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Zeiter
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One of the main advantages of Infinite City Sprawl in the civilization games is that 10 cities of size 1 grow much faster than 1 city of size 10. The ICS thread has a great discussion on how this affects gameplay.
My point is, maybe we need a new growth model. Because as it is now, growth is not only linear, it also stays relatively constant throughout the course of the game, and larger cities grow much more slowly than smaller ones. And this is NOT realistic. History has shown that:
A: growth is exponential.
B: growth is very dependant on technology. Growth before the advent of medicine was at a turtles pace compared to growth in the modern era, which is skyrocketing.
C: Growth rates in cities depend less on inherent population, and more on living conditions. It doesn't matter if a city has 5 million people. If everyone is happy, well-fed, and healthy, growth is going to be huge.
I think Civ4 should make growth more dependant on technology, it should be exponential in nature, and it should depend more on the happiness of citizens. Let me illustrate what I mean by exponential:
The growth of many modern cities can be estimated by the equation Y=X(e)^[0.01(t)], where t=# of years, X=beginning pop, Y=resulting population, and e is a special irrational # whose value is roughly 2.718. Just try it, it really works! Let's take a city of 150,000. In 10 years, what will it's population be?
Y=150,000(2.718)^[0.02(10)]
Y= approx. 166,000
In about 10 years, its population is 166,000.
Let's try world population. Let's estimate the current population at...6.2 billion. In 20 years, if nothing drastic happens...
Y=6.2bil(2.718)^[0.02(20)]
Y=7.6 billion
Yikes, 7.6 billion!
Now, what if we incorporated a similar formula into the game? It would be very realistic, but it also could be too confusing for newcomers and/or non-math students.
And then concerning technology:
Here's some data on world population at given times:
2000 B.C. - 108,000,000
1000 B.C. - 120,000,000 (a +11% jump in 1000 years)
A.D. 1 - 138,000,000 (+15%)
A.D. 1000 - 275,000,000 (+199%) - Big jump, eh?
A.D. 2000 - 6,261,000,000 (+2276%) - HUGE jump!
Why is this happening? Technology. Improved medicine, agriculture, etc. is causing our population to soar. I think the game should emulate this. Like when you discover medical or agricultural technology, your growth should accelerate.
Now concerning growth in big cities:
Big city growth doesn't inherently slow down due to just a bigger population. Instead, it is limited by coinciding factors: Not enough food to feed the masses, unemployment, general unhappiness, emigration to other cities (hmmm, perhaps Civ4 should have immigration between cities...), etc. But if a big city is well managed, and these problems are taken care up, then the city should still experience rapid growth. This would give players incentives to concentrate on their big cities and build them up instead of ICS-ing like crazy.
Well, I hope that made sense, and I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks. 
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Enigma_Nova
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Oh no! It's MATH!
We'll never sell THIS to the ignorant masses who buy our game!
We'd better edit this back to a linear model - at least there's a chance of teaching our people what "y = mx + b" means.
Great idea, Zeiter - but not stupid enough for a mainstream game.
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Zeiter
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*Sigh*
Yeah, perhaps an exponential growth function would be getting a little too complicated. But I still think having your growth accelerate when you discover certain techs (or build certain improvements, like hospitals or something) should be included. This might make for some tough decisions when choosing a tech path:
"Hmmm, I really would like to have cavalry, but if I choose anatomy/physiology I get a hefty growth bonus."
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Drachasor
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It's not impossible, just list 3 numbers for the population growth of each city. Death Rate, Growth Rate, Net Growth. In the simplified presentation it would only show Net Growth. Certain advances lower Death Rate, and other advances lower Growth Rate. Lastly, there are some things you can do to increase Growth Rate. The rates could be in citizens per 1000.
The bigger problem is that the current food and population system is nothing like this. Each pop point is a much larger number of people than the last, but still only needs the same amount of food to feed. If you change the growth system, then you'll need to change the population system. I don't think that is going to change much, if at all.
-Drachasor
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Drachasor
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The middle class can certainly afford to have a lot of children, and some do. The thing of it is that they *don't* want to. They'd rather spend the extra money on luxuries and other items to make everyone happier and more content.
The reason more primitive cultures have more kids is that you are never sure who is going to survive and who isn't. Your children might get sick and die even in their late teens or 20s, without any heirs. In modern cultures survival is much more certain, so once you have a few kids the family line is pretty safe.
I think it has more to do with securing the family line than anything. It is easier and costs fewer children for the middle class, so they get to the same level of certainty and then spend the excess time and other resources on other things.
-Drachasor
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Zeiter
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quote:
Originally posted by Drachasor
It's not impossible, just list 3 numbers for the population growth of each city. Death Rate, Growth Rate, Net Growth. In the simplified presentation it would only show Net Growth. Certain advances lower Death Rate, and other advances lower Growth Rate. Lastly, there are some things you can do to increase Growth Rate. The rates could be in citizens per 1000. |
Hey, this is a really good idea. Simple enough for newcomers to understand, and yet very realistic. New technology and improvements would lower the death rate, and the economic conditions, pollution, and general happiness/unhappiness of your citizens would influence the birth rate. For the greatest population growth, just invest in some hospitals and such, make sure pollution is low, and make sure your citizens are really happy (which will require investing some gold, prompting you to make a strategic decision: do I want to focus on pop growth right now, or other things?
quote:
The bigger problem is that the current food and population system is nothing like this. Each pop point is a much larger number of people than the last, but still only needs the same amount of food to feed. If you change the growth system, then you'll need to change the population system. I don't think that is going to change much, if at all.
-Drachasor |
Very true. The "nutrient tank" system really needs to go. Cities don't simply grow by hoarding resources. Certainly sufficient food is needed for population growth, but in reality, any surplus food should just contribute towards the happiness level of the citizens (thus indirectly influencing the population growth).
I think you've come up with a simple, yet realistic and effective system. Use the birth rate and death rate to calculate the growth rate (as it is in reality) and let the rates be influenced by various factors.
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Drachasor
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All my information indicates a population explosion happens during the transition from primitive medicine to advanced medicine, and before the advant of birth control in some form. It doesn't have anything to do with wealth, really, just the ability to control family size better.
Still, a tech that gave birth control would be bad, unless it gave some large bonus too.
-Drachasor
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Zeiter
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The birth control tech could give a huge bonus to economy and gold output perhaps. I think that would make up for it. It could also reduce the chances of riots, and just generally make people happier (which partly offset the growth penalty.
Or maybe it could give you an option if you were running a totalitarian or authoritarian govt. to restrict your people from using the birth control, or at least to heavily discourage it, thereby protecting your growth, but also denying your empire the other benefits of the tech, like the improved economy and such.
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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
Then comes improved sanitation and medicine- this hits the death rate and cuts it significantly while the fertility rate remain very high- meaning population explodes. Then finally as the population becomes wealthy, fertility drops and populations stabalize or drop. |
That would work.
Each city has a birth rate, a death rate, and a quality of life. These numbers are affected by civilization advances, city improvements, education level of the citizens, and wealth. For example, the presence of some kind of medical facilities will both increase birth rate and decrease death rate.
Quality of life is a bunch of factors together, such as crime rate, happiness, education, cost of living, etc. It affects whether people want to move into or out of this city in general.
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Drachasor
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quote:
Originally posted by Urban Ranger
That's birth rate, not growth rate. Growth rate is (birth rate) - (death rate). |
My point was that birth rate, e.g. raw growth rate, has gone down along with the death rate. Partly because of greater survival chances, and a good part because of birth control in various forms.
-Drachasor
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Drachasor
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Also, I think we can eliminate death rates and birth rates (though keep Family Size in the demographics--did they get rid of those in Civ3?)
Just have *Growth Rate*, and have various advances modify it directly. Behind the scenes, if you want, there can be more elaborate indicators, but the individual numbers don't matter for city sizes as much as the net effect.
Generally all medical advances would increase growth rate, and eventually you'll be able to spend money to increase the rate (via giving people money to have kids, basically). Lastly, the more crowded a population is relative to the tech level and what is built there, the more the growth rate is decreased. More tech and buildings allow high growth rates, until you again reach an equilibrium. Naturally you'll need food to sustain growth and population though.
Hmm, I sorta like how all my ideas on various threads fit together. Contraception could increase the happiness in a city, thereby increasing the productivity (as I proposed in my corruption/waste/etc thread). Then you could choose between outlawing contraception (making people a bit unhappy, with higher growth) or allowing it (happier with less growth).
-Drachasor
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05-07-2004 06:49
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