Does this Firaxis graphic show a size 1 city radius?

[lockstep]

In May 2001, Firaxis answered an 'Ask the Civ team' question regarding the 'estimate diameter' of a city. The (then) attached picture showed a settler that was about to found a city, and a line that - as far as I understood - represented the city radius. (See http://www.civfanatics.com/cgi-bin/a...itypreview.jpg).

As I browsed civ3.com today, Firaxis had replaced the original picture with this one: http://www.civ3.com/asktheteam_051101.cfm.

So far, I´ve got only two explanations:

- A newly-created city has only a workable radius of 1 (a la CtP2).
- The blue line represents the cultural border of the yet-to be-found city (which would indicate at least some empire-wide border size mechanism).

Has anyone a clue?

[Gramphos]

I think someone said earlier that the working area would expand, but mush slower then the original border, and from the size of Civ2. That may have changed to that very small size, as it seems logical, when no new cities will have cultural borders.

Edit: italic text added

[Ralf]

Originally posted by lockstep
- A newly-created city has only a workable radius of 1 (a la CtP2).

Hmm. I see that they have tweaked it somewhat since the previous example. This proves that the game really isnt finished until it finished.

Anyway, I suspect that the "expansion" of the food/shield/trade area is very elementary (thank God) compared to the CTP-2 equivalent. Probably just 2-step process. First 8 surrounding squares from the beginning - then, at a certain threshold-level, you are given access to the remaining 20 squares as well. Thats it. No inflationary third or fourth layers.

If above suspicions is correct, then I like it. This will favour city-development in order to access productive second-layer ocean-tiles, just to mention one thing.

- The blue line represents the cultural border of the yet-to be-found city (which would indicate at least some empire-wide border size mechanism).

I am almost 100% sure that each newbie-city always start out with no culture-borders at all. You get that first layer, then you build a temple. Capitol city after 10 turns though, since your Palace gives 1 culture-point per turn, and the first culture-layer requires 10 points.

[Roman]

Oops, Ralf was quicker than I.

[Gramphos]

I found this City screen showing a just founded capital. (Berlin)
Note that the light area of the map only is radius one. (As the border)

[Provost Harrison]

Culture radius and city radius are not the same things. Any city can work the surrounding 20 squares as well as the tile it is sat on for food, resources and trade. But the culture radius defines your borders and where you can extract trade goods from...

Clear, ja?

[Ralf]

Yes PH, but compare this two settler-surveying pictures:

http://www.civfanatics.com/cgi-bin/a...itypreview.jpg
http://www.civ3.com/asktheteam_051101.cfm

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Culture radius and city radius are not the same things. Any city can work the surrounding 20 squares as well as the tile it is sat on for food, resources and trade. But the culture radius defines your borders and where you can extract trade goods from...

Clear, ja?

Ask Dan about it if you dare. You may get another answer this time, but this was the one I was looking for, and spoke to in my first post in this thread.

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
The way it currently stands, your borders are seperate from your "workable city tiles". The number of city tiles you can work does increase as your city grows, but it doesn't expand nearly as far as your city borders do. Even if your city has only the beginning 1-square (no) border, you can work the requisite number of surrounding squares. But until those squares actually fall within your borders, the enemy can come onto them and do what he pleases. Once you've got borders around those squares, you can tell the other players to get out (and in most cases, they listen).

As for colonies, the resources go to whoever builds a colony and connects it with a road first. Consequently, colonies become key while your borders are expanding, and if you leave them unguarded or weakly guarded, you will pay the price. Also, since colonies need to be connected to a city with roads, an enemy can destroy your roads and sever the connection to that resource.

This can be disastrous, especially when you're relying on goods to pacify unhappy citizens. I had a game going this week and the CPU destroyed my roads at a key juncture and sent four cities into revolt.


Dan
Firaxis Games, Inc.

[Inverse Icarus]

vgriph, whered you get that shot?

and whats with all the banned smileys?

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by UberKruX
vgriph, whered you get that shot?

Stop naming me that!!!!!!
Anyway I extracted it from a German video that I found on civfanatics.com's news
http://download.civfans.net/civ3.zip

and whats with all the banned smileys?

I don’t get your point. I'm most proud of

[tniem]

Interesting indeed. And Firaxis switching pics on us without telling us. Make sure someone checks all those old pages on a continual basis from now on.

And what's with this Gramphos being called another name? Did you use to be vgriph?

In the end it don't really matter, Gramphos usually provides us with good tidbits and decent examples. So thanks.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by tniem
Interesting indeed. And Firaxis switching pics on us without telling us. Make sure someone checks all those old pages on a continual basis from now on.

They change things for time to time. It is almost worth a newsitem

And what's with this Gramphos being called another name? Did you use to be vgriph?

Yes, I was named vgriph before the upgrade (and a short period after). After the upgrade I asked Markos to change my name to Gramphos as vgiph had been a username I've used a while, but my netname was Gramphos. I just missed that the username and the name that showed up was the same during registration. I changed with the upgrade, as it was easier for the admins to change that with vB then with UBB.

In the end it don't really matter, Gramphos usually provides us with good tidbits and decent examples. So thanks.

Thanks!
I prefer being named Gramphos, not vgriph.

[tniem]

Gramphos,

I didn't ever put you two names together, weird. I remember reading his posts and actually wondered where he had gone. Apparently a name switch got me confused, another reason not to allow people to do it when the want to.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by tniem
Gramphos,

I didn't ever put you two names together, weird. I remember reading his posts and actually wondered where he had gone. Apparently a name switch got me confused, another reason not to allow people to do it when the want to.

You did not . I had it written in my signature for over a month.

[Rhysie]

Originally posted by Gramphos
I found this City screen showing a just founded capital. (Berlin)
Note that the light area of the map only is radius one. (As the border)

I think the light area is just the radius of view of the city, the darker area is explored land which none of your units or cities can currently see. I don't think its related to culture or work borders. Although on the other hand, you'd expect a city to be able to see into all the tiles it can work on.

[Provost Harrison]

Well I thought you just got the 21 tile pattern from the start; I am sure that is what they said to begin with. Well this looks interesting. Let us hope the game is not transmogrifying into CtP2 before we get it

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Rhysie
I think the light area is just the radius of view of the city, the darker area is explored land which none of your units or cities can currently see. I don't think its related to culture or work borders. Although on the other hand, you'd expect a city to be able to see into all the tiles it can work on.

So perhaps - just perhaps - the city can´t work on the tiles right now?

[dainbramaged13]

i dont even care about that now... DID YOU SEE THOSE GRAPHICS!?!? THOSZE LOOKED AWESOME! whoever is complaining about graphics better stop it NOW!

[Inverse Icarus]

calm down vgriph

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Rhysie
I think the light area is just the radius of view of the city, the darker area is explored land which none of your units or cities can currently see. I don't think its related to culture or work borders. Although on the other hand, you'd expect a city to be able to see into all the tiles it can work on.

Older screens show the light area in the old Civ2 city pattern.
Also there is a white line under the border, which I think shows the working area.

[Urban Ranger]

It seems that at least resources are not accessable outside of your cultural border unless you build colonies.