Should certain buildings already be present, when you form a city in certain eras?

[Ahriman]

Rise of Mankind has it for sure... only way I play Civ nowadays.
Instead of a size 1 city without buildings, a pioneer builds like a size 3 city with several of the cheap but required buildings that citizens of that age would probably demand.

I think the rise of mankind system is the best; 3 tiers of settlers, later settlers are expensive but start with larger core pop and many buildings already constructed.

Mechanics like this make colonization *much* more workable. It takes far too long in vanilla for a new world colony to get to the point where it is actually economically significant.

. It would be cool if we could keep most of the buildings inside a city when we conquer it.

I agree that conquering a city destroys too much; it means that losing a city, even if you reconquer it next turn, is just far too significant.

However, there are some serious gameplay issues at stake here.

If conquered cities keep more of their buildings, then:
a) Conquest becomes even *more* powerful as a strategy, because the spoils of war are larger
b) Low culture becomes less important, because the conquered city retains all its culture-producing buildings and so immediately starts producing large culture amounts of the conquerer's nationality.

Most of the build loss is happening because every culture building gets destroyed 100% chance.

Hopefully a new culture system (especially one that moved to empire-wide culture rather than city-wide culture) will make b) less important, so we could keep many more of the culture-producing buildings after conquest.

 

[Zhahz]

I don't see a problem, really.

It might be interesting to have something like this as an option for advanced start type games maybe.

If, if, if they ever get the wall to wall city thing under control this would be less of an issue. REX was supposed to be done with in Civ IV but IMO it was still there and players and AIs would populate every map from corner to corner, especially AIs who would settle on utter crap tiles just to fill space.

Does it need to be controlled, dunno, but it does seem silly to have the entire map filled with cities, except that you can consider it representative of the entire world being populated - with smaller/newer cities representing the more rura areas (less developed). I don't think it's so bad for gameplay but a side effect is these late cities that take longer to grow.

You could also say that hey, if that city site was so good that you wanna grow the city extensively with lots of buildings, why'd you wait so long to get it started?

Making cash-rushing available earlier would help alleviate this problem (which I do agree is a problem).

There are a couple of ways of rushing things. Even without cash your later settlements usually grow faster due to having lots of workers to chop or develop land faster. You can switch civics to something that lets you cash rush. Having food rich cities faster (more workers to develop plots faster) means more whipping. We don't really know how rushing will work in Civ 5 but it'll likely still exist.

It's kind of about choices. If you want to rush city development you need to allocate the resources for it.

 

[Ahriman]

You could also say that hey, if that city site was so good that you wanna grow the city extensively with lots of buildings, why'd you wait so long to get it started

Maybe because it was on another continent that you couldn't access until the midgame?

If you want to rush city development you need to allocate the resources for it.

RoM method *does* make you allocate the resources for it; the advanced settler costs hundreds of hammers, basically the combined cost of all the "free" buildings that the new city starts with.

But you build it in an advanced city, rather than having to build them individually in the new city.

Cash-rush isn't really an option because of how horribly inefficient it is resource-wise. Cash-rushing is, what, 4 gold per hammer?

 

[Shurdus]

Does everyone here realise that some buildings do indeed come free in new cities if you have the starting era not set to Ancient? You also get free population points IIRC.
For example, on Modern era starts, new cities get a granary, forge and lighthouse (if applicable) and the settlers cost more to compensate.

But most games start in the ancient era, and settling new islands is a drag because getting the infrastructure up in those cities takes forever. It seems a bit lame considering the fact that these cities never really play a big part in the game any more.

Then again I find the whole idea of instantly allowing new buildings in the new cities a bit of a stretch, and I am unsure if that would be fun.

 

[Ahriman]

More details on how it works in RoM; suppose you have 5 eras of technology. A settler unit available late in era 3 will allow you to build a city that starts with buildings from eras 1 and 2.
It will not allow you to start with buildings from era 3.

And a settler unit available only in era 5 will allow you to build a city that starts with buildings from eras 1, 2, 3.

The idea is so that a city founded in 1800 doesn't have to waste time building a forge and granary; it will still have to build a university or bank or factory if you want those.

The "realism" idea is that those buildings really represent basic human capital/technological know-how, etc.

A settlement founded in 1800 in Australia by European colonists with modern technology shouldn't be on the same terms development-wise as a settlement founded by people with say ancient greek technology.

 

[Avs]

Here's how you'd do it:

Settlers cost to create each age increases ever so slightly like science (but not in the same scale), so that as you advance in age, Settlers, automatically build obsolete/older buildings 2 ages away (for example) to offset that additional cost.

This still means a high food/production city can pump settlers out. This also means settlers will settle and have pre-built buildings for the city at same cost, but produced by the capital. Maybe allow the option to customize the costs of creating a specific settler from a specific city, so that you can manage who, where, and what kind of settler gets produced.

I figure that this would mean a corps of engineers go and build a new city with pre-fabs in the modern ages. Remember, the costs are still the same so buildings don't "magically pop" out of the settler, its more like the production spent on the settler means they moved materials to that new city location and then begun settling.

 

[TheRiddl3r]

Points to MOO3

the feature for moving population between cities/plants have been done very well here.

simply have an option for 'invite imigrants' in a city that will decrease income by 10% while on but will let ppl migrate from the rest of your empire based on an unhappiness formula( unhappy ppl tend to be more inclined to move than ppl at +10 happy/health

without this feature founding a new settlement after the game is ½ over means it will make such a little impact that the add micro just makes the game longer. as such you rarely s city founding after the reniceance in civ4.

so +1 for suggesting it in civ5

that or just make the AI found it's cities where i want them so i don't have to raze 80% QQ

 

[Crazy George]

Hello, my name is Crazy George and I build too many cities.

Early Game, I REX my economy into the ground.
Middle Game, I settle every Island and Tundra Hex I can. If there is Neutral Ground between my enemies, I settle it.
Late Game, I occupy every city I capture, regardless of the need or return to my economy.
I know I shouldn't do this, but I can't seem to help myself. Thankfully, during the course of this thread, I have come to see the errors of my ways. In addition to having to set my research slider to 0%, and running out of Civ specific names for my cities, I can now add, "Just plain sick and tired of building city improvements in every last one of my blessed cities," to the warning signs that I might be spamming more cities than my economy can handle.

I thank you all for your assistance in this matter. I trust the insight shall prove invaluable and with any luck will add a few points to my average scrore.

(Not entirely in jest, I do have a serious REX addiction. Maybe keeping this warning sign in mind will help. So indeed, thanks.)

 

[Shurdus]

More details on how it works in RoM; suppose you have 5 eras of technology. A settler unit available late in era 3 will allow you to build a city that starts with buildings from eras 1 and 2.
It will not allow you to start with buildings from era 3.

And a settler unit available only in era 5 will allow you to build a city that starts with buildings from eras 1, 2, 3.

The idea is so that a city founded in 1800 doesn't have to waste time building a forge and granary; it will still have to build a university or bank or factory if you want those.

The "realism" idea is that those buildings really represent basic human capital/technological know-how, etc.

A settlement founded in 1800 in Australia by European colonists with modern technology shouldn't be on the same terms development-wise as a settlement founded by people with say ancient greek technology.

Makes sense. We can sure all agree that America may have been not too hot back in 1500, but the people colonizing that contintinent did a fine job catching up. In civ, it is next to impossible to get a good colony to catch up with the homeland in terms of infrastructure and such. It does make sense to adress that issue with improved settlers later on. What I worry about though is that later on in the game the cities need to build something, so the player will build some buildings everywhere for a lack of other options. At some point cities will be pretty much generic.

 

[Tavdy79]

I agree in terms of realism.

When talking about gameplay, I would like to take a look at the latest version of the game and assume we integrate such a feature in that game.

In civ4, you get a single population point city and the ability to use a 9 tile cultural area in return for a 100 settler. To get more out of such a settler, you'd need to invest more hammers in order to keep a stable relation between costs and benefits within the game. So if the city should have a granary when it is founded, then the settler should somehow include the cost of the 60 granary. I'd argue that the cost should be a little higher than 60 because you also get the benefit of transporting production, so I'd go for 100 + 1.5 * 60 = 190 for a total cost of the new colonist type unit. The new colonist type unit would be an upgrade to the normal settler and would become available with a certain technology (say construction/engineering in civilization 4). I believe various mods of civilization 4 have already taken this route.

What about this option:

Settler production is based on only, not & production as in . If you want a settler, city growth stops and you get a new settler once enough has accumulated. Any the city produces during that time are then loaded onto the settler to be spent on facilities in the new city, with a maximum amount of settlers can carry dependent upon technological level. Using the tech tree, I'd suggest 50 with The Wheel, 100 with Horseback Riding, 200 with Machinery, 350 with Railroad and 550 with Flight. Any the settler cannot carry gets moved to whatever is next in the build queue.

 

[Avs]

What about this option:

Settler production is based on only, not & production as in . If you want a settler, city growth stops and you get a new settler once enough has accumulated. Any the city produces during that time are then loaded onto the settler to be spent on facilities in the new city, with a maximum amount of settlers can carry dependent upon technological level. Using the tech tree, I'd suggest 50 with The Wheel, 100 with Horseback Riding, 200 with Machinery, 350 with Railroad and 550 with Flight. Any the settler cannot carry gets moved to whatever is next in the build queue.

The only way this would work is settler cost was reduced significantly (by 500%). If your hammer production no longer counts towards building a settler, then the 100 cost will take 50 turns to produce if your city only produces 2 surplus food. This makes creating settlers impossible or emphasizes farm/food cities at the start, which mean no wonders.

 

[Ahriman]

Any the city produces during that time are then loaded onto the settler to be spent on facilities in the new city

That sounds really confusing. So a settler unit in game has to have an extra variable, which are the number of excess hammers it was "built" with?
So settler A isn't the same as settler B?

Any why don't you need to spend any hammers to build the basic infrastructure for setting up a new settlement? ie that which exists without even having any buildings?