The city screen

[Aussie_Lurker]

Ahhh, Roland, you have actually manage to further prove why my system would work the best. Consider this:

In the earliest phases of a city's development (size 1-4) the people only require a few local factors in order to guarantee population growth-access to fresh water (+2 health), a food surplus (+1 health) and possibly some small variety in diet (+1 health for meat and grain, say). It is only in the middle to late phases-when overcrowding starts to bite, you outgrow your local food production, or you simply wish to become more specialised, that you require more 'complex' solutions-such as those provided through food trade, improvements and civics choices. All of this developmental model can be best represented, IMO, by using health as the sole determinant of population growth-with all other factors feeding into how healthy/unhealthy the city is.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[T_McC]

I probably wouldn't worry about having a slider-per-city, that would be a tremendous burden to a game designed to be MP.

A much simpler explanation is that you can change the global slider from the city screen. I think there was talk about being able to access most settings from multiple screens as a simplication of the interface.

What seems to be missing is any visual evidence of corruption/waste. I think they have tried to fold that into the (rather invisible) maintenance costs, but I think city health should also affect productivity. Only losing a few fpt to health isn't much of a penalty, but losing a few hammers/shields would be.

 

[joethreeblah]

I probably wouldn't worry about having a slider-per-city, that would be a tremendous burden to a game designed to be MP.

A much simpler explanation is that you can change the global slider from the city screen. I think there was talk about being able to access most settings from multiple screens as a simplication of the interface.

You'll actually notice that the figures shown are reflective of the individual city.

 

[T_McC]

You'll actually notice that the figures shown are reflective of the individual city.

Yeah, but in the Civ3 interface the gold/beakers/smilies in the City Screen were reflective of the individual city, not the civ as a whole.

I would be very disappointed if individual cities had individual sliders. That completely removes the need for specialist citizens, and there is no way the AI can manage this properly. Although it might be a way to differentiate between dfferent civics. A lousy, super-MM way, but a way nonetheless.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Ahhh, Roland, you have actually manage to further prove why my system would work the best. Consider this:

In the earliest phases of a city's development (size 1-4) the people only require a few local factors in order to guarantee population growth-access to fresh water (+2 health), a food surplus (+1 health) and possibly some small variety in diet (+1 health for meat and grain, say). It is only in the middle to late phases-when overcrowding starts to bite, you outgrow your local food production, or you simply wish to become more specialised, that you require more 'complex' solutions-such as those provided through food trade, improvements and civics choices. All of this developmental model can be best represented, IMO, by using health as the sole determinant of population growth-with all other factors feeding into how healthy/unhealthy the city is.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Lets take ancient Egypt as an example. To simulate its growth, you'd say that they have a food surplus which gives a +1 and probably the rivers add another +?. But lots of cities arose around rivers and not all grew as quickly as those in Egypt. You could give the Egypt Nile delta some special food resource to simulate its growth, but then any cities that would be build in the desert and connected by roads would also gain that food resource. I think that the best explanation for Egypts rapid growth woold be that they had a large and easy to obtain food surplus. So it was a nice and (in those days) relatively easy place to live. So a lot of people went to live there. Also, a food surplus for everybody means less child death and thus a faster population growth. So I really think that in the ancient days a food surplus should have a bigger effect than +1 or nothing.

However, if you'd slightly change your idea to say: food surplus gives a +0 (no food surplus) till +3 (huge food surplus) and the rest is determined by health increasing factors like food resources, aquaducts, rivers and civic choices, then we would be in perfect agreement. Local food surplusses would have a large effect in the ancient age but become relatively unimportant later on.

Maybe it can be modded, but it might be difficult to program an AI that can deal with it (don't know a lot about that). Still, the present system isn't that bad, a huge improvement in comparison to Civ 1-3.

 

[mossmonster]

Here's a possibility for New York's health/growth numbers. Current health for whatever reason is 18 < 20, or -2 total. This causes an extra two food to be consumed as shown. As it is a size 17 city it should eat 34 food, but shows eating 36 of the 41 available. Thus, poor health/sanitation causes food loss (rots/spoils?), which slows, but not stops the growth rate shown as growing in 4 turns.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Here's a possibility for New York's health/growth numbers. Current health for whatever reason is 18 < 20, or -2 total. This causes an extra two food to be consumed as shown. As it is a size 17 city it should eat 34 food, but shows eating 36 of the 41 available. Thus, poor health/sanitation causes food loss (rots/spoils?), which slows, but not stops the growth rate shown as growing in 4 turns.

Welcome to CFC

Yes, this is how it probably works (see also post 37). Aussie and I were just discussing how we would like it to work.

 

[mossmonster]

Thanks for the welcome. For what it's worth I've been lurking for awhile now and have always found both yours and Aussie's comments to be well thought out and insightful.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

We haven’t seen enough screenshots to figure out how the Food relates to Health and growth yet.

It could be that health and food is both as important for growth. It could be that if you are short on food, lets say -2 and you have +4 health the city will grow since you are still ahead by importing food and water from trade or structures.


That is the system I hope it is, because it will make cities not entirely dependent on their own food resources.

I would also like to think that being on the negative side of health should also lower the happiness of a city.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

For what its worth, Roland, I see what you are saying about Egypt-and do believe some extra differentiation with food deficits/surpluses is neccessary.
How about this then: 0 food is still no net effect on health. +1 or -1 net food is basically a surplus/deficit situation respectively-granting a +1 or -1 to health.
+3 or -3 net food, though, is actually a Bumper/famine situation respectively, and should grant a +2 or -2 to health. This should allow a city on flood plain terrain to grow at least somewhat faster than one on standard plains/grassland-especially if there are bonus food sources on any of the tiles.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Roland Johansen]

For what its worth, Roland, I see what you are saying about Egypt-and do believe some extra differentiation with food deficits/surpluses is neccessary.
How about this then: 0 food is still no net effect on health. +1 or -1 net food is basically a surplus/deficit situation respectively-granting a +1 or -1 to health.
+3 or -3 net food, though, is actually a Bumper/famine situation respectively, and should grant a +2 or -2 to health. This should allow a city on flood plain terrain to grow at least somewhat faster than one on standard plains/grassland-especially if there are bonus food sources on any of the tiles.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

That sounds about ideal.