Ditch Cities!

[FreeChina]

Micromanagement is always such a pain in the @$$. The solution? Eliminate city controlling for all but the largest cities (maybe your civ's ten most productive)

A City would be a terrain improvement just like a Mine, a Farm, or anything else...
They would be a terrain improvement that produces trade.
(some suggestions for those other things)
Food Production- Farms, Irrigation, Hydroponics, Ranches, etc.
Material Production- Mines, Factories
Transportation- Road, Hiway, Rails, Canal
Military- Airbase, Nuke Silo, Fort

Now here is where cities work into it. A tile can be "populated" by some means or another (maybe Public works or similar, or something totally new). Every tile once populated becomes a village. Upon reaching a certain population (maybe 5?) it earns a name (Either you choose, or default). You get to/have to manage the eight most populous cities plus two more of your choice. In addition, any populated tile with a population in excess of a certain number would also require micromanagement.
This would make for more realistic suburbs and small towns (land next to New York is nowhere populationwise like land next to Podunk).

FOOD CONSUMPTION: Food will be pooled within your entire civilization, or within given regions. (more likely) Food distribution will be fully manageable and will be a good means of manipulating happiness.

SHIELD PRODUCTION: Mines, Factories, Industrial zones are what produce production.
Military units are built wherever you want from regionally pooled resources.

TRADE PRODUCTION: This is what city tiles actually do, make trade big time, just like real cities. All urban population is really is a bunch of specialists. Other tiles produce trade but much less.

POPULATION PRODUCTION: Population has its ways of spontaneously generating under ideal conditions, but can be "brought in" by settler units under less-than-ideal conditions. Growth is automatic.

POLLUTION: This "commodity" is cranked out based on a tile-by-tile analysis. The use of National Programs (ie Pollution control or Recycling incentive) can reduce it.

CITY IMPROVEMENTS: For those bigger cities that you have to micromanage, all the basic improvements are assumed to have existed already. You get to build the bigger ones, like Universities, banks, international airports, etc. Other none-trade related things, such as SDI, SAM missiles, Power Plants, hydro dams, etc. become terrain improvements just like most everything else.

THE MEGALOPOLIS: As your cities get bigger and more dense, they will combine. No two named tiles can be next to each other, if this happens, the largest one will be the "City" and the rest of the other tiles incorporated within.

DEFENSE: Military units will exert control and presence in a 9-square area. This will allow borders to be defended better, as cities are no longer focused objectives. Whenever an enemy attempts to move into any square within that 9-square area, it's considered an attack.

[NoviceCEO]

Excellent thoughts. I'd like the cities to work more even... I don't like having a single populated square among farms and mines.

But your ideas about Deffense are at least, polemic.

[Qilue]

I like micromanagement.
(says the person who's formers in SMAC individually ordered no matter how many there are)

[rexlunae]

It is good that a leader can direct cities, but it instead of producing one thing in a city, you "put in an order" to the city, and they produce it...eventually.

Then again, if you WANT to micromanage, you should be able to, but that should be unpopular, and cause problems for you.

I love micro managing, but your thoughts are most interesting. I guess it gives a slightly more 'realistic' edge to it all.

[RyanR]

agreed.. micromanagement is one of the many reasons I love Civ2 and still play 20 hours a month or so...

[War4ever]

i do and don't like micromanagment.... but this game rocks whether you like it or not... BTW nice ideas.... i am really curious to see what makes it into civ3


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I am a civ addict. ARE U 2??????


icq 30200920

[Adm.Naismith]

FreeChina, really a Radical Idea indeed!

I love to see someone brave enough to make a sidestep and look some "holy beast" as CIV model from a different angle.
Well done!

On a more critical point of view, I must say that limiting player to manage ten cities is arbitrary to say the last. Military model is so poor it really doesn't catch any level of strategical (let alone tactical) reprodution of military history.

So, if I can play with your idea (with your permission, of course ), using a lot of good point already appared into CIV III Wishlist (sorry to their owner, I really don't remeber the origin) I would modify it as:

Resource on a country level (no more city state) or regional is the way to go - but someone need to specify how to identify and divide regions.

For the latter problem we can add to the map not only the "special resource" layer (where are oil, coal and the like) but also with a "population layer" where every square of the map has a kind of "dominating culture". Contiguos areas of same "dominating culture" fell into "natural (social) region". This layer can help to identify regions by populace, bring up interesting implication about war to annex a city (it will be more prone to revolt if it's of a different "natural region". You can exert control to change the "domninating culture" of an area (diplomatic feauture, choice of goverment, military presence) and help your civilization to expand. That actions, if succesful, will mix the two culture to some point to an assimilation, where the population share same basic "milestone" and never try to split anymore.

Any "natural born village" will develop autonomus decision about some basic requisite (market, temple from start) that can change with the age (bank, sewer system during modern time). You only exert some limited control about this, to a regional/nation level (by finance market development or let they do by themselves - and risk to have some unhappy citizen prone to revolt to a central gov that use their taxes only for him/herselves).

Then you can order to make public build everywhere on a city level (same as in actual CIV II), without the limit of ten city you mention. It can still reduce micromanagement because public build are less than CIV II, they become basic building with age advancing, you have less money to put exactly where you want, so you must shift some management effort from building queue (Micromgmt!) to diplomatic decision, law and goverment, trade pact, espionage mission (Macromgmt!) as a real Big Boss.

Then, to a military level, you have to use same concept: basic "militia" unit can bring in every place by a result of recruitment order, state of populace, money promised and penalty menaced (you can imagin how this can interact with population with ostile "dominating culture" that you have recently conquered and not assimilated enough.

For advanced unit you have the same "order to build" as in CIV II / SMAC, till they became obsolete (back to National Guard, partially out of your control). They are sustained at a national level, and require a populace reduction (by recruitment) from cities surrounding their building location.

About armies actions I will put this choice to one of the already know military threads. I still am for more player involvement than that 9*9 Zone of Control you mention, but I dont want to look anymore to diplomat / spies marching up and down the map, or to ordes of tanks rolling over defensive units only because it's not enemy turn to move ad fire.

I really like Tactical game, but that's not (or shouldn't be IMO) the cup of tea of CIV III

Sorry for who likes Micromgmt, I'm pretty sure you really mean you want to see your order take effect on the game (me too), but I'm not talking about putting some stupid AI to make the "real" brain work.
I'm talking about the challenge of tame a wild horse of a nation, without the needing of caring of galloping by myself

FreeChina, please abuse of my adjustment of your ideas at your own discretion

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Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant

[Urban Ranger]

I disagree. Not that cities are sacred, but in reality they are the centres of a society. Cities are the cores of a civilization.

The problem of Civ and Civ 2 are they play like a collection of city states instead of like an integrated society. They must shift more emphasis to the entire civilization as a whole.

Cities must be allowed to have multiple production queues active at the same time. There should be more automations to make management tolerable.

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If I can't believe in my own eyes, whose eyes can I believe? Yours?!

[FreeChina]

A better way for building military units:
Have a queue for your entire civ, specify how urgently you want the unit and where- the computer figures out what will build it.

[Yuvo]

I think instead of cities, you should have regions(as in states, provinces or counties), which would contain towns and cities.

These regions would be chosen by the computer on the basis of geographicical borders(e.g. mountains and rivers), population and size. You would do all your micromanagement within the regions, instead of cities.

You would still have buildings to represent where people live and names for the larger settlements.

This system would reduce micromanagement without eliminatin it, and would be more realistic(especially in ancient and medievil times)

What do you think?



[This message has been edited by Yuvo (edited February 10, 2000).]

[tniem]

I like the idea of placing cities into provinces or territories and not having to deal with micromanagement. However if you limit it to only five cities you would eliminate what a larger, stronger empire advantages would be. I like the idea of cities being founded by the population growing to a certain level than founding. You could build something there to attract tourists and more residents.