REGIONAL MENU & CITY MENU IDEAS - hosted by Shining1

[Shining1]

A new thread that acknowledges that the regional menu also needs to be looked at properly. Read the summary below for some of the current ideas and please add any ideas you have.

Note: The current summary is incomplete. There are still ideas from the previous thread to include, as well as some of the final suggestsions (Ember) to slot in.

Shining1

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Shining1 (edited May 30, 1999).]</font>

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Shining1 (edited June 05, 1999).]</font>

[Shining1]

1. REGIONAL MENU SCREEN

The idea for a regional menu grew out of the need to make micromanagement of cities, especially towards the endgame, less of a problem. In addition, a majority of posters felt that the current setup in civII and smac did not 'feel' correct - more like a collection of individual city states than a cooperative, organised civilisation.

1.1) GEOGRAPHICAL 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).

1.2) PROGRESSIVE REGIONALISATION -- many posters felt that the first system, having a fixed distance around the capital city, was too limiting. The suggestions was that regions begin as individual cities, and gradually expand as a civilisation advances.

1.3) REGIONAL IMPROVEMENTS -- Regionalisation also opens the door for regional improvements, which would be: 1) structures built in one city but which affect every city in that region (suggest stock exchange, federal police force, as examples). 2) improvements built on a regional basis (from the regional window) and which exist only a regional improvement (i.e not present in any particular city). Some wonders may also operate on a regional basis (suggest Hoover dam and J.S Bach's cathedral, if retained).

1.4) HOW TO APPLY REGIONS -- There are a myriad of suggestions around as to how to impliment the regional build and management options. Some posters feel that regions should control everything, taking resources from cities and building improvements, units, etc CtP style, and only applying them to an individual city once construction is completed. The city menu would then be greatly reduced, even eliminated, as a game feature. I feel this is too limiting initally, but would become very useful in the late game, where micromanaging individual cities becomes exceedingly tiresome.

A signicant number of posters felt again that regions should be run according to historical rules, starting as a group of city states (a greek ethnos for instance), and gradually becoming more and more interlinked, ending up as more or less a single entity, such as the northwest U.S.A.

1.5 REGIONAL MENU INTERFACE (still currently my own suggestions)

* GEOGRAPHICAL VIEW - a slightly zoomed out version of the 3D isometric 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). You cannot view the geography using this form of the window.

Regional Menu 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 make a terraform build queue of areas of the regional terrain. These citizens do not have to be settler units (terraformin and settler unit ideas described below).

* INCLUDE CITY/EXCLUDE CITY: given the likelyhood that a large number of cities will overlap in any regional setup, this gives the oppotunity to set a particularly city as part of the region or not. Suggest two methods: a button on the regional screen that will switch to a cursor that toggles city status when clicked, and an inside city button that will show the available regions (based on radius?) and allow the player to select one.

Finally, the "find city" buttons on the city menu screen are replaced with the "view region" and "view capital" screens.

1.6 WORTH OF REGIONS -- While there seems enough by way of material to justify the inclusion of regions in some form in CivIII, it is still uncertain whether they are the best way to solve city micromanagment issues. A simple resource transfer system, the ability to move from city to city easily using a map view (suggest a system similar to the point and click Total Annihiliation mini-map, with bigger dots perhaps), and a well implemented build queue system, with the ability to send the same orders to multiple cities, all would help.


2. CITY MENU SCREEN

Ideas and suggestions for improving the current city menu system.

2.1) TERRAFORMING -- Terraforming is now handled by citizens from inside the city menu, by settlers from the main map, or, when the appropriate transport tech is discovered, from the regional menu. 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 Masons, Yeomen or Engineers (each of which builds faster than before). Terraforming outside a city is handled the normal way, using settlers, or by workers from the regional map, as mentioned above.

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).
An RTS type system, with an inbetween icon to indication an incomplete building, is suggested (currently, there is no way in SMAC or CivII to stop terraforming, move away, and return to the job, knowing that X turns have been completed with Y turns left to go).

This system makes terraforming simpler and much quicker, if required, allowing the basic links between cities to be established quickly.

2.2) 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 (done as an option in the list of options each unit has when activated in the city). 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). This issue seems to cause some confusion, and it has been suggested that the interface for all terraforming units - whether inside or outside the city - be the same to avoid confusion. I agree.

There is also a suggestion for movement benefits (*2 move or all squares cost 1) for units within your own borders, which would make terraforming less of a problem, even when outside the defined regions of your empire.

Finally, the hardy Settler citizens are never unhappy, making them a welcome addition to any city menu.

2.3) UNIT PRODUCTION -- A suggestion that many units, particularly offensive fighters, should require their own structure to be produced before they can be constructed was generally well received. A system that allowed any city to build that era's basic infantry (i.e civilian milita type mobilisation), but required more complex units, especially offensive forces, to have facilities in place is what is currently proposed.

In addition, upgrades to these facilities make more workshop items available. Feedback for this is positive. Any more comments?

It was also suggested that structures inside a city be allowed to produce units concurrently, so you can have a barracks building a swordsman AND and siege workshop building a catapult simultainiously in the same city.

A similar idea was proposed for structures, but eventually abandoned. However, it was agreed that current production of a structure should be allowed to be mothballed, if the player wishes to change production temporarily.

Posters were divided over which permutation of these rules should apply to Wonders - there was a general feeling that they should require more attention (2/3 of production was suggested) than normal units or structures.

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).

2.4) CURRENT MILITARY IMPROVEMENTS:

CIVILIAN MILITA: produces clubs and bronze spears, swords, and armour. This 'structure' is always present in a new city, and allows the most basic of weapons (of any age) to be constructed.

ANCIENT BARRACKS: Produces more complicated infantry units (iron weapons and bows, when technology allows), as well as mounted units.
+ Stables (provides horses)
+ Archery range (makes bows)
+ Blacksmith (steel weapons)

SIEGE WORKSHOP: Produces ancient mechanical devices, catapults, balista, siege engines.
+ forge (iron components for ballista, etc)
+ gantry (constructs siege engines)

HARBOUR: Not military per se, but can support addons that allow military units.
+ Construction yard (builds triemes)

DEEP HARBOUR
+ Construction yard (builds galleys/frigates)
+ Forge (builds ironclad vessels)
+ Coastal defense (+50% to land/sea engagements)

The ideas for military infrastructure go well with the idea to divide civIII into Ages, similar to AoE, but not crap.

2.5) INFRASTRUCTURE RATING -- A suggestion that a system of 'levels' for city developement in various areas, e.g industry and religion. A city with a higher level in one area is more effective at that task, and infrastructure is built to increase the city's level. This would work very well with social engineering, if the settings were the same. For instance (using modified SMAC settings):

Factory (+5 industry)
Library (+5 research)
Hospital (+2 growth)

Social settings would then have to increase city production, instead of decreasing the production required for completion of a task. (No bad thing - this would avoid the potential industry cheat in SMAC).

2.6) SPECIALISTS

Serf - unhappy worker, suffers -1/3 production (see below)
Worker - works 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.
Mason - terraforming unit.
Settler - special unit, can work or terraform, but cannot be a specialist. Can move from town to town. Must be constructed first, as per civII rules. Never becomes unhappy.
Scientist - + sci
Tax collector - + tax (limit 1 per 5 citizens)
Entertainer**- produces luxuries (make normal citizen happy).
Priest** - makes unhappy citizen happy (1 per 5 citizens allowed)
Governor - available only in regional centres, or cities outside of a region. Improves efficiency for region or city (by +3, assuming a 0-10 scale for each social engineering value). Only one allowed, and only at capital/regional centres (represents the regional beuracracy - a significant investment in human resources in any culture to date).

* 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. A Miner get +1 minerals, but destroys 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. They represent the discontent part of the population, the landless peasants etc.

2.7) OTHER SUGGESTIONS --

* Trachyr has suggested that food be divided up into various types (meat, produce, dairy, etc). I feel this creates too much unnecessary micromangement, especially at the end game. However, if done on a regional or global scale, this could be an interesting addition to the game (the vegetarian empire? ).

* There was also a suggestion of reducing the city radius size to 1 square instead of 2 (cutting available land from 21 squares to 9, but allowing more cities to be built. While increasing individual management problems, with the regional approach this may be overcome, and result in more realistic empires. It also leads to more use of specialists, since excess population cannot be used as workers (though more obvious benefits from using happy citizens as specialists *might* overcome this somewhat in other models).

List of names.


<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Shining1 (edited June 04, 1999).]</font>

[Shining1]

Personal ideas:

Instead of having a interelated structures EACH capable of producting units, I suggest a modification: use ONE structure and have addons to that structure to allow more units.

E.g

ANCIENT BARRACKS
+ Stables
+ Archery range
+ Blacksmith

SIEGE WORKSHOP
+ forge
+ gantry

HARBOUR
+ Construction yard

Keeping upgrades cheap is important. Also, when producing units, the player selects ONE of the three available structures to build with and gets a list of units available at THAT structure only, as well as a list of addons that this structure has. Units that are available but cannot be produced are greyed out.

This idea can also be applied to other city improvements.

[Isle]

This is my first posting on this thread.

The region size should be larger or variable, if civ3 is going to support very large maps like CTP(Which I hope it does), 8 squares isnt much. Regions are supposed to be a top level of management and having 20+ regions in your nation, defeats that purpose.

I see two options, either make a real tree like structure, allowing regions to be structured in superregions, which would be great but conceptual difficult to handle for a lot of novice players, or make the region size dependent on mapsize. The most difficult with the last is how to calculate what the size should be on custom map sizes(f.x. 43x187).

As for the other topic of modifications of base structures, this is EXACTLY how I always have dreamt of it. It would fit perfectly with custom designed unit:
BARRACK: Allows for infantry base-units(chassis)
BLACKSMITH: Allows for units with iron armors
WEAPONSMITH: Allows for shields and swords
... etc.

But we should really go discuss this in the UNIT thread -Isle

[ember]

I would suggest that a region be truly an amalgamation of the resources of the cities inside. All production should be done at a regional level, only the gathering of resources, city growth and unit movment are done at a local level.
If both all the regional level does is allow you to set production for all cities, or pool some resources, but still build at a local level, then you are adding anouther layer of micromanagment.

Regions could be predefined on the map when the game starts, and tnd to be divided by, mountain ranges and rivers. The algorithm would have to make sure that there is enough food producing and resource producing terrain in each region (a question, would cities built on the border of a region be allowed to collect resources from outside the region?)

I think that the ability to have a single national region does make sence, especially if there is dificulty in implimenting the smaller regions.
In ancient times a civ made of two regions wouldn't be one civ, it would be two allied civ's working together temporarily...

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

[Trachmyr]

Removing the emphassis on cities
The position of CIV,CtP,SMAC, and other games of this genere, is that the CITY is the center of society, and the primary focus.

Instead, I counter, that it is the network of all human populaces, all structures (mines. roads, barracks, factories, ect.), and how they interact that decide if a nation is to succede or fail.

Regions
Regions, by their definition, is the combined character of a geographical location. To represent this, regions must be added to CIV3.
Various methods of creating regions has been discussed in other threads. I prefer computer generated, fixed regions. These would conform to terrain and natural boundries (rivers, mountains, Ocean). Regions would also have a maxinum size.
I do not believe that fixed regions would subtract from the game, since real-life regions have remained the same thoughout history, though their names have been changed, and they have been contested.
Regions would form the primary borders of a society, contested regions would have interior borders similar to SMAC.

Habitation and Population
Before cities were constructed, people were nomadic... or semi-nomadic. This needs to be represented in CIV3. My suggestion would be to treat NOMADIC POPULATIONS as a mobile city, but not "improvable".
Eventually settlements were built, which grew into towns, which grew into cities.
I believe settlements should be reprented with evolving grapichs which expand to additional tiles as the settlement expands.

The concept of city improvements is simply an abstract for the implementaion of new technology within a city. I believe CIV gamers can handle a more realistic aproach to city development:
1) Technology implementation- When new technology which can benifit a settlement (let's say an Aqueduct) is discovered, that tech must first be implemented. This cost revenue (an alternative name for GOLD), and is based upon the size of a city (It is harder to incorporate new tech into larger, more stable cities). This expenditure reprensts the cost of materials, the cost to educate engineers, and incentives to implement the technology. Once the technology is implemented, it provides it's benefits to the settlement (in this case a reduction in negative health modifiers due to overcrowding and allowing larger cities). Technology may be implemented on a city, regional or national level to reduce micromanegement.

2) City improvement. A city has many diffrent aeras in which to improve... Housing, Industry, Economy, Recreation and so on. I suggest abstract level to each aera. Thus a city with a level 4 Indusstry typically can produdue more than one with a Level 3 Industry. Improvement require Public Works, similar to CtP. To increase in an aera, a certain number of PW must be spent. Like-wise any nessacary tech must have been implemented. (In our example above, an aqueduct will allow habitation Level 4 & 5 to be reached. If the city was at Habitation 3, it would need x amount of public works to reach 4 now that Aqueducts have been implemented.)
Settlements improve semi-automatically... they only use PW to improve a level if that aera is becoming inefficient due to # of people using it. (# of factory workers for Industry, total population for Habitation). As inefficency rises, a larger percent of available PW will be used to enhance that aera. You may also set Priority numbers to the diffrent aeras. This allows a more "hands-off" approach and highly reduced micromanement (you simply choose what percent of PW to enhance the city, priorities are optional, the computer does the rest based upon your population and workforce). As city level in these aeras increase, the settlement will expand to empty tiles, become denser or expand upwards. If you run out of room, you city will stagnate.

Workforce
Your workforce is handled on a city or regional basis, depending on your "National Goverment Level" (Independant/Regional/Federal).

Workforce determines not only what you produce/build but how your cities develop as well (A city lith Level 8 Industry due to a lot of factory workers is much different than a city with Level 8 religion due to lots of clergy. Detroit vs. the Vatican)

All other projects utilize PW, from mines to roads to Wonders(which appear on the map)

The result will be a highly graphical representation of you NATION, not just cities. Also Micromanement of city improvement is eased, to allow for more detailed workforce, supply and economy.

One final note, tiles should be reduced in size to allow this to be effective. I suggest 1/4 size at maxinum.

[Shining1]

Some responses:

Personally, I feel that a mix of regional developement and individual works are the way to go. In the early game, 99% of all work will be done on a per city basis - up until you get around 8 cities.

At the end game, where you can easily find yourself managing an empire of 30+ cities, most work will be done on a regional basis. Hence we need a system that still allows the player to perform a specific task in an individual city, but also the option of grouping cities together to make construction more efficient and to minimise mircromanagement (i.e, you get 9 cities working on a single structure that can be placed anywhere, so instead of managing 9 individual slow construction jobs, you deal with 1 fast one each turn).

I feel the idea of forcing all developement to be done on a regional basis is a bit too limiting. The best way might be using the tech tree, soc settings, and terraforming to gradually allow more interaction between cities, and, eventually, regions.

Super regions sound a bit difficult to impliment - can you provide more details? Otherwise it seems you can end up with a potentially endless hierarchy of regions. I think that the 'capital screen' suggestion is a good idea though - listing each region, it's output, etc.

[This message has been edited by Shining1 (edited May 24, 1999).]

[Travathian]

for City Menu Screen - terraforming

Instead of slaves, how about serfs.

These were people tied to the land, and so worked for whoever ruled the land, and based on how well the area did, they received more land, rights, etc.

[ember]

A region of size 1 would function, in a resource gathering way, just like a single city.
I think the biggest advantage of basing all production at the regional level is that you simplify micromanagment without losing (probably even gaining) flexibility.
Switching between a regional menu and a city menu seems redundent to me.
Supply units (or the equivilent) would allow you to set routs between regions where you could transport, maybe 5 units per route. What is transported would be selected from a overview region menu, like the current city menu.

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

[Shining1]

Ember: So cities become mere resource generators and providers of citizens, all managed through the regional map.

I still think this lacks flexibility - surely it would be better to allow BOTH systems - maybe enabling the regional map to do 80% of the regular tasks (positioning citizens, starting production, terraforming etc), and leave cities to manage the remaining ideas.

Otherwise, you run into problems with having cities outside of a region - or else you have to cheapen the idea of a region and make them easily redefinable - instead of tying the game together by building capitals, regional centres, roads, etc.

Moreover, it becomes unrealistic to manage city happiness from a regional perspective. More over, you hamper the gameplay, by forcing the player to go from the main map to the regional map to get to a city. Regions are defined to make city management easier - when trying to manage multiple cities at one time. But you will still need to access individual cities on a turn by turn basis, as conflicts and the like develop.

Trav: Close, but no cigar. I need a name for an ancient citizen that identifies him as a builder - the 2000BC equivilent of an engineer.

Thanks anyway - I'll add serf as a name for unhappy citizens.

[BoomBoom]

Shining: How about Architect?

On a different note, and i am sure this has been mentioned before, but this seems the right thread for it, I think that cities should go in radius over time, possibly encompassing other regions, and thereby creating conglomerations like the Northeastern US or the ruhrgebiet in germany. To support these cities you'd have to have smaller, farmer cities around it to support your big cities with food, whereas the large cities provide the smaller cities with produce and luxuries.
Now I can see that you would need a far larger map to do this effectively (so you can't just build 2-3 large cities in Europe for example), thereby increasing your micromanagement, though you could take care of that by making the farmer villages largely automated thereby reducing the workload.

I just can't see how a 28 (which was about 2 million) city can be the same size, and have access to the same resources as 1 city (10000). This was one of my major quarrels with all civ-based games so far.

[Shining1]

BB: Architect is good, though a little lacking in manual labour type connotations.

The variable radius idea is a bit tricky - I remember reading somewhere that Brian tried for SMAC and threw it out because it wasn't fun. Civilistation is constantly an attempt to balance implict and explict variables with fun gameplay - you can't simply include everything that occurs in real life (but I'll include your suggestion, of course. It seems to be very popular).

How about this idea though - using workers within the regional screen to expand (even invalidate) the city radius idea. Once the requiste technology is discovered, you can truck citizens to any square within the region and have them go to work.

Thus, you can end up with most of the endgame (again) being managed through the regional menu screen, as you effectively have a group of cities working together, in all respects (the northeastern US, for instance).

As for minor cities, I suggest a new terraforming idea - the village. Villages are built on one square, and provide the resources in that square to the main city, without having to have citizens present.

Properties of villages are open to ideas - I suggest they add +50% to resources gathered in that region, but at a large cost to build (this contradicts the last paragraph, but the main idea is to have little town icons covering your map, surrounding the big cities, right?)

Also, how do people feel about using mineral resources for terraforming - so you can speed or slow improvements at the cost of city infrastructure?

In addition, how should the regional menu screen work - I currently favour an approach that makes it more and more relevant as the game progresses (i.e have it's abilities linked to the tech tree somehow). Is this good, or would you find it unrealistic or limiting?

[This message has been edited by Shining1 (edited May 26, 1999).]

[This message has been edited by Shining1 (edited May 26, 1999).]

[Ekmek]

If your still looking for an old builder name, MASON could apply.

I like the regions idea but I don't see why there is so much debate about it. Actually I figure a good way to go is follow the path of history. As technology adances allow for a "command and control" technology that allows a civilization to develop from city-state to the satrapies to fuedal states (although somewhat backwards) to the early then modern nation states. The development from city and region is linked to government and the development of communication and infor,ation from runners, horsemen, pigeons torches to printing and the telephone and satelites etc. The expanse of the region and the power your civilization controls could depend on: 1) type of government (how willing the city managers willing to obey the center) 2) the building of commo stations (from towers to statellites) 3) the use of leader units (mayors to generals that can be trained at city units, higher trainer at the capital tends to lead to more obedience).

I like the level ideas of infrastructure, cities should have a more reliable mayor (and later governors for regions) to build on the infrastructure and we should set the attitude of these mayors from perfectionist to aggresive (so they may tend to develop military or science or trade). Random bonuses could be AI mayors that are exceptional leaders.

Economics should have some effecttive, like capitalism should cut into your production capacity by percentages.

The outlying terrain on cities should be developed to so you can create suburbs and industrial areas but not go to far like a mini-simcity (although little units placed on different spots would be nice and placing wonders at differnt angles to see all this on the map would be nice and easier to assign targets if you wanted to do strategic attacks)

[Shining1]

E: Mason. THANK YOU.

You make some good points (economics is for the social engineering thread, though it will not doubt affect city production).

The levels of infrastructure idea interests me, but I have yet to see it fully fleshed out. How is it different to the civII idea of +50%,100%,150% to basic production? Or is this just a means to make these levels more easily identifiable (e.g factory adds 2 level sto production (+50%), library adds one levels to science (+25%), manufacturing plant adds two levels to production (+50%) and one level to pollution (+25%), etc).

So you can view a city bonuses quickly by checking the levels of infrastructure there. I like it. But is this what is being suggested?

Also, are these levels the same as social engineering? (industry, economics, happiness, pollution, etc). It might be easier for players to understand if they were.

So social engineering and infrastructure levels are the same thing, and give +10% for each level. E.g Communism gives +20% production, say (+2 industry), and a factory gives a +50% bonus (+5 industry), for a total of +7 for that city.

Thoughts?

[ember]

E, good point about changing the nature of regions as time goes by.

ANCIENT TIMES
all cities are like civII, they build their own units and structures.
To simulate that some resource movemnt, allow each city to participate in a few "resource routes" these are sort of like trade routes, but are used to send production or food to other, near by cities (5 squares?), linked by roads,rivers or the ocean. this way you could send some production from rome (has coal, in the forest, etc) to naples (agricultural) and send some food back. limit each route to ~4 units. longer distances can be spanned by sending somthing to a city and having it send it on again. Routes do not cost resources to make, but worsen corruption/innefficiency in the recieving city. (units cannon be deployed)

RENAISSANCE
Regions are formed. Production/agriculture is pooled within the region. Units/structures/wonders are built from a central menu (accessed by clicking on ANY city in the region, or main menues) and are deployed after being built, but can only be placed within the region. "resource routes" can be created between regions, limit per route, ~20 units of food/production. Regions would contain a maximum of 6-8 cities. (in the world map, north america could have 4 regions, west cost, east cost, south central (texas through the plains) and north central (canadian praries, ontario, and the northen forests)

MODERN
Each civ is treated as one region, with full deployemnt and resource sharing. "resource routes" can only be created with allies.

The idea behind this is to force people to deal with cities induvidually only in ancient times. As the late game rolls around, treating the whole civ as a region will save a lot of micromanagement. It also simulates the vast improvments in bulk trasnportation that has occured.

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

[This message has been edited by ember (edited May 27, 1999).]

[Shining1]

Ember: I think you should adjust that to 'have the option of', instead of your current modern approach, which sounds like forcing the player to run their empire through the regional menus (what happened to multiple regions, anyway? It's not as if the modern U.S is run as a single region - you have a collection of states, instead.)

Please remember that players WILL still need to access the city menus from the main map in the event a city is threatened, or if it is a convient place to position or upgrade units from. Any working interface must take into account the fact that the player will still need the city menu for at least 30% of the time, and much more when under siege conditions.

While the regional menus offer a good way to manage a group of cities together, cutting down micromanagement, they are ultimately limited by the amount of information they can display at any one time without becoming cumbersome. More suggestions along practial lines to resolve this issue would help us get this idea into better focus.

The age thing is good, too. A bit AOE, however - should this be a concern?

[ember]

Sorry if I wasn't clear on what menu has precidence where.

How i would set up the menues is, when you click on a city, one side (left) of the screen shows the normal citizen allocation, happiness, resource collection, structure list, trade? (unless on a regional level), and units status areas (might not all fit, have to have a toggle). The other side (right) would be the same for all cities in a region (if you want national regions it would be a selectable rule, SMAC style) this side would have the resource allocations listed, one button for food, one for structures, one for wonders, one for units. It would also have sliders for allocation between the different production areas. If you clicked on the name of anouther city, the left side would shift to that citiy's info.

Most advanced options should be selectable rules. Regions should have options of, none, always multiple regions, always national region, and progressing regions.
same situation with supply zones, maybe even a togable unit workshop?

Hope that clarifies things.

{on a civ scale a state is a few squares in a city radius, I picture North america being divided into four regions, east coast, west cost, south central, and central canada.)
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"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[This message has been edited by ember (edited May 27, 1999).]

[Shining1]

Hmmm.

Here's my take on the current city/regions thing (as a Civer, not as thread master).

REGIONAL MENUS SETUP

Regions must be constructed. A city improvement, call it a town hall, needs to be built in order to establish a region, which then extends for a predetermined radius (which does not change) around the city, say for 12 squares.

[Note: Since you always start with a palace in your first city, you always have at least one region in the game.]

All cities within this radius are then part of this region, and, once the appropriate infrastructure is in place (roads, trading post city improvement - basicially all still to be decided), cities within that region may share resources (up to a certain limit) with each other, and become much easier to manage, as individual city production, etc, can be set from the regional window, all cities in the region can be given the same build orders (useful for rapidly making armies or upgrading to new structures - e.g renaisance barracks), and the geographical view in this menu allows you to organise the distribution of resources, troops, and infrastructure more effectively.

All troops/stacks in a region may be viewed and ordered from the regional menu, allowing easy deployment of forces. With the movement bonus for a unit within one of your regional borders, this should make deployment of defensive troops relatively easy.

I suggest linking the powers of a region to the quality of the infrastructure there. Roads allow you to exchange 3 resources each way per turn (possibly influenced by social engineering - efficiency or industry setting?). Railroads allow an infinite ammount of resource transfer (like movement) and allow you to begin building individual city improvements on a regional basis (i.e built using shared resources - often built very quickly!) - and then place them in a single city. Only towns linked by railroad can receive structures from the capital (think of this as the transportation of prefab materials, for instance).

[Resource transfer MUST be to and from the capital of a region, to avoid becoming overly complex.]

This depends on having a network of roads and railroads established between the centre of a region (where the capital structure is) and the outlying cities (not an unrealistic idea, and with the new terraforming techniques not difficult to setup, either). All regional production takes place in the capital, so resources contributed to this city are in effect the same as resources contributed to the 'region'.

All regions are linked to the palace (the original capital, or wherever it has been moved too), and can contribute resources to this city, or vice versa (again, provided the requiste tech has been discovered - no resource trade oversea using canoes). This is handled through the third and final city screen, the capital menu (A simple menu, without any geography - it can't be hard to remember the locations of 5 different townhalls).


To recap:
1) Regions consist of a capital struture in the central city, surrounded by a radius of approximately 10 squares, providing a geographical map that allows the player to manage build orders and deployment of forces in that region.

2) Cities in a region exchance resources and produce items through the capital of that region. Thus a region has two build menus - the capital menu, and the general build menu.

Each city icon on the regional screen has these options:
* Enter city menu screen.
* Exempt from general build orders
* Set production for city (straight to build option screens, not city menu)

2) Regions are dependent upon infrastructure for basic effectiveness - they require a central structure to be built, and they need a network of roads and railroads to facilitate resource transfer.


This is only an early draft of the regional system. Please feel free to add your own ideas or critisms to this, but be constructive - if you think everything should be done on a regional basis, EXPLAIN how this would work in terms of terraforming and city infrastructure. If possible, present critisms as a straight rewrite of the above list.

Secondly, if anything in the above list doesn't make sense, please ask. Keeping ideas readable is a priority for this list.

Shining1

[MBrazier]

Have any of you been looking at the Radical Ideas thread? The idea of basing the game on tiles, not on cities, seems to apply directly to what you're discussing here.

One thing that strikes me, reading this thread, is that the region menu is going to look a lot like the city menu. Indeed, the things you would do for a region are just like the ones you'd do for cities -- move citizens from place to place, schedule unit and improvement construction, set tax rates, and so on. The advantage of a region is that instead of working with 20 tiles at a time, you can work with 100 or 200.

So -- redefine a "city" as a small region, which happens to contain one city _tile_. The "city improvements" now affect all tiles of the region they are in. If a region happens to contain two or more city tiles, that's all right; both sets of city improvements continue to affect the region.
Of course the region has to support both city tiles and all their improvements.

The maximum size of a region can then be tied directly to your current technological level. In the opening game no region can be larger than 10 or 20 tiles -- only enough to support one city tile. This recreates the current Civ "federation of city-states", each city standing alone. Then as society advances the size limit rises, and it becomes possible to treat 50 or 100 tiles (with 5 or 10 city tiles) as one region. That nicely represents the modern nation-state.

Any comments? Have I been clear enough?

[ember]

If each tile has a seperate poulation, where is each improvment placed? how do you defend so many tiles (paratroops would be havoc on you economy).
I think cities are a good abstraction between rural (where most battles are fought) an urban. Having large cities visually spread into the sourounding squares might make it look better, but harder to understand the map.

Shinning1, can you decide which region a city in the overlap would belong to, or does it in the one established first one? (it would be nice to be able to establish regions based on geographical features, like west coast North america, but i don't think the computer will ever be able to pick regions well.

Do you really need to have two build menu's for the region? what is the capitol menu geing to add in convenience? (can't every thing be hadled from the regional build menu)
I feel that dividing the roles of city and region compleatly would make the game less complicated and faster to play without losing depth. Regions handle production, food distribution, and tile improvment. Cities hadle worker placemnt, happiness, economics, local defense, and city imrovments (after they're built). Trade i'm not sure, depends on the system implimented. I think regions should trade with regions personally. Isolated and ancient cities are regions of size 1, with my proposed split screen menu, this would be similiar in function to city screens as they currently are. I would like to see anouther option for happiness control. You send gold to the city and it is converted to happiness depending on government. This could be set on the city menu, automatically, (to avoid riots), or from the F1 city listing.

Terrain improvments.
I feel roads, RR, bases, and other defense/transport instilations should be built by a unit, to allow you to build them where your army is.
Farms, mines, terraforming, trade improvemnts, etc. should be built like PW within a region. (make them cheaper than ctp, lot cheaper) Have an option to allow the computer to auto-place farms and mines on squares that are the most usefull (already being used). Have a slider to control what % of resources goes to mines, what % to farms and what % is discertionary. PW could be sent to other teritories or traded.
I nifty thing to do would be to have a chance that a square that is currently used, be improved aoutomaically, for free (farmers build farms with or without government help)
10% chance that one square in a given city is improved?

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

[Shining1]

Questions:
1) ARE REGIONS NECESSARY AT ALL?

The main idea is to allow cities to be linked together properly. This can be achieved through the city menu, or at least through a further submenu (like the build options and design workshop) of the city menu.

Using this you get the ability to:
* link cities together using roads/railroads.
* exchange resources easily (so you still can do fast building).
* move to another nearby city quickly (can be done using a slightly enlarged version of the Total Annihiliation radar map).

Without the problems of having to specify regional borders and the need to learn how to use ANOTHER menu.

While the notion of a region is good, I suspect the current implimentation isn't the best. Regions perhaps should be limited to government issues only - providing political infrastructure (Governor, regional centre, etc) and the potential for public works within that region (i.e structures built at the capital that affect ALL cities within that region).

Actually having a regional menu isn't necessarily the best solution, when a few changes to the city menu might do instead.

I'm not dissing the concept of a regional format to CivIII - it should definitely be included. What I am asking is whether the idea of city management is best linked to a regional basis, especially as far as the player interface is concerned.

[Regardless, the idea will be included - this is simply for discussion.]

Shining1

[Shining1]

Ember: Autoimprovement of a square could be a function of a government choice - capitalism, for instance. Or at least the option to 'buy' such an improvement at a reduced cost.

But the terraforming options for CivIII have been greatly enhanced anyway - the use of citizens for terraforming jobs should make the construction of improvements much faster than before - so there needn't be much area left for terraforming.

[mhistbuff]

I like the idea of regions that grow over time. Initially, there were cities and only cities, but by the time of Louis XIV, regions where firmly established, particularly in France. I feel that in the beginning of the game, each city should operate seperatly from one another. As technology improves, certain advancements could enable the creating of loosely defined regions (perhaps code of laws ). With later advancements (monarchy or feudalism), the regions would be more defined and possibly allow increased resource sharing. As technology advances and improvements are built (courthouse, castle, governor's palace, etc.) the regions become more advanced and unified.

As for the actual things that regions do, I it should be limited to resource sharing, regional developments(stock exchanges, and the like) and production of units. City improvements should be handled at the city level. Terrain improvements should be handled through a public works system (like in CTP) that could be national or regional. Roads and defense stuff could be build by any military unit or by Public Works.

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THE THREAD UP*=-

[yin26]

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[yin26]

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[ember]

I think all the main ideas for regions have been put down, at least until we get some feed back. Let's not forget about these ideas...

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

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THREAD UP*=-

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THREAD UP*=-

[Hans2]

Here is my origaail Regions Idea. I called them 'Resource Zones', but its basically the same thing. My general idea behind it is that will individual self sustaning cities are good for ancient times, in modern times it becomes ridicuously unrealistic.
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Okay, here are my ideas for revamping the economy:

With advances in technology, a civilization would advance from self sufficient cities into groupings of cities all of which could draw resoures from cities in the same ouping. So, the following things would be introduced:

Infrastructer-however it is modeled (by engineers or PW points or whatever) this is what determines if a city can draw resources from other cities.

Resource Zones-Groups of cities whose structers between them have advance to the point that they are capable of sharing resources form Resource Zones. Resources may be shared freely between these cities. Maybe have Resource Zone Boxes replace city resource boxes. The types of resources that could be shared and the effeciency of transport (modeled abstractly through resource loss similar to corruption) could be determined through scientific advances. Refrigeration prevents spoilage of food, etc. A really advanced civ, say like the US today, would be one big resource zone. If an enemy pillages your land, occupies it, whatever and that has an effect on infrastructure, it will split up some of those Resource Zones.

If any of you think this sounds to complex, think of it this way-in CivII you kinda already have resource zones, except each city is its own resource zone and will always be that way. This would actually simplify things.
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