within a radius of one simply for existing. Remember, I'm doing this small to save myself time illustrating things, and in a real game, I'd propose it grabbing 2 automatically. As it grows, it would establish claims over land even farther away. Farms will automatically claim the tile they're located in (improvements do not need to be built in your territory: usually, their being build will be the reason for your territorial claim), and if they're very densly populated, they'll claim adjacent tiles.
The four original farms are the only farms large enough to claim adjacent territory on this map. Otherwise, all land is being claimed by cities.
You'll also note that there's now another civ to the east. This is going to be Persia. And we're going to have a war with them. But first, you need units. And to train units, you'll need a state weaponsmith industry. Fortunately, we have one in Antium.
Spoiler :
Where you saw Industry in the last city screen, you now see State Industry. The arrow next to State Industry toggles the two screens. You'll notice you're withholding the copper and iron and timber and some of the cows (for leather), and your state monopoly of weaponsmithing is creating weapons with which to equip your new units. These can be traded to cities that need them, but we won't do that, since Antium is the nearest city to the enemy, so we can just train our troops here. Now, if you have sufficient numbers of the right citizens and the armor and weapons to outfit them, you can train troops in antium by pressing the production buttons under the State Buildings box.
However, notice that the only unit that can be built is currently the warrior (the yellow man with the club). Why is it you can't build anything to use your Iron Weapons? Because you haven't set it up yet.
Unlike previous civs, where researching technology gives you access to new units, in this system, technology gives you access to new forms of weapons and armor and training, which you combine as you see fit into a certain number of units in the Armory.
Spoiler :
In the upper left corner of the armory, you see buttons for shock troops, defenders, cavalry, missile units, and siege weapons. When you select one of these buttons, you see on the left side of the screen the various kinds of troops you have set up. At this technological stage, your military logistics allow you to train two different kinds of shock troops. The warrior is obsolete, so you're going to configure an entierly new kind of unit, the swordsman.
We set the primary weapon to be the Iron Sword, but no one has produced any iron armor at the moment, so we'll have to deal with bronze. We could set a secondary weapon that would give the swordsman an extra advantage (like a bow to inflict first strikes), but that would increase the necesarry training time, so we'll skip it.
Next to the weapons, we set the kinds of skills we want to train the unit with. Formation allows the swordsman to enter tight and loose formations if assaulted by archers or cavalry, like a roman legion. (This can be countered by attacking with archers and horses at the same time, or horse archers, as happened in the Battle of Carrhae). March increases movement speed slightly.
Once you set up a unit, it will aquire a name based on equipment and training, you can build it off the city screen the same as in civ IV. This unit, being a Roman Unit equipped with swords and trained in formation and march would be titled a "Centurion" or "Legionairre."
When you slightly reconfigure a unit (such as, change that old bronze armor to iron armor), you'll need to pay for retraining and upgrade all units soon, or they'll be obsolete in the new army and be disbanded. In the case of major changes or deletion of a unit, all units of the old model will be disbanded.
The bottom of the screen shows the total cost in people and armor, the upkeep costs, and the time your people will need to train after a unit is comissioned. The bottom right box shows the total sum you have of each resource in each city.
The way I figure it, this system gives you the latitude to create what you need to deal with a certain opponant, while at the same time being simple enough to be managable. You set up your unit once, and then mass produce with the click of a button, until you don't want it anymore. In this way, you have the ability to raise and train an army of troops especially designed to take out a military superpower. Example:
The king of Persia has innumerable armies that ought to be able to take out any kingdom. However you, Alexander the Great, train a specific unit, the Hoplite, equipped with enormous spears, to use a specific formation, the Phalanx, which allows you to plow through the enemy before they get close to you. This force equalizing tactic brings a military superpower to its knees, because it wasn't prepared to deal with a kind of warfare it hadn't seen before.
killmeplease
Mk Z on Steam
this may result in two closely situated agricultural provinces supplying each other with food. there must be a way to determine the needs.
Agricultural cities do not need food. Food need is determined by cities whose potential for industry surpasses their potential for feeding their industrial workers. Overwhelmingly agricultural provinces would usually not have a high potential for industry.
On the other hand, if two provinces grew entierly different kinds of food, supplying each other with different kinds of food would be a boon to health, happiness, and tax income, with a low trade upkeep, so it would be a very good result to see.
On the other hand, if two provinces grew entierly different kinds of food, supplying each other with different kinds of food would be a boon to health, happiness, and tax income, with a low trade upkeep, so it would be a very good result to see.
killmeplease
Mk Z on Steam
considerations you stated here make resources distribution algorhytm to be not trivial. Just try to program it and you'll see. There is a production optimization problem arise that can be solved effectively only by using methods of operations research (so far). They'll give you the best results as in optimization as in performance. But their performance is not absolute. More provinces/resources there will be, more processor time will be consumed for production optimization. And i do not know will it be acceptably fast or not. But there is a certain anxiety.
This sounds interesting, although complex. I think you could take a very similar version to this and "dumb it down" and still have it interesting. It'd be nice to have a system that wasn't so BFC-centric, that incorporates sharing food between cities, trucking it in, and stuff like that. This seems like a decent basis for an idea of how a city could grow "beyond" its BFC, yet still keep a lot of the current "city" aspect of the game.
I'd probably simplify it by not having "kinds" of food. This isn't a game about micromanaging. Food is food.
But definitely some interesting ideas. One key would be to make sure everything is logical, and that stuff doesn't change too much as you advance. This sounds great for what you describe, back in the old times. But I'm not entirely sure if your model translates well to modern times, without doing the old, "And now we're into the modern day, so let's change everything going on with this map" type of break.
I'd probably simplify it by not having "kinds" of food. This isn't a game about micromanaging. Food is food.
But definitely some interesting ideas. One key would be to make sure everything is logical, and that stuff doesn't change too much as you advance. This sounds great for what you describe, back in the old times. But I'm not entirely sure if your model translates well to modern times, without doing the old, "And now we're into the modern day, so let's change everything going on with this map" type of break.
weekend_warrior
Warlord
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2008
- Messages
- 122
Hanwudi, I like your ideas, but I think you're over-complicating a lot of things.
I also think Civ 5 should abandon the BFC completely. Any tile within your border should be workable, resource tiles outside your border are not "workable" but the resource can be acquired with the proper tech and tile impovement.
The big thing that comes into play now is distance, which I think was what your talking about. I could have a city working a tile clear across my nation, but by the time it gets to the city the value would be greatly reduced. A city closer to it will net much higher results. I also think Civ 5 should implement "towns", but not in the sense they are now. When a town is built (by consuming a worker), it acts as a hub, increasing the output of nearby resources and tiles. Building of roads/ railways would further decrease the amount lost over distance.
I also think that citys should be able to share resources over the entire empire. So a food rich city can feed a starving city, or a production power house city could be used to help build for another city. The key again being distance, as food or production is moved from city to city it loses it's value.
As for the culture border sub-discussion going on. I think it works well except it needs to take into consideration of military control. If I have my army garrisoned on a mine tile, your culture shouldn't be able to push me off it.
BTW, when the hell is Civ 5 coming out?
I also think Civ 5 should abandon the BFC completely. Any tile within your border should be workable, resource tiles outside your border are not "workable" but the resource can be acquired with the proper tech and tile impovement.
The big thing that comes into play now is distance, which I think was what your talking about. I could have a city working a tile clear across my nation, but by the time it gets to the city the value would be greatly reduced. A city closer to it will net much higher results. I also think Civ 5 should implement "towns", but not in the sense they are now. When a town is built (by consuming a worker), it acts as a hub, increasing the output of nearby resources and tiles. Building of roads/ railways would further decrease the amount lost over distance.
I also think that citys should be able to share resources over the entire empire. So a food rich city can feed a starving city, or a production power house city could be used to help build for another city. The key again being distance, as food or production is moved from city to city it loses it's value.
As for the culture border sub-discussion going on. I think it works well except it needs to take into consideration of military control. If I have my army garrisoned on a mine tile, your culture shouldn't be able to push me off it.
BTW, when the hell is Civ 5 coming out?
I remain adamantly opposed to this. There are any number of epire managmement games out there; what makes Civ Civ is empire managment as an emergent property of city management.
I agree, but caravans are the means to do this.
I disagree here though. Or rather, the additional cost of moving it is adequtely represented by the time and production taken in building the caravana and moving it.
Military is too strong already. Not only should culture be able to push you out, if you refuse to leave it should be able to convert your unit.
weekend_warrior
Warlord
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2008
- Messages
- 122
I guess I'd just like to see the game evolve past Found city/ work tiles/ build units, into something more realistic and flowing. Maybe one Civ will have 1 central uber city, and use it's shields to build military to extend it's borders and workers to build roads and infrastructure. While another Civ might choose to build setlers and a network of smaller citys. The system now is too strict, it's too obvious what to do and leaves very little wiggle room to mix things up.
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