CITY IMPROVEMENTS (ver1.1): Hosted by CyberShy

[Robert Plomp]

This thread continues where <a href = "http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000031.html">ver 1.0</a> ended (51 messages)

And it stops where <a href = "http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000117.html">ver 2.0</a> continues

Currently this thread is closed. Move to the new version to continue discussing.

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by CyberShy (edited June 15, 1999).]</font>

Cybershy: I don't want to re-post all my ideas, so let me just put a link to ideas I posted months ago: <A HREF="http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum6/HTML/000433.html">Advances</A>. (I thought I had done this in v1.0, but obviously not.)

I should elaborate. The critical things are:

•Clearer distinctions between the epochs.
•Better modelling of industrial revolution via when improvements become available (earlier!) and what effect they have (cumulative doubling!).
•More improvements that effect trade directly (that's what drives city development in the real world).
•Better modelling of sanitation/health as effecting city growth.

[wheathin]

I really like Ecce Homo's idea for more of a SimCiv style game. Part of the problem is the fundamental tension between the desire for players for a "god game", and the realism concerns about governments that order EVERY conveivable aspect of a civ.

Up until the advent of the modern nation state and the industrial revolution, I think EH's idea works fine. See below for a list of further suggestions. However, after that point, so much of what goes on in industry, entertainment, and finance (and, earlier, religion) is left almost totally to the citizens, not the government (communist or fascist regimes aside).

I think part of the solution is to provide more government organs or programs to "build". I think, though, as much as I like the idea, it becomes unworkable for the late stages of the game.

wheathin

List of suggestions (note that these would be for items that the ruler would not build directly, like a Granary, City Walls, Public Schools, Sewer Systems, or Barracks):

- Religious beleivers ask to begin construction of a Cathedral.
- Scientists petition for the establishment of a Royal Society.
- Professors and Academics demand that you found a University.
- A learned scholar asks permission to establish an Academy for our Youth.
- The local merchants request that you sponsor a Fair.
- Local merchants seek a charter for a Bank.
- Financiers petition you to establish a stock exchange.
- The city fathers request that you grant them the powers of Justice and let them build a Courthouse.
- Traders seek a charter for their Trading Company.

Perhaps a solution to the modern era would be to just lift the SimCity idea altogether: groups petition for zoning changes!

Industrialists appear before the City Council to obtain zoning permits for a Factory.
Businessmen have submitted an application to your government for an Insurance Company.
Religious leaders seek county permission to construct a larger Church.
Local promoters want to build a large Auditorium.

thoughts?

[Ecce Homo]

Thank you, Wheathin, for developing my idea! I think your suggestions can reduce mmmt (short for micromanagement).

The idea brings up other issues.

Maybe a religion should work like an AI (or maybe even human) player that can build improvements, collect tithes and hire military, as long as the leaders agree? Religious communions have always been dominant roles in international politics!

And maybe the same for corporations!

[wheathin]

EH:

Several problems with this model of "independent actor improvments" need to be worked out, but first, some of the advantages.

First, more realism.

Second, it offers an easy way to allow increasing or decreasing government control over the society by allowing certain governments different IAImps. Thus, communist gov't would not have IA Imps for banks or factories or churches. Or much of anything... Theocracies would have gov't control over religious improvments.

Problems to be solved:

1. Timing. When do these supplicants approach the government? Are there set conditions that if fulfilled will always result in the construction of an improvement? Example: instead of spending production and gold, you accumulate "Improvement potential points". When you get enough for "Industry", the industrialist build a factory. When you get more, they want to build a refinery. More would equal a power plant. Etc...

This timing issue needs to be closely tied to city size. If a city is too small, it can;t support the improvement because the market is insufficient (and the whole point of this is to acknowledge that the market operates independently of the gov't to a great extent). Smart CivII players never build marketplaces and banks in cities until they get gold production of 4 (or 9) because to otherwise the improvement won't pay for itself. The same should happen here too. Nobody would put a Fusion Plant in a town of size 2, or build Cathedrals in cities of size 3.

2. Cost. What is it the gov't expends here? Obviously, the gov't won't pay maintenance or the building costs. In fact, these things allow the gov't to make money thru taxes (or fill "Defense Contracts" for military units at a faster rate, i.e. faster production from a larger industrial base; or they make more people happy; etc). But there needs to be some cost to the player for building these to keep the game interesting. After all, any enlightened ruler would choose to build the improvements at the first opportunity if they were free; what is needed is a way to force the trade offs and choices that make Civ interesting. Building improvements needs to compete somehow with building units or cities or keeping people happy or researching techs.

Option1: Again, the "Potential" points. You accumulate them in addition to tax revenues. Abstraction: the economy can only expand so fast based on the available resources, so the choice to build one item prevents building of others.

These could be a global pool, like Public Works, or purely local (or a mixture of both, with the level determined by the government type; more advanced governments can have more diverted into the national pool).

When a player has been petitioned to allow the building of something, and then refuses, we can assume that the demand would remain unsatisfied, so that the player could "build" the item later in the game. The item should go into a "build" (or "allow") list the player can choose from later.

Of course, this just gets into questions of timing again: when do the demands first appear? For this, you''d almost need a complex set of conditions and equations involving factors like:
Population of city
Current tech level
Government type
Economic base of city
Industrial capacity and resources

Option2: direct tax expenditure. But this is just back to the original problem.

Option3: explicit trade offs. I.e. if you had clear factions in the government that had to be appeased, then you might not want to allow an improvement to be built yet. Examples:
- Building the university might anger the religous types.
- Allowing merchants to organize would upset the nobles.
- Factories (without the appropriate regulatory/courthouse improvements - which the gov't would build directly) would upset the citizens by explooiting them, and might also cause pollution.
- Building lots of churches and cathedrals and mosques would give too much power the the religious elements at the expense of the crown (but being a democracy could reduce this effect with Freedom of Religion).
- Happiness improvements present an unusual problem. Perhaps they would require a general re-appraisal that everybody is natually unhappy (but more on that later).

thoughts?

Bottom Line: there has to a reason why a player wouldn't always pursue a strategy of granting every request that is made. Otherwise, the game is boring.

wheathin

[SnowFire]

I would like to see more governance type improvements, and less general type.

Why should I, as president/emperor/king build a shopping mall? Or a pharmacy?

I like the idea of having the religions themselves build the churches. Perhaps this should
be entirely out of our control, perhaps even doing away with these alltogether.

NLT: "As governer, we should be building the millitary structures (city walls, baraks, etc), public services (grainaries, aquaducts, etc) and that's pretty well it. Other improvements should be controled only second hand, by influencing religions, city planners, etc."

Hmm.. first there was blind research, then there was blind building. Just as the money made in colonization more represented the wealth of your empire rather than the wealth of the colonial government coffers, it IS the religious groups mobilizing the community to build a church already. You're just the invisible hand of the civilization, as well as it's government.

[ceebs]

The idea of the churches Building their own Buildings could cause you all kinds of problems, i can see individual cities rioting because you manage to upset the local religious leaders, or maybe due to religious uprisings the units arround a particular city turn Barbarian. as an alternative the church could start creaming your income off from the city where it has built buildings. then all you would need would be a Henry VIII style dissolution of the monasteries type wonder.

the Idea of Muslim nations not being allowed to make churches strikes me as Odd, dosent that religion have Mosques?, i've always taken the cathedrals in Civ to be a Generalised religious building

How about prisons/gulags/concentration camps/penal colonies/slave labour facilities. I know this is getting on the dark side, and would need to be sensitively handled, but these things were important to the development of many if not all empires (Romans, Brits, Russians, Chinese, etc. etc.). My country (Australia) started out as a network of British penal colonies. Some of these "improvements" could be linked to particular forms of government with rewards and penalties for building them. For example, nasty ones such as gulags could be built under nasty forms of government such as communism. They could give some benefits in terms of population control but have a high maintenance cost (and even made a "must build" so you have to bear the cost because its hard to have totalitarianism without them). Under democracy, gulags are automatically disbanded and you get cashback like with barracks currently (an incentive to switch back). This could be optional, however, with their existence creating citizen unhappiness under higher forms of government. Get rid of them and citizen happiness improves.

Prisons and the like should be more neutral because its hard for any civilisation to function without them. For those who baulk at this idea, consider the existence use of nuclear weapons in the game. Its also an example of an unpleasant fact of life reflected in the game.

[This message has been edited by Alexander's Horse (edited May 26, 1999).]

OOOOhh, "civilian" improvement construction sounds like a can-o-worms.

When you build/pay support cost for a Cathedral, just think of it as the government giving tax breaks to the religious organization, write-offs for individual donations, royal warrants for timber or other controlled strategic resources, etc.

[wheathin]

"Religions that build their own churches/mosques/synagogues" gets into the question of who the player is.

It also gets into the question of what Civ3 is supposed to be (and what we want it to be):
A "God Game" or SimCiv?

It sounds as though posters to this discussion want to see more of the SimCiv aspects. Much like zoning the land and building infrastructure in SimCity, the Civ player will set the government parameters and provide civic functions, but it will be up to the Citizens to do most of the wealth-building, manufacturing, entertaining/praying, and even some of the research.

After factories and banks etc... the most important thing to consider are improvements. It is NOT the government that builds farms or fisheries, or, except for the earliest govts (where a truly valuable mine would be a royal monopoly) and communism, mines.

Upgrades in agricultural production, land clearing, mining, and fishing were rarely done at the sole behest of lords. Most western lords, until the mid 16th century, couldn't care less, as long as they received income. While very large irrigation projects are usually organized by the local government (as in Sumeria, Babylon, Egypt, and China), the real agricultural revolutions were the results of millions of individual peasants responding (very slowly) to new methods and technologies. Three field crop rotations, and newer rotations involving legumes; cheaper iron farm tools (which appeared MUCH later than iron weapons - even in the middle ages, a typical manor might have only two or three iron axes; not NEARLY enough for large scale forest clearing); use of fertilizers; cash cropping and growing for a market-based money economy; etc. Fishermen were usually even farther outside the control of local authorities and landed aristocracies because their livelihoods were not tied to the Lord's main asset: land.

If CIv is going to incorporate features that involve non-player constructed city improvements, it seems odd to ignore the equally unreal existing system of tile improvements.

wheathin

[Cartagia the Great]

What if you have the ability to create city improvments which only work in certain forms of government. For instance a patriarcle residence might work pretty well under a theocracy, and even a Monarchy, but would expire with the changing to a Republic or Democractic government nas the churhc loses influence. In a Faschism there might be a Re-education camp, but it woudl be shunned, and destroyed by any other form of government. Also the abiltiy to create new units of this kind, woudl be great.

[AgedOne]

I would be interested in seeing a 'Military Academy' city improvement, which would control the upgrading of units. I know that at first sight this seems to clash with Leonardo's Workshop, but I would see it working like this:
Units must be moved to a city with an Academy, and stay there for (say) 1 turn, and they would be automatically upgraded to the most modern military unit of their strategic type. Leonardo's would still exist as a wonder, but would act as a Military Academy in every city.
I feel this would get rid of one of the more amusingly unrealistic events in CivII - where units upgrade during a sea voyage. Like a trireme with a chariot sets off on a voyage, and arrives at the other end as a caravel carrying elephants! Love to see how they make the change
Suggested with some misgivings. I do really like the magic upgrade when it works in my favour.

[ember]

An Idea just came up in the regional menu thread. What about regional improvments? Not every city builds a stock exchange for example, they serve a region...

Remember to make the number of improvments keep pace with how quick you can build them... you should have some military resources left over and still be able to keep up with infrastructure...

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[wheathin]

I had suggested something similar earlier in this thread (older version): improvements that could only be built in one city but that would affect the whole civ. Sort of mini-wonders that a civ only needs one of, but which are reproducible (that is, there is no reason that each civ can't build their own).

Examples:
- Hoover / Aswan / Three Gorges Dam
- Space Program bits (launch centers, etc...)
- National Defense Command center (a la NORAD)
- Super Particle Accelerator
- Royal Court (may or may not be built in the Capital - Versailles is outside Paris)
- Regional Weather Control station (futuristic, would help with crops and food production)
- National Museums and Galleries (modern happiness improvements)
- Olympic Stadium (there must be 15 or 20 of these around the world!)
- SDI / BMD
- Stock Exchanges or other major financial improvements

wheathin

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THE THREAD UP*=-

[crusher]

This is not a new improvment but a idea for the library.

each city library holds 200 years of information. sketchy at first but better as time goes on. you chose what years are recorded in a given library. if a library is captured or unmatained you lose the info on those given years. Kind of like built in viking scribe cliff notes with areas that say

------years lost due to fire in 1415--------
this way its like real record keeping

------------------
"War does not determine who is right,It determines who is left."
-Crusher-

[Flavor Dave]

I approach the general question of what changes need to be made in CivIII as, what aspect of CivII need improving as a game, not what needs improving to better reflect history. It is too easy early in the game and late in the game to take cities, and too hard in the middle.

One way to make it easier to defend cities early is to have a 40 shield improvement called barricades or outposts or something, that work like city walls, but not as well (doubles defense perhaps). Then, when the city has more shield capacity, you can upgrade it to full fledged city walls for another 40 shields. And later in the game, another upgrade costing 40 or 80 shields, that doubles defense against howies.

Medieval fair is a really cool idea, I think it would be neat on the city screen. But what would be its purpose? Is it a happiness improvement or a trade improvement? And, wouldn't it then be redundant to either cathedrals or banks? I don't get it.

One thing that bothers me and many other civvers here is how hard it is to use caravans early in the game, esp. on maps without alot of water. It takes too darn long to get the caravans anywhere. I had an idea that I put under units, that you could have the option of converting an explorer into a trading post, like a settler becoming a city. The trading post would be a fortress, and the explorer would have a1, d3. Any caravan within X squares (15?) could be instantly moved there. Like a paradrop. So, you use your explorer to scout the Chinese territory, and then it sets up a trading post.

You could also come up with a city improvement that does for caravans what barracks do for military units. If you have a city that you want to make a trading center, build a..what, a customs house? And any caravan built there could have some kind of enhanced movement ability. You'd have to either make the improvement cheap, or the enhanced movement pretty spectacular, or else it isn't worth building. I favor making it cheap.

The only other problem I can think of with CivII is that there probably needs to be one more pollution control device. When I have a really great city, even mass transit and recycling center don't stop pollution.

In general, we shouldn't add too many "net" improvements; there are already enough things to build as it is. I do think that the cost of some of the other improvements should be less.

Unless--one thing about CivII is that improvements get progressively more expensive. The only way to incorporate these ideas is to have a bunch of these "late" improvements have little effect, but be cheap. A city park costs 40 shields, and makes one citizen happy. A TV station costs 80, and makes 2 happy. A theme park costs 120, and makes 3 happy.

Given the stupid way the AI uses nukes, SDI should be a LOT cheaper. The huge expense of SDI makes nukes too much of a headache. If the AI actually used them to conquer, that would be one thing. Making SDI cheaper would unbalance the game in your favor. But its just an annoyance that takes away from my enjoyment of the game. And recycling centers and mass transit should either be cheaper, or they should work better.

Also, on this thread I see the same mistake over and over again that I'm seeing on the other "suggestion" threads. Folks are thinking about how to make Civ a more perfect reflection of reality, rather than making it a more perfect GAME. Think about the GAME aspect of it.

[NotLikeTea]

I would like to see the deemphasis of city walls, as the game progresses.

Look a round you... how many cities have city walls anymore? Once the modern age came around, walls were no longer used.

[Flavor Dave]

The post above is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Yes, nowadays, you don't see City Walls. (Of course, you do see the modern equivalent, army bases all over the place, but hey, we have to be literal here, don't we? And, we had the Berlin Wall too, right? I wonder what the borders of Israel look like.)

OK, say city walls become obsolete at, say, mobile warfare. Well, then there is ONE BEST WAY to win--build armor, and go on the rampage. Not's idea would obviously make the GAME worse as a GAME.

Another problem with the post above is that the poster doesn't realize that war is a much more important part of Civ, in modern times, than of the real world. In the real world of today, everybody gangs up on anyone who starts a way. But if you put this into Civ, whoever was in the lead entering the modern era would win, since you couldn't bring down that Civ with war.

That's why there aren't many city walls today. It's b/c there aren't alot of cities that fear foreign invasion.

If you wanted to make Civ realistic, you'd have to have insurrection be a much bigger threat than war in the modern era.

But then, if you wanted to make Civ realistic, you'd play two turns and die of old age.

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Flavor Dave (edited June 05, 1999).]</font>

[Ecce Homo]

Why are there hardly any City walls today?

1: Modern artillery, missiles and planes can shoot across them like if they weren't there.

2: Nowadays, cities are too big and too rapidly growing to wall.

Let us concentrate on the first point, the strategic one. The appearance of fortifications has varied throughout world history. The decisive factor has been the enemy's technology - the forts in the Wild West were built of wood because that was enough to withstand the natives' arrows. One of the most sophisticated defensive lines ever was the border of Iraq during Desert Storm, because the US armed forces are maybe the world's most advanced ones.

Thus, the form of defenses should be an issue of cost and demand rather than technology.

-Suggestion for defensive structures-

WALL
Available with Masonry. If Civ 3 contains different resources, there could be a choice between wood, brick, stone or a compound. The wall is built "slot by slot"; each "slot" protects one unit (primarily), one citizen (second) or one city improvement (third).

Close combat units cannot attack what is protected by the wall - they can however attack the wall itself. Range attack units can bombard across the wall - random citizens, units and city improvements might be lost.

FORTRESS
Available with Construction (or Engineering). It is also built slot by slot, but is of course more expensive and cannot protect city improvements.

Units can only attack the fortress itself. As it is damaged, random slots are destroyed and the hosted unit/citizens are damaged/lost.

BOMB SHELTER
Available with Radar. Works like a Fortress, but is harder to destroy - does even give some protection against nuclear arms.

[NotLikeTea]

I really like the idea of a bomb shelter. We here in Canada had the Deifenbunker, to house important politicians and scientists in case of disaster.

Building one in your capital should make for more interesting battles to capture a spacecraft before it is launched.

What about air raid sirens?

[wheathin]

Gun Emplacements

After about 1550, every old walled city in Europe was obsolete. This was one reason why monarchs with access to bombards (early cannon) could force intransigent cities and lords to submit to the growing central authority. Defenses for cities had to be totally reconstructed, and were far more expensive. The new art of fortifications under Vauban, a french expert, created the more modern look of glacis, shield, ditches, earthworks and gun embrassures designed for murderous enfilading fire.

Civ3 should at least incorporate a new defensive improvement for the 1650's and after (lasts until air power, requires a post-gunpowder, pre-industrial, construction tech like Metallurgy) to reflect the fact that simple maintenance of a city wall would not have protected the inhabitants. They would have had to invest substantial sums of money and effor to buliding the new structures, or give up on walls altogether and declare and "open" city.

wheathin

[Ecce Homo]

Wheathin, good points!

I still think fortifications should be limited by need rather than by technology. Great fortresses should be available, but not built until the enemies have got cannons.

[MBD]

My two cents today:
I'd like to see a group of buildings which give the arts some representation in the game and improve either "quality of life" or happiness (and, of course, player score) such as a theater, opera, museum. The player can allocate some money from the yearly budget to support them.
I'd like to be able to "build" works of art that could be pillaged or stolen on the capture of a city and which could survive from ancient times to the present, similar to the paintings/sculptures in any museum today.
I'd like a (small) variety of factories/industries so that a city can specialize in producing certain types of things, like weapons.
I'd like there to be a way to dedicate a city to a particular activity, such as a manufacturing city, a religious center, an administrative center, or even a gambling center. I can see that building more than one of any type of building can be a headache. Maybe you could have different sizes/costs of a building, like a factory, where a larger factory produces more.
In the area of production, a guild building could improve efficiency, and a warehouse could improve the value of a trade route.
I also would like to see more ancient/medieval buildings.

[EnochF]

A quick suggestion about Airports:

They should be able to handle more than one airlift per turn. However, I understand that giving them unlimited airlifts per turn is also undesirable and might affect game balance, so let's compromise somehow. Either a flat rate of three or five airlifts per turn, or the number of airlifts depends on the population of the city (i.e., an airport can airlift X times, where X = the population divided by 5, rounded down).

Oh, and I also forgot to mention that I like the Mill improvement from CtP. It's a great early-mid-game boost to production.

[NotLikeTea]

More of a philosophy that a concrete idea..

I'd like to see more negative effects on improvements. As is, the more the better, always. SMAC went in the right direction with Punishment Spheres and Genejack Factories, but with advantages and disadvantages.

Could make for more variety in cities, rather than identical super infrastructured burgs.

[Ecce Homo]

About Airports and Airlifts...

Let's have an improvement called Runway. You can have one or many in a city - each one of them allowing one Airlift per turn. When they are not used for airlifting they are used as Caravans à la CtP. Each Runway cost one shield a turn, representing the demand of fuel and spareparts for the aircraft.

You can also have a Dock improvement, allowing "sealifts" and a Railway Station improvement, allowing "rail-lifts". This would certainly reduce micromanagement.

[Cartagia the Great]

I feel the need to, once again, state my beliefe that there should be city improvments that, like some special units, could only be built in certian governments and would have no affect, or better yet, a negative affect in order forms of government.

Perhapse, even, differant buildings would have differant affects under differant governments.

Here is a few examples of what I'd propose:

Re-education camps: Built under a Fachist government they would decrease the city population by one, but would turns three unhappy people into happy(brain washing :P)
Under any other form of government these centers would be a terrible reminder of a darker past and would create 2 unhappiness in each city they occupy. they would need to be sold. But, by selling them, you don't gain any money

Cathedral: Under a Monarchy, Feudal, Tribal and City State government they would make two unhappy people neutral. In a Republic and Democracy they would do this to only one pop, due to the govenrment no longer favoring one religion. Under a Fachism and Communism, these govenrments disapprovle of religion would lead people to look upon Cathedrals as a relic from the past, and would create two unhappiness due to loss of support fro the govenrment to religions

The liberary, under most governments, would have an increased science rate. Due to Fachist and Communism's banning of certian materials, they would be reduced in effictivness

the Voting Booth could be a building which increases happiness in Republic and Democracies, and decreased happiness in all other forms of government, due to lack of voting.

Those exxact examples don't need to be used, but what do you all think of them?

[NotLikeTea]

I don't know if it's a result of communism, or just the Soviet Unions, but they were very good at "Science cities", entire towns dedicated to rocketry, or nuclear energy. Could this be incorporated somehow? While the science bonus looks reasonable for communism, keep in mind it was the USSR to launch the first sattelite, the first animal into space, and the first man into space. Not too shabby!