Pop-sustain limits to cities with undeveloped city-areas

[Ralf]

Alternative A:
You dont improve you city-areas with irrigations and mines at all (or max 2-4 tiles, tops). You try to road-connect your cities and recources, yes - but since you only allow 1 worker per 5-10+ cities, all terrain-improvements are limited to only the most essential tiles. Lots of uncultivated city-area tiles even near the end-game, in other words.

Alternative B:
You always strive to improve most, if not all city-area tiles with irrigations, mines, terrain-type transformations, roads and whatnot. You typically assign 1 worker to each 1-2 cities. Near the end-game, more or less each and every city-area tile within your empire is cultivated, on way or the other.

And now my question:
Should alternative A cities be allowed to grow to big 15-20+ sized end-game cities, as well as Alternative B cities?

Or to put it in other words: Is it realistic (and gameplay-improving) to imagine 5-10+ million mega-cities with almost non-cultivated city-area pop-sustain support? The only explanation being; well, that terrain-undeveloped city have accumulated its population undisturbed by pop-subtracting settlers/workers for a very long time. That is: the time-factor alone garantees really big cities?

As I look at it: Firaxis should (if they havent done so already) add a realtime max city-pop sustain-factor, dependable on how big your realtime food/shield-output is. In practice:
A city without any manmade food/shield-related city-area terrain-improvements cannot be expected grow above, lets say 6-8 pops (or if its surrounded with mostly fertile grassland, then 10 pops, perhaps, but thats about it).

I see above as yet another ICS-loophole prevention. And this "realtime max city-pop sustain-factor" adds realism to the game as well. Agree?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Ralf
As I look at it: Firaxis should (if they havent done so already) add a realtime max city-pop sustain-factor, dependable on how big your realtime food/shield-output is. In practice:
A city without any manmade food/shield-related city-area terrain-improvements cannot be expected grow above, lets say 6-8 pops (or if its surrounded with mostly fertile grassland, then 10 pops, perhaps, but thats about it).

How about that: Each citizen consumes three bushels of food per turn instead of two. Irrigating a tile adds two bushels per turn instead of one. (BTW, no need to tinker with shields. )

[Ralf]

Originally posted by lockstep
How about that: Each citizen consumes three bushels of food per turn instead of two. Irrigating a tile adds two bushels per turn instead of one. (BTW, no need to tinker with shields. )

Hmm! Sometimes a solution can be too easy & close to be spotted. I found below paragraphs in the Civ-2 Rules.txt file, by the way:

2 ; # of food each citizen eats per turn. Change that to...
3 ; # of food each citizen eats per turn.

Grassland, 1,2, 2,1,0, yes, 1, 5, 2, For, 0,10, 0, Hil, ; Grs. Change that to...
Grassland, 1,2, 2,1,0, yes, 2, 5, 2, For, 0,10, 0, Hil, ; Grs.

Replicate above increased irrigation-bonus to all appropriate terrain-types.

Besides being able to tweak the AI to really emphasize city-area cultivation, my only remaining wish is a more flexible, extended and above all more newbie-friendly & easy to overview Rules-editor. I think we have been promished the latter already.

[Sava]

I don't like this because food supply does not always dictate population growth. Look at most African countries. They have next to no food, yet they exploded in population the last 50 years.

Food supply should be linked to population health and the quality of life. Maybe for Civ 4 something like that could be added.

Also, you are thinking so one dimensional. Much of food nowadays is shipped from various areas around the world. The majority of food from grocery stores does not come from local sources. According to Civ's food = population model, Arizona and New Mexico would have no more than 10-20 thousand people.

In Civ2 there was a feature that I have had fun with, the food supply caravan. Using this, you can build around 200 little puny cities, each exporting one unit of food to one city, therefore increasing its max size by 100. The largest city I've had so far is 143. Gosh that was fun!

[Ozymandous]

Pardon if I missing something here but what does this penalty for not improving your surrounding areas do besides annoy players?

I don't know about everyone else but if I am trying to hurry to settle as much area as possible (non-ICS, yet not trying to be "perfect" with city planning) I don't always stop to irrigate/road/mine every square around my cities. This is what you do in between times after you've crushed a pesky neighbor or after you've settled all good available area, IMHO.

If this "penalty" is some sort of weird attempt to try to control an ICS player, how about a better option, namely that your initial population point is REQUIRED to work the city square itself. You get to size two then you can place that "extra" worker whereever else you want them, but you CANNOT do that with the first population point. If someone places a city in a slow or negative growth tile then I guess they will have to pay the penalty.

I don't recall anywhere in history where a city was limited in size due to their not drastically terraforming the land. Cities may not have grown that large until they did so, but there should NOT be some "artificial" limit imposed on city growth. Cities will grow only as fast as the surrounding land permits, once they reach a certain size they will use almost all resources available (food wise anyway) until things like farms, nets, etc are used anyway.

This idea would seem to do nothing more than annoy many players, if you want a "solution" to ICS then this is not it.

[Gramphos]

SoulAssassin,
Why don't you create your own Civilization Simulator, but stop working against gameplay. If you could came with good suggestions on how to change the population growth I'd be happy, and also remember that One pop in civ makes some work. People that have more food in the real world work harder then the starving people, so the food should be related to the productivity of a city, which the pop points help to present.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by SoulAssassin
Food supply should be linked to population health and the quality of life.

Or the more health-related city-improvements you have - the less diseases & epidemics taxes your normal city growth-rate. Lets say each health-related city-improvements reduces a hampered growth modifier slightly, tweakable in the Rules-files.

Also, you are thinking so one dimensional. Much of food nowadays is shipped from various areas around the world

Normally about 99% of all food a Civ-game city-pop consumes comes from its very own city-area. Food-caravans in Civ-2 was an exception, not the norm. I dont know about trading/exchanging foods in Civ-3, though.

Im not against food-supporting cities surrounded by undeveloped (sometimes inhospitable) terrain-tiles - on the contrary. Im only against the idea of cities growing slowly but automatically to mega-cities, regardless dedicated city-area cultivation and/or external constant food-import.

[Sava]

Actually, I am working on a Civ simulator. Ralf you're going to learn that most of the things I complain about are symantical issues. Issues that could be corrected and changed very quickly, that wouldn't change the overall flow of the game. But for some reason, you are unwilling to accept any realistic suggestion that anybody makes.

BTW the population growth model that I have is very simple. It's too early and too long to list out the code, and I'm not going to cut and paste it because I haven't copyrighted it.

Basically it involves these factors

Amount of children per family (between 7-15 in early stages, then changing as a result of density, religion, and culture)

Lifespan (dependent upon health, food, and conditions)

Avg. Age of conception (dependent upon religion, culture and lifespan)

Amount of Urbanized Population (more urban means less children)

There are other factors, but it is too complicated to list, and it wouldn't be coherent unless you can read C++. PLus I'm too lazy to type any more.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Ozymandous
Pardon if I missing something here but what does this penalty for not improving your surrounding areas do besides annoy players?

There must be a distinctive city-growth and city pop max-limit advantage in cultivating your city-areas, comparing with not doing it.

IF your city is surrounded with mostly fertile terrain, that you dont bother to cultivate - and IF that city nevertheless can grow just as fast/ just as large as any city with highly emphasized city-area cultivation, then there is no real incentive for improving & cultivating your city-areas in the first place, is it? All you have to do is to found your cities in relatively grassland-fertile surroundings, and city-growth more or less takes care of itself - and without upper city-pop limits.

[Roman]

Originally posted by SoulAssassin
Amount of children per family (between 7-15 in early stages, then changing as a result of density, religion, and culture)

Lifespan (dependent upon health, food, and conditions)

Avg. Age of conception (dependent upon religion, culture and lifespan)

Amount of Urbanized Population (more urban means less children)

There are other factors, but it is too complicated to list, and it wouldn't be coherent unless you can read C++. PLus I'm too lazy to type any more.

This is a great idea!!!

I supported this before Civ 3 design had been finalized, but we can now be pretty certain it is not "in". Oh well...

Could you give us some more details on how this works? It interests me enormously.

[Roman]

Originally posted by Ralf


There must be a distinctive city-growth and city pop max-limit advantage in cultivating your city-areas, comparing with not doing it.

IF your city is surrounded with mostly fertile terrain, that you dont bother to cultivate - and IF that city nevertheless can grow just as fast/ just as large as any city with highly emphasized city-area cultivation, then there is no real incentive for improving & cultivating your city-areas in the first place, is it? All you have to do is to found your cities in relatively grassland-fertile surroundings, and city-growth more or less takes care of itself - and without upper city-pop limits.

This is easy to solve - simply increase the bonus provided to food production by irrigation and farming.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Ralf


There must be a distinctive city-growth and city pop max-limit advantage in cultivating your city-areas, comparing with not doing it.

IF your city is surrounded with mostly fertile terrain, that you dont bother to cultivate - and IF that city nevertheless can grow just as fast/ just as large as any city with highly emphasized city-area cultivation, then there is no real incentive for improving & cultivating your city-areas in the first place, is it? All you have to do is to found your cities in relatively grassland-fertile surroundings, and city-growth more or less takes care of itself - and without upper city-pop limits.

Ah, and where does it state anywhere that just because you don't build farms the citizens of that city haven't done some cultivation on the area?

How do you know the "farms" represented in the game aren't the huge, mechanically harvested farms like in the American mid-west and an "unblemished" tile something worked by hand of possibly with animals (mules/horses/buffalo's with plows, etc)?

You don't know this.

If a city is founded on and surrounded by grassland and is gathering 22 food a turn and then places farms around and can now gather 42 food wouldn't that be a major improvement? I would think so. Last I checked a farm gave one additional food per square which is not to shabby. A city will grow only as large as it can without starving whic is the max-city limit. The city will ONLY grow as fast as it's food comes in, the more food you have the faster it will grow.

These ideas are already implemented in the game, it's not hard to figure out.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Ozymandous
How do you know the "farms" represented in the game aren't the huge, mechanically harvested farms like in the American mid-west and an "unblemished" tile something worked by hand of possibly with animals (mules/horses/buffalo's with plows, etc)?

You miss the point. Im not saying that non-irrigated tiles shouldnt produce any food. Obviously they DO produce some food-output as well. But city-areas with non/few irrigated tiles shouldnt be able to support modern-style 5-10 million mega-cities. That would be rather unrealistic, dont you agree? The most logical approach would instead be the Civ-2 style "irrigation -> improved farmland" evolution-path, but with added max-limits.

- non/few irrigated tiles = less food = can support max 5-8 pop cities
- many irrigated tiles = more food = can support max 10-15 pop cities
- many irrigated & improved farmland-tiles = max food = can support 18-25+ pop cities.

If they skipped "improved farmland" in Civ-3, I dont know. I hope not. Anyway, MY point is that building cities without irrigated & improved tiles should severely hamper further city-growth beyond certain pop-levels. Like aqueducts/sewer system does, but not so abruptly.

Just a slowed-down growth-rate towards inevitable mega-city sizes, isnt enough by itself. I have seen screenshots with 18-20+ sized cities, with hardly any food-related terrain-improvements at all. I dont like that, and I hope they come from gametest setup-scenarios only. If it really is possible to nurture such big cities without bothering with irrigations, then the whole idea with food-related tile-improvements goes inflationary.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by SoulAssassin
Actually, I am working on a Civ simulator.

When do you have a runable prototype?
I'd like to see this in action.