Empire size and density

Very good ideas! There have been many proposed solutions to this.

1) Get rid of 21 square city radius
2) Get rid of cities
3) Divide Civ into Provinces

I think they must all be combined in a way to make an empire the way it is in real life. I like your idea to have cities grow in support and size with more population. I suggest instead of founding a city, you give settlers the "settle" option. Settling would in essence disband the settlers, meaning you could no longer use the unit to irrigate or mine etc. But the square (or area) the settler has "settled" will be replaced with a small nameless village. Over time the population area may become a city. This also goes with the idea of claiming land. Settlers and explorers should be able to "claim" land. By claiming land you are putting the land under control of your empire and allowing settlers to "settle" the land. So for example, if you settle in 5 squares of the map (using the Civ 2 model) in an X shape, the center of the X will spawn a city, and the other squares will continue to grow as suburbs. When it reaches a certain population (I dunno, 100,000?) It will ask you to name the city. If an adjacent area reaches 100,000 as well it will become part of the city (thus adding on population to the city as well) and the city's radius will increase to two squares. This can continue for a while, but it should be harder for adjacent settled areas to be populated once a city is formed (settled areas should tend to stay the same after a city with 9 squares (assuming the map is MUCH bigger) I know this system is in no way completely accurate, any ideas are very welcome and encouraged

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~~~I am who I am, who I am - but who am I?~~~
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[jdlessl]

One realism problem is the sizes of the Civ empires. At it's peak, the British Isles were the HQ of a quarter of the world. The colonies they controled were not exactly 1st world status, so most of the industrial production was done on the Isles themselves. In the game, Great Britain is large enough for a small handful cities. You would never expect a civ that small to amount to anything, yet they did. So the problem becomes one of density. How big, area-wise, should cities be and how much land does it take to support them? In reality, they're pretty damned small, and the land they 'control' is certainly not the size of Montana.

One possible solution would be that cities are not allocated space outside of the city itself. A brand new city with 10k people takes up barely more than a single pixel on the screen, but can grow to huge sizes, even merging with nearby cities. This would allow many more cities per unit area and give empires who developed a tiny little area as much power as those who expanded out (the US, for all its 3 million sq miles of territory, didn't surpass Britain in production until the year 1900 or so). Being able to group them into counties/states/whatever would help aleviate micromanagement problems later in the game. Gathering resources would be done on an empire-wise basis. Resources are taken to the nearest city and distributed from there. Regarding food, the transportation eats part of what it's carrying, so you need them to move as fast as possible. This requires a good road network (figure a square or area or whatever within a certain distance of a road is connected to it). Obviously better tech levels (horse-drawn wagons vs 18-wheel rigs) means better transport devices, to the point where in the modern age transportation costs are a mere fraction of their previous levels.

Another thing, food production per person has increased by ridiculous amounts in recent decades. In the US in 1850, a good two thirds was employed in farming. Today, it's around 2% and we generally have massive surpluses. The amount of food one man can produce has increased by over 3000% in the last 150 years, to say nothing of improvements of earlier centuries. This increase is only minimally reflected in Civ 2, where modern agricultural techniques afford an increase of 50%. Similar increases for mining and construction techniques.

Combine this with the new cities, and a tiny island civ could easily manage an emire that spanned the globe.

Just some food for though.

Jared Lessl

I can't explain my ideas, hopefully Civ3 comes out perfect.

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GAMEOPOLIS

[Biddles]

Wouldn't it be easier to increase the map size to a more realistic level? I mean, lets face it, no matter how good any of these alternative city ideas are (and some of them sound great) NONE of them are going to be used in civ3. This game has two almost perfect (if not perfect) successors to live up to. Something as radical as changing the city style won't be used in civ3, even if it is better for the game (and lets face it, it probably is). So a solution that fixes the problem would be to increase the map size (look through some of the previous map size threads, some of us want HUGE, and I really mean huge, maps).


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- Biddles

"Now that our life-support systems are utilising the new Windows 2027 OS, we don't have to worry about anythi......."
Mars Colonizer Mission

Yah, I have a feeling Firaxis will not make any drastic changes as Biddles pointed out. A larger map size is DEFINITELY something I'd say all Civers want in Civ 3. The biggest world map in Civ 2 is so distorted too, New Zealand is the size (height wise) of Australia! Some big islands aren't even on it. I hope they make the map 10 times bigger, but compensate with faster production. I feel that with a larger map though some new city founding ideas may have to be implemented.

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~~~I am who I am, who I am - but who am I?~~~
"Oh, they have the Internet on computers now!"

[Stuff2]

I don't think that cities should be spread over more than one square. I think instead it should work something like this:
First of all, i'm all in favor of the province idea.
When u seattle a square a small village will show up.
As the population grows the productive land will decrease.
A suggest something like this:
- small village > 100 people 100 %
- big village > 500 people 90 %
- small town > 1500 people 80 %
- big town > 5000 people 70 %
- small city >15000 people 60 %
- normal city > 50000 people 50 %
- big city > 150000 people 40 %
- small metropolis > 500000 people 30 %
- big metropolis >1500000 people 20 %
- small gigapolis > 15000000 people 10 %
- big gigapolis > 15000000 people 0 %

The percentage is about resource production in that square. The reason is that bigger cities will not have any land for mining forestry or agricultural (since people live everywhere)
You can choose on your own which level a seattlement has to reach before you bother to name it. FE if you have set the option to normal city a popupscreen will show up as soon as any seattlement get's more than 50000 inhabitants. Adjacent cities should not be a problem. Every province should only have one seattlement where the name actually is of importance.

That sounds like a good idea Stuff, but what happens if population areas merge? Can they? For example, two adjacent squares reach metropolis level...could they merge to become a giant megaopolis (gigapolis). And if so, what would the name become? For example, Tokyo-Yokohama, Delhi-New Delhi, Minneapolis-St. Paul. This wouldn't happen often because it is hard for a civ to produce so many people so close together. It would probably happen only once or twice to a civ at the major focal points of commerce.

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~~~I am who I am, who I am - but who am I?~~~
"Oh, they have the Internet on computers now!"

[jdlessl]

Wouldn't it be easier to increase the map size to a more realistic level?

Probably. What I was suggesting was to keep the maps the same size but shrink the cities and make them slightly more malleable than they were. It's the same result, but I think a larger (ie, really fscking huge) map will hit older systems harder. But hey, if you don't have 500MHz & 128MB RAM or better, you don't deserve to be playing Civ3!

The really important item was getting rid of the 21 square area a city gets on its construction. CTP nationalized unit maintenance costs, why not the same for food and, if they're used, various raw materials? Tempered, of course, by the potentially staggering transportation costs.

You could have a game setting that if it takes more than x% of the food to send it from A to B, don't bother trying. Just add it to the local granaries.

Jared Lessl

[Grier]

Im not sure if a bigger map is the answer as that leads to more time spent on the movement of units (unless it is accompanied by a radical overhaul of the unit system). What I would prefer is for the size of your empire being drastically limited (through the use of Rise and Fall of Empires).

[UltraSonix]

I think that empire size can be more accurately portrayed with a larger map. To counter the need to move units more, how about a gameplay improvement. Instead of just having a fast-piece-slide, have a command where a unit just drops into the destination square without travelling the squares in between (like in an airdrop). The command would be done through the mouse and the unit has actually gone through the squares in between, just it hasn't been shown. The suggestion would be effective if the units Civ3 move anywhere at the speeds of SMAC.

Also, if the game is released in 2002 like it rumoured to, then I doubt many people would still be running a P166 with 32mb RAM as their primary computer, so computer requirements shouldn't be a problem.

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