What DO you like about Civ 4?

[Stilgar08]

But I do agree with Brain's underlying concern that this will remove complexity from the game. To avoid this, some restrictions should be applied.

1) The shields do not go into some "empire" pool of resources. They have to be sent from a specific city to another city.

2) Movement of shields should be consistent with the movement the civ can expect to experience. 1 movement if the civ does not have horses, 2 if the civ does have horses, 3 if the civ has motorized transport. Roads and rails between the cities should be used as usual to achieve optimal movement. So, if two cities are railroaded, the shields would get there that same turn. If the two cities are separated by an unroaded mountain range, it'll take a few turns.

sounds like an MMing nightmare to me... choose the city, choose the amount of shields or lemme at least see, how many shields they ship
how long would this inter-city-trade be effective? For one round (only if you have a rest of unused production)? Or do you have to determine, how long you want to make this deal? Or is this deal in effect until you cancel it? How do you keep track...

Not my favourite kind of handling things... :thumbdown

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I do want to see an ability to move hammers, and food units, between cities-but think we should stick to the KISS philosophy.
You simply go to a city, and select what % of that city's food and/or hammers go into internal trade. This can ONLY be done if the city is on the trade route-and said hammers/food go into a central 'pool', where they can be traded to other nations OR sent on to other cities within your nation. 'No fuss, no muss', as they say!
For me, the importance of this system is so that we can have a GENUINE specialisation of cities-something which hasn't been truly possible before now.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Commander Bello]

I do want to see an ability to move hammers, and food units, between cities-but think we should stick to the KISS philosophy.
You simply go to a city, and select what % of that city's food and/or hammers go into internal trade. This can ONLY be done if the city is on the trade route-and said hammers/food go into a central 'pool', where they can be traded to other nations OR sent on to other cities within your nation. 'No fuss, no muss', as they say!
For me, the importance of this system is so that we can have a GENUINE specialisation of cities-something which hasn't been truly possible before now.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Even easier it would be to automatically add the 'carry-over' into the national pool of hammers. Than you can produce at maximum speed within your cities, you don't loose production AND you can distribute for the purpose of hurrying.

 

[oldStatesman]

Even easier it would be to automatically add the 'carry-over' into the national pool of hammers. Than you can produce at maximum speed within your cities, you don't loose production AND you can distribute for the purpose of hurrying.

I agree - except the carryover would be subject to a small penalty to account for spoilage, wastage, breakage, lost intransit etc. Maybe you would loose 1 out of 10 hammers or food units...but this would eliminate the need to mm citys to get the optimal production. And the strategic reserve would have a shelf life...use it or loose it in a certain amount of turns to prevent exploits ... Of coarse, milkers are not going to necessarily like this idea...

 

[Crazy Eskimo]

sounds like an MMing nightmare to me... choose the city, choose the amount of shields or lemme at least see, how many shields they ship
how long would this inter-city-trade be effective? For one round (only if you have a rest of unused production)? Or do you have to determine, how long you want to make this deal? Or is this deal in effect until you cancel it? How do you keep track...

Not my favourite kind of handling things... :thumbdown

I don't see it that way.

You handle it through the city production screen. Just instead of choosing a tank, you choose "send shields to X city" and are given choices in a dropdown to select which city is the destination. Like wealth, it lasts until you cancel it. Also like wealth, you don't get to select a certain amount of shields. You either send all of the city's production, or you don't send anything.

For keeping track of shipments in a non-RR situation, a small caravan unit could be employed to show the shields progress to the new city. They could start out automated with a "Go to" command to the new city. They would be endowed with the computer's AI to avoid barbarians, enemy units, etc. At the players discretion, the player could take control of them and move them like any unit (to avoid wonder rushing, these shields would be unable to be joined to a city that was making a wonder, much like chopping a forest does now), in case the player knows there's a war coming or just doesn't like how the AI handles movement.

I think that this would be pretty easy to keep track of. Did I miss anything?

I do want to see an ability to move hammers, and food units, between cities-but think we should stick to the KISS philosophy.
You simply go to a city, and select what % of that city's food and/or hammers go into internal trade. This can ONLY be done if the city is on the trade route-and said hammers/food go into a central 'pool', where they can be traded to other nations OR sent on to other cities within your nation. 'No fuss, no muss', as they say!
For me, the importance of this system is so that we can have a GENUINE specialisation of cities-something which hasn't been truly possible before now.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

This is an interesting alternative to the system I laid out. I can see how it would work too, with the following restrictions in place:

1a)These centralized shields cannot be applied to a wonder or

1b)There is some limitation on how centralized resources can be applied to the wonder.

I am aware than many wonders were undertaken with the help of many cities. However, I am leary of this being used to exploit and rush wonders

2) You have to build a small wonder for food centralization and a different one for shield centralization to enact them.

If we have to build granaries in a city to stockpile food for the city, it seems only logical that we would have to build some sort of depot to expand it to an empire wide level. That, and it keeps this ability from being too powerful.

3) You can only divert a certain percentage of a city's production to the central pool. Beyond that, and unhappiness among your citizen's starts to increase.

Again, seems only fair and logical. This would keep this ability from being too powerful. The only drawback from this that I see would be for the need I originally wanted this ability for: a large city with all the improvements it needs being able to donate it's production to other cities. Maybe some sort of size or improvement level that you have to clear in order to ward off unhappiness at 100% production donation. Or, perhaps an improvement whose sole purpose is to allow 100% production donation without unhappiness penalty.

 

[Stilgar08]

In that case, I'm with you, Aussie, Commander Bello and old statesman, because if you leave out the MM part it's just a great idea and adding to realism...

 

[sgrig]

Didn't Soren say that food trading will only improve health, rather than contribute to growth?

 

[narmox]

I'm sure health will contribute to growth, Finally people in civ4 will become more like humans (health = more life) rather than tribbles (food = more babies)

 

[Brain]

I completely disagree with the concept of a central pool of shields because, as I have said earlier, it would just boil down to the same thing as every other so-called "strategy" game. Production should not be shared between different cities. Just look at countries with un-even infrastructure such as Germany (west vs. east) or former communist states. Some regions are still very backward while others are prosperous. This is reflected in Civ and it it should stay that way. The corruption model is what needs to be changed if we want more specialized production.

 

[JavalTigar]

Brain: "Some regions are still very backward while others are prosperous"

In the US Florida is famous for oranges, Idaho is famous for potatoes & Iowa for its corn. But these states don't exist on those food stuffs alone. They trade with a organized infastructure. Hell, Hawaii wouldn't be a huge as it is now if not for the importing of food from the mainland.

Food should be traded, and production to some degree. No city has all of the raw materials needed to make everything. Think about a castle keep, without the serfs in the field, it is done for! (thus the purpose of a siege)

Every civilized area has some sort of import and export. So there should be some type of representation of this in the game.

 

[narmox]

But not to the expense of gameplay please.. This is Civilization, not Intra-empire Trade.

 

[Gen]

I completely disagree with the concept of a central pool of shields because, as I have said earlier, it would just boil down to the same thing as every other so-called "strategy" game. Production should not be shared between different cities.

We don't know for sure what system will be featured in Civ 4 but I don't generally see this concept as inherently bad. After all, Master of Orion has exactly that: some planets are better in production, some in research yet there is also a global planetary reserve pool which accumulates "unused" production which can be later used for speed up projects on any planet when and where it's needed. Allocating resources in the planetary reserve has it's cost though: half of these is wasted.
And I wouldn't call Master of Orion a "so-called strategy" game
Of course, by all this I don't want to suggest that this model is necessarily better for Civ 4 but it's certainly worth considering.