Small Unique Bonuses for Cities

[Gyra Solune]

Basically, I thought it would be kind of neat if every city had its own little bonuses relevant to its name and role in history, giving a little bit more flavor beyond just a list applied to successive cities. So like, for example, if you were playing America, Washington might get, say, a +5% Production bonus for building a Monument, while New York would get +1 Gold for its sea Trade Routes, Boston would have, I dunno, +1 base Culture? Detroit would get additional production for Armor units, and so on and so on. I'd imagine these should apply regardless of if you rename the city, of course, and should show up on a tooltip whenever you have a Settler up for production. It's just simply say "NEXT CITY: Barracks provides +1 Tourism" and so forth.

Of course, this could be a little annoying for some, but I dunno, I guess it could give incentive to found cities in places similar to where they historically were, but not so much that it completely breaks things, just gives a little neat helpful bonus or something. And of course, they could do something silly and give awesomer bonuses for cities farther down in the list. Like, for example, Columbus, second-last city in America's titanic list, would get a flat +10 Happiness, or Milwaukee would have +5 Culture and Food for each Cattle resource, or Salt Lake City could get +30 Tourism for an adjacent Lake, and so forth. This might be troublesome for civs that don't do very well with extreme expansion like that, but it could also serve as something of an incentive to push out just that one more city if you're content with what you have already. In many cases one might simply think having one extra city isn't worth it given how many they have, but then they see in the tooltip "NEXT CITY: Great Merchant spawns upon founding" and decide that maybe it is indeed worth it to settle on that otherwise useless slab of snow lands, or be in the midst of a war and their next city would provide 3 free Zeros and push to make what would otherwise be a pointless endeavor into a strategy to plant an impromptu military base.

Obviously it would be complicated and require some crazy balancing to not make one civ horrendously broken on the basis of their city list, but could also spice up the uniqueness of every civ with little touches too small to really be a part of a unique ability or so, and give all the names of cities a touch more relevance than just letters assigned to a number.

 

[epicivfreak]

Basically, I thought it would be kind of neat if every city had its own little bonuses relevant to its name and role in history, giving a little bit more flavor beyond just a list applied to successive cities. So like, for example, if you were playing America, Washington might get, say, a +5% Production bonus for building a Monument, while New York would get +1 Gold for its sea Trade Routes, Boston would have, I dunno, +1 base Culture? Detroit would get additional production for Armor units, and so on and so on. I'd imagine these should apply regardless of if you rename the city, of course, and should show up on a tooltip whenever you have a Settler up for production. It's just simply say "NEXT CITY: Barracks provides +1 Tourism" and so forth.

Of course, this could be a little annoying for some, but I dunno, I guess it could give incentive to found cities in places similar to where they historically were, but not so much that it completely breaks things, just gives a little neat helpful bonus or something. And of course, they could do something silly and give awesomer bonuses for cities farther down in the list. Like, for example, Columbus, second-last city in America's titanic list, would get a flat +10 Happiness, or Milwaukee would have +5 Culture and Food for each Cattle resource, or Salt Lake City could get +30 Tourism for an adjacent Lake, and so forth. This might be troublesome for civs that don't do very well with extreme expansion like that, but it could also serve as something of an incentive to push out just that one more city if you're content with what you have already. In many cases one might simply think having one extra city isn't worth it given how many they have, but then they see in the tooltip "NEXT CITY: Great Merchant spawns upon founding" and decide that maybe it is indeed worth it to settle on that otherwise useless slab of snow lands, or be in the midst of a war and their next city would provide 3 free Zeros and push to make what would otherwise be a pointless endeavor into a strategy to plant an impromptu military base.

Obviously it would be complicated and require some crazy balancing to not make one civ horrendously broken on the basis of their city list, but could also spice up the uniqueness of every civ with little touches too small to really be a part of a unique ability or so, and give all the names of cities a touch more relevance than just letters assigned to a number.

I like that part. If the series is going to continue to push for more and more unique per-civ stuff, this seems like a natural inclusion to development at some point. Why not 6?

 

[awesome]

I like the idea, but it seems like the bonuses would get generic and repetitive after awhile.

 

[Viregel]

Even if the bonuses repeated, it would make the game better on the grounds that, no matter who you're playing as, you will always get a semi-unique bonus at any point in the game. Could be hard for some cities, but would be interesting.

 

[DudewiththeFood]

I would take ages to think of something for every city. And anyway, if I like the bonus I get from Medina, every time I play as Arabia I'm going to rename all the cities apart from Mecca so I get Medina every time.

 

[Viregel]

I would take ages to think of something for every city. And anyway, if I like the bonus I get from Medina, every time I play as Arabia I'm going to rename all the cities apart from Mecca so I get Medina every time.

I think that the bonus would work on the grounds of what the city should be, rather than its actual name.

 

[Gyra Solune]

I think that the bonus would work on the grounds of what the city should be, rather than its actual name.

Yeah, that was the idea, that the city bonus be for which numbered city it is, and the actual type of bonus be based on what that city's original name is. So if you found New York and rename it Buffalo, that city would still have New York's bonus, and you'd need to continue going down the list until the default founded city is Buffalo before you get that bonus. It's not attached to the name itself, it's just based on what the default name would be.

 

[DudewiththeFood]

Yeah but if I renamed New York Buffalo and Washington was as it is, the game thinks New York hasn't been built because it doesn't exist so that's what the city is and then both cities would effectively be New York cities. Also as awesome said, the bonuses would have small differences and if every city in a civ recieved a different bonus, then most civs would end up with the same bonuses in a different order. Maybe it should just be the first 5 cities or 1 in 10 or something.

 

[awesome]

Every 10 cities would probably work. That way, the bonuses could get progressively stronger and they can still probably be fairly unique. It would just take some brainstorming.

Like, say Washington starts with a monument and then let's say that the 11th city is Detroit, which lets you build one manufactory without expending a great person. If you change the city's name, the list won't come back to that name.

 

[Urdnot_Scott]

I really like it in theory, and it worked well with your example, America, however I don't know how well it would work with other civs, what did Tharos contribute to the Carthaginian Empire that Lixus didn't? How was Chalco different to Tula? Are there even any differences atall between the various Zulu 'cities' on their list?

 

[Viregel]

I really like it in theory, and it worked well with your example, America, however I don't know how well it would work with other civs, what did Tharos contribute to the Carthaginian Empire that Lixus didn't? How was Chalco different to Tula? Are there even any differences atall between the various Zulu 'cities' on their list?

This is the only real problem with the idea. I think that finding an ability for every city would be hard, but I wouldn't say that it's impossible. The abilities can be the same or similar, and you could get two in a row with a free 200 gold lump sum. I'd say that it would just be a ton of research.

 

[awesome]

Well, that's honestly why I picked America. But yeah, the bonuses might not all be city specific, kind of like how the ua doesn't always match the leaderhead.

 

[Urdnot_Scott]

Yeah, I guess, but then don't you think the point is sort of defeated? I really liked the idea of cities having corresponding benefits, thats the main thing for me here, a bit of 'immersion' for lack of a better word, and also more uniqueness to the civ itself, for example, people say oh, 'india lacks any faith bonuses wtf dis is so wrong coz Buddhism is Indian and so is Hinduism and they r both supar important' and I agree, but with this system you could have a nice faith bonus for important Indian cities to do with these faiths, although I might be biased towards this because of my admittedly weird playstyle :L

Still, it just wouldn't work with certain cities, and now I'm basically arguing with myself, I've gone nuts :L

 

[awesome]

The city list order can always be picked specifically for this? Like instead of city 11 being lixus, it can be zama, which gives some kind of combat bonus. Of course, that still might not work for everyone.