Natural city model

[Trifna]

We're talking about serious Civ revolutioning here.

The city modelization in Civ always have been a representation (by a tile called "city"). And ressources around just stay as they are, + improvements. But look at New York and USA's East coast! Forests? Mines? Forget it. I guess there's nothing but the city between NY and Chicago or Washington. So it changes alot on many aspects:
- tiles (forest to city, plains to city, etc.)
- production (food's production isn't 30km outside NY's center...)
- unit moves (to a certain extent)
- moving troops on opponent's field
- attacks on city
- how the map looks


So I would propose a way to arrange this. Of course, it implies to consider the growth of production by science, which is what permits such big cities (enough food, etc.).

I would see possible to graphically simply show the city taking expansion, until it even reaches tiles around. Once a tile is touched, it is touched GRADUALLY, which means it will have only it's boarders with city, then more, more, more.... until its production is a entirely a city-type production (which will go up with the city beeing more dense/effective). It also means that the value of the center tile will see its value change through expansion (since it wont be only city form the beginning).


EDIT: It's not only about a graphical issue but mainly the gameplay issue that's important here. Presently, the geographical expansion of cities isn't in Civ 3.

[Theseus]

I think there's a graphic mod for this (appearance only).

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

You're right, Theseus. That genius, Snoopy (at least, I think it was him ) , came up with a graphics mod which turned all the railroaded tiles into suburban squares, and irrigated squares into farmhouses and barns and the like! It looked REALLY COOL!!!
On this sort of subject, though, although I like what they've done regarding borders and luxuries/strategic resources (ie all cities connected to capital get access to all luxuries/resources in border), I was hoping that they could have done a similar thing for production/food and commerce. For instance, lets say you have an industrialized city with about 20 shields/turn, then a fraction of that production (say 10-20%) should be available to all citiies connected to your capital). The same with food-so that cities with food a food surplus of 4, for instance, should be able to contribute 1 or 2 "bushels" of food to every city in the empire (But, say, only if they are even or in famine conditions). This would, in my opinion, reflect the manner in which cities are known to specialize in real life-with some being industrial heartlands and others being breadbaskets, with yet another type being financial centres (Like NYC for instance)
Anyway, probably too much to hope for in Civ3, maybe Civ4 .

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Sorry, it wasn't Snoopy (Though he does some FANTASTIC graphics!!). The two graphics mods which come to mind are BlueO and Rikk's "The Burbs" Graphics Mods. There is an irrigation Mod by Zeb_Fisher, but I can't seem to find it .
Anyway, here are the links, if you'd like:

BlueO: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=40057

"The Burbs": http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=51022

Hope this helps.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Tattila the Hun]

Ever played the chinese on one of the suburb graphics? I know two of them, and in the other, by 1900 the world is cowered with bluish skyscrapers (and a dozen pyramids and pentagons...), making my units virtually invisible. (To me, naturally...)

[Trifna]

All this is only graphic, the core is stil the gameplay. Any of you would try to push the concept further?

[Willem]

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
There is an irrigation Mod by Zeb_Fisher, but I can't seem to find it .

Here it is, along with a modification I did for Plains.

[Carver]

Thanks Aussie, the graphics sound kickarse.

This thread reminds me of how impressive it would be to play CTP2 and watch hydroponic farms, auto fisheries and mega mines slowly take over the landscape. It truly had a revolutionary feel, like being in a science fiction movie. I wish Civ3 had more of that. But that's the problem with city specific production. CTP was definently ahead with their "integrated nation" system.

[Trifna]

Nice to see someone making the first comment about that thread... May I propose to get to the subject and discuss the principal thread?

Someone interested?....... I'd reaaaallly want to discuss it...

/me hears the wind in the canyons [of his keyboard]

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Sorry Trifna, I certainly hadn't intended to Hijack this thread, I guess I just misunderstood your intention, and didn't realise that you were talking about MORE than just graphic issues (sorry!)
If it helps, I was considering the following ideas for a Industrial/Modern age Mod, once I get my hands on PtW. Basically, I intend to have "improvements" such as Suburbs (reduces corruption, increased commerce and production-increased pollution and possibly reduced culture??), Central Business District (again increased commerce, reduced corruption), Industrial Zone (Increased pollution, increased pollution-requires factory), intracity road network (increased commerce, increased production, increased pollution). I also had ideas for a city railway network, highways and freeways! I also want the ability to create improvements, in a city, that grant production and/or food bonuses in surrounding tiles, in the same way that harbours and offshore platforms do for coastal tiles. This might help me to reflect, again in an abstract fashion, the movement of goods and services between cities, and might even allow cities to specialise in finance, manufacturing or food production.
Beyond that, I had hoped that a civs cities which are connected by the trade network, and are on the same continent, should have pooled commerce, production and food from all of their cities. It should then be possible to "dole" these out to cities in your trade network AS THEY NEED THEM, and any excess could even be included in the international resource trade which currently already exists in the game.
Failing that, I'd like to give roads and rail a bonus to food, production and commerce to that tile-to reflect the intra-civ trade of raw materials etc. However, I don't want to do that until I'm able to give railways a maintainance cost, to prevent abuse by player and AI alike!! Anyway, those are just a few thoughts on this subject, I hope that gets debate going!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Trifna]

hehe Thx Aussie

I guess such a mod would be the beginning to a more natural economic and domestic system. For now, megapols are still exploiting farms around, they don't expand geographically and the regions aren't specialized in the way they're built.

[Datajack Franit]

Hmm I don't like it

[Trifna]

Originally posted by Datajack Franit
Hmm I don't like it

Datajack, this isn't really constructive. The point is knowing why it's not good or why it'd be good. Just knowing if someone likes or not = useless

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Trifna
Datajack, this isn't really constructive. The point is knowing why it's not good or why it'd be good. Just knowing if someone likes or not = useless

Trifna, some of "older" apolytoner here probably saw plenty of radical suggestions about cities model at The List v.2.0 (browse Apolyton archive for it).

This by no means must be intended as a way to stop you suggesting change, but:
- I humbly suggest you read old suggestions, just to refine yours and consider the opportunity to underline difference.
- I suppose for Civ/PTW is way too late for radical, and frankly I hope Civ saga will end here. We need new blood. IMHO

[Trifna]

Ok, thx for informing me
Stil would have hoped someone would want to discuss it but I seem to be the only maniac speaking of Civ 4 here

I too would hope some new blood, but I dunno if anyone would compet with Civ franchise. Maybe they'll refresh themselves...

About the List, I read quite a part of it, but it's been some time and doesn't close discussions. But I'll do as you say, comparing... when I'll have some time. Now I declare this thread dead 'cuz not enough air.

[Brizey]

The empire-wide resource thing is just an unrealistic as the city based system. Both are extreme-reality is somewhere in between. The city-based system creates a more interesting mathematical scheme. Everyhting is built from groups of low integer count resources from discrete cities. Thus, a human can out micromanage a mediocre AI .

A more fluid, more natural system would make it much harder on the human player. Integer optimization is a harder problem than floating point optimization. The human player can use more readily adaptable heuristics to solve these problems, and thus can beat a canned AI. If the system was pure floating point, a decently coded AI would cream us.

In other words, the unnatural system is what makes civ civ.

[Trifna]

Just in case I wasn't understood, I'm not talking about not having cities. There stil are cities, but their capacities and all is changing. As same as New York is stil a city even if there's not even a physicaly distinction from Washington DC for exemple. What does change is the production of each city and stuff like that.

[Brizey]

Let me clarify what I was saying...

The two extremes of civilization-wide sharing are a purely discrete model and a purely distributed model.

In the purely discrete model, all cities are completely economically and industrially isolated. This means that the cities only cooperate on a strategic level. This is NOT the civ3 model. The commercial production is shared, but the industrial production is not (at least not directly or efficiently).

In a purely distributed model, you really don't have cities, other than as strategic points of reference and outlets of production. This is also not the civ model.

Reality is of course, between these too extremes.


As for the discret integer thingybob, what this does is make it easy for humans to do estimations of outcomes in their heads. We can think things like: in two turns, pigopolis will grow one population point, so I better add another worker to finish that mine on that turn so I can maximize my new citizen's production. All of this fine tuning is tractable because it is based on simple integers and arithmetic. We can exactly predict the outcome of our decisions.

If the system were more complicated, such as distributed production, these types of decisions would be too difficult and we would have to rely more on intuition and guesswork.

[TacticalGrace]

the current game system is already too difficult for the AI. intuition and guesswork are beyond any AI possible in the foreseeable future

[sabrewolf]

ghengis farb actually made the urban city sprawl. check out the creation forum or CFC

[Trifna]

I guess the AI could get something simplified in some way?... I know nothing about technical side of AI but I'd guess that it could be put in a some model and this model could be used as much as the present one. It's only a few new factors to me...