The pitfalls of expanding city-areas in Civ-3

[Ralf]

This thread is about the pitfalls of over-powerful terraforming in general, together with the idea of gradual expanding to enormous 69-tile city-areas (CTP-2 style), in Civ-3.

But first; lets start from the very beginning, with some comparing tbs-game city-area history (no, NOT mathematical ICS-formulas - rest assured. Im taking this one from an different angle):

In Civ-2 you had a fixed 21-square city area + some early transform terrain-type capabilities (basically plant/chop down forrest to begin with).
Because of those attractive special resource-spots were spaced out the way they where, it was a constant challenge trying to simultaneously have as much of them as possible under any city-influence - but, at the same time avoid too much neighbor area-overlapping.
You have to prioritize fertile enough overal city-areas, and - not to forget: prioritize that all important central city-square. Without that fertile central city-square, it was impossible to support a land-improving settler and grow the overal city-population at the same time - at least early on.

Finally, because the city-area was fixed and limited to 21 squares, it really mattered if too many non- or less productive squares was within the city-area. Sure you could always transform, but only in later stages, and only if you where prepared to let it take some time.

Above was good, because it forced the player (at least the fun-having non-ICS´er) to PUZZLE - to make benefit/trade-off choices on where to found his cities. Later the player got more powerful transform terrain-type capabilities, and that was nice (although i never liked the unrealisticly powerfull one: transforming to/from mountains. Creating and level out huge mountains should simply be impossible - period).

Time went on and we got SMAC. This game basically gave the player the same nice base-area puzzle-challenge as Civ-2, with one questionable addition: terraforming.
I never liked it, because the puzzle-effect was somewhat diminished. You no longer was forced to "make the best of the existing land-areas". Thankfully, this feature was editable/turn-off able, however.

Also, thanks to the fact that borders never extended out from land and that fertile oceans-squares and ocean-recources was just as uniformly and evenly available, as on land (at least special resources) one could found ocean-bases on huge areas in relatively uniform looking patterns.
On land these uniform patterns was often discontinued because of irregular coastlines, unhabitable squares and the existing landareas. The ocean had lots of inhabitale squares, but still:
because of the huge one ocean-connected uniform look, the placement of those ocean cities was much less of a puzzle-challenge, and less nice to look at.

The solution to the uniform ocean-base look, could be that the player is restricted to build ONLY on underwater "islands" (= chunks of special underwater land-squares equivalences). This way you reintroduces those discontinued patterns because of irregular underwater "coastlines" again. Just as on land islands.

Firaxis: if you ever thinking on expanding the main-game to involve futuristic ocean-cities in Civ-3, then please think hard about not "wash out" the puzzle city-area challenge, by add above or similar idea.

And now (at last) we come to the expanding city-area feature, and the pitfalls of implementing the same idea in Civ-3 - alá CTP-2:

On the surface this idea about an gradually expanding city-area seems really nice. However, because of this concept, the player only have to find a relatively fertile central city-square + and a few reasonably productive and fertile squares in the (to begin with) inner 8-square circle.

After that, the expanding city-area (in CTP-2; up to 5 circle-layers = 69 squares), you can easily "swallow up" the country-side, gradually. You dont have to cover any special resources-squares to begin with - these you can add automatically in later stages, if you just found your city near those enough.
Also, because of this concept, it doesnt matter much if some (maybe half, or in some cases even 60-70%) squares is non-productive. You still have and awful lot of squares to feed/produce on. An example: 69 squares - 70% still means a whopping 21 good squares left.
Now, admittedly - i dont know if its possible to expand to the 5:th max layer in CTP-2 on only 30% of the squares available. Anyway, you have plenty of time to terraform those non-productive squares as well.
According to the screenshots it seems pretty easy to build really huge cities on relatively few developed tiles.

Anyway, this thread is NOT about CTP-2. What i want to discuss the pros and cons of a similar solution IN CIV-3.

What do i think?

Frankly, i dont know if i like this concept that much. Theres no challenge in trying to puzzle those fixed easy-to-overview city-areas anymore. Also, it doesnt matter much where you place your cities - no dealing with important benefits/trade-offs squares anymore.

Three times as many city-area squares means that each indevidual city-square gradually become much less important in the overal picture, then in Civ-2/SMAC. Is that a good thing?

Now, some people dont like micro-managing, and thats perfectly fine. But wouldnt it be a better solution to try to add more effective city-mayors, instead of adding this expanding city-area challenge-inflationary concept to Civ-3 also?

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited November 28, 2000).]

[The diplomat]

I was thinking of starting a tread on this very topic. So, I am glad that you did.
You make good points. I will just add my 2 cents. I think that the original reason why ctp2 implemented expanding city radius was to make bigger cities better than smaller ones in an attempt to combat ICS. I believe that there are other ways to make bigger cities better than small cities. For one, make the rate of production more dependant on quantity of population rather than on quantity of ressources, and that should do the trick. Big cities will have larger populations and will therefore build things faster than smaller cities. Another issue that I would raise with expanding city radiuses is that it fuels city growth instead of limiting it. In civ2, the city radius is constant, so the maximum amount of ressources a city will get is constant. A city will grow until it reaches that amount then it will stop. In ctp2, a city will automatically grow until it is huge. As the city grows, the city radius suddenly gets bigger which increases the total amount of ressources so the city will grow even more at which point the city radius will expand again, helping growth again, etc, until the city is huge. So, all cities will get to pretty big population sizes no matter what, if the terrain is just half decent. The only question is how long will it take.

So, I don't think that civ3 should have expanding city radiuses. There are other ways to fight ICS and make the city model better overall. In an email, Firaxis hinted that they had a solution to ICS. I can't wait to see what creative solution they came up with.

[Tiberius]

quote: For one, make the rate of production more dependant on quantity of population rather than on quantity of ressources, and that should do the trick.

That's a good idea. I think this could be expanded by making trade more important and giving great trade bonuses for big cities. The advantages of great cities should be bigger than disadvantages.

I'm not against expending city radius (it's realistic and make cities more interesting and dynamic), but 5 layers are way to much; 3 would be enough.

[UltraSonix]

quote: In an email, Firaxis hinted that they had a solution to ICS

I seem to recall that they explicitly stated that they thought they had killed off ICS.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards... Despite any stupid advertisments you may see to the contrary... (And no, koalas don't usually speak!)

[airdrik]

Here's an Idea: instead of expanding the city radius by a whole circle every x population sizes, you expand it by one every 2-3 population sizes. You could even start with the radius of the city being a mear 5-10 squares, then after a while it would expand, you could choose which squares it expanded into, or let the computer decide (you have 1-2 rounds to decide before it became perminant). The new squares would have to be adjacent to the old ones. That way you have the advantages of expanding cities without having them expanding into 69 square monstrosities. Add that to the increasing production/trade(/food) and you have all your larger cities engulfing any smaller cities you have.

Another Idea: if two cities (in the same civ) are close enough together, and they have enough adjacent squares, you could choose to have them merge. If they were like this for too long (10-15 turns) then they would merge automatically. No more ICS because all your cities would merge with each other into one big super city. You could have one production center for every 15-25 squares. If an enemy invaded they would have to take it either one square at a time, or if they took a production center then they would take that entire secter.

Yet Another Idea: forget cities altogether and just have one expanding civ. You get one production center for every 15-25 squares. You could have settlers start new areas that aren't adjacent to your civ, but otherwise, expansion would be automatic. Each square would have it's own pop as well as the resources (rather than sheilds, the things like wood, iron, etc. all in one bundle) and food (trade would depend on the pop in a production center), and would only be able to expand depending on the food in that square. The amount of production produced would depend on the pop in all the squares in a production center's 'secter'. The amount of stuff supported by that center would depend on the amount of resources in it's secter.

More realism, I think, since in real life you have a lot of little viliages spread out across the civ which could not be implemented with the prev. city plan. Govs would affect the percent of resources/production that reaches a production center. Advances would increase the amount of resources that are extracted as well as the food produced.

Comments? Suggestions? Are my ideas too radical?
(By the way, I thought each of these Ideas up as I was typing, pretty good for on the spot thinking )

[jbs]

I like the idea of an expanding city radius. I dislike CTP2's implementation of averaging city tiles. keep the ability to select the tiles, but expand the radius. With a small city, this restricts you to tiles closer to the center (more realistic) instead of picking that best tile in the corner. Than as the city grows the number of possible tiles expands. This would let you grow very large cities (also realistic). I would not recomend the method of averaging the city tiles like in CTP2.

[The diplomat]

Well, I like the "no worker on tile" system of ctp2!! That is not the problem. Remember they are not averaging the city radius, they are simply taking a % of the total. The problem is that if you combine both systems (ie "no workers on tile" + expanding city radius") then you create a problem because the efficiency of the city actually fluctuates up and down. Every time the radius expands, the efficiency suddenly drops then has to gradually climb up again until the city radius expands agian at which point the efficiency drops again etc...

The reasons why I believe that the "no worker on tiles" is such a great innovation is because it reduces micromanagement and improves the AI. It is also more realistic since it represents rural population spread out around your city.

The worst thing to do would be to combine the "expanding city radius" with the old fashioned way of placing workers on tiles. Because the AI would have to cope with even more possible combinations of worker placement. And the player would have to worry even more about whether the right tiles are being worked. The player would have to follow a particular city when it expands so that he/she can readjust worker placement. Remember that everytime a city radius expands, you have to completely reevaluate what tile each worker should be on.

If anything I would suggest combining "no worker on tiles" with a CONSTANT city radius (like in civ2). The constant city radius will make the city model more stable. In addition, the model would have less micromanagement since you would not need to place workers on each tile. Here is how it might work:

I found a city. It has its traditional 21 tile city radius. Each worker would produce x% of total ressources (ressources of all tiles added up). 2 workers produce 2*x%. 3 workers produce 3*x% etc. At a certain point, you would eventually produce 100% of total ressources. Additional workers would automatically become specialists. In addition, tech and SE would improve overall efficiency by slightly increasing the value of x so that you would reach 100% with fewer workers allowing more specialists. This would accurately reflect how with technology we now produce the same amount of ressources (like food) with a lot fewer people). Tile improvements would improve efficiency just for specific ressources. So, with farms you might get a city that produces 10% of total "shields" but 15% of total "food". This would make tile improvements much more important than they are in ctp2. As well, notice that the original tile improvements would still play a huge part. The original total amount of ressources would not change. 10% of 100 is 10 but 20% of 5 is 1. Notice that if a city did not have much of a ressource to begin with, increasing the percentage would not do as much compared to a city that has a lot of the resource. The conclusion is that this model favors good city placement. You would want to find good spots where there are lots of ressources to begin with. A small city in a great spot might actually produce more than a huge city in a very poor location. (as seen from my example). So, this model favors good placement which I believe is what this thread was all about from the begining.
[This message has been edited by The diplomat (edited November 29, 2000).]

[Ralf]

THE DIPLOMAT:

Nice tread with good points. However, dont forget how Firaxis should implement quoted idea with the anti-BAB feature (Bigger Always Better), making small empires more attractive in some areas, then their huge empire counterparts. Anti-BAB could mean that, the fewer cities an empire has, the easier you can grow really HUGE cities, with out any happiness-problems.

Quote: "For one, make the rate of production more dependant on quantity of population rather than on quantity of ressources, and that should do the trick".

------------------------------------ edited:
Further down this thread i revoke my enthusiasm for Diplomats and Tiberius ideas, however.
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TIBERIUS:

I agree that the problems with the expanding city-area idea would be somewhat less excessive with only three layers, instead of five. But would that really cure ANY of mine or Diplomats objections?

Also, dont forget that this idea introduces some rather complex mathematical city-tile formulas, that isnt always that clear and obvious to understand and explain. Check out below thread, there one guy tries to sort thing out, while another guy five posts further down finally gets it right, with a lengthy read-a-couple-of-times explanation + a rolleyes-smiley (meaning; dont you see how simple it is).

Well, im not saying its non-understandable - what im saying is: does it really HAVE to be this way? All i wanted was some immediately understandable city-tile feedback alá Civ-2/Smac city/base-screen.

Is it an "intuitive" solution, or what? http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum35/HTML/000573.html?7

The only ones who enjoys this model seems to be those who primarily are interested in moving around units inside and outside there huge 40-60+ cities-sleeze empires.
Those who enjoys nurturing their smaller carefully developed 15-30+ cities empires, finds that most of the fun direct-control fine-tweaking and puzzle-challenges of the tile and city-placement have been "streamlined" away in CTP-2.
Now, admittedly, some likes that way - but is it commercially smart not trying to do everything to make Civ-3 enjoyable whatever playing-style?

Secondly, it doesnt seems to do what it was originally suppose to do either: killing ICS.
Check the following "can of worms" thread, there is member of the CTP-2 team that repeatedly tries to convince some math-crunching civer´s that ICS now finally is dead. The Activision-guy gives up answering after a while:
http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum35/HTML/000313.html?45

Finally some words about the argument that gradually expanding city-areas makes these cities "more interesting and dynamic".

Is that true? Take a look at some of the CTP-2 in-game map-screenshots. Because of reasons that have already explained, you are not forced to nurture these city-areas that much anymore, and you dont have to bother with how and where to place your cities.
You are bound to get pretty huge cities anyway. As Diplomat says: "The only question is how long it will take".

Now, in what ways is that "more interesting and dynamic"?

Also: The old fixed 21-square model actually HAD a built-in gradual expansion-effect. You could only place workers on more and more tiles gradually. Your city had to grow first, before you could take possesion of any extra squares.
The only principal difference between the two models is that with the fixed 21-square model you can choose freely between the 20 surrounding tiles, directly from the start, while in the "expansion city-area" model the player are lead-guided by a (at least initially) rather coinstraining 8-tile limit.

Above 8-tile constraint-factor is then gradually overtaken by the third, fourth and fifth layers, that makes each single tile less, and less meaningful to the overal picture.
One could argue that the constraint-factor gets loosen up temporarily by the second area-layer - just to be gradually overtaken by the washed out/diluted-factor when to many to digest city-tiles comes under the city-influence.

Again; in what ways is that "more interesting and dynamic"?

By the way; what does the word "dynamic" actually mean, when talking about city-areas? Should fast city-growth be a real challenge, or just some easy-going self-evident process?
Shouldnt "dynamic" mean that your cities can actually SHRINK, if the player is too sloppy and careless? Does the "expansion city-area" model give you that type of dynamics? Well, does it?

Diplomat quote:

"As the city grows, the city radius suddenly gets bigger which increases the total amount of ressources so the city will grow even more at which point the city radius will expand again, helping growth again, etc, until the city is huge".

The final nail in the coffin is that the old 21-square model has been tried and tested in miljons of play-testing hours, and Firaxis know exactly what they gonna get by re-using this concept.

A clever saying: If its not broken, dont fix it.
Now, by comparison; check out the CTP-2 "can-of-worms" thread above.

The problem is that the whole city-area concept is that is such a central and totally intergrated part of TBS Civ-gaming. Make a mistake with an easy addon-feature like SMAC terraforming - no big deal: those who dont like it can exclude it. Make a game-structural design-mistake with the city-area concept? Then it suddenly spells BIG mistake.


AIRDRIK:

You have some interesting ideas, but also remember:

What is simple for the human player to see and take advantage of on the map, is not necessarilly simple and easy to take advantage of for the AI.
AI-programmers works to a large degree in a black box here: they cannot instruct the AI to "overview" and "experience" the map in real time, the same way the human player can. Everything have to be meticulously calculated - and thats easy on a 8x8 two tile-types chessboard. But, on a huge-sized, irregular and complex Civ-3 map? Theres just too many variables here to take into account for.
I say; dont overload the AI with this feature on top of everything else. Follow the KISS-rule (keep it simple stupid).

Stick with the known 21-square solution, and try to improve on that instead. Ultimately however its up to Firaxis to decide.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited December 03, 2000).]

[Tiberius]

It's my mistake that I didn't explain better (more detailed) what's my opinion about expanding city radius.

First of all, starting with only 8+1 tiles for small cities restrict players to pick the best tile in a distant corner, fact that seems realistic and usefull to me. Realistic because villagers usually don't cross ocean tiles or mountains to collect food and usefull because if you want that distant tile, you must help the city to grow. Expanding to the 21 square radius is logical and doesn't need further explanations. I added the 3d circle because I'd like to see bigger cities in Civ3, and this could be a small step to prevent ICS. Your and Diplomat's objections are valid. I do not have an answer, but I still like the expanding idea, at least from 1 to 2 circles, maybe 3 (I said maybe).
I said "interesting and dynamic" because I'm a micromanager and I do care about my cities; I like to watch them growing and developing (btw, please Firaxis, give us a decent CityView!). (well, growing too much is not good either, I admit it). Maybe there should be an option to let a city grow beyond the 2nd circle only if you appoint it as a region capitol or something.

Next, about the "no worker on tile" system of ctp2: I think it's perfect for the AI, because this way the he can do what he knows the best: calculate; it's much harder for an AI to make decisions regarding "resource tiles puzzeling". I don't want to see though the same system for human players: I want to have the possibility to decide what resources the city must gather. For non-micromanagers, there should be an option to chose automatic-resource-gathering.

I'd like to expand a little Diplomat's idea about population dependant production: make all buildings in a city population dependant! What do I mean? First of all, in the Civ2 system, you can build in a 3 or 4 size city all the CIs that are available. That's stupid! Did you ever see a small town with university, stock exchange, nuclear plant, and all the other CIs ?! Why only resource gathering is linked to the city size and resource processing (goods production) or other activities not ???

Instead, I imagine the following system:
A part of your pop will work on the fields (tiles). Let's say 0.6 pop/tile in the beginning, or even more. Later, with certain scientific discoveries (like railroad, industrialization, refrigeration, and whatever else) this number will be lower (maybe 0.1 in modern ages).
The remaining pop will work in the city. Each building needs a certain amount of pop in order to function. (for ex. a marketplace 0.2; a bank 0.5; and so on)

A short example:
Let's say your city's pop is 5. The pop of your city will be distributed this way:
5x0.6=3 pop working on city surrounding tiles
granary+marketplace+school+factory = 0.1+0.2+0.2+1= 1.5 pop
unemployed=5-3-1.5=0.5
Next you can chose: build a CI that needs 0.5 working pop or wait until the city grows and you will have more workers.
Of course, those who are unemployed will be unhappy, but that's why you give them luxury, right?
Unhappiness will be caused by city size + unemployed + war discontent.

I know, the first objections will be: no, no, too much micromanagement. But the only thing that you, as a player should do is to take care to not build too many CIs in small cities! And a smart mayor can be a sollution for non-micromanagers.

I guess you got the main idea.
(Diplomat, didn't we discuss something similar (more or less)in the recent past??)
[This message has been edited by Tiberius (edited November 30, 2000).]

[Ferdi]

I think that the city radius as it is implemented in civ2 and ctp2 should be killed and replaced by something better which gives us more fun.
Currently, the city radius defines an area (fixed in civ2 and variable in ctp2) from which the city takes its ressources. This concept is at first wrong (my opinion) and I'd prefer a new one. Here is a first draft of what it could be.

In real life the city radius IS THE CITY ITSELF which contains houses, servicies (bank, supermarket, parks, ...) and industries that produce manufactured goods or simply transform raw materials. This urbanized area is very small when the city is founded but grows only with the number of buildings constructed as factories, banks, but also houses for your people (buildings can be skyscrapers in modern times to save room). The shape of the city is modeled by neighbouring terrains and its your job (when there is no more space in the current tiles) to select the next adjacent tile (only plains and grassland) when you want to build something new in your city. Note for example that it might not be allowed to expand your city beyond a river if you don't have the bridge building technology. And the population size would be limited due to the lack of room for new buildings or if ressources are too expensive to collect (too far from the city).

To build mines and farms you need to select a tile anywhere on the map (in your borders of course) that can support a mine or a farm AND people who will work there to produce food or iron/wood/... . The production of these mines and farms needs to be transported to your city. This transport costs money and couldn't be affordable if mines and farms are too far from your city. In ancient times it would have been impossible without the wheel or without a cheaper means of transport.

Farms and mines can only be performed in NON urbanized area! So if you need to enlarge your city because you need more room for your population or to create a big industrial center then you might lose some good grasslands from where you were producing food.

With this system the city radius a la civ2 and ctp2 disappear and is replaced by a more realistic one.

[Tiberius]

I don't agree with you, Ferdi.

Cities and villages always had a zone of influence, an area surrounding (more or less) the city or the village. People from villages/cities gathered their resources from that zone of influence. Maybe in modern times times it's not quite so, because industrial cities can buy the goods from agricultural centers (that's the food caravan in Civ2, I guess), but the model is realistic and historically true.

quote: To build mines and farms you need to select a tile anywhere on the map

Are you saying that a village, placed near the ocean will gather food from a 10-tiles-far farm instead of fishing? I don't think so.

[Ferdi]

In fact in my system the influence zone always exists but depends on the economic and technologic power of the city. A small city with a weak economy and without any means of transport won't be able to work tiles other than the surrounding ones.
I'll tell you more later.

[The diplomat]

Yes, Tiberius, we did talk about this concept a while back. I am glad that you brought it up. I remember suggesting that certain CI's should require a small amount of pop, to prevent small cities from building everything. It would encourage players to build big cities since the more pop, the more city improvements you would be able to support. So, I do agree with your idea. I don't know about your actual numbers. They look ok but I am not sure. The nitty gritty numbers are not that important. I do agree with your overall concept.
We do have to be careful about micromanagement. You made a good point about that. If the pop were only substracted from the workforce when the city improvement were finished, then the player would just need to determine whether or not the city has not enough pop to build an extra city improvement. So, the player could look at a city and say:"I don't want to build that city improvement just yet, I want more workers." or "the city is size 8, sure, I can build that city improvements A,B,C, I'll have enough workers left over."
Here is a possible solution: as soon as you got a citizen who only produced surplus ressources, that citizen would automatically become "unemployed". This wouls signal the player that the city has enough pop to build a city improvement. The player could go ahead and build a city improvement which would automatically convert the "unemployed" head into a "specialist" (for lack of a better term) or the player could manually convert the "unemployed" back into a worker to get that surplus.

Another idea would be instead of using pop for city improvements, to use "shields" just like support. This would limit the number of city improvements a city could build at a single time just like support limits the number of units.

An important point that I made when we last discussed this, that I want to repeat here is that not all city improvements should require pop. For example, barracks, aqueduct, granary would not require population to support. But for example, banks, university would require pop support. This is important because it would alow small cities to build the basic city improvements, just not the advanced ones.

A good aspect about this idea of "pop support for city improvements" is that it forces the player to make a decision as to what city improvement to build. The player would have to make a choice because a city could not have everything right away. This adds more strategy. Do I build a bank or a university? Or do I wait until the city can have both?
After all, civ is about strategy and making tough decisions.

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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[The diplomat]

I just came up with another new idea:

What if a city improvement were always built in 1 turn. Hear me out. A city improvement would cost SHIELD and POP SUPPORT so it would still cost to build. On the city screen, if I see a "unemployed" head, I could convert it back into a worker or I could build a city improvement. I would just select a city improvement, click the confirm button, and the "unemployed" would convert into the appropriate "specialist" for that CI. Like I said, ALL city improvements would require SHIELD support but some would require both SHIELD and POP SUPPORT.

Wonders would still be built the old fashioned way over several turns.

1)This would properly reflect how wonders are huge projects compared with city improvements.

2)It would reflect how a turn is 1 year at the end of the game, a lot more in the beginning. Does it make sense to take 20 years just to build a granary?

3)AI mayors could become "smart" because their task would be so very simple. If you turned the mayor on, you would give the AI mayor a specific agenda (econ, military, science etc). All the AI mayor would do is wait until a city got a "unemployed" head, and then create a city improvement but only those belonging to its agenda. (For example, a mayor with the ECONOMY agenda would only build ECONOMIC city improvements).
So, the AI mayor would only be doing the lowly micromanagement tasks if the player so choosed. The AI would not make any real decisions and therefore it could not mess up a city. It would just be doing the repetative task for the player if the player did not want to do it. Even with the AI mayor ON, the player would control every other aspect of the city, since the AI is only doing that one task. AI mayor could of cource be turned ON or OFF at any time. Players who want to micromanage everything would still be able.



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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[Ralf]

DIPLOMAT AND TIBERIUS:

I have read your and Tiberius posts a couple of times, and i think must redraw some of my early entusiasm. I guess i am some kind of traditionalist here, but i really think Firaxis shall pursue with a tweaked, improved version of the known "place workers on 20 surrounding squares" concept, and consequently drop the public-works idea. At least if its meant to be a total replacement solution.
What the programmers uses for strategies "below the interface" however - on an programming code-level - in order to make it easier for the AI-civs to nurture those city-areas, is of course a different thing. Frankly, i dont care what helping shortcuts they use - as long as the city-area improvements is reasonably equal with advanced players on higher levels.

Why no principal change? Because the Civ-2/SMAC model is so immediately feedback-friendly and instantly overviewable from the players point of view. Sure it requires some micro-managing, but only when the city grows a population-point, or some foreign unit occupied any used city-sguares. And this was ONLY necessary id you didnt trusted the automatic new/redirected tile-choices the AI made for you (which priorities can, and should be fully txt-file tweakable in Civ-3, by the way).
Was that really so hard and troublesome to do? Firaxis also introduced those city-mayors in SMAC already - im sure they are planning the same for Civ-3. So for those who didnt like to micromanage those cities and city areas - whats the problem?

Also, i think both yours and Tiberius calculation-examples suffers the same lengthy read-a-couple-of-times mathematical hard-to-digest problems, as in my critized example from the CTP-2 post. Read and compare - i can see before my inner eyes that the same "dont understand"-posts is going to reappear again if Firaxis decides to implement these ideas:
http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum35/HTML/000573.html?7

As i commented in my previous post; im not saying its non-understandable - what im saying is: does it really HAVE to be this way?

What i fear is going to get lost, is one 100% fundamental quality that did so much (at least in my eyes) for gameplay, replayability and the overal fun of nurturing an gradually growing empire in Civ-2. And that was:

The exact and immidiately understandable relationship between what the player did in terms of city- and tile-improvement input, and what the player recieved in terms of changed city-screen output.

Please guys, read above a couple of times, because i really think this is a crucial point, in terms of recreating that elusive Civ-2 MAGIC.

If i build any city-improvement or any tile-improvement i want the output-change to be directly and intuitively understandable in a graphic foods, shields, coins, lightbulbs, happy-faces, [any additions] -format. I dont want numbers.
A marketplace gives a clear and easy to understand 50% coin-increase, minus the greyed out corruption-coins. An irrigation gives an 50% food-increase (i dont remember exactly) from that particular square. This is what i mean: 25%, 50%, 100%, 200% - to this single product - easy to grasp benefit-factors!

What i DONT want is a game that forces the player to understand some multi/complex-related, multi-benefiting, percentage/fractions-numbered AND/OR/ELSE boolean mathematical god-damn formula. Sorry

I realise that the programmers deals with formulas, but for the love of God: keep them out of sight, and away from the players. From the players viewpoint, everything should be very easy-related and very intuitive - all in a nice and good KISS (Keep-It-Simple-Stupid) Civ-2 gameplay tradition.

Heres some thougts that i copied from a guy named Daniel Ban/ Deja.com:

"Sid wrote an afterword with some discussion of his design philosophy. What I remember is that Sid wrote that the hardest part of designing Civ was not in adding features but in keeping them out. Sid made the point that each and every feature added to a game has a cost, not just in developer time/effort but a GAMEPLAY cost.
Each feature will require the player to think about that feature. It may require clicking or micromanagement. It may require screen space or game time. Every time a designer adds a feature, the game gets larger, more crowded and more complicated. So Sid refused to add features that, although they sounded neato, would be overburden the game with details. I have always thought of the idea that adding features must be balanced against overloading game detail as "Sid Meier's Rule"."


About the "this makes it more realistic" arguments:

FIRST PRIORITY: What WORKS best in practice? Is it EASY to grasp? What actually ADDS something to gameplay?
Second priority: Is it realistic and compatible with real life?

Unwritten game-developing acronym-rule (well, at least it should be):
CIRARIC = Computergames isnt real-life, and real-life isnt computergames.

An example: In action-games like Quake and Half-life the developers dont even try to imitate exact human behaviour in order to pick up a weapon. The player simply runs over the ammo/weapon that lies on the floor. He hears a pick-up confirmation sound - but thats about it.
By comparison; the developers of a action-game called Trespasser (may it rest in peace) the player had to "physically" navigate an arm/hand in order to grab (and aim) a weapon.
The result was directly contra-productive in terms of both effectiveness and real-life realism. That game actually felt LESS realistic by this approach.

Sense moral: In order to imitate reality (also in games like Ctp2/Civ3), its often more effective to work with pre-understood assumptions, then trying to pedantically translate each and every real-life aspect physically on to the world-map or 3D game-screen.

Now, dont missunderstand me: Realism i great - but only as a second priority.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited November 30, 2000).]

[The diplomat]

quote: Originally posted by Ralf on 11-30-2000 04:53 PM I have read your and Tiberius posts a couple of times, and i think must redraw some of my early entusiasm Also, i think both yours and Tiberius calculation-examples suffers the same lengthy read-a-couple-of-times mathematical hard-to-digest problems, as in my critized example from the CTP-2 post. What i DONT want is a game that forces the player to understand some multi/complex-related, multi-benefiting, percentage/fractions-numbered AND/OR/ELSE boolean mathematical god-damn formula. Sorry [This message has been edited by Ralf (edited November 30, 2000).]

I guess I should have stopped while I was ahead

Well, I completely understand your point. I think you might have misundertood me. My explanations were meant to explain the inner workings, how the model works "under the hood". The player would not have to play with complicated %'s or anything. The city screen could be just as user-friendly and graphical as civ2!

If you don't mind, I'll try to explain my city idea again, this time with no fancy numbers. The idea is as simple as this:
-a city collects a fraction of the total city radius based on number of workers. More workers, more ressources.
-Exactly like in civ2, the player would see amount of food,shields and gold the city is collecting.
-food would allow pop growth. shields allow city improvements to be built. gold goes in taxes and science "beacons".

As far as the player would see, it is just as simple as civ2 but with less micromanagement.

I agree with the KISS principle. But I have many problems with the civ2 model. It is not a good model.


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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[airdrik]

Back to how to implement my idea of the city expanding at a 1 square-at-a-time basis, Forget the entire civ being one big conglomeration, and forget the merging of cities. instead, if a city gets big enough, you can choose to separate it into two different secters, kind of like the production centers I suggested. You don't have to.

As for how the ai would do the expanding, it could do it one of two ways: one is that it looks at all the adjacent tiles and picks the best one (or randomly selects between a tie). The other way is that it looks for the closest resourse tiles within x tiles and aims for it, adding squares until it reaches it.

Another way it could be implemented is that in order to expand into a certain adjacet tile, the tiles around it had to exceed a certain cumulative pop: x to expand into fertil ground, 2x for forest and hills, 3x for desert, swamp, and jungle, and 4x for mountains(if you expand onto them at all)

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by The diplomat on 11-30-2000 06:56 PM My explanations were meant to explain the inner workings, how the model works "under the hood". The player would not have to play with complicated %'s or anything.

Well, that i understood.

But, what the Civ-2/SMAC city-area model does so brilliantly (and that civers dont seem to miss, before its actually is streamlined away) is to display the exact inner relationship between each used city-area tile, and then graphically explaining by how much each of these tiles actually contributes to the city´s overal food-, recourse- and treasure-storages.
With a blink of an eye you can see that this developed tile contributs with exactly this amount of foods, shields or coins.

To have that kind of information about the "inner workings" of the city-area, in such a direct and intuitively easy-to-overview graphic format is really an example of KISS-philosophy in its purest form!


In your model, Diplomat, the player can ONLY see the total ADDED UP AMOUNTS. He cannot directly see and understand the exact inner relationships between the used tiles - and by how much each of these tiles actually contributes to the city´s overal food-, recourse- and treasure-storages.

This is going to raise questions amongst future civers (as it has over at the CTP-2 section).

Questions that that only can answer with some "number-crunching exercises" and lengthy "read several times before you understand" explanations (as it has over at the CTP-2 section).

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited December 02, 2000).]

[The diplomat]

Ralf: Now I think I understand what you are getting at. You are saying that the "total city radius" system is less intuitive to the player because it simply gives the player the end result and hides the way it got there. Whereas, civ2 by graphically showing how much each tile contributes, ends up being more intuitive to the player. For example, the civ player can easily see that, "that forest tile is giving me a bunch of shields and that other tile over there is giving me lots of food!" Am I correct? If so, you make a very strong argument and I agree with you completely.

Do you feel that civ2's city model (specifically, how it collects ressources and uses them) has any MAJOR flaws? If so, what are there? If there were a model that was different from civ2 but just as intuitive, would you like it?

Here is a new city model that I have come up with that tries to adress your concerns. You should like it:

Only certain tiles would produce ressources. For example, forest, mountains, river, beach, and special etc... (note how important good city placement would be!) When you settle a city, the tiles that produce ressources would show up in the city screen. Just like in civ2, the player would see little ressource icons on the tile itself thus showing the player what tile is producing ressources and how much. However, the player would not need to actually place workers on any tiles. All tiles that are allowed to produce ressources would produce ressources no matter how many workers a city has. But, the number of workers would determine how much ressources a single tile produces. So, the number of resources each tile can produce would increase with the population of the city. The player would see graphically how a tile is producing more ressources with more workers: a tile would have say 2 little "shield" icons on it at first, and 4 little "shield" icons later when the city was bigger.
The player could make the tiles that don't produce anything, start to produce ressources by placing tile improvements on them. For example, a grasslands tile would originally not produce anything but if you built a farm improvement on it, then it would produce food, and the player would see the tile with little "food" icons on it to show that it is now producing food.
So, this models would show what each tile is producing and how much in the same way as civ2 (ie with "food", "shield" and "gold" icons on them) but at the same time the player would not need to actually place any workers on them. Workers would simply increase how much each tile produces.

What do you think? I tried to combine the best of both models.
The reason I am so adamantly against physically placing workers on tiles to produce stuff, is because I don't like that system. I believe there has got to be a better way that reduces micromanagement while still remaining intuitive for the player.

I want to finish by saying that this thread is turning into a very intelligent debate. I am really enjoying our discussion.

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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[Ralf]

Diplomat quote: "Do you feel that civ2's city model (specifically, how it collects ressources and uses them) has any MAJOR flaws?"

I dont think the Civ-2 "Place workers on 21-tile city-area" model is a BIG problem at all. But that i think originates from my own personal playingstyle: founding max 18-25 cities, and only expand/conquer after the Alpha Centauri launch - and then the hassle of micro-managing a really large 40-60+ cities empire was an overcome-able problem, because it was relatively few turns left before the game was over.
I realize however that Firaxis cant develop a game only on basis of this specific playing-style. There are different needs out there, and its upto Firaxis to come up with effective city-mayor solutions, so that these micro-manage hassles can be minimized.

Its another thing however, that this model could be tweaked a little better. I always thought that AI-civs over-emphasized foods and under-emphasized shields a little. But as i said in some earlier post: That should be completely tweakable trough the txt-files in Civ-3.

Diplomat quote: "If there were a model that was different from civ2 but just as intuitive, would you like it?"

Im not principally against changes in the city-area model, so rest assure: your are not talking to a stonewall here. (as if i had any kind of influence over it whatsoever)

Its just that designing a complete overhaul of the Civ-2/SMAC city-area model, simply cannot be compared with just another feature-update. If a strong AI is the "engine", then the city-area model is the "gearbox" of the TBS Civ-game concept. This game-mechanical feature is really that important.
Unbalanced units, city- or tile-improvements can be tweaked in the txt-files; unbalanced governments likewise; added small features with bad side-effects can be toggled off/patched and many other small bugs or minor less succesful features can be fixed/tuned successively with patches.

But a flawed city-area model?

Given all the other complexities and demands on the game, i would be rather cautious to change it - at least change it radically. The problem is that i cannot see how that intuitive "inner workings" graphic tile-information can be displayed in any other, and better ways. You have mentioned added tile-info to your idea in your last post - but im having trouble with the idea itself.

quote: Originally posted by The diplomat on 12-01-2000 07:52 PM [quote]However, the player would not need to actually place workers on any tiles. All tiles that are allowed to produce ressources would produce ressources no matter how many workers a city has. But, the number of workers would determine how much ressources a single tile produces.

quote: The player could make the tiles that don't produce anything, start to produce ressources by placing tile improvements on them. For example, a grasslands tile would originally not produce anything but if you built a farm improvement on it, then it would produce food.

The problem is that with above model you have replaced city-area micro-managing with a new frustration-factor, and also probably increased the workload of the AI.

With the great Civ-2/SMAC model the player can choose freely what to emphasize:

- more workers on grassland to ensure a faster population-growth,
- more workers on forrest and mined hills to ensure faster resource-gathering, or
- more workers on sea/ocean to ensure a higher rate of trade-earnings

With your model the player cannot choose what to emphasize, and thats likely to get some people (me included) rather frustrated.

You can argue that one could put in emphazise-sliders in the city-screen there players can tweak what kind of output they want.

But, in this case, we are back to square one: You have replaced micro-managing the city-area view, with micro-managing those city-area sliders.

What is the principal difference here? (This seems to be a Catch-22 type of dilemma)

Also, in the city-area view the AI only does what you command it to do by point-an-click. Working with sliders the programmers is forced to "translate" complex changes from the sliders to the even more complex variations of city-areas. And that is likely to produce a rather "fuzzy" relationship between sliders-input and city-area view output.

Totally anti-KISS if you ask me.

quote: Only certain tiles would produce ressources. For example, forest, mountains, river, beach, and special etc... (note how important good city placement would be!)

Yes, but the human player can easily overview and easily estimate were to best place his cities.

For the poor AI-programmer however, working in hes black-box of infinite combinations of possible terrain-tiles mixtures that the map-generator can produce, the task have become even harder:
How the heck can he program the AI to effectively find those important good city placements, on an totally unknown map, amongst big quantitys of non-producing tiles?

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited December 03, 2000).]

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by Tiberius on 11-30-2000 03:13 AM make all buildings in a city population dependant! What do I mean? First of all, in the Civ2 system, you can build in a 3 or 4 size city all the CIs that are available. That's stupid!

But, isnt that a rather unlikely and hypothetical scenario?

WHY would the player want to build all available CI:s in a 3-4 sized city?
WHY invest so much resources in any small city?

It doesnt make sense.

The whole "problem" seems totally academic to me. Remember that the effectiveness of advanced late-game city-improvements IS often heavily dependent on population-sizes:

- The effects of universitys and science-labs is almost negligible in 3-4 sized cities.
- The effects of stock exchanges and super-highways is almost negligible in 3-4 sized cities.
- The effects of factorys and manufacturing-plants is almost negligible in 3-4 sized cities.
- The effects of chatedrals and police stations is simply not needed in 3-4 sized cities.

A full set of trade-routes can of course boost a small 3-4 sized city´s economy - but, by the time these trade-routes are established in those cities, they have already growt far beyond the size of 3-4.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited December 03, 2000).]

[Tiberius]

Sorry for not participating to the discussion, but I have Internet only at work, so in weekends I can't post.

Back to Civ3:
I quote Diplomat: "certain CI's should require a small amount of pop, to prevent small cities from building everything". That's the idea. Ralf, it's not that somebody wants to build everything in 3 size cities, but players should be forced to decide what they want: a lot of smaller cities close to each other or fewer, but better developed large cities. If you can't build factory+hydro_plant+mfg_plant (or library+university+research_center)in a 12 size city, that's a loss. So why shouldn't we encourage the development of big cities? And I ask you once again: Why only resource gathering is linked to the city size and resource processing (goods production) or other activities not ???

I agree that some CIs won't need any pop-support: barracks, aqueduct, granary. (Btw, Diplomat, the numbers were just an example, based on a first-look-common-sense. Important is the concept, at least now; details later)

quote: A good aspect about this idea of "pop support for city improvements" is that it forces the player to make a decision as to what city improvement to build. The player would have to make a choice because a city could not have everything right away. This adds more strategy.

That's a very good and valid point. Maybe Ralf didn't read it

Ralf, you are worried that players won't understand the system. Now, if you look at the city screen, and see that 40% of your pop is working on fields, 40% are working in CIs and 20% are unemployed (and they are unhappy), what's so hard to understand here? It's just like real life.

We started this (the thread) talking about the expanding city area concept. We all agreed that those 5-circle-layers huge cities from CTP2 are not the best anti ICS sollution. Linking pop to CIs it's an effective and easy to understand concept that helps big cities to become more important.

One more idea: let bigger cities to have more than 3 trade-routes. The trade-bonus will be one more arguement in the favor of big, well developed cities.

About Diplomat's tile-system: I don't know if I like it or not. I must think on it.

[Ralf]

Well, Tiberius - maybe i got myself too hooked up on that 3-4 size-example of yours. I didnt look any further. I realize that you and Diplomat have a point about half-max sized cities (and thats what a city of 12 population-points basically is, more or less) having virtually each and every city-improvement on the tech-tree, within its walls. So, should it be possible to build ALL city-improvements there is, in a 10-12 point city, in civ-3 as well? Answer: NO

On the other hand: I woudnt like it if i was forced to build "improved farmland" on 80-90% of the city-area, just to have that 24-28 city, in order to build those final end-tech CI:s, either. The reason is simply that such city-areas are to monotonous and darn right ugly to look at. I want a middle-ground all-CI:s size solution here.

If Firaxis ever decides to implement the "field/CI/unemployment-idea", i want it succesfully merged with the input-able city-area view in Civ-2/SMAC. With input-able city-area view the player can:

- See and understand the inner-workings between all used tiles within a blink of eye.
- Let the field-workers emphasize either food-, shield- or coin-generating tiles.

If it CANNOT be succesfully merged (= easy to overview and understand), i rather stick with the old Civ-2/SMAC input-able city-area view only. Any ideas?

Finally: Remember that there are other suggested game-concepts that fights over city-screen space as well. I have some hopes for a brand new stand alone game-parameter: Health.
I like it, because the health-parameter generates many nice spinn-offs. The basic idea (i think) is that full health means that the foods-, shields-, coins- and lightbulbes-production continues problem-free, like in Civ-2. Beneath full health means that all those four areas suffers gradually and accordingly.
Another reason for good city-development: Granary, Bathhouse, Sewersystem, Farmacy, Hospital

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited December 04, 2000).]

[Tiberius]

I just can't stop thinking that the major decisions about Civ3 are already taken, so it's a bit useless to debate here field/CI/city radius/.... But, anyway, good ideas never hurt.

I agree with you about health (just don't see the connection with our debate so far ). I hope that a missing aqueduct won't limit the size of a city to 8, but along with the lack of other health improvements (bathhouse, pharmacy, hospital) increases the chances for diseases, plagues, etc.

Oh, I see now a connection. It's about (again) strategic decisions: I must create big cities for production and trade bonuses but I have to take care about the people: health, employment, happiness.
I like it

[Deathwalker]

Personally I like the idea of a fixed max city area size, like civ's 21 squares. I think if you make it expanded like I hear CTP 2 the placement of cities can be ruined?

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I have walked since the dawn of time and were ever I walk, death is sure to follow

[Grumbold]

It seems to me that Civ-2 controlled excessive improvement building in small towns by maintenance cost. Until a civ has grown into a sprawling Republic with several well developed cities it cannot afford to support loss-making improvements like banks or factories in a size 3 city. The CtP games have run into a few problems because they don't seem to tread cash as such a hard to obtain commodity. Requiring population to support an improvement is another quite elegant solution but I instinctively dislike fractional costs. I would be tempted to leave no pop cost on early construction then add them in integer units to banks, factories etc.

The map scale of even the largest game world is unlikely to get anything but the biggest city to occupy more than one tile. However I like the concept of expansion. I would suggest that a city could exploit:
1 square with no improvements
2 squares with connecting road improvements and a depot in the city
3 squares with connecting rail plus railyard
4 squares with motorways/maglev and advanced depot.

That should allow cities to grow in more sensible ways, i.e. not a rigid radius but drawing resources along communication routes. Only the completist would bother pushing motorways out through appalling terrain just to make every tile within the maximum radius exploitable. Meanwhile two large cities could grow up close to each other but on opposite sides of a mountain range.

Slightly off topic, but I also like the idea of terraforming and motorway/maglev being impossible through mountains. Man's ability to adapt his environment to himself has some limits!

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by Grumbold on 12-05-2000 11:16 AM Requiring population to support an improvement is another quite elegant solution but I instinctively dislike fractional costs. I would be tempted to leave no pop cost on early construction then add them in integer units to banks, factories etc.

I agree about no pop-cost on early CI:s, and also the integer thing. Lets keep it simple in those future Civ-3 game-manuals, shall we.

quote: However I like the concept of expansion. I would suggest that a city could exploit: 1 square with no improvements 2 squares with connecting road improvements and a depot in the city 3 squares with connecting rail plus railyard 4 squares with motorways/maglev and advanced depot. That should allow cities to grow in more sensible ways, i.e. not a rigid radius but drawing resources along communication routes.

The fixed 21-square area is fully acceptable for me, but i think also your idea have some nice points (i reckon you mean 4 squares = 4 squares away, of course). However, under three non-negotiable conditions:

- Apart from the city-tile itself - max 20 area-tiles (to avoid "city-area tile-inflation", like in CTP-2).
- Powerful non-city-area related anti-ICS preventions (otherwise ICS gets worse, by this approach).
- I must have that input-able city-area view - without it, this idea is 100% dead - at least in my eyes.

Under those conditions, i could just about accept this idea. But what about ocean-tiles? Also, maybe 3 tiles away is enough? - otherwise that city-area view gets too big (or tile collect-symbols too small).
My fear is also that the AI perhaps cannot exploit this idea nearly as good as the human player. If this approach is more "AI-unfriendly" then the old one, i would rather stick with the old trusted 21-square fixed radius model.

quote: Slightly off topic, but I also like the idea of terraforming and motorway/maglev being impossible through mountains. Man's ability to adapt his environment to himself has some limits!

Non-transformable and mines/roads-only mountains is not just a question of realism. Also, the map looks nicer then not each and every square is railroaded or maglev-ed.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited December 05, 2000).]