'Dev Diary': City planning (part2)
In this second part I'll try to round up all you can do with cities, while also explaining some of the new mechanics in light of the Chinese Civilization, who interact differently with the mechanics.
In this part I'll explain the following:
- City Level and Population Capacity (Pop Cap)
- The role of Population in the city + Yield gathering
- City Ratings and Amenities
Part 1 of the City Planning 'Dev Diary', which explains the mechanics of tile acquisition, influence, districts, verticality and buildings is found
here (on page 3, post #60)
1. Population
1.1 General Ideas
In Timeline, as well as Civilization and other Civ-likes,
Populations represents the inhabitants of your city, in groups of people that share the same characteristic. I chose the term 'Population' over Citizen to further emphasize that you're assigning groups of people (in your employ) to do work, like a real leader would.
Populations have two major roles in the City they live in: they can either work tiles inside the City's Sphere of influence to collect yields, or be assigned to one of the city's buildings to work as civil servants ('Specialists')
The Population assignment is identical to what you've seen in previous Civ games, particularly Civilization 5.
As is normal in Civ,
Populations cost
Food in maintenance, 1.5 per Pop, rounded down.
1.2 Passive Yield income vs Active Yield income (Core addendum)
One thing I forgot to mention before is
that tiles can passively generate yields for their city without having a Population assigned to them. This occurs when a tile is
CORED and
OWNED by the city, but not worked.
Tiles owned but NOT Cored by the city yield nothing when not worked. Assigning a Population to work any tile gives the full yields.
So for instance, A Core that generates 2
Food per turn, will generate 1
Food when left idle.
If you have cored every tile inside the working radius of your city and assigned all your Population to work as Specialists, the city will get half the combined yields of their rural tiles. This makes Coring one of the more important parts of City management.
Populations can only be assigned to work tiles that are within a 3 tile range of the City Centre. Any further than that can be cored, but never worked.
1.3 Specialists
Specialists will be explained later, but they work like they did in Civ5. You assign Population to a building you've constructed, to work one of the Specialist slots there. In return, you get yields and a Great Person Point. There are more mechanics at work, but these will get their own Dev Diary. For the moment, all you need to know that Specialists exist and that if you're familiar with Civ5, you'll know how they work on a baseline level.
1.4 Population and Religion
Religion is another mechanic that I won't fully explain at this moment, but your Populations can be converted to follow one of the eight major Religions. This assigns a tag to that Population which corresponds to their Religion.
Thus, when I use the term '
follower' I mean '
Population that follow the Religion I'm refering to'. This is important for Religious modifiers, as well as abilities that care about follower count, such as the Mughal Faction Ability
Din-i-Ilani, which gives bonus yields to followers depending on whether they follow the State Religion or not.
If a majority of the Population follows a certain religion, then that religion is the 'Majority Religion', which would be indicated with that Religion's symbol appearing on the City Banner. This again relevant to the Religious beliefs that care about this. The Mughals -once again- override this rule - their cities always count towards their State Religion if at least one Mughal Population following the state religion is present in the City;
Religious divergence can lead to
Civil Unrest, while Religious unity can lead to bonus
City Happiness.
2. City Level
2.1 Population Capacity
Cities in Timeline, have three levels, which determine its maximum
Population Capacity. Ingame these will be called 'Administrative Centre', 'Provincial Capital' and 'Metropolis', but the names are largely cosmetic.
For those that have played Civ 3, you may remember that Cities without Fresh Water couldn't grow beyond Population 6 without building an Aqueduct. And that cities with Fresh Water or an Aqueduct were limited to 12 Pop until you built a Hospital.
Timeline has imposed a similar limit on how large Cities can grow in terms of Population in the early game. As it currently stands (with numbers susceptible to change), you are limited to
6 Population in Administrative Cenres and
12 Population in Provicial Capitals.
Metropoles can have an unlimited amount of Population.
2.2 Reasons for the Cap
The Population Capacity enables for more gameplay variety in building up your cities.
Think about it: Each Population will build a Residence in your Districts, which takes up space. If you overbuild the Residences without providing sufficient Housing your citizens will be forced to build slums which makes them greatly unhappy. Populations will also demand Amenities as the game goes on.f I allow Population to grow wild in the early game, you'll be overwhelmed.
Thus, I need to put a limit on how large a City can grow early on before you succumb to hellish City Management.
By implementing a hard limit in the early game, you make City Management a different experience depending where you are in the game:
In the early game, you'll be lacking Amenities, which makes the big puzzle to solve balancing
Residences and
Buildings, to avoid your cities from becoming Overcrowed by putting too many buildings inside them.
In the endgame however, you'll have the Verticality mechanic. Your citizens will build storied houses, and take up less space. Your Metropoles will have plenty of Districts which accomodate many citizens. Which allows you to place the Amenity buildings required to keep them healthy and happy and the game evolves around keeping your growing cities clean and content for the added bonuses.
This system makes Wide very good early, and Tall to be very strong late-game. An inverse of how they normally play out in Civ, yes, but one that (hopefully) leads to more interesting strategic choices and longterm planning. Upgrading your City or not isn't something you should always do. You will probably want a mix of City Levels across your empire to hold your vast land but not succumb to the ever-increasing demands of your growing Population.
2.3 Differences between Pop Cap and Housing
The difference is simple:
Housing determines how many buildings you can place inside your city. Every point of 'Housing' is a free Zone for you to place a building on.
It has NO effect on the maximum amount of Population the City can have, merely on how many it can accomodate without needing to give up space.
Population Capacity limits amount of Population that city can have.
2.4 Increasing Population Capacity
There are three ways for generic Civilizations to increase Pop Cap without increasing City Level.
- 1. Fresh Water. Settling near a source of Fresh Water, or constructing a Building that grants Fresh Water (the Well), will automatically increase your Pop Cap by +2
- 2. Baby Booms. If your City has High Health, it can enter an event called a 'Baby Boom' which increases its growth rate, but also permanently increases its Pop Cap by +1
- 3. Building Town improvements. The Halmet and its upgrades, the Village and the Town (collectively called 'Town Improvements') function as mini-districts, increasing Pop Cap and Housing by +1 per level of the Town.
Otherwise,
Upgrading City Level. This is achieved by
upgrading the main Government building in the city (either the Village Hall or Town Hall) once you've hit your maximum Population.
There are Civilizations that get bonus Pop Cap, however
The Assyrians get
+2 Pop Cap in Cities they've settled.
The Chinese get
+2 Pop Cap in Administrative Centres and +4 in Provincial Capitals
A yet unrevealed Civ gets bonus Pop Cap from Town improvements.
2.5 What about Food?
If a City is at maximum Population Capacity, all of its
Food will be added to is Food Stockpile. Whatever can't be stored will be converted into
Coin. You can use Trade Routes to move the stored Food to other Cities to help them grow via a Domestic Trade Route.
2.6 What else does City Level do, besides Pop Cap?
You may have noticed how some improvements and buildings have a 'One per City level' tag. Administrative Centres (ACs) may only have one of these. Provincial Capitals (PCs) can have two copies of the structure, and Metropoles three.
In other words, I use City Level to balance buildings and improvements that are too strong to spam, but too weak to be restricted to 'One Per City' status.
Other than that, City Level also determines the maximum distance Influence can travel: 3 tiles for ACs, 6 tiles for PCs and infinite for Metropoli. This is important to both Cultural Influence and City Connections via Trade.
City Level ALSO determines the amount of Districts a city may have: 2 for ACs (not counting the City Centre), 6 for PCs and infinite for Metropoli.
3. City Ratings
3.1 Three base Ratings
In Civ4, you had two important modifiers to keep track of:
Happiness and
Health.
Low Happiness impeded production, while
low Health hamstrung your growth rate.
Both are back in Timeline, which a more expanded role!
Civilization 3 had a
corruption/waste mechanic that reduced the amount of commerce (its version of 'Gold' / Coin), the further away the City was from the Palace. I've brought that mechanic back too.
So, if you've played old school Civ, you already know the three main ratings of
Happiness,
Health and
Efficiency.
The Chinese Civilization have a fourth City Rating called '
Harmony' which plays into their Five Elements/Feng Shui adjacency game.
An example of how they could appear (from the perspective of a Chinese player):
Every rating has a score out of 0-100, which determines how good the rating is. 50 is considered average.
3.2 City Happiness
3.2.1: Happy and Extatic cities.
City Happiness represents your Population's overal satisfaction. It determines when your cities become Happy or Extatic, which give bonuses to yield percentages.
If a City has a Happiness rating of 75% or more, it is Happy and receives a +10% bonus to all yields except for Food and Production
If a City is has a Happiness rating for 90% or more, it is
Extatic, and receives a +25% bonus to all yields except for Food and Production
The American Civ bonus, '
The American Dream' makes it so these statuses
do affect
Food and
Production, which normally isn't the case.
3.2.2 Happiness Amenities
Happiness is increased by providing Happiness specific Amenities. These are categorized as such:
- Luxury, which is obtained via Luxury Resources
- Entertainment, which is obtained by building Recreation buildings
- Security, which is obtained by Garrisoning troops inside the City
- Splendor which is obtained by building World Wonders.
- The final category, Miscellaneous, applies to all Amenities that don't fall under these categories.
3.2.3. Citizen Demands
As the game goes on, your Populations will demand Amenities to keep them satisfied. In Administrative Centres, they'll eventually be satisfied with one type of Amenity per Population. In Provincial Capitals, this will be two amenities of a different category, or two luxuries. In Metropolis, this will be increased to 3 different Amenities.
Entertainment, Splendor and Security can only be used once for every Citizen. Luxuries can be used multiple times by the same Population, but the resources have to be different.
In other words, a Population can be satisfied by Amenities for Entertainment, Splendor and Security (achieved by leaving a Garrison, building a Recreation Building and having a Wonder inside the city), while another Population can be satisfied by three separate Luxuries (e.g.: Gold, Gems and Wine).
Miscellaneous Amenities are rare, but can satisfy Populations in lieu of a standard Amenity. These are obtained by building Worship buildings (apply ONLY to followers) or certain Wonders that grant them. On lower difficulties, they will also be granted by the Palace and Government building.
City Happiness track the amount of open Happiness Amenity slots across your Population. If all are fulled, City Happiness wil be at 100%. If none of them are, Happiness will start at 0.
3.2.4.
Civil Unrest
Civil Unrest is the counter to Happiness and will reduce it. It is gained by
- Overcrowding: If you run out of space for Residences, you will take massive penalties to Civil Unrest
- Persistent Low City Happiness: Every 10 turns (standard speed) spent under 50 City Happiness increases Civil Unrest by +1. This lasts indefinitely until City Happiness grows above 50%, after which it'll persist for 20 turns.
- Being overworked: Workshops are important buildings because they improve Production. They however also increase Civil Unrest
- Drafting: This allows you to quickly turn a Population into a unit but it temporarily increases Civil Unrest.
- Religious surpression: Followers will grow unhappy when they have no places of worship.
- Occupation: Cities dislike being occupied by foreign powers, giving a large penalty to Civil Unrest.
- Pollution and Crime: while Pollution and Crime have a larger effect on Health and Efficiency, citizens don't like living in cities that are dirty or corrupt.
3.2.5 Happiness Crises & Boons
- If Happiness climbs above 80, the city will have a small chance to enter a Celebration. This will be a 'Festival' if the City had a pantheon or follows a Majority Religion. Otherwise, it'll enter a generic Celebration called 'We love the King Day' which slashes building and garrison maintenance costs in half for ten turns and reduces Crime and Pollution by 25% for its duration.
- If Happiness drops below 40, it'll have a small chance to enter a status called a 'Strike'. Halves your Producition in the city. Once the city has produced 20
Culture per Technological Era, the Strike will end.
- If Happiness drops below 20, a worse event, called a 'Revolt' might trigger. This will spawn Rebels (barbarian units) near the city that will start ransacking its improvements, while your city's Production is reduced by 5% of its usual output. Quelling a revolt requires destroying the rebels, or bribing them with Coin. Failing to deal with a Revolt, may spread it to your other cities with low Happiness.
3.3. City Health
3.3.1. Clean and Immaculate cities
City Health represents your City's cleanness. It determines when your cities become Clean or Immaculate, which give bonuses to Growth Rate and Tourism.
If a City has a
Health rating of 75% or more, it is
Clean and receives a +10% bonus to
Growth rate and
Tourism
If a City is has a
Health rating for 90% or more, it is
Immaculate, and receives a +25% bonus to
Growth rate and
Tourism.
The Tourism also applies to Pilgrims, which are religious Tourists.
3.3.2 Healh Amenities
Happiness is increased by providing Health specific Amenities. These are categorized as such:
- Food Variety, which is obtained via different 'Food Resources'.
- Sanitation, which is obtained by Fresh Water access.
- Healthcare, which is obtained by building Medical buildings.
- Greenery which is obtained by having Cores with high Appeal or owning Natural Wonders.
- The final category, Miscellaneous, applies to all Amenities that don't fall under these categories.
3.3.3. Citizen Demands
As with Happiness, your Populations will start demanding Health amenities as the game goes on. The ratings are identical:
Administrative Centres will demand 1 Health amenity per Population, Provincial Capitals two and Metropoli three.
Sanitation, Healthcare and Greenery can only be applied once per Citizen. Food Resources can be used multiple times by the same Population, but the resources have to be different each time.
Once again, Miscellaneous Amenities can satisfy Populations in lieu of a standard Amenity.
City Health track the amount of open Health Amenity slots across your Population. If all are fulled, City Happiness wil be at 100%. If none of them are, Happiness will start at 0.
3.3.4. Pollution
Pollution is the modifier that will reduce your City Health rating. It's increased by:
- Population Size: people are dirty and will throw their filth everywhere. Each Pop generates Pollution.
- Industry: Workshops produce a tremendous amount of Pollution, especially at higher levels.
- Rural Pollution: Tiles with Disgusting appeal produce Pollution to their city.
- Unsustainable Resources: Some Resources pollute the environment if the City uses them for Construction, Recruitment or Industry.
- Pillaged Structures: Damaged or Destroyed buildings will generate Pollution (on top of negative appeal) until restored or replaced.
While Pollution causes Civil Unrest, Civil Unrest itself
doesn't cause Pollution.
Several of the buildings and Technologies in the game passive reduce Pollution from the different sources.
3.2.5 Health Crises & Boons
- If Health climbs above 80, the city will have a small chance to enter an event called a 'Baby Boom', which increases its Population Capacity by +1 and doubles the Growth rate bonus from being Clean or Immaculate during its duration.
- If Health drops below 40, it'll have a small chance to enter a status called 'Disease Outbreak'. This halves the city's Food output, and prevents any new Population from being created. Once the city has produced 20
Knowledge per Technological Era, the Disease will end.
- If Health drops below 20, a worse event, called a 'Plague' might trigger. This sets the city's Food output to 10% of its usual number, immediately kills one Population, and has a chance to spread to any other City connected to the Trade Network. Knowledge output reduces the chance for Plague to spread. A plague can be cured by spending a large amount of stored Knowledge, or by completing a project.
3.4 Efficiency
3.4.1 What is Efficiency?
Efficiency is the corruption mechanic of Civilization 3 repurposed to Timeline. It represents the efficacity of your government in your different settlements. It is designed to slow down your expansion to avoid snowballing. The further away you plant or conquer, the harder it'll be to immediately turn the city into something useful. Efficiency starts at 100 by default and is then reduced by the modifiers that interact with it.
The City's Efficiency rating shows how much of your total yields are actually being used by the city. A City with an efficiency rating of 50%, produces all of its yields (after other modifiers) at 50% the normal rate. A City with an Efficiency rating of 100 contributes all of its yields to the empire.
Efficiency also determines Rush costs. A city at 50% Efficiency pays +50% more
Coin to Rush (100 - 50 = 50), while a city at 100 Efficiency pays no extra money.
The Ming have a unique bonus that improves the cap of their Efficiency, allowing them to get up to +125% yields and -25% to Rush costs in their cities if their Harmony ratings are Balanced. There are Wonders and Techs that can have similar effects. Regardless, Efficiency is HARD-CAPPED at 125 and cannot be increased beyond that number.
Unlike Happiness and Health, which track amenities, Efficiency is determined by one two factors: Distance and Crime, which both reduce it.
- Distance from Palace: the further away your City is, the less efficient it is, as it is hard for your officials to administer your orders.
- Every tile your city is away from the capital reduces Efficiency by -2
- Crime: This is generated by your population and buildings, though not at the same rate health is.
- Every two Population increase Crime by +1
- All Mercantile buildings generate Crime inherently, as money attracks thieves.
- Every point of Crime reduces Efficiency by -3
Buffing Efficiency will involve reducing these penalties and by accumulating flat bonuses to Efficiency that are greater than the penalties received from Crime or Distance.
Several Civs and Leaders in the game have bonuses to Efficiency as part of their kit
. Liu Bang of Han for instance gets bonus Efficiency from assigned Specialists.
3.4.2. Distance Penalties
The further away your city is, the less efficient it is, as it is harder for your officials to administer your policies.
Every tile your City is away from the Capital reduces CIty Efficiency by -2.
There are two ways to reduce Distance Penalties: The first is to connect your Settlement to your Capital, either via a direct Road connection, or by a naval route (which requires a Lighthouse in the disconnected City) or (endgame only) by building an Airport. Doing any of these halves all Distance Penalties to Efficiency.
The second is to build a Tribunal-line building, which halves all Efficiency penalties, from both Crime AND Distance. The bonuses of the Tribunal, Courthouse and High Court are additive with other modifiers, meaning that a Connection + a Tribunal eliminates the penalties entirely.
One of the unrevealed Civs in the game has an alternative method to eliminating Distance penalties which involves improving Horses.
The Ming have suffer twice the usual penalties from Distance, making their faraway cities particularly slow to set up.
3.4.3. Crime Penalties
Wherever inequality and poverty exist, so does crime. Crime is generated by your Populations but at a lower rate than Pollution. Only 1 per five citizens generate Crime spontaneously.
However, Crime is further increased by building Workshops and Mercantile buildings, two building types that encourage theft if not protected.
There are several ways to reduce crime:
- Garrisoning units: each unit stationed in the city removes Crime by -1
- Courthouses: Reduces Crime by 50%, which is the only percentage reduction in the game
- Police Stations: reduces the Crime generated by adjacent buildings, making it an excellent structure to place near Workshops and Mercantile buildings.
Much like real life, Crime can only be curbed, not fully rooted out. There will always be some Crime, but with careful city planning you'll be able to mitigate most of it.
Efficiency can still be pushed to 100 with low levels of crime, but that requires the total amount of flat bonuses to Efficiency to be greater than the total amount of Crime generated by the City.
3.5 Harmony
The Chinese have a unique, additional City Rating called Harmony, which they obtain by gathering Feng Shui points. It provides an alternative way to improve your City Health and Happiness ratings, by playing into the Chinese unique mechanics.
The game tracks the amount of positive and negative Feng Shui synergies exist in the game, weighing them against each other. a +2 positive synergy is worth 2 positive points, while a -1 negative synergy is worth one negative point. The Harmony rating shows the ration of "Good" Feng Shui vs "Bad" Feng Shui.
There are NO negative consequences of low Harmony. If you don't want to play into Harmony, you don't have to. But it is recommended that you do. There's no downside.
If Harmony is at 60, the city enters at state of
"Auspicious Harmony". This puts the Happiness rating, if lower than Harmony at the same level as the Harmony rating. The city also ignores Happiness penalties from Civil Unrest (though the penalties from unfulfilled Amenities persist).
If Harmony is at 80, the city enters a state of "
Balanced Harmony". This also fixes the Health rating, if lower than the Harmony rating at the same level as the Harmony rating. The City will now also ignore penalties to Health from Pollution.
In other words,
Harmony allows Chinese players to by-pass the usual prerequisites to obain the statuses of Happy, Extatic, Clean or Immaculate in their city by playing towards ONE rating. This should theoretically make the Chinese the easiest Civ to reach those statuses with. The Chinese can ignore Pollution and Unrest, and even
amenities if they can maintain perfectly balanced harmony, a reward for the sometimes very restrictive rules of their building and improvement placements.
~~~
I think I'll leave it at that, since the post is getting long enough. Most of the systems I'm explaining here already existed in previous Civ game, but never co-existed together. They worked before, so why not incorporate them again? If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.
Force Limit per City not founded by you.
Housing and 
Efficiency from Occupation in Occupied Cities.
Strength and 
HP as a Scout
Nineveh
Fortifications
Trade Route
additional Prestige per passing Domestic Trade Route
Great Work of a random Type belonging to that Civilization
MP cost on vegetated & rough terrain.
Appeal to adjacent unimproved tiles
