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Drachasor
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Well, I was thinking about things, and here's an odd idea I came up with for Civ IV. This may be like some other TBS out there, I am not sure.
I'll use numbers to illustrate each point of my idea, as I think that aids reading and organization.
Part I of the Crazy Idea:
1. Workers only build roads, forts, and outposts (or whatever is used to secure Strategic and other resources).
2. A city builds improvements to take advantage of its mining, farming, and logging areas (and whatever other areas might exist). When you build one, you select the tile it applies to.
3. A city may build multiples of each improvement building (of course). Each time you build an improvement building it is more expensive to build another of the same type.
4. When you select an improvement and tile, the more tiles of that type you have, the cheaper the improvement is, but the price still ramps up with further builds. (This simulates the fact that if you have a ton of hills, then it will be fairly easy to find good mining locations early on).
5. Perhaps workers can provide some modest speed improvement to the building process? (I am not imagining it takes a long time though).
6. Roads do not per se give a trading bonus, but Roads that connect you to other cities do (through some formula). Likewise, roads and rail do not increase any kind of production in and of themselves. This is governed by the above method as well as the standard city improvements. This will make cities look prettier and more city-like, I think.
7. Travel on non-railed, improved city square becomes like traveling on a road after some tech advance (perhaps earlier you can get an advance that gives you 2 for 1 movement).
Part II of the Crazy Idea:
1. Each city has a production pool and food pool slider, defaulting at 0, it ranges from -(X * # of Citizens) to +100%. Positive percents indicate how much food/production the city is giving up to be used by other cities connected to it via road (or perhaps just other cities in your civilization). Negative amount is a fixed number of food or shields, capped depending on your technology (X), and city size. (This would be easy to distinguish).
2. So at each city you can decide how much of its production or food it is going to share with other cities, or how much it is going to take from other cities that are sharing. If the pool amount is too small to satisfy all the cities, then some cities go without 1 shield, or all go without 1 and some without 2, etc; the same with food. If there is an excess, then excess food stays in its home city, and excess production is either stored (perhaps to a limit) or turned into cash (a bit like capitalization).
3. Cities can build projects that are like capitalization, but one increases production, and another increases food. These effects work on the base production and food generated, not the leftover.
4. This makes it so that it is good to have food cities, raw production cities, and refined production cities. Additionally, if you have a high trade or production city with no access to food, you can give it the food it needs. This is in line with how cities actually developed.
5. I might be nice to allow tech improvements/regular improvements to let an individual citizen farm more than one square, but this is probably too complicated to deal with.
I know this is a bit crazy, and in some ways a huge depature from how things have been. On the other hand, I think there are some nice elements to my crazy idea. Perhaps it is broken in some way, unfun in some way, or too complicated in some way though. I do not think it is however, (but I am open to correction and suggestions).
Thoughts?
-Drachasor
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Naokaukodem
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Indeed, it seems a little bit complicated for a so basic thing.
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Azail
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Oh!
Oh God!
Someone call the CDC! It's spreading like the plague!
 It began with the development of Civ3 and when that tird hit the market, I fear the infection spread and has been spreading since. Soren's recent power point presentation seems to have put the final proverbial nail in the coffin, however. It's gotten to the point where it's almost got you people trapped in a mindless state, believing that Civ3 was actually a complicated game. I can hear the drones chanting in unison when I visit Apolyton:
Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!
Do or Die!... Simplify!
(*Set it to a rhythm, it works well)
I don't know whether to laugh or feel sadened at this fact. How low has the average human IQ fallen for you people to believe that Civ3 does not need massive complications added in to make it fun again? While I would say to this specific idea that there are some needless complications within, it is a worthy idea, in general, to consider. Three of these point alone, developed slightly further, would rid Civ of the ICS problem forever. I'll leave it to you to figure out which ones those are ( sure, that will happen).
Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!
Do or Die!... Simplify!
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Drachasor
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Hmm, perhaps I worded it in a convoluted manner? Though, I can see how the first part of it is a bit complicated and unweildy. It is a bastardization of public works, but less user friendly.
Hmm, for the second part, I can see how ICS would be a problem (I never use ICS, so it did not occur to me). However, the second part is not really complicated, for the end result is that you have specialized cities. Specialized cities means that it is easier to micromanage them.
Let me try to reword the second part into something more comprehensible Again, the idea is that you have pooled food and production resources. Point number 1 here condenses the core idea into one line.
1. All Cities can choose to share some or all of the food or production they generate with other Cities.
2. Or they can choose to use some of those shared resources.
3. These is governed by a slider in the city screen.
4. There'd be capitalization-like projects to increase production or food generation.
Now, right now this might sound like it makes things far more complicated, but let's see where this would rapidly lead.
1. People would end up making specialized cities. For example, a very high mining area would become a shield generating city. It would use no shields on itself (unless there was an improvement it needed), and rather it would devote 100% of its production to the pool. The same is basically true of farming cities (though naturally they'd devote some food to themselves).
2. This means that when you are managing your cities, you can easily catagorized them into more digestible parts. The shield/food generating cities would be cities you managed very little, beyond building new improvements for them. Beyond that, they'd stay in production mode. Since you have the same number of cities, you'd have to micromanage fewer cities.
3. I think the interface I proposed is fairly inuitive, and it would be grasped quickly. It might sound complicated, but the end effect of the system is that it decreases micromanagement overhead and actually simplifies gameplay in this sense. That's how it looks to me anyhow.
I hope that made it easier to understand. I left out specific details, such as a potential cap on resources you can take in from other cities (based on city size). I also didn't detail the exact interface system, as perhaps my proposal was unweildy, eh?
Now, there is an ICS concern with the second part, but since the system works much better with large cities where Factories and the like become worthwhile. Additionally, other efforts to curb ICS, such as requiring certain population levels for certain improvements could work. Also, my proposed cap on how much a city can take in would also help control the ICS issue (as bigger cities could use a lot more shared resources). Potentially factories or the like could increase how many shields you can bring in from outside cities as well (by the same percentage it increases City shield production).
Basically this system could theoretically (with the proper twaks and adjustments) get rid of the ICS system by making large cities much, much more attractive and useful. If that is done, then one needn't directly destroy ICS.
Well, thoughts on this rewording?
-Drachasor
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Drachasor
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This thread seems to have gotten stuck into some kind of limbo, I wasn't able to find it without searching (even though it is a week old or so). Very odd.
Anyhow, does anyone else have any comments on this? I think the ability to specialize cities and make them interdependent on each other (but not so much your empire would collapse if you lost a city) would be very nice if implemented correctly. I also think specialized cities would make dealing with city management much easier.
Hmm, this also ties in with an idea someone else had in another thread. That was to make most improvements have some negative effect associated with them, so you wouldn't want every improvement in every city, but rather the right improvements in the right city. That would combine with this fairly well, and make specialization a key attribute of city management.
Thoughts?
-Drachasor
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Vince278
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Sounds good but that goes against the KISS concept.
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Drachasor
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But the relationships are very, very clear and transparent.
It isn't all that complex, just different.
Hmm, I also have another idea that could link it into a public works system. Excess shields from building something, as well as excess shields given out could all go into the "public shield pool." That means that after all the cities take and give what they need, the excess is in this pool. When you want to build a farm, mine, (wood cutting thing?), then you use shields from this pool. When you want to build a road, railraod, fort, airbase, (naval base?), radio tower, etc, then you use a worker.
This means that excess shields are never wasted, and it all goes into one cohesive design. It seems pretty transparent to me, though I am a little concerned about confusion regarding what workers do and what public shields do. I don't think roads should do anything to tiles beyond improve transportation though, so all the "city improvement" tile improvements would be done by public shields, and everything else by workers.
Hmm, just a suplementary idea though, but I think my original idea (part II), fits in with the kiss concept in that it isn't overly complex and it is simple to see the cause-effect relation. Perhaps I can be overly verbose though (I such I recommend against implementing me in cIV).
-Drachasor
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Drachasor
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Oh, and if someone else's idea about having some improvements (in the market line, production line, etc) give some negatives, so you have to choose what improvements to build and not build it would work even better.
Now you don't have to worry about building improvement X in every city, you just want improvement X in cities that are specialized in what X is doing. As I have said, specialized cities makes the entire micromanagement of the game much, much easier. Simpler too. That's why I came up with this idea, because it takes away a lot of hassle. It might look a little odd, but you aren't going to be fiddling with the dials all that much, instead you are going to decide what cities will do what generally, and then more or less sit the sliders once. With a tweak every now and then.
-Drachasor
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Drachasor
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I was so excited to see 4 new posts on my thread.....
it was pretty anti-climatic. Perhaps I need to make a thread proposing that "KISS" be removed from the english language.
Hmm, moving population would be nice, but it seems to me there need to be some limits on that. Also, if the population model isn't change that much, then moving food around is a lot like moving population, or at least population growth. If you have a lot of excess food elsewhere you could double or triple the growth of new cities.
Vince278, do you think it goes against the principle of keeping things simple and calling those who don't stupid? Did my explanation sway you, or are you still finding things too complex?
Hmm, maybe I should have put in some sort of poll, so I'd know what people who browed the thread thought.
-Drachasor
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Drachasor
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The "stupid" thing was just a joke to avoid the term "KISS." I didn't take offense to anything anyone said.
Hmm, ok, well, I can get it down to one paragragh, if I exclude what I see the effects to gameplay would be:
Let every city you have either add shields/food to a community pool each turn or take shields/food from that pool. There'd be a limit to how much you could take based on city size (and perhaps improvements), and no limit to how much you could give away.
I also proposed adding a shield and a food version of capitalization.
*proceeds to shut up now*
-Drachasor
PS. I hope the one-sentence paragraphs won't stop you from reading this.
PPS. I can't keep my fingers still!
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Drachasor
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In Civ II you could use Caravans to aid in the production of a wonder (50 shields each). My idea on production was more limited, basically a city could get maybe an extra 3 shields a turn or so per citizen per turn at best.
This should probably be considered in regards to the polution amount (basically those shields pollute twice), so putting all those shields into a high production city would make a massive pollution problem. This would use whatever pollution model cIV has--which might mean massive unhappiness and population growth issues.
Basically this idea would creat specialized cities. And then your midling cities taking in the extra shields would be producing your troops and other units. It allows your very high production city to focus solely on production (food comes from elsewhere, as with high trade cities), and send those extra shields to be better used by other cities. As opposed to wasting shields when you have twice as many as you need for what you want to build.
-Drachasor
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Drachasor
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The idea is that since you'd have to handle pollution through the nose if you send a ton of production to a high production city, you instead split it up among smaller, less productive ciites. They can then make troops and such things more efficiently (with less/no excess shields).
I am not sure how or if pollution is going to be in cIV though, it hasn't been clear. Maybe they will change it so that it causes unhappiness and growth issues, in which case you might get riots (or the cIV equivalent) by stacking production like that.
Besides, it is better to spread out those shields among your otherwise less useful cities, so that they can produce faster, though something should be done to limit a super-wonder building city (bad unhappiness from lots of pollution would probably work...perhaps make it have a 50-70% production penalty if they are unhappy enough from pollution).
-Drachasor
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Vince278
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I'd like to see pollution handled differently too but by affecting squares it already impacts growth and happiness. Having it leave the squares alone and directly affect happiness sounds cool.
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Enigma_Nova
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Model the pollution realistically.
It takes resources to transport the shields, so there would have to be a small amount of pollution coming from that.
But, the process of making the shields and transforming them into something useful will take up most of the pollution;
in effect, if one city sends all its shields somewhere else to be turned into stuff, the total population is the same as if that one city used all its own shields.
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Drachasor
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quote:
Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
Model the pollution realistically.
It takes resources to transport the shields, so there would have to be a small amount of pollution coming from that.
But, the process of making the shields and transforming them into something useful will take up most of the pollution;
in effect, if one city sends all its shields somewhere else to be turned into stuff, the total population is the same as if that one city used all its own shields. |
Yeah, I was worried about the Wonder City issue though, but I guess that could just become the way to build Wonders. I suppose having various cities in your Empire help build a Wonder in one particular city would make Wonders feel like bigger projects.
I suppose it could be balanced by upping the cost of Wonders, so it isn't done too early.
-Drachasor
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30-06-2004 05:55
I don't think anyone anywhere in this thread has said anyone is stupid, least of all me. I do see some saying to KISS. I personally don't read posts with more than 3-5 paragraphs. If some people need more than that then they haven't completely thought out their idea. 
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