Civ4: City Specializations?

[Andreiguy]

Civ's city system seems fundamentally flawed.
First of all, cities should contribute to the NATION, not just to themselves. The player could then assign revenues to specific cities.
A specialization (which could be made after a city reaches a size of 4 or 5, say) would not mean that a city is bound to that, for example a trading, industrial, or administrative city would produce some food, but after a point would need to be supported from the national supply.
Specializations would give specific targets in war, for example, a targeted attack on industry, a blockade of a trading city, or a "shock and awe" attack on an administrative city.

TRADING City - (Hong Kong, China) Such cities would bring wealth to the nation. They would not have to be on water, but would have very large bonuses if they were, especially in the early ages.

INDUSTRIAL City - (Detriot) Such cities would produce units and provide shields for large improvements and wonders in other cities for a nation.

AGRICULTURAL City - (Kansas City) Just because cities like Kansas City are centers for agriculture doesn't mean they're the biggest cities...In Civ 3, they would be. In Civ4 they could support the other cities with food.

ADMINISTRATIVE City - (Denver) Like the effects of the Forbidden Palace, these cities would have no corruption and would dramatically reduce it around them. Capitals would not have to be administrative, but would be by default.

RESEARCH City - (Space City, Russia) These cities would have huge research bonuses, but would be severly hampered in growth if not supported by other cities.

ENTERTAINMENT City - (Los Angeles) These cities would bring large happiness bonuses (depending on size) to the entire nation.

Once a city reaches a certain size, it could double, triple, etc. up depending on its surroundings.
New York, size 30, for example, could be TRADING, INDUSTRIAL, and ENTERTAINMENT.

In a national system, shields could then by traded via diplomacy. This would be much more realistic.

[pedrojedi]

That's a great idea! But it would be definitely be a Civ4 trait, and such change in the mechanics of the game would require a a lot of change from the current systems, to make it feasable but not too easy to kick some AI ass, since such changes would definitely benefit the human player, IF the AI of civ3 were applicable in this setting.

Advantages of this system would be a new "environment"/map that would could use, in a simple way: an in-nation trade-route map, making trade routes through the civ linking cities with happiness, food, and the player must set the optimum distribution.

There's also another opinion... Such configuration already exists, but in a much less detailed degree. You can set a city to be commercial, agricultural, scientific or productive, just by choosing some city improvements and not building them in other cities. The flaw is, you'll have a great disadvantage over the AI and there are no trade routes to bring a high happiness city's happy resources to a productive sad city with low resources.

[Spiffor]

I think city specialization will be done naturally if there is a comprehensive way to trade food and shields between cities and civs.

For example, if food can be traded, a city surrounded by hills becomes a viable site, bent on producing massive amounts of shields. If food can be traded, you can turn the whole population of your Newton's University city into scientists, and let them get fed by cities whose sole purpose will be agriculture (that's assuming scientists' output rises when there are proper improvements). If shields can be traded, your remote island city can become a naval powerhouse.

Some time ago, I thought of an easy interface to trade food and shields.
The basic principle is this : you take some food from a connected city, so that it gets pooled, and you give this pooled food to another city. No caravan units, no bilateral logic. The logic is not "City A sends food to City B". The logic is 'City A gives food to the nation's pool ; City B takes food from the nation's pool".

More precisely, it could like like this. Here is City A :

Notice the +and - buttons left of the bar. By clicking the - button, you take food from the city to give it to the pool.

Once you have taken 2 food, the trade advisor could look like this :


There is now food City B can use.

Click on the + button, and voilà ! City B will grow again.


Same mechanics with shields. Food and shields in the "pool" would be tradable with other Civs the same way as resources and luxuries.

[pedrojedi]

Nice simple idea

edit: It would also give a new diplomatic option!

[Panag]

hi ,

, it seems new traits are needed , ....


what should indeed be needed is something like "city states" civ's , civ's that only have one or two cities , they should be able to produce a bit faster , have loads of money , etc , .....

great idea

have a nice day

[Gramphos]

I love Spiffors idea.

That and stockpiling (per tradenetwork level) of all resources would be a very good thing for Civ4.

[The Mad Monk]

I was thinking along the same term as Spiffor, myself.

Both the civ money system, and the MoO2 freighter system show ways in which this could be accomplished. This pooling system represents a third. Abuses could be prevented (to food, and especially to shields) by requiring the building of freighters (otherwise nonexistant, like MoO2 frieghters), having the ability to send food and shields dependent on trade routes, like Civ3 resources, and having losses to the pool, based on overall corruption rates.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
having the ability to send food and shields dependent on trade routes, like Civ3 resources, and having losses to the pool, based on overall corruption rates.

I was precisely thinking along these lines, but maybe the waste would also be dependant of tech (better alimentation techs makes food waste less terrible).

I don't know for the freighters, though, it might be too much micromanagement.

[The Mad Monk]

You wouldn't actually have to move freighters around; what 'freighters' would do is dictate the maximum size of the pool, and/or how much could be sent from or to a given city. That way, it would be up to the player to decide how much to build up the internal trade network, knowing that cities that are building freighters can't be focusing on their own improvement or producing units.

[pedrojedi]

It would be aproximatelly like CtP

[Fishman]

I've found that some city specialization happens because of terraine and wonders. Iron Works, collosus, Newtons create city specializations.

As more of a builder type myself, most primary cities tend to get the same buildings. More building types might be the answer.

Have you tried Kal-el's Double your Pleasure mod?
With so many more wonders and buildings and slower growth, city specialization is more important.

[Panag]

Originally posted by pedrojedi
It would be aproximatelly like CtP

hi ,


, it should be way morte improved then CtP

have a nice day

[Spiffor]

I haven't tried the DyP mod, but I should give it a go. Does the AI understand it, and play with it with sufficient wits ?

[pedrojedi]

panag, that's why I said "aproximatelly".

Building a good web of trading should be possible in a future civ game, since it would make commercial attacks more varied and you could concentrate certain products on certain cities, creating monopolies and stuff.

[peterfharris]

Originally posted by Spiffor
I haven't tried the DyP mod, but I should give it a go. Does the AI understand it, and play with it with sufficient wits ?

The AI does O.K. but does suffer a bit as is usual with modifications. You will therefore most probably need to go up a level in difficulty.

Excellent mod, I recommend you try it. I no longer play vanilla Civ since I found DyP.

[peterfharris]

Originally posted by Spiffor

I was precisely thinking along these lines, but maybe the waste would also be dependant of tech (better alimentation techs makes food waste less terrible).

I don't know for the freighters, though, it might be too much micromanagement.

The MOO2 freighter system is extremely simple. You just build the freighters and forget about them, all freight movements are handled automatically. Of course, you pay gold per turn for the freighters so you must not build too many (or you can scrap some).

I reckon Spiffors' suggestion would be an excellent addition to Civ. You could build the freighters, give a distribution order to some cities and forget about it.

[bobbo008]

or how about building a "mega" thing, like a huge dock... in my current game, my best port can build a battleship in 2-3 turns (i forgot which). it would be cool, since that's all the city produces now, since they're experts at it now, you'd think, they would become "prized" battleships, maybe elite automatically or something.

[Master Zen]

Interesting but I think cities specialize by them selves naturally. Just think about a huge 100+ shield city with the Iron Works. Wouldn't that be your Detroit or Essen? How about a city with the Colossus, Copernicus' Observatory and Newton's University, wouldn't that be your science city?

Of course, it would be nice to specialize a bit more..

[Spiffor]

Re: freighters. Well, that might be an excellent idea then. After all, I had a bit of trouble thinking about the implementation of the actual cost of such a trade network. I'm not sure if these costs are necessary (after all, resources and luxuries get dispatched across your empire for free), but the freighter system at best avoids abuses, and at worst doesn't add too much clutter, so I guess it's not bad

bobbo008 : that's a good idea

[JRK]

I like Spiffor's +- idea on food trade--it is very simple and would be easy to implement--but it does not allow for an easy method of introducing waste/corruption. If your two cities are land-locked and a thousand miles apart, it is difficult to see how that would be able to be treated as differently as two cities twenty miles apart and connected by a river. I think city-city trade routes are still most appropriate, with a portion of the food rotting before its arrival.
Also, the cost of the food route could be taxed if it goes through another nation or it could be made expensive if unnecessarily long. This proposal would definately be more demanding (concerning micromanagement) than the pooling idea, but I can't see how the other way would possibly deal with the differentiated corruption of very distant and very proximate cities.

Of course, when dealing with civ3 it is a reality that we seriously need to avoid more micromanagement

[JRK]

Also, concerning shield-sharing. I'm not exactly sure what the game considers a shield to be, but it seems as if at least some of the problem could be rectified if workers could be regarded as extra production. If you pool fifty workers together, it seems as if you could get some public works projects done a bit sooner.

Maybe if we called them engineers in the modern ages...

[JRK]

I should probably add something about group movement on this. I don't want to be moving my fifty workers around every couple of turns

[Panag]

Originally posted by bobbo008
or how about building a "mega" thing, like a huge dock... in my current game, my best port can build a battleship in 2-3 turns (i forgot which). it would be cool, since that's all the city produces now, since they're experts at it now, you'd think, they would become "prized" battleships, maybe elite automatically or something.

hi ,

, a small wonder " dry dock " , great idea

it should help to speed up the repairs on both your own and allies ships , one extra commerce for the city that build it and it would allow to build a type of UU naval unit , like the yamamoto or a large more powerfull ( only one for each civ ) battelship

have a nice day

[Spiffor]

Panag : this "dry dock" is a great idea

[Sultan Richard]

With the food --

Assuming that the food will be transported using the regular trade rules (harbour/airport/roads ...) could the distance be calculated between where the pool is stord (assuming a building that acts as a pool HQ) and the target city, then the tils distance could be used to calculate food loss.

Eg, two cities close to each other will have negligible food loss, but two cities far away will have significant food loss, unless you build another pool HQ near it.

This idea could be linked into the Province idea whereby each Province has its own pool, or some might want a unified pool for the whole nation, or groups of pools for different provinces/cities etc.

[dexters]

Pft, it can just be a formula where a constant, say 0.01 is multiplied by a factor for age and distance (I think the cpu is very good at calculating distances between two points).

In the ancient age, you may have an age factor of 10 and for every tile (assumung Civ 4 is tile based) you multiply it by 1.

So food loss for two cities 4 tiles apart would be 10 X 4X 0.01 or 0.4

How do you break this fractional unit down to fit the current food system?

The food system just get reworked into fractions.

[Jamski]

It would be quite simple to have a trade system like in Colonisation, but with fewer traded goods, setting up the trade route and then watching the cracan, ship, wagon go back and forth automatically. That would be nice, and people could attck the trade ntwork directly - at last a use for privateers.

-Jam

[MoonWolf]

Actually it can be done very simple without any central pool. To summarize the ideas I here, I suggest the following:

-Have +/- to decide how much the city should contribute to the empire of food and shields
-Let the corruption affect you gold pile, not the individual city
-Make some local adjustments for trade/science be possible. Scientists are also paying taxes, so no city should be without income

Panag, liked your "dry dock" idea! Made me think if I could make something possible in Civ3, but how to make bonuses available when only building certain units? Hmmm....

[Panag]

Originally posted by MoonWolf
Actually it can be done very simple without any central pool. To summarize the ideas I here, I suggest the following:

-Have +/- to decide how much the city should contribute to the empire of food and shields
-Let the corruption affect you gold pile, not the individual city
-Make some local adjustments for trade/science be possible. Scientists are also paying taxes, so no city should be without income

Panag, liked your "dry dock" idea! Made me think if I could make something possible in Civ3, but how to make bonuses available when only building certain units? Hmmm....

hi ,

thanks for liking the dry dock ( panag thinks back when he was asking firaxis for a 360 X 360 map and everyone told him it was not possible )

well there are several buildings that civ III could use to build certain units , but the problem is the coding , .....

Gramphos , any ideas on this

or could Mike or Soren take a look at it

anyway , it remains a great idea for an XP or civ IV

but who knows , look at the large map , everyone told me i was nutz , but after a long talk in a chat with firaxis , surprise , surprise , ..... so who knows what lays around the corner , ....

have a nice day

[MoonWolf]

Originally posted by panag

well there are several buildings that civ III could use to build certain units , but the problem is the coding , .....

It can't be that impossible. Like it is now, you can set paramaters that won't allow you to build certain buildings until you have an other one (like you need library to build university). If a simple patch can add this to units, the problem for specializing in unit production is solved.

Let's make an example with your "dry dock". This can of course only be built in coastal cities and as a small wonder. This building must be present to be able to build e.g. a certain battleship that are greater and/or cheaper (cheaper to simulate more efficent production). As this battleship can only be build in a city with the "dry dock", it is specialized!

Yeah, I like big maps too! I might only play on the smaller ones if I'm playtesting something.