Settling Cities

[Arcaian]

Hey guys! This wouldn't happen in an expansion to Civ V, more likely Civ VI.

I was just wondering, don't you guys feel that the way expansion occurs in Civilization is a bit unrealistic? It feels a lot more like a colony to me. The only times I can think of where a dedicated group of people were gathered to go to a location with no settlement present (at least from that nation) and settle a new settlement there would be examples like Jamestown, classic cases of colonialism.

What happens much more often in real life is that once a centre for a region is established (in civ terms once a capital city is built) villages appear in quite a wide region around it, supplying it with food and other materials it needs. New cities appear when one of these villages grow, and the population increases, villages around it start sending food to it and it can grow to a city. I feel like this would be a more realistic source of cities, and settlers could be used to found the capital city and to found colonies; settlements quite distant from the current boundaries of your nation, like the other side of a continent or a new continent.

The actual in-game functions would be something along the lines of you having villages wherever you have a citizen working a tile. You can choose to invest money to increase the size of the village (something along the lines of larger farms or the like) or you could build a fort nearby, those type of choices would increase the size. Once a critical mass in the village has been reached you could choose to convert it into a small city, which would then be able to receive food from nearby villages. There wouldn't have to be an arbitrary limit on the distance from cities, you would just need to have incredibly productive farms nearby.

I think it is an interesting idea at least!

 

[phaethon16]

I think it's an interesting idea for civ 6, though I would say Civ III did settlers right by having population points removed from a city when a settler is made, and in that way settlers made sense. I really like the idea though, because it would limit the amount of crap cities other civs could create on icy terrain or deserts, because they would either by huge money sinks or just wouldn't grow. I would be interested to see this idea implemented, because I think it provides a layer of depth not yet seen in city production.

 

[Arcaian]

I think it's an interesting idea for civ 6, though I would say Civ III did settlers right by having population points removed from a city when a settler is made, and in that way settlers made sense. I really like the idea though, because it would limit the amount of crap cities other civs could create on icy terrain or deserts, because they would either by huge money sinks or just wouldn't grow. I would be interested to see this idea implemented, because I think it provides a layer of depth not yet seen in city production.

Thanks for the reply! Yeah, I think it'd be better for the trade off between tall and wide. Instead of slightly artificial limits like increasing the cost of science or social policies or national wonders (kinda hard to justify that), you'd have the more realistic trade off between large cities or small cities. I don't think this would be moddable, sadly, but could be pretty cool for Civ 6

 

[Naokaukodem]

Villages were present in previous Civs in the name of goody huts, and I've always wanted this to be expanded as an idea, in the same vein I feel unrealistic to have borders with nothing and in V border growth costing you money.

With increased power I'm sure developers could be more precise about it : either you can grow indefinitely, first here first served (see my idea about claiming land with scouts, wars would be more common and not necessality seen as "total wars between Nations"), either the map is fully populated since the start and is far from being empty.

The second option seems to be dominant in the developers mind, as the goody huts idea let it presume. (+ "borders with nothing", + expanding borders costing you culture or gold) So I think we should at least see graphic manifestations of life in the map, in nearly every tile. (caves, huts, camp fire, monuments etc.)

After all, realistically, agriculture have been pushed toward an apparition because the land started to become cluttered with human presence, and the way of life of people couldn't bare it. (nomadism : a large portion of land is required for a relatively small group of persons, to let the resource renew when abandonned) Surely, people started to feel cramped and strongely ask themselves how to solve this problem other than wars.

So, there could be graphical evidence of human presence everywhere, but this human presence could be ideally interacted with, in the same vein as we can interact with City-States in V or indians in Colonization. Considering the universality of this presence, not every square could be interacted with, but only with some occasionnally, like when claiming land (barbs rising ?) or treating with other villages that adopted agriculture to your following. (most people would be OK to join your "infinite food" city however)

 

[Arcaian]

Nice ideas Naokaukodem! I do know about the goodie huts, as I have owned every Civilization since Civ 1 The idea actually came to me because of hamlets and the like in Civ 4.

You make a good point that agriculture would've been developed to suit the needs of overpopulation (at least overpopulation for a nomadic lifestyle). I guess barbarians and ruins/villages in Civ 5/4 are meant to represent this, but I'm sure there would be peaceful 'barbarians' as well. Would make for something else interesting in the early game, thankfully something we're not lacking.

Could lead to some things like overexpansion causes native peoples to rise up (i.e. place too many cities early game and you get a barbarian invasion). Interesting

How would you deal with expanding borders? I've always felt they were meant to represent the area in which your culture is the dominant one, and not the areas your nation has laid a 'claim' to. A scout travelling through an area wouldn't really do much to bring the area under your culture.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Nice ideas Naokaukodem!

Thank you.

You make a good point that agriculture would've been developed to suit the needs of overpopulation (at least overpopulation for a nomadic lifestyle). I guess barbarians and ruins/villages in Civ 5/4 are meant to represent this, but I'm sure there would be peaceful 'barbarians' as well. Would make for something else interesting in the early game, thankfully something we're not lacking.

Yes the early game in V is pretty much the most interesting part of the game. But what if we start at -40000 ? After all we rule culture entities, and I wouldn't mind to extend this to "races" of people. If we rule "races", it would be logical to start since the Homo Sapiens appeared.

Could lead to some things like overexpansion causes native peoples to rise up (i.e. place too many cities early game and you get a barbarian invasion). Interesting

Actually I was more thinking about a lot of villages you had to treat with, right of passage (shaping the land : mountains could be passable again), trade, alliances, etc... not really overexpansion because other ideas could make expansion very optional.

How would you deal with expanding borders? I've always felt they were meant to represent the area in which your culture is the dominant one, and not the areas your nation has laid a 'claim' to. A scout travelling through an area wouldn't really do much to bring the area under your culture.

It's an interesting question actually that I wondered myself a lot of times. As it, I feel disatisfied with the current model. Because :

Either you rule a cultural entity, in which case your territory expansion obeys to culture as now, but you have not a centralised mean to take decisions, like raising armies, entering wars, controlling your gold, making trades, etc...

Either you rule a state, you have all those abilities but your borders are not determined by culture, much more by wars, claiming land and occupation. So, if there's nothing or nobody near your "borders of fact" (occupation = tiles you work), nothing must prevent you to actually work any tiles you suit.

More generally, I think that the culture acquiring tiles mechanic is a straitjacket. A "wrong good idea", a bad idea. Civ2 had it right, except that we were limited by a city radius.

I propose to totally scrap those kinds of limitations for an open system that allows anyone to work any tile he sees. That would work as following : once a tile picked (any one that is displayed on your map and is free), the distance and the average move points of units would determine when the resource come into the city. The more far away the tile is, the longer the resources takes to arrive, but once arrived, you receive a continuus flow of them each turn.

Also, the farer the tile is, the harder it is to defend. Physical barbarians could intercept convoys if there's no road to this tile, or pillage the tile and capture/kill the citizen if there's no improvment, if there's not any unit on it. So you would have to : build roads in order to secure the convoys, and defend your tiles as currently. If your tiles are too much scattered, no doubt you will have difficulties to defend them. The best strategy is however to deploy cities like the old fashion, but nobody knows what it would cost you in the game where this feature would come, so I don't know. If it's costy, you would still have an interest in planting new cities, because each of them possesses a population engine : the more you have cities, the more your population grows quickly, and also for defense purposes.

 

[Arcaian]

Thank you.



Yes the early game in V is pretty much the most interesting part of the game. But what if we start at -40000 ? After all we rule culture entities, and I wouldn't mind to extend this to "races" of people. If we rule "races", it would be logical to start since the Homo Sapiens appeared.

There was a map like that in Civ IV, never really played it much. It was an interesting start, but didn't change enough of the game mechanics to really do it. If we were gonna go back to -40k B.C.E, you'd need to (in CiV terms at least) drop the palace science down to pretty much 0, and only have 1 or 2 bpt until you settle a proper city and build a library or something like it, then resort to normal mechanics. Actually moddable

Actually I was more thinking about a lot of villages you had to treat with, right of passage (shaping the land : mountains could be passable again), trade, alliances, etc... not really overexpansion because other ideas could make expansion very optional.

Hmm... so to stop the player from just claiming all the land possible, you'd need to make deals and the like with the locals? Could be an interesting mechanic to stop 'taking' all the tiles. In CiV terms, there's no real reason to not take every tile you could if they were free (I'll talk about this more later in the post). Would they disappear over time, found civs or city states or what? Sounds fun though

It's an interesting question actually that I wondered myself a lot of times. As it, I feel disatisfied with the current model. Because :

Either you rule a cultural entity, in which case your territory expansion obeys to culture as now, but you have not a centralised mean to take decisions, like raising armies, entering wars, controlling your gold, making trades, etc...

Either you rule a state, you have all those abilities but your borders are not determined by culture, much more by wars, claiming land and occupation. So, if there's nothing or nobody near your "borders of fact" (occupation = tiles you work), nothing must prevent you to actually work any tiles you suit.

I always thought that you were some sort of eternal ruler; the ruler of the state option. Ruling a culture wouldn't give you the direct control we've always had. I do agree that later in the game when you have conflicts and border tensions your military would be the factor changing it, but early game I can understand the culture mechanic. But you could still work outside of your culture, it'd just have negatives along with it. Paying tribute to the locals, or needing a military unit to force them to let you work there or something like that.

More generally, I think that the culture acquiring tiles mechanic is a straitjacket. A "wrong good idea", a bad idea. Civ2 had it right, except that we were limited by a city radius.

I propose to totally scrap those kinds of limitations for an open system that allows anyone to work any tile he sees. That would work as following : once a tile picked (any one that is displayed on your map and is free), the distance and the average move points of units would determine when the resource come into the city. The more far away the tile is, the longer the resources takes to arrive, but once arrived, you receive a continuus flow of them each turn.

Also, the farer the tile is, the harder it is to defend. Physical barbarians could intercept convoys if there's no road to this tile, or pillage the tile and capture/kill the citizen if there's no improvment, if there's not any unit on it. So you would have to : build roads in order to secure the convoys, and defend your tiles as currently. If your tiles are too much scattered, no doubt you will have difficulties to defend them. The best strategy is however to deploy cities like the old fashion, but nobody knows what it would cost you in the game where this feature would come, so I don't know. If it's costy, you would still have an interest in planting new cities, because each of them possesses a population engine : the more you have cities, the more your population grows quickly, and also for defense purposes.

Good ideas! I definitely like working anywhere, but taking some time to set it up. Very realistic, though might make it a pain for the poor AI!

I don't think roads alone would stop raiding, and it'd be too easy. I think to make it more of a tough decision, you need a military unit/improvement at the tile they're working, but you need to pay for patrols along the road, something like the 1gpt they cost in CiV, but optional. Would make it a hard choice whether you work the far away, very good tile or not, or build a city there. Love this idea though, it'd be awesome in the next civ!

 

[Naokaukodem]

There was a map like that in Civ IV, never really played it much. It was an interesting start, but didn't change enough of the game mechanics to really do it. If we were gonna go back to -40k B.C.E, you'd need to (in CiV terms at least) drop the palace science down to pretty much 0, and only have 1 or 2 bpt until you settle a proper city and build a library or something like it, then resort to normal mechanics. Actually moddable

Yes but if we talk about the same thing this mod was far from being finalized, I gave an idea for it, it was to use the cottage pillage system into a resource depletion system, because resource depletion would be need to represent well this era. And also, there were no cities, it was constantly moving camps. Last, there would be the need of totally new resources, like flint, not considering the particular work on beast and their possible migrations. It may be moddable but it would ask a lot of work ; nobody tempted it very seriously since now.

Hmm... so to stop the player from just claiming all the land possible, you'd need to make deals and the like with the locals? Could be an interesting mechanic to stop 'taking' all the tiles. In CiV terms, there's no real reason to not take every tile you could if they were free (I'll talk about this more later in the post). Would they disappear over time, found civs or city states or what? Sounds fun though

Yep in a mod or new game that would allow you to claim every bit of land you see first, those villages could help. The perfect thing would be that you start off as one of these villages, could become a civ, a city-state, barbarians, etc... and the other villages doing the same. Before that, some of them would welcome you making you gifts (goody huts, ruins, Colonization Indians), some others would be hostile and trigger a barbarian uprising, some would be neutral/suspicious.

I always thought that you were some sort of eternal ruler; the ruler of the state option. Ruling a culture wouldn't give you the direct control we've always had. I do agree that later in the game when you have conflicts and border tensions your military would be the factor changing it, but early game I can understand the culture mechanic. But you could still work outside of your culture, it'd just have negatives along with it. Paying tribute to the locals, or needing a military unit to force them to let you work there or something like that.

But look ; if everything around you is empty, why wouldn't you catch it ? Because you don't need it ? The thing is that Civ is a game with a victory condition, and that this victory condition is partly due to this territory, if not directly tied to it (Domination of III). Why do you create cities in Civ ? To gain power (that is ok), or simply to catch an unreachable resource. (iron in V) Again, if it's free of any presence, why not taking it for good ? Why to involve the whole restriction machine that is tied to planting cities ? You should be able to take whatever pleases you, granted that it's not already taken, and if it is, take it by ask, force or snake.

Good ideas! I definitely like working anywhere, but taking some time to set it up. Very realistic, though might make it a pain for the poor AI!

I don't think roads alone would stop raiding, and it'd be too easy. I think to make it more of a tough decision, you need a military unit/improvement at the tile they're working, but you need to pay for patrols along the road, something like the 1gpt they cost in CiV, but optional. Would make it a hard choice whether you work the far away, very good tile or not, or build a city there. Love this idea though, it'd be awesome in the next civ!

Actually building a road is an investment, it's a worker that is busy all the time the road is being built and will not work elsewhere, and the farer the resource is, the longer it takes. I think it's even maybe too expensive, especially early. The simpliest thing would be to patrol a unit in that axis, protecting physical convoys from physical barbarians.

 

[Arcaian]

Yes but if we talk about the same thing this mod was far from being finalized, I gave an idea for it, it was to use the cottage pillage system into a resource depletion system, because resource depletion would be need to represent well this era. And also, there were no cities, it was constantly moving camps. Last, there would be the need of totally new resources, like flint, not considering the particular work on beast and their possible migrations. It may be moddable but it would ask a lot of work ; nobody tempted it very seriously since now.

Ah, I wasn't talking about a mod, I was meaning in un-modded civ 4, there was a default scenario called 'ice age' or something like that, where the game starts in 40,000 BCE. It pretty much played the same as usual however. Playing constantly moving camps at the start would be interesting, and also a much better way of letting people reach their preferred tiles than start bias. That way the Incan's could move to the hills and eventually found their capital there, instead of hoping that there are enough people in the game without a hill bias to get some hills. I don't think you could mod the whole thing easily, but some parts of it would be doable without too much work.

Yep in a mod or new game that would allow you to claim every bit of land you see first, those villages could help. The perfect thing would be that you start off as one of these villages, could become a civ, a city-state, barbarians, etc... and the other villages doing the same. Before that, some of them would welcome you making you gifts (goody huts, ruins, Colonization Indians), some others would be hostile and trigger a barbarian uprising, some would be neutral/suspicious.

Yeah, I was thinking why not start as one of them. It would lead to the interesting decision that you've never really had in civilization before; what if you're not a major civ? What if you become a barbarian and your goal is to attack all the major civs. What if you become a city state and your goal is to have the most influence of all the city states, or something like that. It would lead to a really interesting early game!

But look ; if everything around you is empty, why wouldn't you catch it ? Because you don't need it ? The thing is that Civ is a game with a victory condition, and that this victory condition is partly due to this territory, if not directly tied to it (Domination of III). Why do you create cities in Civ ? To gain power (that is ok), or simply to catch an unreachable resource. (iron in V) Again, if it's free of any presence, why not taking it for good ? Why to involve the whole restriction machine that is tied to planting cities ? You should be able to take whatever pleases you, granted that it's not already taken, and if it is, take it by ask, force or snake.

When you look at it that way, there is no reason to stop land expansion other than it is associated with victory. As long as you had an appropriate measure for getting land back from other people, it would certainly be possible. Otherwise whoever scouted first would just claim all the land, in CiV mechanics you'd never get it off them until you take that city. If you can claim all the land you want with no cost - as long as it is free - then it would make the amount of citizens you have even more important, which is good

Actually building a road is an investment, it's a worker that is busy all the time the road is being built and will not work elsewhere, and the farer the resource is, the longer it takes. I think it's even maybe too expensive, especially early. The simpliest thing would be to patrol a unit in that axis, protecting physical convoys from physical barbarians.

I wasn't suggesting keeping the 1gpt for the roads, but the reason I suggest a 'artificial' system for the patrol is because if you've got a road that's 6+ tiles long you'll have to use multiple troops, which (under the current system at least) is a lot of investment and production for protecting it. But I was thinking more about claiming a strategic resource 10-12 tiles away. It could be tricky to patrol it, but thinking about it that could add something to the balance of claiming far off tiles.

 

[Browd]

Ah, I wasn't talking about a mod, I was meaning in un-modded civ 4, there was a default scenario called 'ice age' or something like that, where the game starts in 40,000 BCE. It pretty much played the same as usual however.

You're correct. There was a Civ IV Ice Age scenario, where the game started 20,000 years earlier. Like some other scenarios it was a Rhys mod that shipped with the game. There was also a Fall from Heaven scenario (Age of Ice) that shipped with BTS.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Ah, I wasn't talking about a mod, I was meaning in un-modded civ 4, there was a default scenario called 'ice age' or something like that, where the game starts in 40,000 BCE. It pretty much played the same as usual however. Playing constantly moving camps at the start would be interesting, and also a much better way of letting people reach their preferred tiles than start bias. That way the Incan's could move to the hills and eventually found their capital there, instead of hoping that there are enough people in the game without a hill bias to get some hills. I don't think you could mod the whole thing easily, but some parts of it would be doable without too much work.

And why not a non-fog of war decay, the people losing memory if they don't visit anymore a land, natural wonders being the last to decay. That could trigger players to place units at strategic points, as long as it's possible with the system. (like playing several camps of one tribe, the core of the tribe can feed units within an determined area)

Yeah, I was thinking why not start as one of them. It would lead to the interesting decision that you've never really had in civilization before; what if you're not a major civ? What if you become a barbarian and your goal is to attack all the major civs. What if you become a city state and your goal is to have the most influence of all the city states, or something like that. It would lead to a really interesting early game!

Here are my attempts to explain what I envision and in several variations :

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=490201
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=479211
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=504119

I wasn't suggesting keeping the 1gpt for the roads, but the reason I suggest a 'artificial' system for the patrol is because if you've got a road that's 6+ tiles long you'll have to use multiple troops, which (under the current system at least) is a lot of investment and production for protecting it. But I was thinking more about claiming a strategic resource 10-12 tiles away. It could be tricky to patrol it, but thinking about it that could add something to the balance of claiming far off tiles.

I didn't either, when I talked about "building a road being an investment", I only thought about the worker building it being busy to do so. It's a game investment. I understood that you suggested to being able to "activate" a road by making it cost gold but making convoys automatically sure. Yes, why not, although I think that building a road alone should be enough to make the convoys travels automatically sure. If we can't agree on that, let's just make physical units patroling (patroling : you would need only one unit in an averagely long road, would it be only to detect barbs) in order to intecept physical barbarian units.