City Production Possibilities...

[1]

Everyone loves making super high production cities in Civ 2... and what bugged me is, if my city produces 200 shields, why can it only produce 1 (60 shield) unit? I think cities should be able to take FULL advantage of their production every turn. How about being able to say "put 100 shields into making this superhighway" and "put the rest into making that B-2" all in one turn. Not only would this encourage big city building, but it would also be more realistic. Why should a city making 60 shields a turn be able to make just as many tanks as a 120 shield city?

[Ralf]

Originally posted by 1
Everyone loves making super high production cities in Civ 2... and what bugged me is, if my city produces 200 shields, why can it only produce 1 (60 shield) unit?

Well, you perhaps have a point seen from a theoretical view. But I really prefer a stiff max-limit of 1 unit/ 1 city-improvement per city/turn, regardless of wasted output, anyway.

The reason to this, is that it would be too easy to misuse this cheat in a very gameplay-destructive matter. You could virtually overflow the map with 7-8 cheap & effective spies/diplomats or cheap musketeers/riflemen, from one mega-city/turn alone. Not to mention if several mega-cities cooperated. After only 3 turns from 3 mega-cities, you could end up with upto 70+ spies, or musketeers/riflemen. What about the added micro-management?

Finally, it would be far too easy to create "unbeatable armies" this way, with help of massive amounts of cheap, but defence-competent musketeers/riflemen. It would only become inflationary in the end - and the human player could exploit that much better, because of his map-overview advantage over the AI.

[b&i_c]

Yeah, that would be a little too much micro-management, but it is a good idea anyway.

[Martinus]

This would be another effective solution to prevent ICS and BAB (or at least make it less succesful) - now 1 mega city would be able to rival in the production speed with 6-7 smaller cities.

I think it is a good idea.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by 1
Not only would this encourage big city building, but it would also be more realistic. Why should a city making 60 shields a turn be able to make just as many tanks as a 120 shield city?

As I mentioned earlier Im against building several units/CI:s in one city, in one single turn. At the same time I must admit that Im rather sympathetic about the "encourage big city building" part of your argument.

One could of course argue that a huge 200 shield-output mega-city (this means Civ-2 Manhattan Project in 3 turns, without any caravan/freight help - is that even remotely possible?) that builds a spy for only 30 shields, could save the 170 shields to the next turn. Then 170 saved shields + 200 new ones would turn into 370 shields. But this would only prolong the problem: what about the next turn, and the next? You would end-up with a constantly overflow-growing shields-mountain. And building Wonders would be far too easy, by deliberately build cheap units in advance, in order to accumulate the shield-overflow. Not good.

A final solution would be that you could sell any shield-overflow automatically to a heavily reduced junkyard-prize. This overflow-junk would then at least bolster your economy somewhat. Important though: Any small overflow-amounts would NOT transform into junk-money. ONLY really big overflow-amounts over a certain rather high level; so that ONLY huge mega-cities is likely to benefit from this economically.
Or perhaps if you have missed the chance building a big Wonder, and theres no other worthy wonder-projects in sight. You could then produce any unit/CI of your choice - and, if the wasted overflow is big enough, you at least could reap an added economical junk-recompense.

[Footie Mad]

I think its and idea with some value but of course it has to be refined to prevent the abuse that Ralf mentioned. Perhaps limiting the max number of units per turn and city to 2 or 3?

[TechWins]

First of all how are you even able to get 200 shields? If you really do without cheating than that is awesome.

Personally I don't like the idea of multiple building because of all the reasons Ralf listed.

[1]

Well in response to Ralf.... obviously other parts of the game would have to be changed in order to accomodate this. Most likely, the most simple solution is best... and that's just to raise production costs on certain units. No harm, no foul. This way the problem is addressed and we are both happy (and btw, I just made up the 200 shield city thing, just as an example, though I have done it before with 4 irons and lots of hills I believe)

[KrazyHorse]

Let's see: assuming no food caravans, four irons, you've got to have 8 farmland grasslands to keep your city at size 20. It's possible to all of the grasslands producing shields. Add to this the 28 shields from the mined/RR irons and the (21-8-4)*4=36 shields from the mined/RR hills, and you get 72. Multiply by the 2.5 Factory/PowerPlant/Manufacturing bonus to get 180. I guess that's close enough for me. Has anyone ever actually seen this without setting up a custom map? I don't think I've ever even seen four irons grouped perfectly. Very lucky, 1. I've never gotten a city above 110; it seemed useless.

[KrazyHorse]

Actually, I just realized that coal's better than iron. It gives the same seven shields, but also a food. That means I can change one of the grasslands to hills, netting me 3 shields*2.5 = 7 when rounded down. 187 shields. Closer...

[1]

You can do it food caravans, and make everything hills

[MORON]

As long as my bomber can kill the lame musket stack, I see no problems with massed units.

Besides, the upkeep is going to kill them.

[KrazyHorse]

Ummm..wrong thread?

[DarkCloud]

Double and triple unit/city building production (the shields would either a: be evenly distributed (or) b: be distributed by a side slider bar to assign priorities.

and unit queing should be allowed in civ III.

[One More Turn!]

What if your production was pooled for your civ? It would be up to the player to distribute the production points amonst the cities to fill competing needs. It would certainly limit the need to build wonder-assisting caravans as in Civ II and would provide the ability to quickly build a unit or improvement that you have to have immediately.

On the other hand, now that I think about it, it would create the same problems as being able to build multiple units/CI's in one city at the same time, so maybe that isn't such a good idea.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Guys,
I've sort of touched on the production issue in a previous thread, but not on this specific issue.
My ideas concerning city production are as follows
1) Cities should be able to build multiple improvements (eg multiple factories, multiple temples etc.). The # of improvements would be limited by Population size and each new improvement would suffer from "The Law of Diminishing Returns"

2) Cities should be able to have at least 2 build queues each. At least 1 for civilian improvements and units(settlers/workers) and 1 for military improvements and units (available upon building a barracks?). Ideally, I think that coastal cities should have a 3rd queue for building naval units (once they've built the appropriate facilities) and possibly a 4th build queue could become available when you discover Flight (but I'd be happy with even just 2!!)
This wouldn't unbalance the game as much as people think, as you'd still need the money to support all of these units and because, when you have more than 1 build queue operating, they should all build below optimum speed (as they all share some common facilities)

3) Cities with a large surplus of "Shields", should be able to "Vector" them to another city. This would be useful for helping new cities become developed more quickly. Limitations should exist, like multiple cities vectoring to a single city should suffer from diminishing returns (see above), and their should be some transfer loss between cities. This would essentially make production shields a regional "Resource" just like coal, oil or iron (and yes you should be able to sell surplus shields at rock-bottom prices!)

4) Lastly: Ralf, the Manhattan project took only a few years to complete (which is about 3 turns), but of course they had the entire nation working on it. This is how I believe WOnders SHOULD work. A single city alone should take forever to build a wonder, but with other cities loaning surplus "Shields" that city should be able to build the wonder more quickly.

The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Urban Ranger]

OTOH, I don't see this is an abuse at all.

If a player has spent time and effort to create mega cities, what is the justification of penalising this person? For the same cost another player could make a whole lot more cities, but if a megacity can't build more than 1 unit or improvement per turn there is absolutely no point in doing so.

In effect, that just places a limitation on a player's strategy.


Lurker,

You have some good ideas. Having multiple improvements for a city is something you can find in Caesar III. What kind of diminishing of returns are you thinking of? Eons ago I had suggested multiple queues for a city. That just makes sense doesn't it? The vectoring of "shields" is also a good idea This replaces the cavaran for building wonders since the camel is gone. How do you prevent it's abuse though?

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Urban Ranger,

Firstly, the diminishing returns I'm talking about are in regards to the bonuses you originally get for that improvement. For example, if your first factory gives you a 50% bonus to manufacturing, the second might only give you a 40% bonus, etc. Same for research bonuses and happiness bonuses.

As for limiting the abuse of vectoring shields. You might be able to do that by saying that each city after the first can only vector X-1 shields to that city (where X is the maximum shields a city can give), then X-2, X-3 etc. You could also have a shield loss during vectoring based on technology, distance between cities and the corruption levels in each city.
Finally, the maximum shields that any city can give to any 1 city would be a fraction of it's total surplus.
Anyway, those are just a few ideas. If you have any more, I'd like to hear them.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker

[Vlad Antlerkov]

I think cities that are large enough should be able to build multiple things at the same time. A city that's working all available squares in its city radius and has a population at or above say, size 14, or is producing more than 120 shields/turn probably should be able to do this.

I also like Lurker's idea of vectoring shields. Of course, some of those shields might be lost in the transfer, the number being dependent on the amount of shields you're sending and how far they're being sent.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Again,

I reckon that 2 things should limit the "Vectoring" of production shields. The first is the population of the city recieving the shields-an example might be to say that a city can only recieve shields from a number of cities equal to it's population number. The second limitation would be the population of the city sending the shields-eg the max % of shields that can be sent by a city would be determined by its population number (up to the number of free shields it possesses), say 4% per population point!?
As I said in the earlier post, the # of shields lost in transfer would be based on factors like distance, corruption and tech level.
The way I actually envisage the production shields (in real-world terms) is as a combination of manufactured components (like girders, plastics, bricks etc) and man-power. Vectoring shields, therefore, is just a high production city sending its surplus, prefabricated materials to another city in order to speed up build times!

Anyway, any additional thoughts on my ideas are welcome.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Eternal]

Anyway, like all the other ideas, I say, IT SHOULD BE AN OPTION

[Urban Ranger]

Hmmm...

Maybe vectoring can also be limited by the production of the recipient city. This could represent having all available workers working around the clock so there's no way you can increase it more by pouring in more resources.

Say, 50%?