Should you be able to relocate rural improvements?

[evonannoredars]

The whole concept of being able to relocate a rural tile whenever you convert it into an urban tile feels really odd to me, to the extent I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't intentional (and would instead be surprised why it hasn't been fixed yet). My reasoning is as follows:

• Towns are apparently supposed to be important for feeding cities. However, with your number of rural tiles effectively being unable to decrease until you physically run out of space (which seems impossible unless you don't overbuild, fill a lot of your city tiles with wonders or don't have much land terrain in a city), I've never noticed my cities particularly suffering when it comes to food, even without my towns set to feed them.
• Additionally, it's fairly easy to grab a lot of land quickly in towns by repeatedly urbanising and moving the rural tile, which doesn't feel like something you should be able to do imo.
• If overbuilding a rural tile did remove it, it would make towns more important for food and encourage more strategic city-building as you'd have to choose what balance to strike between urbanising your cities versus making them able to sustain themselves.
• Being able to expand less carelessly would also make planning which buildings to place where more important, rather than chucking everything you have down wherever.
• Warehouse buildings would likewise require more consideration, with a higher risk of becoming pointless in a city that has over-urbanised. Dev diary 3 states that they 'become focal points in Settlements with dense agricultural or industrial development, rewarding careful planning and optimal placement' - choosing whether or not to place them in cities would make careful planning and optimal placement important.

 

[wesplaysciv]

They could do it maybe so that the pop gets released after the building is completed, or maybe like 2-3 turns later.

When you say rural tiles can’t decrease - can relocated rural folks not be made specialists?

I was thinking that it makes sense that rural populations relocate when their area gets urbanized but actually it’s probably more common for rural populations to migrate to cities so maybe they could incorporate that somehow

 

[evonannoredars]

When you say rural tiles can’t decrease - can relocated rural folks not be made specialists?

True, although imo it often seems much more beneficial for production and food to become a different rural tile than a specialist.

 

[UWHabs]

The numbers get crazy (400 food in a city per turn in the modern era?), but the balance actually sort of works. I found my "cities" basically by the end of the game had no rural tiles left other than fishing boats, my outer cities that weren't as productive maybe had a few here or there, and my towns were mostly rural settlements. I'd really only settle towns to claim land or claim resources, and if I needed them to actually be productive for me, I would have to convert them to cities.

I do think it's a little obscure how much food they do send back to cities, but maybe I just haven't clicked close enough. And obviously haven't tested a "no town" game to know if the cities would really stagnate and starve if they didn't have any towns feeding them. Although maybe they could change up some of the buildings a little more to differentiate cities and towns? So like in a town, a granary functions as it currently does giving the boost to the tile yield, but in a city instead it gives you like +10% food from towns. Or even if there was other interactions, like if a Garden instead of giving you food on its tile, gave each connected town like +1 happiness? I think between fishing tiles and all those other food buildings, cities don't really struggle for food nearly as much as we were led to believe.

Or maybe they just need to have specialists cost even more in food maintenance. If a specialist cost you 6 food and 2 happiness, you'd need an entire "Farming town" food tile to balance that out, and you would really have to fight to keep the city food-positive.

 

[StargazingDog]

The entire point of the current system is to remove the need to plan out and commit to where your "citizens" should be placed while still allowing for some customization. I feel it works well.

 

[Wabnosa]

Make a happiness penalty if you want but let me see, and move pops between growth events.

 

[Krikkit1]

True, although imo it often seems much more beneficial for production and food to become a different rural tile than a specialist.

That could be an alternative... building on a Rural tile could automatically turn the population into a specialist on that tile... ie the population never relocates, just changes what it does.
(For this Towns would have to allow one specialist limit)

 

[UWHabs]

Moving after a period of time would make sense, but obviously you'd have to balance being able to just pick up and move your tiles to get maximum culture bombing. My usual strategy is if I want to move a tile, I find what building should go on top of it and move it that way.

Although I also would love something where I could take a rural population and move them into my city to be a specialist. Especially once you get a few nice buildings down and have those bonus cards to boost them more, being able to urbanize my farmers without building over their land would be a nice ability. Another one would be to be able to re-allocate my specialists at the start of a new era. Since often they get placed based on the best adjacency buildings, since buildings lose their adjacency, I'd love to either shift them around, or temporarily put them to work in the fields until I can get some of the new buildings up and running.

I get not wanting to constantly shift back and forth and avoiding that micro. Maybe what should happen at the start of an era is that any specialists in your city get kicked out, and you can either re-assign them as specialists or to work the fields. But you also would be given the option that at any point, you could pick up a rural worker and urbanize them. You can't do the opposite, and once a specialist is placed, they'd be fixed for the era. Maybe there's a few special caveats (resources can't be un-worked, UI can't be un-worked). But it would help you re-organize at the start of a new era.

 

[Melkus]

I get not wanting to constantly shift back and forth and avoiding that micro

These are all good ideas, but we spend so much time and so many clicks on the tile puzzle. It's tiring already - and the more you can shift around, the more you will end up with samey, "optimal", boring layouts
.
You either keep a rigid system (small changes are fine ofc) or you get something that then needs an auto-optimizing button to be bearable.

 

[Melkus]

Especially once you get a few nice buildings down and have those bonus cards to boost them more, being able to urbanize my farmers without building over their land would be a nice ability

Also, this would turn the whole concept of coupling the city expansion with working the land in this game into a joke.
I get that a civ game without pops feels weird, but it's kind of fundamental to what they did here.

 

[Melkus]

To the OP: My answer is yes - I just wish they would make the whole process less annoying to click through - the game should -somehow- let us choose the new tile without forcing us through the whole back-and-forth zooming.
It's so disorienting.
(Maybe the way it's coded makes this harder than it looks, I don't know)

 

[Taefin]

I think the current system hits a sweet spot between being forgiving to new players (not losing pops outright if they need to build over a rural tile) and an engaging puzzle as one learn the game (thinking before placing a rural pop that may not be able to move). It also places zero restrictions on what city you can build, albeit requiring planning, whereas losing the pop would require having a rural path of tiles extending from the city center to stay out of the way of buildings.

 

[playshogi]

What are you supposed to do with the evicted pop? Sacrifice them for production like civ4's slavery mechanic?

 

[Graethyenne]

I am a hard no on moving rural pops (other than when their rural tile gets urbanized). I didn't enjoy Citizen micro in 6, so I definitely don't want to reintroduce it here.