We Need Longer City Names!

[Dr.Oogkloot]

At least 25 characters. How can I use nice names like Prykarpattya Ivano-Frankivsk otherwise? See also the "Favorit civ to play as" thread.

Chieftainissimo Oogkloot

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[Wazell]

Of course we need longer city names. Minimum 60 characters so we will no longer have any problems with that. Also remove all those other stupid restrictions such as max 255 cities, 327 million population etc. and everyone's happy!

[Evil Capitalist]

We need longer nation names too- how else can we put in long official titles like "The United Kingdom of Great Britian and Northern Ireland" (second in length only to the full name of Libya)

[Shadowstrike]

Just out of curiosity, what is the full name of Libya?

[Evil Capitalist]

In English:
The great socialist people's Libyan arab jamahiriya.

[DarkCloud]

I say all we need for cities is a 20 long character name so we can have names for destroyed cities like New New Thebes or New New New New York.

City numbers- 300-400 per civ

Population- Limitless

Civilization names- 20 characters

[Nemo]

how are you going to realisically FIT 20 characters on the screen? it would dwarf the cities and cover up too many map squares.
it would be nice, but it would be more of a nuisance.

[DarkCloud]

The typeface could be 'smart' and shrink to allow longer titles.
Anyways, you can already receive city names up to 15 letters, I believe so 20 would be better, but not too much of a jump.

[Dr.Oogkloot]

quote: Originally posted by DarkCloud on 08-12-2000 02:18 PM I say all we need for cities is a 20 long character name so we can have names for destroyed cities like New New Thebes or New New New New York.

I solve this by calling them "Thebes, Take 2" or "New York, Take 4"

quote: City numbers- 300-400 per civ

Should be enough.

quote: Civilization names- 20 characters

No! More!!

[Dr.Oogkloot]

Aagh! Double post
[This message has been edited by Dr.Oogkloot (edited August 13, 2000).]

[DarkCloud]

Shadowstrike-

Do you really believe that realistically you could fit in 1000 cities on a map for one civ even, let alone 2 or 3.

The only way to do this would be to do something which I have been hoping for. Increase the map size by 10-20 percent so you can have realistic distances and cities.

[Gord McLeod]

The trouble you run into there is computational power and game speed. Ever tried playing SMAC on a custom-sized map? If you go too large, you'll swiftly find your game bombs out when memory usage escalates beyond the game's limits.

[DarkCloud]

Well Gord, increasing the map by 10% wouldn't be that bad would it with a limit of 300-400 cities. I mean, if you have a pentium II 200 with 16 memory bits with no problem, then you can run Civ with no problems on a huge map with 200 cities per civ so why do you not think it will work on a bigger map with more cities?

[Gord McLeod]

Because the memory requirements increase exponentially when you change the number of map squares; path-finding becomes hellishly difficult very quickly, more data has to be stored, swapped, and tracked. I'm hardly saying that it's not possible, but it's not nearly as easy as people seem to think it is. The limits were used in older games on older hardware, yet there seems to be a perception that the limits were imposed arbitrarily, when they were really hardware/software limitations put in place because exceeding them made game performance suffer.

For the record, I have 128 megs RAM and I still find that SMAC dies eventually with a mere 128x128 map, let alone 256x256. Huge maps in SMAC are defined as 128x64, IIRC.

[Shadowstrike]

What! 300 - 400 cities per civ? No, way more, somewhere in the thousnads (this only allows the option , it does not force you to do this)

Edit: typo
[This message has been edited by Shadowstrike (edited August 13, 2000).]

[UltraSonix]

Two things - the absolute maximum city size the game can handle should be large 1024 or 4096 or something. But built into the rules file should be a line that caps it at say, 256 or 768. This way people with good computers will be able to enjoy a huge game, while people like me (P166 ) will be able have a decent game without the computer auto building heaps of cities and slowing the game heaps.

In relation to the name thing this thread was originally about: how about the ability to have very long name for anything (eg 256 chars), but the game will also auto-truncate. However, the game will also give the player the option of specifying a shortened version of the name for display, or for the computer to use when they want to insult you. This way the computer'll know to truncate "The great socialist people's Libyan arab jamahiriya" to "Libya" and not "The gr...iriya"!

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[DarkCloud]

Wait, how many people in here actually have pentium 250 and above.

I don't so I would approve of an option that tells you how fast your computer will run with any different map size, say select
SMALL- Runs Fast
MEDIUM- Runs Fast
LARGE- Runs Medium
HUGE- Runs Medium
GREATLY HUGE- Runs Slow
MONSTOROUSLY HUGE- Runs Slow
LUDICROUSLY HUGE- Runs Very Slow

It would also tell you how fast it would run with x number of cities.

[jpk]

Each civilization has its own list of city names. There is also a list of extra names if a civilization builds more cities than there are names in the civilization's list.

First I would like all duplicates removed. Hamburg should be either a German city or on the extra names list but not both. If memory serves me correctly Kazan is both a Russian city and a Mongol city. Remove it from one of the lists.

All civilizations should draw from a common extra names list. That would eliminate having three or four Naples on a map. If some player wants to remname every city "Naples" it's fine with me but that should not be the default.

The list of common names should be sufficiently long so that you do not have two Moscow's or two Rome's as is currently possible.

Hopefully this message is worth $.02.

[DarkCloud]

Having two romes is a blight upon "Civilization", I once played a game where I had 3 Madrids, the Zulus had 2 Zimbabwes and the French had 2 Paris's, The City list should be longer, surely Firaxis could find some extra French Cities or Spanish ones!