Taking advantage of all land plots and resources

[Silurian]

It would allow you to exploit high value tiles outside BFC but would not encourage megacities.
It would make the positioning of cities more important.

Also the cost could be say
One tile outside 0 gold
two tiles outside 1 gold
three tiles outside 3 gold
four tiles outside 6 gold
etc
or something else

I commute 320kms to work and it costs me a lot of gold. Im sure that in Austraila there are people who commute further.

 

[Camikaze]

But if those tiles were only producing one hammer, commerce or food, then there will be no gain by using tiles further away. You would only be losing money.

Also, I think city population is meant to represent the population of the entire BFC. I don't think it is meant to be the case that no-one lives on any tiles except the city tile, and they all commute. I think that population centre is meant to include the population of the urban centre and its surrounds. So, if we extend this principle to further away tiles, I don't think any population working those tiles would actually live in the urban centre, so a cost to commute to the tile would not be the best.

 

[Silurian]

I agree with you to a certain extent but the spread of population would not be uniform.
More people now live in cities than in towns and the country side.
Few people now work in agriculture due to the tech advance of the last 200 years, though the new food processing industries does provide employment in the towns (and cities)
Since the invention of the railways and the increase in agricultural production a large number of people do not work where they live. They may commute from a town on oneside of the BFC to a mine on the other. I think they should also be able to go outside the BFC.

If a tile only is producing one hammer, comerce or food you would not explloit it.
But if say it was one hammer and commerce and four food you might.

There has to be a penalty for working outside the BFC or you will get megacities.
I think gold, representing the extra wages for people working away from the centre of culture and the transport costs of bring back the goods is an easy way of doing it.
As an alternative you could use unhappyness or just reduce the productivity of those tilres.

 

[rysmiel]

That is how it currently is; too close and you can't make them productive, too far and you're not utilising large numbers of tiles. If you allowed for the use of all tiles, no matter whether or not they were in your city range, then you would have your cities far apart, to get the most use out of tiles for an individual city. To create mega-cities.

Deends on what the cost is to building a lot of cities close up early on and then abandoning them later in the game; which is an effective strategy if settlers cost population, for example.

 

[rysmiel]

There has to be a penalty for working outside the BFC or you will get megacities.

What is wrong with getting megacities ?

 

[Silurian]

There is nothing wrong with megacities as such.
but they increase polution, overcrowding etc

The idea of abandoning sizeable cities in your civilisation is not realistic.
Cities are destroyed because the civilisation is destroyed or some ecological disaster.
You would have to be a despot to be able to destroy your own city

I agree with you that it should cost population to build settlers but if this not being balanced by natural growth the city would become less productive and unhappy. "All of are iron workers have gone we have to train more pay 10 gold" "We are unhappy because are children have gone" "We do not want to become a settler because we have many fine improvements in our small city"

Just in the late game allow tile working beyond the BFC

Also in the early game make the BFC smaller!!

 

[rysmiel]

There is nothing wrong with megacities as such.
but they increase polution, overcrowding etc

So put in mechanisms to handle those.

The idea of abandoning sizeable cities in your civilisation is not realistic.

Which is no reason to not include it in the game.

Cities are destroyed because the civilisation is destroyed or some ecological disaster.
You would have to be a despot to be able to destroy your own city

I agree with you that it should cost population to build settlers but if this not being balanced by natural growth the city would become less productive and unhappy.

Why ? Why not "We're a frontier city, our people are going to found more cities, our glorious empire is expanding, yay".

 

[Silurian]

I agree that if you have a new frontier city they would be more happy to move on.

But if your family has lived in a city for hundreds of years you are less likely to want to move.
There will always be people wanting to move but the older a city is the percentage will decrease.

And if you are a despot who is forcing population transfer a percentage of the settlers would leve your empire for another.

And even frontier cities do not disband - have you see "paint Your wagon"

 

[Stormyswan]

It's just stupid when you have 4 grassland plots, all with Grain, and because they're outside the city ring, you can only use the bonus from one of them because you have the grain resource.

Or, you have dozens of workshops in tiles outside the city ring and they sit there doing nothing.

On the other hand, you can fuel infinite units with ONE source of oil. So the wars on oil were useless if you had just one oil resource. And ONE source of coal can produce power for your 50 city civ for thousands of years.

Is this in the manual? Or is it one more thing the manual neglects to say?

 

[Camikaze]

Is this in the manual? Or is it one more thing the manual neglects to say?

What pesgores is saying is that you can't work any tiles not in your city's BFC, as seen in the city screen. This is in the manual.

 

[Gingi]

It's just stupid when you have 4 grassland plots, all with Grain, and because they're outside the city ring, you can only use the bonus from one of them because you have the grain resource.

Or, you have dozens of workshops in tiles outside the city ring and they sit there doing nothing.

On the other hand, you can fuel infinite units with ONE source of oil. So the wars on oil were useless if you had just one oil resource. And ONE source of coal can produce power for your 50 city civ for thousands of years.

When you multiples of a resource, it's useless to keep building more resource improvements if they are OUTSIDE the city range.

How it should be:

For plots:
-A plot outside any city's range with an improvement should give a +1 bonus of the appropriate kind (food, hammers or commerce) and give it to the nearest city (farm would give food, workshop hammers, mills commerce, etc). If 2 or more cities are at the same distance of the plot, you can choose to which one you give the bonus.

For resources:
-Each resource with improvement and road can be given the following place to go:
--->The nearest city (automatic)
--->Any city in your empire or ally's empire (in this case, it gives you a diplo bonus of +1) to which you have a trade route
--->The resource market (a market where you put your surplus resources and sell them to your opponents, for a minimum price, who will then bid, all of this in the same turn, then the highest bid will be added to your account every turn. You could also bid in other markets and gain those resources from them, but you/they can at anytime get the resource back. and stop trading to whatever is paying for it)

-Each resource multiple provides the bonus to the city to where it is attached, and attaching the same resource various times increases the bonus by simply adding it (ex: Rice gives +2 Health; 4 Rice give +8 Health)

Importing/Exporting food/hammers:
-Each city can import food or hammers to other city, and receive food or hammers exported from other cities. This can be done internally or negotiated with other civs.

I think this would make the game better and more realistic. Your thoughts?

I forgot to post the following:

Limited production using some types of resource:
-ONE source of coal can only supply ONE city with power.
-ONE source of oil can only supply 25 units. When this cap is reached, the player cannot build any more tanks, aircraft, or other units that need Oil.
-Other examples which I can't remember right now.

There, complete.

EXTRA SUGGESTION NOT WORTH ITS OWN THREAD:
-After you research Mass Media, you can see the whole world and border, city and terrain improvement changes, and when you research Satellites the Fog of War disappears.

These are all amazing ideas, especially importing and exporting food and hammers. I have always, always, always wanted to do this. To be truthful I had only thought of importing and exporting food (not hammers) and only internally (not with other civs), but those are even better ideas.

I think these are so good ideas I'm going to follow this topic. When I become a good modder I am going to make a mod with all these ideas in it, even the last one (mass media reveals world, satellites reveals units/removes FOW . Great ideas pesgores!

 

[Gingi]

Sorry for the double post, I was going to edit but it was so long it would've gotten really messy

I didn't like how 4 rices gives you 8 health, so how about we add a limit to it? Maybe you can limit the number, based on the size of your city. This would mean that smaller cities can't pile resources as much as larger cities.

# of resources to pile | city size
1 | 1
2 | 8
3 | 20

That way cities sizes 1-7 can put 1 rice, sizes 8-19 can put 2 rices, and sizes 20+ can pile 3 rices (or any other resource). I thought maybe we could make this number the limit to how many resources in general you can pile; so when you reach city size 8, you can pile 2 different resources (rice and silk), with two of each (2 rices and 2 silk); but maybe that would just make it super unbalanced.

Another idea that I liked was how you can work the tiles outside the city borders but you have to pay maintenance. I think you should have to pay one gold for every tile outside of the city borders it is, HOWEVER, you can reduce the maintenance in one (or both) of these ways:

{You research the Sailing tech AND the tile connects with the city through a river}
OR
{You research the Railroads tech AND the tile connects with the city through railroads}

If one of these occurs maybe we would reduce the maintenance by one gold, so

# of tiles outside BFC | # of gold to pay
1 | 0
2 | 1
3 | 2
4 | 3

but if you have both, maybe something like this?

# of tiles outside BFC | # of gold to pay
1 | 0
2 | 1
3 | 1
4 | 2

Most tiles that you will be trying to work are going to be 1-2 tiles outside the BFC so adding both of these two options makes a smaller difference than you would think (I am purposefully making it a smaller difference because otherwise it would defeat the purpose of the BFC).

Also guys I would like to point out that if your city has reached its maximum potential through tiles it can still improve through specialists. I used to underestimate specialists too but through certain buildings or wonders you can really make them count. Just think about it.

 

[frekk]

With the hex grid, BFCs are a thing of the past.

For those that really need to be using every tile in their territory without either wastage or overlap between city footprints, hexes will be like a godsend.

With a hex grid, if you draw a "radius" or ring of 1 hex out from a central hex, what you get is a bigger hex. Same thing with 2 hexes, or 3, or 4. Really, its the same with squares too, if you draw out along the diagonals the same as the vertical and horizontal ... but a big square wouldn't look anything like a circle or radius at all. A big hex does, there's no need to chop the corners off.

These larger forms will also grid, just as their smaller forms do. If BFCs were squares, city footprints would interlock perfectly. With hexes, given a city plot radius that is equal in every direction (as is likely), city footprints will interlock perfectly as well - that is, the footprints will fit together in a larger grid, with no wastage between and no overlap. Except that oceans and mountains are likely to get in the way a bit, but that will always cause some problems.

 

[Gingi]

With the hex grid, BFCs are a thing of the past.

For those that really need to be using every tile in their territory without either wastage or overlap between city footprints, hexes will be like a godsend.

With a hex grid, if you draw a "radius" or ring of 1 hex out from a central hex, what you get is a bigger hex. Same thing with 2 hexes, or 3, or 4. Really, its the same with squares too, if you draw out along the diagonals the same as the vertical and horizontal ... but a big square wouldn't look anything like a circle or radius at all. A big hex does, there's no need to chop the corners off.

These larger forms will also grid, just as their smaller forms do. If BFCs were squares, city footprints would interlock perfectly. With hexes, given a city plot radius that is equal in every direction (as is likely), city footprints will interlock perfectly as well - that is, the footprints will fit together in a larger grid, with no wastage between and no overlap. Except that oceans and mountains are likely to get in the way a bit, but that will always cause some problems.

You'd think, right? But Civ 5 is going to have a completely different way of city borders growth. It's going to be one tile at a time, and it's going to grow to the food (mainly) but I assume also some priorities to the gold and hammer. Because that way you'd get a big city with lots of food to sustain itself, but alas, 4 hammers / turn and just enough gold to sustain the city maintenance.

Plus, we're talking about a Civ IV mod / expansion here, remember? Civ 3 mods are still popular, why shouldn't we still be working on Civ 4 just because the next one is going to come out in 7(ish) months.

 

[pesgores]

Limited production using some types of resource:
-ONE source of coal can only supply ONE city with power.
-ONE source of oil can only supply 25 units. When this cap is reached, the player cannot build any more tanks, aircraft, or other units that need Oil.
-Other examples which I can't remember right now.

Confirmed here for Civ V, last paragraph

 

[Jarlaxe Baenre]

About the main post... I agree. It is very unrealistic that a single source of a resource can supply all your cities. One farm with a couple pigs can supply a nation with pork chops. It should only work for one or two cities. The only reason I connect to resources outside my city radiuses is that I can trade it to the AI for gold or a different resource.

Also, this system means that I rarely use aluminum co. or standard ethanol: It's useless. It takes all those resources, and give you a bit of another resource. It is not worth spreading to your other cities because they already receive that resource. If this problem was fixed, those two corporations (Or whatever replaces corporations in future versions of civ) would not be a waste of a Great Person or a resource.

 

[frekk]

Plus, we're talking about a Civ IV mod / expansion here, remember? Civ 3 mods are still popular, why shouldn't we still be working on Civ 4 just because the next one is going to come out in 7(ish) months.

Fair enough, but you're in the wrong forum then ... this is a subforum of the Civilization V Forum.