CITY INTERFACE (ver1.0): Hosted by Shining1

[Shining1]

City menu

While the City menu in CivII was pretty good, arguably better than AC in fact (build queues aside - though they were crap too), there is much room for improvement. The 'collection of city states' feeling is a major part of this - Civ and AC had very little by way of means to link cities together.

1) Terraforming and Settlers
Terraforming should be done by actual citizens in the city, and from the city menu itself. So you don't keep having to change back and forth between them. Include "terraformers" in the worker options menu, and allow two or more to work the same square. This saves a lot of messing around with settlers and terraformers, and a simple "terraforming complete" message will alert the player to the need to change citizens over. In addition, adding a build queue for worker behaviour would help immensely - terraform this bit, then go do the forest, then go back to work on the whales. While this doesn't eliminate micromanagement from the game, it makes it much faster for the player to coordinate.

Furthermore, citizens inside cities and the settler unit should have less of a distinction made between them. A 'build settlers' order will still be available, but does not yield a distinct unit. Instead, this order drains X minerals and fuel per turn as a set rate, as citizens prepare to move out of the city and into the country. These settlers have the normal civ abilities, such as terraforming and found city, but may return at any time to any established city to rejoin the workforce. As such, the are added to the citizen list at the top of the screen, and can be used to work a terrain square. They may then be removed at any time to perform settler duties, such as terraforming
on a off city square, or founding a new city.

Like other 'normal' citizens, a settler unit outside the city may retreat to their home city if attacked within the city radius (as with a unit moving into a square being worked by a citizen - the tile is vacated, and the military unit moves into it as if the settler was not there. If caught outside of the city
radius, the unit must defend itself. This way, settler units will not be such easy targets.

[Note: to keep the unit type homogenous, so you don't have settlers of different types working in a city, NO settler unit may be equiped with any equipment - neither weapons or armour. Defense will still require a military unit to accompany it.]

All of this applies to the basic 'settler unit'. Later in the game, this unit will be upgraded, and non-citizen terraforming units will become available, such as engineers and terraformers.


Al Gore Rythm

The SMAC interface is good, but I think some things could be improved.

First, later on in the game it's a hassle in SMAC to turn Transcendi into Engineers. I'd like to se a "Set all future citizens to X duty" when you can no longer work the land, or even when you can.

Other than this, my favorite part of Colonization were the specialists who worked land. Now say a standard citizen would be balanced, and specialists would work specifics jobs but would have a lax in other duties. Say farmers would boost food but destroy minerals in a square, lumberjacks and miners vice-versa and so on.


Shining1
2) Specialist Citizens
Build queues and citizen specialists were handled somewhat ineptly by SMAC, but it's safe to assume they will be much improved in CivIII. Some suggestions for specialist citizens are:

Wizard - as in CivII
Tax collector - as in CivII
Foreman - improves speed of terraforming
Settler - (as given above) a mobile citizen who cannot fill any other specialist role.
Priest - one happy citizen, *2 for a temple in the city. *
Entertainer - as in CivII, **
Governor - a single happy citizen in each town is allowed to act as the government of that town, reducing corruption and improving efficincy, especially when given a courthouse.

* The Oracle then counts as an extra priest citizen in each city - very easy to understand. The priest should also be distinct from the Cleric UNIT, a unconv. designed to convert small towns and units.
** is improved by banks, markets places, and some tech discoveries - especially after the discovery of music - a dead end tech that adds a further 50% to entertainers. Adds a further choice to happiness management -
priests? Or entertainers?

The roll of citizens was underused in CivII, instead, when you wanted a funtion fulfilled, you had to build a structure. CivIII should link the people to the town much more than CivII did, making citizens the main source
of benefits, and structures the key to maximising those benefits.

Shining1



3)Unit construction

Conversely, some units do not become available unit the requiste structure has been build. Advanced attacking units often require their own structures to be built before they can be turned out. This represents the necessary investment into training facilitys that must be made in each city to produce the more dangerous units.

For instance, archers require a barracks, as somewhere to train and make the necessary equipment required for their craft. Hoplite, on the other hand, were historically a conscriped force, and every man who could afford a spear and shield was required to have one. Hence no ongoing facilities would be required to produce hoplite.

As a general rule, cities should be able to build and maintain defensive units without requiring a special facility, while attacking units generally should need a facility (archers, legion, knights, crusaders, etc.)

Some more advanced units will probably require their own, unique barracks to train. Catapults and siege engines, for instance, both have special engineering requirements.

4) Unit component ideas
List of basic units and requirements.

Infantry Chassis
Can be produced without facilities, up to Bronze weapons and armour

Horseman Chassis
Requires stables, and can be equiped with up to bronze weapons and armour

Barracks
Produces iron spear, swords, bows, and receives upgrades when appropriate techs are discovered.

Stables
Required for horse mounted units.

Siege Workshop
Builds catapult (artillery), siege engine (negates walls for units attacking from that square).

Unit construction interface.
Each city gets four building 'slots', each of which may be occupied by a single structure for advanced unit production. (The 'construct building' menu is located above these slots.'

The default type is "Civilian base", which can produce the most basic of unit chassis (infantry) and the most basic weapons (bronze weapons, muskets, etc depending upon the era. All cities start with this 'structure', which is replaced by the more advanced barracks.

Since each structure only yields certain types of weapons, it is necessary to continually demolish and rebuild (approx 2-3 times per game, like CivII).

Suggestions?

[Ecce Homo]

I mentioned this on the Trade list...

Some city improvements should be private - not owned by the player. The player would agree with a capitalist AI to have certain improvements built.

[Trachmyr]

I think city radius should only be one square, were talking about a lot of land here... to counter the effect of a reduced number of tiles, the following should be implemented:

1)Multiple workers per tile
--- Each tile has a maxinum yield (tech can improve)
--- Each worker has a maxinum harvest (tech can improve)
--- Workers must be same type (All farmers, miners, ect.)
--- Workes of diffrent cities can be on the same tile
----- Providing that the are friendlies
----- Providing that the tile isn't MAXED OUT
2) As technology improves, nation wide transit systems can move any # of resources from one connected city to another. In fact most resouces will be goverend by a natinwide screen. (Big Cities don't supply their own food)


With a smaller aera of influence, you can have more cities in a smaller area, more like Real life

[Shining1]

Ecce: Sounds a wee bit complicated - remember, civ games often have you managing upwards of 30+ cities, and micromanagment isn't particularly popular.

Also, Civ is government orientated - so private works aren't normally an explicit part of the game.

Trachmyr: Realistic is not always fun. Reducing the city radius will cut down production options and lead to an even greater number of cities with even more micromangement than before.

If you feel that cities are too infrequent on the Civ map, you can fix this by adding smaller population centres in the form of some kind of terraforming - possibly founding minor towns to improve the commerce output of a square?

The resource transfer between cities is a good idea - perhaps make it an effect of caravans - allowing them to establish either trade routes or resource links.


You obviously both have some great ideas to contribute - may I suggest you focus a bit more on gameplay and less on realism however...

[Trachmyr]

Ok, a compromise...

You can build towns with a smaller area of influence, they can later be upgraded to cities through an expenditure of labor production with a prerequisite # of people.

Cities can be built from the start, but require a lot of Revenue or PW... but get a higher population.

This way, mostly towns will be built in the early game; but cities will be built in the latter game, and they will be better from the start.

[Shining1]

Well, my question is why you need to have a smaller city radius at all. People can walk just as far from a major city as they can from a small town...

Perhaps a city could be upgraded to a 3 squares radius with the discovery of automobile or something?

This would definitely max out the available terrain, and be less punishing to players with a less than 100% perfect city layout.

But there should be a good gameplay reason for denying players that second square radius.

[Trachmyr]

I personally don't think a city can have a second tile rasius... people are only willing to walk/drive so far to work. On the map in CIV2 of earth... you can only fit 3 cities in britania, 2 in japan without crippling your cities because of overlap. Once automobiles are discoverd, transport and pooling of resources are improved. Small towns can be built near important terrain tiles/resources, and those resouces trucked in to heavily populated cities. I think micromanegement can be handled by a good queue list, and options for production other than building structures (like capatilism, or SOCIALISM, or Trade goods, ect.)

[Shining1]

People will go any distance they need have to if it allows them to get a better resource. 2 squares is a reasonable limit, though, as it cuts down the city overlap.

And the number of cities is another of the real vs. gameplay issues - you can't fit them all in without a very big map (2000*2000 squares, I suspect).

The main problem with a one square radius is that you cut the available squares for developement from 21 to 9 - greatly cutting down a player's options.

I'll definitely try to include your suggestion, I'm just trying to understand the reasons for it...

[Shining1]

More city stuff:

A further colonization like connection to the resource map.

Drones suffer a 1/3 drop in efficiency when set to work in a city square. They also cannot become specialists - drones always appear to the far right of the citizen row, forcing the player to make happy or normal citizens into specialists.

Happy citizens, in addition, gain a 1/3 bonus to any specialist jobs they perform (NOT working in city squares). Hence a happy scientist will produce 4 beakers per turn, instead of 3. This bonus is rounded down, and doesn't apply to either priests or entertainers.

This requires each specialist to have a couple of icons, one for a normal citizen, and one for a happy citizen.

[Trachmyr]

I appreciate your open mind on this subject (1 tile radius), and I certainly understand your critisims/concerns. I have played Colonization quite a bit, it uses 1 tile city radii. In comparison to the two games, I believe IMHO that 1 tile is better. Here are some reasons:

1) More compacted territory, easier to defend and set up infrastructure.
2) In civ2, i found the 2 tile radii to actually hamper growth. For a city in CIV2 to prosper, you have to have access to a sizable percent of good tiles... out of the 21. If your dealing with 9 tiles, as long as you have a couple of good terrain tiles, your city can prosper before massive terraforming.
3) with 21 tiles to place workers, city proffessions are neglected. With a 1 tile radii, you will begin placing city workers much quicker (esp. if city workers include the Labor force, Merchants, preist, and what-not)
4) Finally, with more compacted territories, there will be enough room to allow a larger number of civs to be in the game. (Colonization has about 13(counting the native tribes), and it's an old game)

I hope I've cleared my point a bit, but I suspect you'll still disagree with me... oh well :-)

[the Octopus]

"The roll of citizens was underused in CivII, instead, when you wanted a funtion fulfilled, you had to build a structure. CivIII should link the people to the town much more than CivII did, making citizens the main source of benefits, and structures the key to maximising those benefits."

The problem with that is that the "specialists" are too interchangeable. In order to see a real "happiness" change in a city because of religion, you need to work on the infrastructure and build up belief in the people, not just declare that 50% of your population are priests...

I think that the Civ 21-square layout is pretty good. I definitely dislike Trachmyr's suggestion. I like to play on smaller worlds, simply because then I don't have too many cities to manage. I think that Brian said that they considered a variable radius for one of the games he worked on (SMAC?) and threw it out because it wasn't fun.


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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"

[the Octopus]

It would be nice if I was warned of "impending disasters" before they were right on my doorstep, e.g. in the current version of the games, it says "if you build this settler this turn, the city will be disbanded -- continue?". How about "you've just started building a settler, but with the current rate of production and food collection, you will need to disband the city to produce it -- continue?". These sorts of problems usually hit me when I'm not paying too much attention to a particular city, and just let it do what it has been doing. Another example would be producing more units than can be supported with the current mineral output in SMAC.


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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"

[Druid2]

I see a problem w/ the terraforming/improving being done from the city screen.

How you gonna terraform places that are outside a city radius?

[Shining1]

Octopus: As opposed to declaring that half your population are entertainers?

Basically, I agree with Trachyr that specalist citizens were underused in CivII - it would be nice to make it worthwhile to use a variety of citizens in different occupations in CivIII, instead of everyone just working to pump out minerals as fast as possible.

Hence I regard the citizens more as kind of individuals than a representation of large numbers of people. A worker, a priest, an entertainer - you get the picture.

It would probably help to tweak their output a little as well, so it becomes obvious that 4 workers, a tax collector and a wizard is a better investment combination than 6 workers.

Limiting the number of specialists per head of population would help this - one tax collector per 5 citizens is a realistic maximum, and the same for priests (thus avoiding the situation you describe).

I definitely agree with the warnings suggestion, especially when it comes to riots and the like. Delaying the outbreak of riots for 1 turn might help (it does take time for mobs to get organised and to realise that they can rebel successfully) - and the penalties for such a rebellion should be higher.

Finally, 9 squares is just too few for a Civilisation city to grow from.

[Shining1]

Druid: If you didn't read as far as the mobile settlers bit, I suggest you do so.

I've suggested that Settlers for CivIII will be a unique kind of unit, able to detact from and re-enter a city's population more or less at will. You still have to build them (i.e supply wagons, provisions, training, etc), but once you have you can do more or less what you want. This includes terraforming outside of a city square.

[Shining1]

{Reposted from Social engineering thread, since several settings are related to city improvements as well}

Global values for social settings:

Order - how organised your society is.
Affects number of police units allowed and effectiveness of some facilities

Happiness - how happy people are to be a part of your civilisation.

Health - determines population growth rate and some resource gathering penalties/bonuses. Negative for most of early game.

Corruption - affects number of resources gathered and control over population. Positive for most early game options.

Industry - affects resource consumption. Zero for most early game options.

Economy - affects trade and commerce income. Zero for most early game options.

Knowledge - society's ability to gather knowledge (can be heavily affected)

Environment - affects environmental damage, and can confer movement bonuses. Positive for all early game options.

Unlike SMAC, however, certain technologies should immediately affect these settings. For instance, Philosophy and Physics could both give +1 to knowledge (for the first civ to obtain them), while environment will be adversely affected by both plastics and the automobile.

Other settings can be greatly affected by city improvements. Hospitals will improve health and happiness, while Court Houses improve order and reduce corruption.

[Frank Moore]

This was posted in the player interface forum, i think that they should be stated here also:

From Cybershy:
• When I'm able to build SDI in a deity level, all my cities start to build this at once, because of the danger of nuke-attacks. There must be an option "Let all cities make SDI asap" or "Now" or "Use all my money to finnish SDI ASAP" etc.

When you're at war give the option "I need 10 armors and 20 bombers in the area of Amsterdam ASAP. Then the cities surrounding Amsterdam will work on it, and after they made it, they continue their current job. It must even be possible that the created units all move to amsterdam as well automaticly. This works ways better then going from city to city to change their production target, and then set it back later again.

Of course you can micromanage later the city of Rotterdam in example to continue builing on the Oracle, while the other cities near Amsterdam make the army

And From don Don:
1. In Civ the Attitude Advisor space on the right for a row of icons showing city improvements. Happiness improvements in particular (Temple, Cathedral, Coliseum) but also certain others (my mind draws a blank here).

Now I load up a spreadsheet and keep track of what's been built in what city. (I do it for MOO2 also.) What I want is a civilization spreadsheet showing size, production, key improvements, etc., from which I can access the production queue directly without going to the city screen.

Direct access to the resource map would be nice too, so you could open two or three neighboring cities up and swap squares.

2. Mmmmm, while we're at it, make the list and order of improvement icons customizable, too. Throw in a toggle for Tax/Lux/Sci and Supply/Demand displays to replace production and improvement displays. Naturally make it sortable by age, alpha, size, happiness, shields, etc. And fix it so it responds to up/down pg up/pg dn and doesn't lose its place when you do jump to a city screen and back.

[tfs99]

Blending "tile improving" settlers and the city is a good idea.

I'm not clear on how you would "build" a settler, that is, without producing a distinct unit.

How would the settler work a square away from the normal city radius? Would you just pick a tile for them to work from the map? Normally a significant passage of time would occur for the settler to move/improve. How is that handled?

It would be great if improving tiles could be managed from both the City Interface and the Map Interface and to make the interface as similar as possible.

Also, an option to toggle the display of the resource production icons on the regular map for each tile would be quite helpful.

I'd also like to see a "rollover" summary like a WinApp tooltip pop-up over a city, improved tile, unit or what-have-you once the mouse is stationary for a user selectable amount of time (100 or 200 ms would be the default).

[This message has been edited by tfs99 (edited May 20, 1999).]

[tfs99]

If we're going to have a Unit Workshop ala SMAC (and I hope we do), I'd like to see the ability to select multiple units with the mouse and obsolete them all with one menu pick.

I think this was mentioned by someone else, but I would also like to have the ability to select a group of units, buildings, wonders in order and assign them to the build queue with one menu pick as well.

Having the ability to group and filter the units, buildings, wonders, what-have-you so that you don't have to look at them all at once (and scroll, scroll, scroll) would be great!

It's a pain setting up a build queue in SMAC when you have to scroll back and forth and the scrolling mechanism always seems to do something other than what I expect (going too far/not far enough, etc.).

[Trachmyr]

FOOD

I propose 5 food types, the more types you feed your civs the happier and healtier they'll be.

Types - Where you get them
1)GRAIN - Wheat Farmers
2)PRODUCE - Gatherers/Produce Farmers/Mixed Farmers
3)MEAT - Hunters/Fishermen/Livestock Farmers/Mixed Farmers
4)DAIRY - Livestock Farmers/Mixed Farmers
5)CANNED - Special, see below

Note: Livestock and Mixed Farmers use sliders to determine ratio of food types produced.

What your people eat:

You have a slider to determine what pecentages of each food type is eaten. If you don't produce enough of a selected type it will be filled in by another (if available) or come from your stockpile. The heiarchy of food is: Dairy->Meat->Produce->Grain->Canned, meaining dairy is the first you'll eat if substitution is needed, then meat, then so on...


Shelf-Life, diffrent food have diffrent storage potentials... percentages given below is the percent of the total amount of that type lost per turn.

Grain: 0%
Produce: 60%*
Meat: 100%**
Dairy: DOES NOT GO INTO STOCKPILE EVER
Canned: 0%***
* 40% after REFRIGERATION is discovered, 20% after PLASTICS is discovered.
** 80% after CURING is discovered, 60% after REFRIGERATION is discovered, 40% after PLASTICS is discovered.
*** Once CANNING is discovered, any Produce or Meat that would have been lost, is turned into CANS... 50% of left-over Dairy is CANNED once REFRIGERATION is discovered.

Happiness & Health:
(Note: Modifiers given are abstract)

People's diet must contain at least 20% of a type for it to count as eaten.

No Food: -3 Health/ -3 Happy
1 type eaten: -0 Health/ -1 HAPPY
2 Types eaten*: -0 HEALTH/ -0 HAPPY
3+ Types eaten*: -0 HEALTH/ +1 HAPPY
*CANNED does NOT count

Grain Eaten: +0 HEALTH/ +0 HAPPY
Produce Eaten: +1 HEALTH/ +0 HAPPY
Meat Eaten: +1 HEALTH/ +1 HAPPY
Dairy Eaten: +1 HEALTH/ +1 HAPPY
Canned Eaten*: +0 HEALTH/ +0 HAPPY
*Note that CANNED won't be eaten unless it comes out of stockpile

Population Growth: Still requires maxing out Stock. If a grainary exists, only GRAIN and CANS will remain in Stocpile.


Micromangement concerns:

You must adjust the "People Eat" slider, default is 25% of each type except canned (canned isn't an option, since you only eat it if you are consuming your stockpile), which typically will work just fine.

You must take care of which farmers to use, and adjust ratios for 2 farmer types. However, hopefully the AI can do this automatically with some intelligence.

[Trachmyr]

PW must be seperated into 2 distinct catagories: City works and National Works.

City Works are handled by workers, within the city. Simply place the worker on a tile, choose for his job improve/Terraform/Enginner or whatever (and I hope CIV3 includes diverse worker types, miners, lumberjacks, ect.), and chose the project... and if multiple workers are allowed per tile (using the Harvest/Yeild configuration), more enginners means faster completion. Although multuple workers per tile would be imbalanced on a 2 tile city radii...

National works (Roads, bases, listining posts, ect.), use a PW system like in CtP, it can also be used on city works (Big cities contribute a lot to smaller ones IRL)

[Shining1]

Wow. Some great ideas arriving here.

The regional thing is something I've been trying to figure out for a while, and it works with some of my own ideas too. Being able to bring up a 'regional' map of the area - within the city menu - and then be able to send resources (up to a certain limit) to another city or move straight to that city's city menu without having to exit the current city and click on the new city from the maing screen.

This implies regions would be limited in size geographically - no bad thing. I suggest a radius of around 8-12 squares, depending on what works best for the regional map.

The idea of building a regional government is what link it all together properly. This government would form the regional centre (i.e always centre of the map for that region) and would be the main place to coordinate global build orders such as frank suggests.

Incidentally, the build orders idea fits well with the barracks one - allowing you to mothball production of one unit type and move to another - done by setting the slider scale to zero. I suggest a limit of three 'incomplete structures' per city. Units, however, will be different, in that you can't mothball production of one unit chassis (e.g barracks legion) to switch to another unit of the same type (e.g barracks archers). But you can change between structures, as I mentioned before (set the percentage slider to 0%)

This gives a much better feeling of connectedness between cities, AND make the capital a much more relevant structure. With the ability of all citizens to terraform roads, etc, connecting cities to the capital will be very easy, and because most early game work will be managed through the capital (the only available regional centre), you get a better sense that this town is 'important'.

Improvements and units should still be made on a per city basis - as they are in real life (I don't get the idea of having 'transferable' structures or terraforming, Ctp style).

Land outside a city but within your borders should be able to be worked by a settler unit in the normal way, provided the settler unit is on the same continent as the city (maybe same region? This would require the main map to include 'regional borders' as well as global ones. And cities without a regional capital would be penalised as a result - good or bad?)

Running production orders through the capital would also work - providing the region is small enough to only support around 10 cities (again, a radius of about 8 squares). I suggest the following - you can set a regional production type from your capital, and then select 'exceptions' to this from your list of cities. (You will also be warned if a city is producing a wonder, if the city is within two turns of completing it's current production, or if you cannot mothball the current production in that city). Any regional production orders will supercede city orders (i.e mothball all current production and go to the head of any build queue).

Wonders should be a total effort by that city - once begun, they replace all 6 build menus (the three unit producting slots and the three city improvement slots) with a single, large icon (some nice concept art) and cancel all production in every menu.

With so many production menus, the system of using rows of shields to show production should probably be abandonned (or included as a right click popup window, just for show). A simple number of current shields vs. required shields should be included on a corner of the struture concept art, along with the name of the unit.

Another problem with having multiple production slots is build queues - how to implement them. Since single production types can require more than one structure (e.g knights, who need armour and weapons from the barracks and horses from the stables - producing them will tie up BOTH structures for the duration - I suggest a single, global queue for all production types in the city.
Making multiple units/structures at one time can be included by allowing more than one item in a single build slot (select a slot, and click replace, insert, or concurrent).

[Note: with so many production menus, there also needs to be a 'cancel all' button.]

This just about ties up a screen full of production by itself, so some planning about the location of each part of the interface should be included in future discussion.

[Shining1]

Summary so far.

1) Regionalisation
Every civilisation is divided up into different regions, based on a capital surrounded by a radius 8 area of land (or square, etc). Citys that are properly linked to the capital within this radius (i.e by road) can exchange resources, and the player can access any city from any other city with that region from the regional map, a popup feature within the city menu. Regions can be named, have their own internal borders, can be set identical production queues, and make city management a simpler process. As well, some social engineering factors (values) and the tax rate can be altered for each region.
(done either through options in the capital of the region or the social settings screen).

2) Terraforming
Terraforming is now handled by citizens from inside the city menu, or by settlers from the main map. Each city gets a terraforming build queue, and a 'hurry' button to rush improvements for money. A certain number of citizens are allocated jobs as slaves? (need ancient word for builder), Yeomanry or Engineers (each of which builds faster than before). Terraforming outside a city is handled the normal way, using settlers.

As such, the main map will need a 'work in progress' type icon to indicate the current square around each city that is being improved (only one square at a time can be done, unless settlers are used externally).

3) Settlers
These become more flexible, as well as being able to leave the city and terraform/found citys, they can also temporarily rejoin a city population as either workers or terraformers. They can provide external benefits to a city, able to both terraform terrain outside the city square and access production squares similarly inaccessable, when within the city region (think combined terraformer/supply crawler behaviour).

4) Unit production
Many units, particularly offensive fighters, require their own facility to be produced before they can be constructed (currently, bows and iron weapons and armour require a barracks, horses require a stables, and catapults require a siege workshop).

Some units require more than one structure to be produced, in this case, the unit type always appears at the most basic structure (e.g knights, requiring horses, are still built at the barracks).

Production of at any structure can be altered according to a sliding bar system, much like the tax rate, and allows production at a structure to be mothballed, if necessary (i.e slider set to zero).

Construction of base facilities is handled similarly, and up to two current construction projects can be mothballed at a time (but not worked on concurrently, like units), making a total of four possible works-in-progress at any one time.

[Note: I really don't like this idea. There wouldn't be much demand for simultainious production anyway - I suggest a limit of one unit/one structure per base at a time. With multiple structures required for the same unit, they already have a purpose. This would make the design workshop easier to manage, as well.)

Wonders require the complete attention of a base - no structures or units can be left incomplete.

Envisioned construction window - much like civII (bottom left) but with six slots - three buildings (top of window), three unit facilities (bottom of window) (reflecting the limited skills of a single city - as in real life).

5) Specialists

Worker - works in city radius square
Engineer - terraforms in city radius square
Farmer* - improves food output by 1 in square
Trader* - improves arrows ouput by 1 in square
Miner* - improves shields output by 1 in square
Scientist - + sci
Tax collector - + tax (limit 1 per 5 citizens)
Settler - special unit, can work or terraform, but cannot be a specialist. Can move from town to town. Must be constructed first.
Entertainer**- produces luxuries (make normal citizen happy).
Priest** - makes unhappy citizen happy (1 per 5 citizens allowed)
Governor - available only in regional centres. Improves efficiency for region.
etc. Only one allowed.

* Farmers and traders appear automatically when in the right square, and require certain technologies to be discovered first. They can also be manually selected. However, they limit mineral output to a maximum of 2. Miners get +1 minerals, but destroy ALL food output in their square (they also appear much later in the game).

** Entertainers and priests both improve city happiness, but in different ways. Entertainers affect both normal and unhappy citizens, in the normal CivII way. Priests affect ONLY unhappy citizens, making them normal. Thus, priests are usually first required, but are limited, both by the number allowed and in that they do not generate happy citizens.

Happy citizens make better specialists, adding +1 to tax, sci, or effic. Priests and Entertainers are not improved by this, however.

Unhappy citizens are less productive, slowing terraforming and work output by 1/3. They cannot become specialists (including farmers, etc), and may revolt if present in great enough numbers.

[Shining1]

Umm.. I definitely didn't get everything there. But that seems to be a starting point - post agree/disagree with relevant summary points and I will modify them accordingly.

(Trachyr: Your food system would again require a huge ammount of micromanagement. If citys were limited to maybe six or seven per side, this would be okay. But with a normal game probably requiring management of 30+, there's no way you can stop to spend time adjusting your cities individual consumption.

Besides, governments don't do this anyway - Civilisation puts the player in the position of being a kind of immortal president - approach the game from this direction. You have a great deal of energy for ideas, but it must be channeled in the right direction...)

[Trachmyr]

Actually goverments DID handle food distrubution, only under more recent (capatilist) goverments, has food distrubution been left to market economies. But even the former USSR had direct control over rations.
I think your concerns with micromanegement are unfounded, in the early game (with only a few cities), being able to distribute food in such a controled option is highly valuable. In the late game, with cities producing a large amount of widly varied food, leaving the slider (only one slider) at 25/25/25/25% works just fine.
Sliders for worker types can be eliminated by allowing more farmer types:
Wheat Farmer: 100% Grain
Produce Farmer: 100% Produce
Livestock Farmer: 100% Meat
Dairy Farmer: 100% Dairy
Cattle Farmer: 50% Meat & 50% Dairy
Mixed Farmer: 40% Produce, 30% Meat & 30% Dairy

When Farmers are placed by the computer (as for population Growth), the computer can use the same slider.
example: You've got 25/25/25/25 selected; you currently produce 12 Grain, 2 Produce, 4 Meat, and 8 Dairy. A new Farmer will be a Produce Farmer, since it is farthest from the 25% mark.

We're only talking about one slider, that in the late game you can safely leave at default if you don't want to optimize food dispersal. That's not a lot of Micromanegment... and if you have a city that is short on food, you have more options to help them out (since diffrent types should produce diffrent amounts)

[mindlace]

I think this is more relevant here than in OTHER- what do you think, Shining1?
(i know I'm repeating a bit, but I'm also trying to make it more complete & concise)

REIGONS:
After you have developed your social choices to a certain degree, you have the option to build a 'Reigonal Headquarters.' Once a city has built a reigonal headquarters, you select a certain number of cities (possibly dependant on social choices) that must be linked by roads/rr/water. Radius for the Reigon is determined the same way that Borders are determined, just internally as well. Then you name the reigon.

These cities are now in a reigon. When you click on the Reigonal Headquarters, the city screen shows a reigonal map instead (probably have to be expanded).
Production, Economy/Trade, Food, and research are aggregated. New buttons allow you to automagically switch citizens over to tiles/specializations that maximize one of the above for the reigon. You may use the 'scroll through cities' arrows (like SMAC) to see the traditional city screens, or click on a non headquarters city (right click-'show reigon'), or right click on the headquarters city to get 'show city'.

PRODUCTION:
The build queue splits into 3 parts (someone else's idea) and you may place things into those queues and assign percentage priority to those queues. Rollover production follows standard rules, but goes to the highest priority queue first. When units are produced, you select on the reigonal map which city they are 'assembled' in. When improvements are built, the cities without the improvement are flagged, and you may not select a city that already has it.

ECONOMY/TRADE:
Maintinance costs for Improvements are paid collectively before going into the coffers.
Trade routes are aggregated to the Reigons: SEE TRADE LIST.

RESEARCH:
Research is aggregated, and perhaps each reigon can select a tech to persue? If you want one fast, every reigon works on it, but if you want to be more broad, you can farm out different techs...

FOOD:
The general food pile is allocated to each city so no-one starves (if possible), and you decide whether to be 'big endian' or 'little endian'- BIG ENDIAN: your biggest cities get surplus first- LITTLE ENDIAN: the smallest cities get food first.

Psych:
psych/riots are still city by city, though perhaps you can have an econ to psych bar (like the global one that currently exists) for the reigon. In the reigonal screen, selecting 'psych' gives you a list a lot like the 'citizens' screen in SMAC (F4) but there's numbers on the cities in the reigon window and next to the citizens so you know who belongs where. (if there's room, the numbers can just be the city name, but they shouldn't shrink so much like SMAC)

WORKERS/RADIUS:
Workers may work any tile in the Reigon. (whether or not terraforming/colonization is done by them- but I think it's a worthwhile idea. The 'automatic withdrawal' could still apply.) In a city/citizen screen, out of city radius workers look different.
Specialists are still assigned to cities.

WONDERS: since they can be built by reigon, would it belong to the 'reigon'- an attacking player only gets it if they take the whole thing? Prolly better to just assign to one city, like a unit.

REIGONAL IMPROVEMENTS:
This idea opens the door to 'reigonal improvements'- things that reigons could build as a collective.

Frank Moore: this would address your 'I need 10 more bombers, etc, ASAP'- with the 3 build queues and the ability to place the 'assembled' units at any of the reigon's cities.

Finally, the abilities outlined above may be dependant on tech- Mass production for 3 build queues, networks for multiple techs, superhighways for out-of-city radius production. I think the basic abilities should come at once, though- you're trying to reduce micromanagement, even if it's slightly 'unrealistic'.

~mindlace

[mindlace]

FARMERS:
New unhappy unit: Marijuana Farmer
(The only reason I would like this whole food idea is so that I could have a vegetarian empire.)

REIGONS:
The 'radius for reigon' would really penalize an archapegalo(sp?) empire. That's why I say # of cities. The headquarters serving as the nexus of the first reigon- awesome. Though I hope that it takes a bit to discover 'headquarters'.

PRODUCTION:
Units and infrastructure are indeed manufactured at many cities- often around the globe- and then assembled into final products at a given city. This is why I think reigonal production should be aggregated- it simulates the situation to a certain extent.

BUILD QUEUES:
err... I think three build queues should be mixed, any unit/improvement you like- maybe even tile improvements? Though perhaps with this method you should get 2 queues to start (for a reigon) and, say, 4 for discovering mass production.
The rules for stopping/starting production are OK- no stopping units, only improvements that are currently being worked on. I'd say that wonders take up 2 of 3 slots- so that when the barbarian/mindworm eats your defensive unit, you can pop another out without abandoning the giant work in progress.

BUILDING REQUIREMENTS FOR UNITS:
ech. So when I'm hellbent for tech, and my poor little city is manufacturing the Seige Workshop, and 10 turns go by and I've got gunpowder, what then? More to the point, most of my units get obsoleted very quickly. Simply keeping them updated is a challenge. Keeping them _and_ their various buildings updated, _and_ trying to remember which city can legally build that Mechanized Infantry unit I need on the Eastern Front *yesterday* strikes me as a real pain in the arse.

SETTLING/TILE IMPROVEMENTS:
right on. Amen, allelujah, hooray.

[Travathian]

Not sure where this belongs but . . .

How is it that a unit knows about a terrain bonus by just walking by it? Especially those which arent readily visible.

I mean, come on, how is a phalanx going to know 'there is gold in them there hills' without spending considerable time checking the area out. Buffalo, ok, I can see that, if you actually walk into that square then you'd probably notice the abundance of buffalo.

So, here's the changes I am recommending.

1) Terrain bonuses can only be recognized if a unit actually moves into that square.

2) Terrain bonuses such as gold/diamonds/coal won't be realized until the square is mined. Or possibly a shorter version of mining which allows for basic excavation to determine if these resources are available.

[ember]

I think regions are a good concept, but there are some difficulties with the suggested methods.

1) If regions are used, then we have to have only one build screen for that region (otherwise it is too complex to be building on multiple levels of orginization). THe problem comes for new cities established outside of existing regions, and for regions growing with new tech, what happens to induvidual cities out side of regions, and what happens when regions amalgamate or you want to re-organise.

For these regions a proposs that your entire empire be treated as a region (full details in the thread " a new civilization concept"). all resources are pooled, and only, multi part build list. (one for improvments/PW (infrastructure), one for wonders, one for units, one for capitalization). wonders are built one at a time, as your civ can only have one focus.
Units and structures are prioritized in their menu's and each unit type is given resources proportional to it's priority, you then deploy completed units/structures where you want them.

This allows a lot of suggestions above without having to seperatly impliment them.
mothballing production: set the priority for that structure to 0, resources already spent are not lost, no new ones are added.
Massive structure builds. Discover SDI, set your imrovment build rate to the max, and assign set the SDI priority arbitrarily high, most production goes to SDI, until you have as many SDI as cities, when no more resources are added to the SDI bin, until there is an oppening. same method for the "10 bombers 20 tanks to london" set their priorities high tanks 2x that of bombers, deploy them all to london, presto.. an attack force.

Induvidual cities would no longer build units, they would be resource gathering points and bases, allowing much more specialized cities, like farming centers. The build screens would have to have good information about the current numbers of each unit types, production available, economy and stuff like that.

[Shining1]

Mindlace: ROFL. (Marijana farmers unhappy? WTF?)

The regions idea is linked to better city management, whereby you can bring up a region menu, instead of a city menu. Part of managing this is a requirement to be able to organise things while viewing the geography of the region, so that you know you have the right cities building the right units/improvements. This limits the available size of the region in question, though it should still be enough to allow management of 8+ cities per region.

Secondly, the whole idea is more or less intended to penalise rabid expansionism, by excluding distant cities from the empirial infrastructure. In real life, a far off colony requires a great deal of investment in infrastructre to manage (e.g india) properly, but in CivII the only problem was an increase in corruption. And regions have always been decided on a geographical basis anyway - this is why Sydney isn't governed by Calcutta.

I still don't favour the idea of having a single build menu for each region, instead a system of resource transfer, using the regional menu screen, might be a better idea.
It's only recently that structures could be assembled in one place using components built elsewhere - perhaps this could be a part of the tech tree? After discovering a certain technology, you get the option to assemble improvements via the regional menu using minerals from ALL cities in that region - so you can build improvements in close to a single turn.

As for the infrastructure idea, what you say is exactly true. This is to make life harder for players using hard out conqueror tactics, a notable let down in SMAC. There are ways to limit the problem, however. Basic defensive units NEVER need structures to be build (warriors, riflemen, etc). These structures should be quite cheap, too, and worthwhile, when you get to go rampaging enemies with steel plated knights . Finally, new technologies should follow the historical pattern, and produce inferior units to the elite available at the time.

Trust me, this is absolutely accurate as far as history goes. Countries need to constantly upgrade their military infrastructure in order to stay ahead - being caught out in this fashion is desirable in a game like Civilisation.


Regional menu
Options:
Geographical View - a slightly zoomed out version of the 3D isometric (or whatever gets used) view, showing the capital at the centre and the surrounding cities. Each city menu can be accessed from this screen in either a right-click and hold popup form or the actual thing itself.

This has an option to shows resource output per city below each city, and also any resource transfer to cities within this region.

By City View - a menu showing infrastructure for each city, including improvments, garrisions, resource production and current production (this would take approximately 2 lines per city, based on civII).

Options:
Pool resources - allows resources to be contributed to 'regional projects', and, once the appropriate transport tech has been discovered, to build city improvements for an individual city using this system.

Set build queue - allows the player to set an item or list of items as the current production for EVERY city in the region, and allows the player to set exceptions to this. Useful for changing over techs, e.g building musketeers and an upgraded barracks upon discovering gunpowder.

Regional terraforming - allows the player to take a number of citizens from a city or cities, and use them to terraform areas of the regional terrain. These citizens do not have to be settler units.