Note: The current summary is incomplete. There are still ideas from the previous thread to include, as well as some of the final suggestsions (Ember) to slot in.

Shining1

[This message has been edited by Shining1 (edited May 30, 1999).]

The idea for a regional menu grew out of the need to make micromanagement of cities, especially towards the endgame, less of a problem. In addition, a majority of posters felt that the current setup in civII and smac did not 'feel' correct - more like a collection of individual city states than a cooperative, organised civilisation.

1.1) GEOGRAPHICAL REGIONALISATION -- Every civilisation is divided up into different regions, based on a capital surrounded by a radius 8 area of land (or square, etc). Citys that are properly linked to the capital within this radius (i.e by road) can exchange resources, and the player can access any city from any other city with that region from the regional map, a popup feature within the city menu. Regions can be named, have their own internal borders, can be set identical production queues, and make city management a simpler process. As well, some social engineering factors (values) and the tax rate can be altered for each region. (done either through options in the capital of the region or the social settings screen).

1.2) PROGRESSIVE REGIONALISATION -- many posters felt that the first system, having a fixed distance around the capital city, was too limiting. The suggestions was that regions begin as individual cities, and gradually expand as a civilisation advances.

1.3) REGIONAL IMPROVEMENTS -- Regionalisation also opens the door for regional improvements, which would be: 1) structures built in one city but which affect every city in that region (suggest stock exchange, federal police force, as examples). 2) improvements built on a regional basis (from the regional window) and which exist only a regional improvement (i.e not present in any particular city). Some wonders may also operate on a regional basis (suggest Hoover dam and J.S Bach's cathedral, if retained).

1.4) HOW TO APPLY REGIONS -- There are a myriad of suggestions around as to how to impliment the regional build and management options. Some posters feel that regions should control everything, taking resources from cities and building improvements, units, etc CtP style, and only applying them to an individual city once construction is completed. The city menu would then be greatly reduced, even eliminated, as a game feature. I feel this is too limiting initally, but would become very useful in the late game, where micromanaging individual cities becomes exceedingly tiresome.

A signicant number of posters felt again that regions should be run according to historical rules, starting as a group of city states (a greek ethnos for instance), and gradually becoming more and more interlinked, ending up as more or less a single entity, such as the northwest U.S.A.

1.5 REGIONAL MENU INTERFACE (still currently my own suggestions)

* GEOGRAPHICAL VIEW - a slightly zoomed out version of the 3D isometric view, showing the capital at the centre and the surrounding cities. Each city menu can be accessed from this screen in either a right-click and hold popup form or the actual thing itself.

This has an option to shows resource output per city below each city, and also any resource transfer to cities within this region.

* BY CITY VIEW - a menu showing infrastructure for each city, including improvments, garrisions, resource production and current production (this would take approximately 2 lines per city, based on civII). You cannot view the geography using this form of the window.

Regional Menu Options:
* POOL RESOURCES - allows resources to be contributed to 'regional projects', and, once the appropriate transport tech has been discovered, to build city improvements for an individual city using this system.

* SET BUILD QUEUE - allows the player to set an item or list of items as the current production for EVERY city in the region, and allows the player to set exceptions to this. Useful for changing over techs, e.g building musketeers and an upgraded barracks upon discovering gunpowder.

* REGIONAL TERRAFORMING - allows the player to take a number of citizens from a city or cities, and use them to make a terraform build queue of areas of the regional terrain. These citizens do not have to be settler units (terraformin and settler unit ideas described below).

* INCLUDE CITY/EXCLUDE CITY: given the likelyhood that a large number of cities will overlap in any regional setup, this gives the oppotunity to set a particularly city as part of the region or not. Suggest two methods: a button on the regional screen that will switch to a cursor that toggles city status when clicked, and an inside city button that will show the available regions (based on radius?) and allow the player to select one.

Finally, the "find city" buttons on the city menu screen are replaced with the "view region" and "view capital" screens.

1.6 WORTH OF REGIONS -- While there seems enough by way of material to justify the inclusion of regions in some form in CivIII, it is still uncertain whether they are the best way to solve city micromanagment issues. A simple resource transfer system, the ability to move from city to city easily using a map view (suggest a system similar to the point and click Total Annihiliation mini-map, with bigger dots perhaps), and a well implemented build queue system, with the ability to send the same orders to multiple cities, all would help.

2. CITY MENU SCREEN

Ideas and suggestions for improving the current city menu system.

2.1) TERRAFORMING -- Terraforming is now handled by citizens from inside the city menu, by settlers from the main map, or, when the appropriate transport tech is discovered, from the regional menu. Each city gets a terraforming build queue, and a 'hurry' button to rush improvements for money. A certain number of citizens are allocated jobs as Masons, Yeomen or Engineers (each of which builds faster than before). Terraforming outside a city is handled the normal way, using settlers, or by workers from the regional map, as mentioned above.

As such, the main map will need a 'work in progress' type icon to indicate the current square around each city that is being improved (only one square at a time can be done, unless settlers are used externally).
An RTS type system, with an inbetween icon to indication an incomplete building, is suggested (currently, there is no way in SMAC or CivII to stop terraforming, move away, and return to the job, knowing that X turns have been completed with Y turns left to go).

This system makes terraforming simpler and much quicker, if required, allowing the basic links between cities to be established quickly.

2.2) SETTLERS -- These become more flexible, as well as being able to leave the city and terraform/found citys, they can also temporarily rejoin a city population as either workers or terraformers (done as an option in the list of options each unit has when activated in the city). They can provide external benefits to a city, able to both terraform terrain outside the city square and access production squares similarly inaccessable, when within the city region (think combined terraformer/supply crawler behaviour). This issue seems to cause some confusion, and it has been suggested that the interface for all terraforming units - whether inside or outside the city - be the same to avoid confusion. I agree.

There is also a suggestion for movement benefits (*2 move or all squares cost 1) for units within your own borders, which would make terraforming less of a problem, even when outside the defined regions of your empire.

Finally, the hardy Settler citizens are never unhappy, making them a welcome addition to any city menu.

2.3) UNIT PRODUCTION -- A suggestion that many units, particularly offensive fighters, should require their own structure to be produced before they can be constructed was generally well received. A system that allowed any city to build that era's basic infantry (i.e civilian milita type mobilisation), but required more complex units, especially offensive forces, to have facilities in place is what is currently proposed.

In addition, upgrades to these facilities make more workshop items available. Feedback for this is positive. Any more comments?

It was also suggested that structures inside a city be allowed to produce units concurrently, so you can have a barracks building a swordsman AND and siege workshop building a catapult simultainiously in the same city.

A similar idea was proposed for structures, but eventually abandoned. However, it was agreed that current production of a structure should be allowed to be mothballed, if the player wishes to change production temporarily.

Posters were divided over which permutation of these rules should apply to Wonders - there was a general feeling that they should require more attention (2/3 of production was suggested) than normal units or structures.

Envisioned construction window - much like civII (bottom left) but with six slots - three buildings (top of window), three unit facilities (bottom of window) (reflecting the limited skills of a single city - as in real life).

2.4) CURRENT MILITARY IMPROVEMENTS:

CIVILIAN MILITA: produces clubs and bronze spears, swords, and armour. This 'structure' is always present in a new city, and allows the most basic of weapons (of any age) to be constructed.

ANCIENT BARRACKS: Produces more complicated infantry units (iron weapons and bows, when technology allows), as well as mounted units.
+ Stables (provides horses)
+ Archery range (makes bows)
+ Blacksmith (steel weapons)

SIEGE WORKSHOP: Produces ancient mechanical devices, catapults, balista, siege engines.
+ forge (iron components for ballista, etc)
+ gantry (constructs siege engines)

HARBOUR: Not military per se, but can support addons that allow military units.
+ Construction yard (builds triemes)

DEEP HARBOUR
+ Construction yard (builds galleys/frigates)
+ Forge (builds ironclad vessels)
+ Coastal defense (+50% to land/sea engagements)

The ideas for military infrastructure go well with the idea to divide civIII into Ages, similar to AoE, but not crap.

2.5) INFRASTRUCTURE RATING -- A suggestion that a system of 'levels' for city developement in various areas, e.g industry and religion. A city with a higher level in one area is more effective at that task, and infrastructure is built to increase the city's level. This would work very well with social engineering, if the settings were the same. For instance (using modified SMAC settings):

Factory (+5 industry)
Library (+5 research)
Hospital (+2 growth)

Social settings would then have to increase city production, instead of decreasing the production required for completion of a task. (No bad thing - this would avoid the potential industry cheat in SMAC).

2.6) SPECIALISTS

Serf - unhappy worker, suffers -1/3 production (see below)
Worker - works in city radius square
Farmer* - improves food output by 1 in square
Trader* - improves arrows ouput by 1 in square
Miner* - improves shields output by 1 in square.
Mason - terraforming unit.
Settler - special unit, can work or terraform, but cannot be a specialist. Can move from town to town. Must be constructed first, as per civII rules. Never becomes unhappy.
Scientist - + sci
Tax collector - + tax (limit 1 per 5 citizens)
Entertainer**- produces luxuries (make normal citizen happy).
Priest** - makes unhappy citizen happy (1 per 5 citizens allowed)
Governor - available only in regional centres, or cities outside of a region. Improves efficiency for region or city (by +3, assuming a 0-10 scale for each social engineering value). Only one allowed, and only at capital/regional centres (represents the regional beuracracy - a significant investment in human resources in any culture to date).

* Farmers and traders appear automatically when in the right square, and require certain technologies to be discovered first. They can also be manually selected. However, they limit mineral output to a maximum of 2. A Miner get +1 minerals, but destroys ALL food output in their square (they also appear much later in the game).

** Entertainers and priests both improve city happiness, but in different ways. Entertainers affect both normal and unhappy citizens, in the normal CivII way. Priests affect ONLY unhappy citizens, making them normal. Thus, priests are usually first required, but are limited, both by the number allowed and in that they do not generate happy citizens.

Happy citizens make better specialists, adding +1 to tax, sci, or effic. Priests and Entertainers are not improved by this, however.

Unhappy citizens are less productive, slowing terraforming and work output by 1/3. They cannot become specialists (including farmers, etc), and may revolt if present in great enough numbers. They represent the discontent part of the population, the landless peasants etc.

2.7) OTHER SUGGESTIONS --

* Trachyr has suggested that food be divided up into various types (meat, produce, dairy, etc). I feel this creates too much unnecessary micromangement, especially at the end game. However, if done on a regional or global scale, this could be an interesting addition to the game (the vegetarian empire? ).

* There was also a suggestion of reducing the city radius size to 1 square instead of 2 (cutting available land from 21 squares to 9, but allowing more cities to be built. While increasing individual management problems, with the regional approach this may be overcome, and result in more realistic empires. It also leads to more use of specialists, since excess population cannot be used as workers (though more obvious benefits from using happy citizens as specialists *might* overcome this somewhat in other models).

List of names.

Instead of having a interelated structures EACH capable of producting units, I suggest a modification: use ONE structure and have addons to that structure to allow more units.

E.g

ANCIENT BARRACKS
+ Stables
+ Archery range
+ Blacksmith

SIEGE WORKSHOP
+ forge
+ gantry

HARBOUR
+ Construction yard

Keeping upgrades cheap is important. Also, when producing units, the player selects ONE of the three available structures to build with and gets a list of units available at THAT structure only, as well as a list of addons that this structure has. Units that are available but cannot be produced are greyed out.

The region size should be larger or variable, if civ3 is going to support very large maps like CTP(Which I hope it does), 8 squares isnt much. Regions are supposed to be a top level of management and having 20+ regions in your nation, defeats that purpose.

I see two options, either make a real tree like structure, allowing regions to be structured in superregions, which would be great but conceptual difficult to handle for a lot of novice players, or make the region size dependent on mapsize. The most difficult with the last is how to calculate what the size should be on custom map sizes(f.x. 43x187).

As for the other topic of modifications of base structures, this is EXACTLY how I always have dreamt of it. It would fit perfectly with custom designed unit:
BARRACK: Allows for infantry base-units(chassis)
BLACKSMITH: Allows for units with iron armors
WEAPONSMITH: Allows for shields and swords
... etc.

Regions could be predefined on the map when the game starts, and tnd to be divided by, mountain ranges and rivers. The algorithm would have to make sure that there is enough food producing and resource producing terrain in each region (a question, would cities built on the border of a region be allowed to collect resources from outside the region?)

I think that the ability to have a single national region does make sence, especially if there is dificulty in implimenting the smaller regions.
In ancient times a civ made of two regions wouldn't be one civ, it would be two allied civ's working together temporarily...

Instead, I counter, that it is the network of all human populaces, all structures (mines. roads, barracks, factories, ect.), and how they interact that decide if a nation is to succede or fail.

Regions
Regions, by their definition, is the combined character of a geographical location. To represent this, regions must be added to CIV3.
Various methods of creating regions has been discussed in other threads. I prefer computer generated, fixed regions. These would conform to terrain and natural boundries (rivers, mountains, Ocean). Regions would also have a maxinum size.
I do not believe that fixed regions would subtract from the game, since real-life regions have remained the same thoughout history, though their names have been changed, and they have been contested.
Regions would form the primary borders of a society, contested regions would have interior borders similar to SMAC.

Habitation and Population
Before cities were constructed, people were nomadic... or semi-nomadic. This needs to be represented in CIV3. My suggestion would be to treat NOMADIC POPULATIONS as a mobile city, but not "improvable".
Eventually settlements were built, which grew into towns, which grew into cities.
I believe settlements should be reprented with evolving grapichs which expand to additional tiles as the settlement expands.

The concept of city improvements is simply an abstract for the implementaion of new technology within a city. I believe CIV gamers can handle a more realistic aproach to city development:
1) Technology implementation- When new technology which can benifit a settlement (let's say an Aqueduct) is discovered, that tech must first be implemented. This cost revenue (an alternative name for GOLD), and is based upon the size of a city (It is harder to incorporate new tech into larger, more stable cities). This expenditure reprensts the cost of materials, the cost to educate engineers, and incentives to implement the technology. Once the technology is implemented, it provides it's benefits to the settlement (in this case a reduction in negative health modifiers due to overcrowding and allowing larger cities). Technology may be implemented on a city, regional or national level to reduce micromanegement.

2) City improvement. A city has many diffrent aeras in which to improve... Housing, Industry, Economy, Recreation and so on. I suggest abstract level to each aera. Thus a city with a level 4 Indusstry typically can produdue more than one with a Level 3 Industry. Improvement require Public Works, similar to CtP. To increase in an aera, a certain number of PW must be spent. Like-wise any nessacary tech must have been implemented. (In our example above, an aqueduct will allow habitation Level 4 & 5 to be reached. If the city was at Habitation 3, it would need x amount of public works to reach 4 now that Aqueducts have been implemented.)
Settlements improve semi-automatically... they only use PW to improve a level if that aera is becoming inefficient due to # of people using it. (# of factory workers for Industry, total population for Habitation). As inefficency rises, a larger percent of available PW will be used to enhance that aera. You may also set Priority numbers to the diffrent aeras. This allows a more "hands-off" approach and highly reduced micromanement (you simply choose what percent of PW to enhance the city, priorities are optional, the computer does the rest based upon your population and workforce). As city level in these aeras increase, the settlement will expand to empty tiles, become denser or expand upwards. If you run out of room, you city will stagnate.

Workforce
Your workforce is handled on a city or regional basis, depending on your "National Goverment Level" (Independant/Regional/Federal).

Workforce determines not only what you produce/build but how your cities develop as well (A city lith Level 8 Industry due to a lot of factory workers is much different than a city with Level 8 religion due to lots of clergy. Detroit vs. the Vatican)

All other projects utilize PW, from mines to roads to Wonders(which appear on the map)

The result will be a highly graphical representation of you NATION, not just cities. Also Micromanement of city improvement is eased, to allow for more detailed workforce, supply and economy.

Personally, I feel that a mix of regional developement and individual works are the way to go. In the early game, 99% of all work will be done on a per city basis - up until you get around 8 cities.

At the end game, where you can easily find yourself managing an empire of 30+ cities, most work will be done on a regional basis. Hence we need a system that still allows the player to perform a specific task in an individual city, but also the option of grouping cities together to make construction more efficient and to minimise mircromanagement (i.e, you get 9 cities working on a single structure that can be placed anywhere, so instead of managing 9 individual slow construction jobs, you deal with 1 fast one each turn).

I feel the idea of forcing all developement to be done on a regional basis is a bit too limiting. The best way might be using the tech tree, soc settings, and terraforming to gradually allow more interaction between cities, and, eventually, regions.

Super regions sound a bit difficult to impliment - can you provide more details? Otherwise it seems you can end up with a potentially endless hierarchy of regions. I think that the 'capital screen' suggestion is a good idea though - listing each region, it's output, etc.

Instead of slaves, how about serfs.

I still think this lacks flexibility - surely it would be better to allow BOTH systems - maybe enabling the regional map to do 80% of the regular tasks (positioning citizens, starting production, terraforming etc), and leave cities to manage the remaining ideas.

Otherwise, you run into problems with having cities outside of a region - or else you have to cheapen the idea of a region and make them easily redefinable - instead of tying the game together by building capitals, regional centres, roads, etc.

Moreover, it becomes unrealistic to manage city happiness from a regional perspective. More over, you hamper the gameplay, by forcing the player to go from the main map to the regional map to get to a city. Regions are defined to make city management easier - when trying to manage multiple cities at one time. But you will still need to access individual cities on a turn by turn basis, as conflicts and the like develop.

Trav: Close, but no cigar. I need a name for an ancient citizen that identifies him as a builder - the 2000BC equivilent of an engineer.

On a different note, and i am sure this has been mentioned before, but this seems the right thread for it, I think that cities should go in radius over time, possibly encompassing other regions, and thereby creating conglomerations like the Northeastern US or the ruhrgebiet in germany. To support these cities you'd have to have smaller, farmer cities around it to support your big cities with food, whereas the large cities provide the smaller cities with produce and luxuries.
Now I can see that you would need a far larger map to do this effectively (so you can't just build 2-3 large cities in Europe for example), thereby increasing your micromanagement, though you could take care of that by making the farmer villages largely automated thereby reducing the workload.

The variable radius idea is a bit tricky - I remember reading somewhere that Brian tried for SMAC and threw it out because it wasn't fun. Civilistation is constantly an attempt to balance implict and explict variables with fun gameplay - you can't simply include everything that occurs in real life (but I'll include your suggestion, of course. It seems to be very popular).

How about this idea though - using workers within the regional screen to expand (even invalidate) the city radius idea. Once the requiste technology is discovered, you can truck citizens to any square within the region and have them go to work.

Thus, you can end up with most of the endgame (again) being managed through the regional menu screen, as you effectively have a group of cities working together, in all respects (the northeastern US, for instance).

As for minor cities, I suggest a new terraforming idea - the village. Villages are built on one square, and provide the resources in that square to the main city, without having to have citizens present.

Properties of villages are open to ideas - I suggest they add +50% to resources gathered in that region, but at a large cost to build (this contradicts the last paragraph, but the main idea is to have little town icons covering your map, surrounding the big cities, right?)

Also, how do people feel about using mineral resources for terraforming - so you can speed or slow improvements at the cost of city infrastructure?

In addition, how should the regional menu screen work - I currently favour an approach that makes it more and more relevant as the game progresses (i.e have it's abilities linked to the tech tree somehow). Is this good, or would you find it unrealistic or limiting?

[This message has been edited by Shining1 (edited May 26, 1999).]

I like the regions idea but I don't see why there is so much debate about it. Actually I figure a good way to go is follow the path of history. As technology adances allow for a "command and control" technology that allows a civilization to develop from city-state to the satrapies to fuedal states (although somewhat backwards) to the early then modern nation states. The development from city and region is linked to government and the development of communication and infor,ation from runners, horsemen, pigeons torches to printing and the telephone and satelites etc. The expanse of the region and the power your civilization controls could depend on: 1) type of government (how willing the city managers willing to obey the center) 2) the building of commo stations (from towers to statellites) 3) the use of leader units (mayors to generals that can be trained at city units, higher trainer at the capital tends to lead to more obedience).

I like the level ideas of infrastructure, cities should have a more reliable mayor (and later governors for regions) to build on the infrastructure and we should set the attitude of these mayors from perfectionist to aggresive (so they may tend to develop military or science or trade). Random bonuses could be AI mayors that are exceptional leaders.

Economics should have some effecttive, like capitalism should cut into your production capacity by percentages.

You make some good points (economics is for the social engineering thread, though it will not doubt affect city production).

The levels of infrastructure idea interests me, but I have yet to see it fully fleshed out. How is it different to the civII idea of +50%,100%,150% to basic production? Or is this just a means to make these levels more easily identifiable (e.g factory adds 2 level sto production (+50%), library adds one levels to science (+25%), manufacturing plant adds two levels to production (+50%) and one level to pollution (+25%), etc).

So you can view a city bonuses quickly by checking the levels of infrastructure there. I like it. But is this what is being suggested?

Also, are these levels the same as social engineering? (industry, economics, happiness, pollution, etc). It might be easier for players to understand if they were.

So social engineering and infrastructure levels are the same thing, and give +10% for each level. E.g Communism gives +20% production, say (+2 industry), and a factory gives a +50% bonus (+5 industry), for a total of +7 for that city.

ANCIENT TIMES
all cities are like civII, they build their own units and structures.
To simulate that some resource movemnt, allow each city to participate in a few "resource routes" these are sort of like trade routes, but are used to send production or food to other, near by cities (5 squares?), linked by roads,rivers or the ocean. this way you could send some production from rome (has coal, in the forest, etc) to naples (agricultural) and send some food back. limit each route to ~4 units. longer distances can be spanned by sending somthing to a city and having it send it on again. Routes do not cost resources to make, but worsen corruption/innefficiency in the recieving city. (units cannon be deployed)

RENAISSANCE
Regions are formed. Production/agriculture is pooled within the region. Units/structures/wonders are built from a central menu (accessed by clicking on ANY city in the region, or main menues) and are deployed after being built, but can only be placed within the region. "resource routes" can be created between regions, limit per route, ~20 units of food/production. Regions would contain a maximum of 6-8 cities. (in the world map, north america could have 4 regions, west cost, east cost, south central (texas through the plains) and north central (canadian praries, ontario, and the northen forests)

MODERN
Each civ is treated as one region, with full deployemnt and resource sharing. "resource routes" can only be created with allies.

The idea behind this is to force people to deal with cities induvidually only in ancient times. As the late game rolls around, treating the whole civ as a region will save a lot of micromanagement. It also simulates the vast improvments in bulk trasnportation that has occured.

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

Please remember that players WILL still need to access the city menus from the main map in the event a city is threatened, or if it is a convient place to position or upgrade units from. Any working interface must take into account the fact that the player will still need the city menu for at least 30% of the time, and much more when under siege conditions.

While the regional menus offer a good way to manage a group of cities together, cutting down micromanagement, they are ultimately limited by the amount of information they can display at any one time without becoming cumbersome. More suggestions along practial lines to resolve this issue would help us get this idea into better focus.

How i would set up the menues is, when you click on a city, one side (left) of the screen shows the normal citizen allocation, happiness, resource collection, structure list, trade? (unless on a regional level), and units status areas (might not all fit, have to have a toggle). The other side (right) would be the same for all cities in a region (if you want national regions it would be a selectable rule, SMAC style) this side would have the resource allocations listed, one button for food, one for structures, one for wonders, one for units. It would also have sliders for allocation between the different production areas. If you clicked on the name of anouther city, the left side would shift to that citiy's info.

Most advanced options should be selectable rules. Regions should have options of, none, always multiple regions, always national region, and progressing regions.
same situation with supply zones, maybe even a togable unit workshop?

Hope that clarifies things.

{on a civ scale a state is a few squares in a city radius, I picture North america being divided into four regions, east coast, west cost, south central, and central canada.)
------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

Here's my take on the current city/regions thing (as a Civer, not as thread master).

REGIONAL MENUS SETUP

Regions must be constructed. A city improvement, call it a town hall, needs to be built in order to establish a region, which then extends for a predetermined radius (which does not change) around the city, say for 12 squares.

[Note: Since you always start with a palace in your first city, you always have at least one region in the game.]

All cities within this radius are then part of this region, and, once the appropriate infrastructure is in place (roads, trading post city improvement - basicially all still to be decided), cities within that region may share resources (up to a certain limit) with each other, and become much easier to manage, as individual city production, etc, can be set from the regional window, all cities in the region can be given the same build orders (useful for rapidly making armies or upgrading to new structures - e.g renaisance barracks), and the geographical view in this menu allows you to organise the distribution of resources, troops, and infrastructure more effectively.

All troops/stacks in a region may be viewed and ordered from the regional menu, allowing easy deployment of forces. With the movement bonus for a unit within one of your regional borders, this should make deployment of defensive troops relatively easy.

I suggest linking the powers of a region to the quality of the infrastructure there. Roads allow you to exchange 3 resources each way per turn (possibly influenced by social engineering - efficiency or industry setting?). Railroads allow an infinite ammount of resource transfer (like movement) and allow you to begin building individual city improvements on a regional basis (i.e built using shared resources - often built very quickly!) - and then place them in a single city. Only towns linked by railroad can receive structures from the capital (think of this as the transportation of prefab materials, for instance).

[Resource transfer MUST be to and from the capital of a region, to avoid becoming overly complex.]

This depends on having a network of roads and railroads established between the centre of a region (where the capital structure is) and the outlying cities (not an unrealistic idea, and with the new terraforming techniques not difficult to setup, either). All regional production takes place in the capital, so resources contributed to this city are in effect the same as resources contributed to the 'region'.

All regions are linked to the palace (the original capital, or wherever it has been moved too), and can contribute resources to this city, or vice versa (again, provided the requiste tech has been discovered - no resource trade oversea using canoes). This is handled through the third and final city screen, the capital menu (A simple menu, without any geography - it can't be hard to remember the locations of 5 different townhalls).

To recap:
1) Regions consist of a capital struture in the central city, surrounded by a radius of approximately 10 squares, providing a geographical map that allows the player to manage build orders and deployment of forces in that region.

2) Cities in a region exchance resources and produce items through the capital of that region. Thus a region has two build menus - the capital menu, and the general build menu.

Each city icon on the regional screen has these options:
* Enter city menu screen.
* Exempt from general build orders
* Set production for city (straight to build option screens, not city menu)

2) Regions are dependent upon infrastructure for basic effectiveness - they require a central structure to be built, and they need a network of roads and railroads to facilitate resource transfer.

This is only an early draft of the regional system. Please feel free to add your own ideas or critisms to this, but be constructive - if you think everything should be done on a regional basis, EXPLAIN how this would work in terms of terraforming and city infrastructure. If possible, present critisms as a straight rewrite of the above list.

Secondly, if anything in the above list doesn't make sense, please ask. Keeping ideas readable is a priority for this list.

One thing that strikes me, reading this thread, is that the region menu is going to look a lot like the city menu. Indeed, the things you would do for a region are just like the ones you'd do for cities -- move citizens from place to place, schedule unit and improvement construction, set tax rates, and so on. The advantage of a region is that instead of working with 20 tiles at a time, you can work with 100 or 200.

So -- redefine a "city" as a small region, which happens to contain one city _tile_. The "city improvements" now affect all tiles of the region they are in. If a region happens to contain two or more city tiles, that's all right; both sets of city improvements continue to affect the region.
Of course the region has to support both city tiles and all their improvements.

The maximum size of a region can then be tied directly to your current technological level. In the opening game no region can be larger than 10 or 20 tiles -- only enough to support one city tile. This recreates the current Civ "federation of city-states", each city standing alone. Then as society advances the size limit rises, and it becomes possible to treat 50 or 100 tiles (with 5 or 10 city tiles) as one region. That nicely represents the modern nation-state.

Shinning1, can you decide which region a city in the overlap would belong to, or does it in the one established first one? (it would be nice to be able to establish regions based on geographical features, like west coast North america, but i don't think the computer will ever be able to pick regions well.

Do you really need to have two build menu's for the region? what is the capitol menu geing to add in convenience? (can't every thing be hadled from the regional build menu)
I feel that dividing the roles of city and region compleatly would make the game less complicated and faster to play without losing depth. Regions handle production, food distribution, and tile improvment. Cities hadle worker placemnt, happiness, economics, local defense, and city imrovments (after they're built). Trade i'm not sure, depends on the system implimented. I think regions should trade with regions personally. Isolated and ancient cities are regions of size 1, with my proposed split screen menu, this would be similiar in function to city screens as they currently are. I would like to see anouther option for happiness control. You send gold to the city and it is converted to happiness depending on government. This could be set on the city menu, automatically, (to avoid riots), or from the F1 city listing.

Terrain improvments.
I feel roads, RR, bases, and other defense/transport instilations should be built by a unit, to allow you to build them where your army is.
Farms, mines, terraforming, trade improvemnts, etc. should be built like PW within a region. (make them cheaper than ctp, lot cheaper) Have an option to allow the computer to auto-place farms and mines on squares that are the most usefull (already being used). Have a slider to control what % of resources goes to mines, what % to farms and what % is discertionary. PW could be sent to other teritories or traded.
I nifty thing to do would be to have a chance that a square that is currently used, be improved aoutomaically, for free (farmers build farms with or without government help)
10% chance that one square in a given city is improved?

The main idea is to allow cities to be linked together properly. This can be achieved through the city menu, or at least through a further submenu (like the build options and design workshop) of the city menu.

Using this you get the ability to:
* link cities together using roads/railroads.
* exchange resources easily (so you still can do fast building).
* move to another nearby city quickly (can be done using a slightly enlarged version of the Total Annihiliation radar map).

Without the problems of having to specify regional borders and the need to learn how to use ANOTHER menu.

While the notion of a region is good, I suspect the current implimentation isn't the best. Regions perhaps should be limited to government issues only - providing political infrastructure (Governor, regional centre, etc) and the potential for public works within that region (i.e structures built at the capital that affect ALL cities within that region).

Actually having a regional menu isn't necessarily the best solution, when a few changes to the city menu might do instead.

I'm not dissing the concept of a regional format to CivIII - it should definitely be included. What I am asking is whether the idea of city management is best linked to a regional basis, especially as far as the player interface is concerned.

[Regardless, the idea will be included - this is simply for discussion.]

But the terraforming options for CivIII have been greatly enhanced anyway - the use of citizens for terraforming jobs should make the construction of improvements much faster than before - so there needn't be much area left for terraforming.

With advances in technology, a civilization would advance from self sufficient cities into groupings of cities all of which could draw resoures from cities in the same ouping. So, the following things would be introduced:

Infrastructer-however it is modeled (by engineers or PW points or whatever) this is what determines if a city can draw resources from other cities.

Resource Zones-Groups of cities whose structers between them have advance to the point that they are capable of sharing resources form Resource Zones. Resources may be shared freely between these cities. Maybe have Resource Zone Boxes replace city resource boxes. The types of resources that could be shared and the effeciency of transport (modeled abstractly through resource loss similar to corruption) could be determined through scientific advances. Refrigeration prevents spoilage of food, etc. A really advanced civ, say like the US today, would be one big resource zone. If an enemy pillages your land, occupies it, whatever and that has an effect on infrastructure, it will split up some of those Resource Zones.

Not too complex, but a little vague. You obviously have some good ideas here, along the lines of progressive regionalization, some more details would be nice, however, for me to include your suggestions in the 1.2 list.

In my mind, this is scarcely an improvement over the current state of things.

For there to be a real improvement, regional management must transcend cities. There must be an acknowledgement that individual city management is something that cannot be dictated by the supreme leader of a nation, and so we must, in a sense, limit the control of the nation to regions.

Here is how regions could be made a superior alternative to cities: Regions can be any shape and can include a number of tiles up to 60 (or some other number, based upon play-testing, maybe 75). This can include ocean no more than 2 tiles from shore. Every one of the tiles in a region can be worked by a member of its collective population. Improvements are built by the region in a "region screen" which resembles the current city screen. Each region must contain at least 3 former cities and no more than 10. The largest of these former cities becomes the "capital" of the region. This city becomes marked by a star with a circle around it, and clicking on the capital gives one access to the region screen. Terrain improvements are built via a public works system, and can be built on any tile in the region.

Any members of the cities' excess population (who are probably automatically designated entertainers or other specialists) can be transferred to work tiles outside the city radii but inside the region. Eventually every tile in the region may be worked, including large mountain ranges, expansive deserts and tundra, and there will still be excess population to provide entertainment, taxes and science.
Also, every tile within the region can be engineered or terraformed, meaning those large deserts can be made verdant again. (In the interests of realism, I might also suggest a longer time-span for radical land engineering changes, such as glacier-to-tundra, tundra-to-desert, etc.) With such control over large patches of the Earth's surface, it would make much more sense to preserve forest and jungle squares for environmental reasons.

The geographical mode of management is determined by a civilization's government. Anarchies, tyrannies, dictatorships, monarchies and republics are governed city-by-city. Democracies, communist states, fascist states, fundamentalist states, technocracies and other such higher forms of government manage by regions.

The difficulty then becomes how to manage the "transitions" from city management to regional management. If you wish to form a region that includes the city radii of six cities, and only three of the cities have a temple, should the region have the equivalent of a temple in every city? I believe this can be managed behind the scenes by the computer simply pooling all the resources of each individual city, then adding in all the extra resources of regional tiles and government bonuses. Thus, a region would ultimately have the collective equivalent of three temples working upon a combined population. You would then have the option of building a "regional church system" which would provide the equivalent of a temple in every city, and the cost of such a system would be diminished due to the presence of the three preexisting temples. From the computer's point of view, the cities would still exist as independent entities, but from the point of view of the interface, they would not.

Now, at any time, the borders of your regions may become disputed, if another nation claims a tile currently being worked by a citizen outside of a city radius but within your borders. This would be an act of war. In order to claim a tile, you would have to position a military unit there and then make a claim, then position a citizen of your region on that tile.

Building cities within your regions would not be impossible in this system. Settlers can still be produced on a region-by-region basis. As long as that part of the region currently contains enough tiles not part of any other former city radius, then a new city will appear. It will effectively be a part of the region and can be managed as such. As soon as you build this new city, you will then have to rebuild your region-wide improvements (but in a streamlined manner and much faster than the city could build those improvements on its own). Effectively, this would build improvements in the small city, but with the collective building power of the entire region. A temple in one turn (called "regional church system"), a marketplace in another turn (called perhaps "regional business network"), a harbor in the next, etc. Or perhaps giving each improvement an equivalent "region name" is silly and pointless, so you would simply build a "regional marketplace."

The extent of regions could not exceed the current borders of the civilization. One could not, for example, claim a tile which is ten tiles distant from your nearest city because it has a tempting resource on it. In Alpha Centauri, I believe borders effectively reach 3 or 4 tiles beyond your city radii, or less if a foreign civilization is near. Claiming regional land would be limited to squares within your borders. The only way to expand your borders will remain building cities, but individual city management will still disappear.

I had an idea that region sizes grow over the course of the game (city size in ancien, medium in medeaval, national in modern)

It would be nice to have a more flexable city radius. Maybe you can relocate any overlapping city squares to a unused but adjastet square no more than 4 squares away?
then you don't have to worry about the awkward shpe of the city radii as much...

A question for everyone:

* What is the optium level of mircomanagement per turn, say in terms of cities. I find 8 cities are no problem to manage, 12 is okay, 20 starts to cause problems, and 30+ just gets tedious.

Resources are a funny concept in civ.
A shield can represent either a resource or labour depending on what is in you city.
Maybe this should be split up.
Resources come from the terrain. Wood from forests, metals from hills/mountains, oil and coal from resource squares in desserts/swamps the ocean or wherever. More advanced mines/lumberyards give more per turn. Depending on play balnce issues this could be just one abstract type, or subdivided into the different classes of materials.

Labour comes from your population.
Each pop. point produces a certain amount of labour, modified by government, tech and improvments (like factories). Pop points not devoded to gathering produce double or more labour.

Resources are freely shiped throughout you empire (or within a region), and can be shiped between regions on trade routes of some type. Resources are stored for when they are needed, but reserves decay over time, maybe ~5% a turn. Resources can be sold to other empires or abstractly like capitalization. Resources can also be bought abstractly at a hefty premium, or from other civs.

Labour cannot be moved from it's city/region, and cannot be saved.
All units/structures require a certain amount of each component.
Ancient units tend to require a higher ratio of resorces/labour than modern units.
( a legion and a musketter unit might have the same amount of iron in tehm, but much more workmanship is required to make the muskets)
Infantry are less resource intensive than other unit types. Ships are the most resource intensive.
This, combined with the regional sharing of resouces will allow people to develop production centers seperate from the mining areas.
Food from agricultural cities (all pop devoted to resource gathering) is sent to the bigger cities to support industry (only the best squares are gathered, or could have lots of overlap with the resource gathering centers, most pop is devoted to labour) and mining comunities (all pop devoted to resource gathering, but in forested/hilled areas) Production from the industrail centers is used to build infrastructure for all areas, and military units.

This could lead to different war strategies, such as a civ with only one major mountain and hill chain. Attampt to capture their resource producing area and force them to devote lots of their money to try and aquaire resouces from elsewhere.
Or siexe their oil cities and dissalow them from building tanks and ships cheaply.

In Canada, for example, most mining is in the north, on the shield and norhtern alberta, but the bulk of the industrial production is in southern ontario, which is basically grassland. The bulk food production is in the plains, and some in southern ontario/quebec.

I don't really like the idea of regions as a game concept. If there need to be regions, then they should NOT be defined by the computer, and they should not be static. If regions are to be useful, then the player must decide what set of cities and/or tiles constitutes a region.

Production still has to occur at a city level as long as the Civ1/Civ2/CTP paradigm of city improvements is retained. (I have some conceptual and game play issues with city improvements, but I'll save them for later.) You can't build temples at the regional level, for example -- if the region has 7 cities, which one gets the temple's benefit?

I also don't see any advantage of letting the player make cities into carbon copies of each other. Why would I want to build the same thing in all of my cities, or even a large number of them which happen to be close together? Assuming a Civ1/Civ2/CTP-style production model, each city would have a dramatically different production rate, and the benefits of city improvements would be different between them. (City A might be large and would require an Aqueduct (either to overcome a Civ2-style size ceiling or to negate CTP-style overcrowding penalties), whereas City B might be just fine with its happiness/size, but might have enough trade income to justify a Bank. I treat my cities as individuals.) So, making regions into a "mass change" feature would not please me.

However, I do like the concept of differentiating resources (and separating resources from labor). And I add this idea: like CTP's public works, let resources and food be put into a national pool. If the mines of City C produce 9 units of iron per turn, and a cannon requires 3 units of iron and 30 units of labor (just to make up some numbers), then the mines of City C would supply enough raw material to produce 3 cannons per turn in the factories of Cities D, E and F -- if I can supply the labor. Meanwhile, the farms of Cities G and H can produce, say, 32 units of food per turn, which might be enough to feed all of my empire (Cities A through H). Of course, Cities A-C, G-H might also be building things with their own labor even as they supply food and resources to Cities D-F, depending on how closely we continue to follow the Civ1/Civ2 model.

This would change how food is handled. Instead of having a local food surplus, the nation's food would be averaged out over all cities. This would generally eliminate starvation in all cities (but in the event of global disaster such as global warming, could mean your whole empire starves). In terms of game-play, this seems desirable, and in later years (after discovering refrigeration, railroads) it makes great sense. In earlier years, it may be slightly unrealistic -- food handling and storage and transportation technologies are inadequate and would mean some food would rot before getting to its destination. But this could be rationalized in game terms by giving a bonus upon the discovery of certain techs (e.g., refrigeration) -- similar to what Civ2 does.

The other CTP interface improvement that Civ3 will need is the interactive City Report. (This is what you get when you press F1.) I use this feature more than any of the other game reports because it's so flexible -- you can click a column header to sort the list by that column (and it is, or should be, a stable sort, so the list remains sorted by your previous selection if any, in the event of a tie), and click again to reverse the sort.

The biggest headache of Civ2 (after getting nuked by the AI) is when cities require attention. At the beginning of every turn I have to go to any city that's causing trouble (or which has finished something, because there's no queue), in whatever order the game decides I must go to them. I can decline to visit a city at that particular moment, but then I have to try to remember to go back there -- and I can't sort the city report by happiness or whatever to quickly find the cities I need to visit. In CTP, I can postpone city management until whenever I am ready for it, and I can quickly do what needs to be done, because I can see all my cities in one report, rather than zooming in to one city at a time and then trying to figure out how it fits in to the global picture.

However, there is still room for improvement in the city report of CTP. For instance, I can't tell at a glance how many specialists (entertainers, especially) my cities have -- for that, I still have to visit cities sequentially. No matter how much Firaxis improves the city report, in fact, it will always have such drawbacks -- some player somewhere will want to see information which isn't there.

Therefore, I would dearly love to be able to build custom report screens with a REAL scripting language (or even a shared object compiled with a C compiler and linked against a Civ3 library if it comes to that -- just make sure you don't use the Win32 API, because when we Linux users (or the Mac users, etc.) get the game ported we won't have that API). I want to be able to produce a custom report, covering any conceivable bit of information the game is willing to divulge to me (where every one of my units is located, the top 5-10 cities of the world, how many temples I have and where they're located, my relative demographic rating in years of military service, EVERYTHING). I want to be able to bind this to an arbitrary keystroke sequence and/or mouse selection/button. I want to be able to put usable widgets on it (with callback functions that can perform any legal game action, such as generating another report, changing production orders, changing unit orders, changing empire settings, performing diplomatic actions, sending profane messages to other players -- ANYTHING the client program is legally allowed to do). And of course this should be a full-powered programming language, with both local and global variables, recursive functions, arrays, user-definable "struct"-like data types, dynamic memory allocation, etc. Garbage collection and object-oriented features are optional, since I can get by just fine without them.

I think you have a misunderstanding of what I have in mind for a region.
I would focus all production on the region, but the various structures would still have a physical location.

In your example, when you finsih a temple, (and various other things, not liminted to one per turn) a deployment list comes up, and you choose which city you want your temple in.

Regions would allow cites to be LESS cookie cutter like than before, by allowing them to specialize without crippiling them.
(a farming center could have virtually no production, but the region would build it's granary, temple, supermarket, etc for it.)

A production centre might not even harvest in a single square, like NYC, or Tokyo

Some improvments, like a stock exchange would only be needed in one city per region.

Growth should depend on happiness, government, tech, infrastructure and location.

Food has a strong influence on happiness.
All food is pooled and distributed to a nuetral happiness level automatically. (losses to to bad transport can happen)

The happiness neutral level of food corresponds to current slow groth, maybe 2.2 food / person.
Having more than this much food slightly increases happines and hence growth.
having less decreases happines. At a certain level (~1.5 food/ person) starvation begins. Happiness penalties are SEVERE and pop losses are inevitable.

Inventions like contraception will slow growth rate slightly, but they will also allow you to slow it dramatically where popultion has started to outstrip food supply.

This idea allows the modern phenomina of overcrowding. The population will grow well past the point of sustinablility and then begin to collapse, but with riots and probably revolts in long term starving cities.

Aquatducts/ hospitals increase growth
Cities near oceans and on rivers have bosted growth.
cities by mountains and desserts are reduced.

Other ideas:

Surplus food (over 2 / person) is stored in the grannary. The number of turns of spare food gives the happines bonus (and the minimum time for a full siege) Food decays at a rate of 10-20% a turn, to prevent near infanite stores. Modern refrigiration techs/ canning might slow this.

Suggest including it as a build option, like infrastructure, etc, based on the population of the city. With a geometric increase in cost, because you can't honestly move New York away anytime (say set a limit to the population of around 8 - before you need infrastructure to support extra population).

Call this construction "Exodus", a similar option to Capitalisation. An Exodus will allow your entire city to be moved anywhere within the current limits of that city on the turn it is built. The reasons for using such a feature are obvious to anyone who has played CivII, but include:
* Obvious overlap with another city (esp on arcipeligos)
* "Blind" placement, where you find a much better spot after doing some exploring.
* Accidental placement, like the above, but where a better option is obvious, you just missed it (thus it should be very cheap for size 1 cities, and relatively affordable for size 2-4 ones (say 10 shields per population).

Finally, an exodus should give you the option of joining two cities together, when they are within each other's city limits.

NOTE: The next version of this thread will simply be called 'CITIES AND REGIONS 1.2 - etc', and will include issues such as the resource model, founding cities, ICS, etc, hopefully overlapping with other threads where these also occur. Thus, these issues can be discussed generally and with specific regard for citys themselves.

What about moving the city radius. Move up to 4 squares that overlap on other city radii into an area adjastent to the normal city radii, that no other city can gather from... requires RR advance)

Specialists:

I must mention that I oppose citizen specialists as they are now because to switch them in reality takes much longer. I have another proposal.
1) Slider bars that represent the total pop of the city; with worker, merchant, scientist, and clergy as the only citizens types. Clergy replace the "elvii".
2) The structures you have in the city will both determine how many of the people can become these "specialists", as a percentage, and the rate that they will switch. These include marketplaces, banks, etc. for merchants; libraries, universities, for scientists, and temples, you get the idea. Technology may also be a factor. Writing & Literacy for scientists, FE. SE choices may also affect this. Workers are considered the standard and have no structures.
3) You move the slider bar to the percent citizen makeup you wish your "specialists" to be, up to the current limit. The level stays put for that turn. Each following turn, the % of citizens employed in that field increases, based on your buildings, tech, and SE choices.
4) Workers are exempt from the above. When increasing workers, the shift is immediate. This is because their jobs often require minimal training. You can switch back w/o penalty until you end turn. Then their new jobs are set.
5) Workers are also split into 2 types: rural & urban. Urban workers add labor to production, while rural workers are on the tiles outside the city square and bring in the food, resources, and raw trade goods (this is loosely based on the "village" idea).
6) These originally only affect their respective areas(labor, money, science). Later techs & SEs may give them other areas of influence (like SMAC) and greater influence in their own areas. Note that rural workers may also get later benefits.
2 questions:
Should non-workers cost the city more money (IMHO no; the extra cost is paid for by the populace)?
Should more non-workers add to the city's happiness level (more well-fed well-paid middle class types. I can go either way on this one)?

My thoughts on the city menu:

You have your standard window. Like civ2 and unlike SMAC (and like any normal MS window) it can be moved aside to view the map beneath.

TOP EDGE:
At the very left is a toggle with 3 choices: food, production, and trade. This tells the AI where to put your people in the event of sudden growth or decline in city pop. Each can have it's own priority level, or none or only one can (food is the default). In the event of a tie the AI will choose the tile that gives you the greatest overall resources, if all are equal it's the one closest to your city (due to supply loss from distance). The AI will also switch if your settlers/public works alter a tile to increase or otherwise change the output.
In the middle you have the standard citizen icons. You will be able to tell their culture by their race & dress (this image should include a face and upper torso) based on the various civs. Over their heads there will be a symbol denoting each citizen's religion, which are not always the same as their culture (after mingling for a while).
Just to the right of these will be the city's HAPPINESS indicator, the importance of which I described in the SE threads (Aug. 9 or thereabouts). This gets rid of the necessity of happy/content/unhappy citizens, and reduces the amount of citizen icons.
On the far right is the necessary outside info, such as turn/year, total money in treasury, City name, etc.

TOP:
On the far left is the big 3: Growth (not food, food is now a factor of growth), production, and trade. Above these there will be the % modifiers currently affecting each category. The growth indicators can be smiling little baby heads instead of bushels of wheat. With negative growth the heads are frowning with x's for eyes.
In the middle, is the city radius, showing which squares are worked. Instead of counters (civ2) each square has a number (like SMAC). This number will be x10 of the number's used in civ2/SMAC but costs will also be about x10(kudos to Maniac). This allows fine-tuning of modifiers to these resources. The city radius will not be used if villages are used. Maybe a small city view instead.
Far right has the city's stores. This includes saved food, money, the city's total unused research points, and production. Food & production will be subject to deterioration over time. If the city is captured, this food, money and production is also captured, and the research is lost. A little of each may escape to a nearby city of the same civ, or to an allied city if there are no available cities of that civ nearby. Next turn the civ will return the supplies, with deterioration & distance reductions, subject to piracy, etc. If a city is under siege and cut off from the capital, it may only use what are in it's stores if it needs extras, and the research isn't applied until the siege ends. Note that an empire split in half may combine the resources of the connected cities only, the SUPPLY grid will determine if cities are connected. However, only the research points connected with the capital are counted towards actual research, until re-connected. In the event of a successful rebellion, part of the research is lost but most of it goes to the new civilization, which may give it more techs if enough research has been saved.

THE MIDDLE:
On the left is support like we all know, with the exception that all have varying food, production, and money costs. Also any modifiers to support will be shown here.
The center shows the growth rate of the city, and # of turns until it will grow. The total food allocated to growth will be displayed; also everything that affects growth will be broken down here.
Right side shows all the items under construction. These will be shown as small windows with only the unit/building name in it, turns until completion, and another button in it to increase the production rate (see below). a 2nd button will allow you to set the production in this button to auto; this will set it to produce what is in your queue for that button only. If no queue has been built then it will default to your auto preferences that would be selected in the PREFERENCES screen or in a .txt file. There should be several types of auto-queues; the "governor" selections in SMAC are a good start. Now, if you click on the name of the item it will enlarge the window to show the picture of the item, actual # of production already allocated to production and the amount needed to complete it, as well as a unit workshop button and another "increase production rate" button. It will also show if this item is under your control or being built by your people (under strong FREE MARKET SE's). There will be an option to "purchase" the construction points back from your people, in an emergency (i.e. you need them for war units). The smaller windows allow for several items to be under construction at the same time.
The increase production rate is done by buying "extra" shields. The max you can buy is based on the amount of production normally allocated per turn. FE, an item has 7 shields added to it per turn. At a cost of, say, 2 coins each you can increase it to 14/turn. The max you can multiply it by is x3/turn. To increase production from x2 to x3 costs even more from x1 to x2. If enough money is allocated then the additional purchasing power will carry over until next turn. This means that x3 is assumed with enough money, and the extra is applied as x2 next turn until that is maxed, then x3, then the next turn, etc. In addition there would be no difference in cost buying units or buildings. This cost isn't affected by tech (tech adds production instead, so tech does affect this but not directly) but IS affected by SE choices. The more totalitarian a civ is the lower the increased costs. This will eliminate sudden purchases (which IMHO are unrealistic) & add to the benefits of having some large cities instead of several small ones.

BOTTOM:
At left are all the structures that the city has built. Next to these are the buttons to sell the structures, and the damage indicators to each set of buildings. Now I envision a system similar to Birth of the Federation, where planets(cities) had multiple buildings each, with added effects. "Damage indicators" I've explained in other threads such as CITY IMPROVEMENTS & OTHER. Above the damage I's will be the city's free repair rate, also explained in those threads.
The middle has all the units in the city, which I feel needs no explanation.
Far right bottom corner has the change city name, maps, view city (if used), etc. ala civ2. The happiness button breaks down how your city is affected by the various modifiers.

1) When opening the small window into the larger one, there should be a box to indicate how much prodution you wish to allocate there.
2) It should also allow you to scroll up/down to other choices, like civ2, or double-click on the pictured item to get an even larger window showing all items, like SMAC.

LEFT SIDE OF SCREEN: City stats

Very top
City Name, pop x.xxx (yyyyyy), Rate of growth zz.z%, q turns to next full pop point.

x is pop points, y is the number of induviduals calculated from x. y = 5000 x^2 - 1250.
z is the growth rate in hundredths of a pop point per turn.

upper area
Specialists box. has a spot to set the ratio that new pop is sent to the field for every pop kept in the city if you don't keep track yourself. Also the Happyness indicator.
Has icons for all the workers (peasents/workers/middle class) and various scientist / merchant / happy guy / soldier support guys(who count as workers for all other purposes)[/b]

middle
lists: stores
FOOD: 124 (+25) Grannary: 243 (-17)
[i]food recieved / surplus then stored / decay
RESOURCES: 89 (-6) GOLD: 156 (+14)
resources stored / net loss or gain after decay, gold in city / net loss or gain per tuen. These numbers only matter in a siege, when a city is forced to be it's own region, or when captured.

then raw production
LABOUR: 160, 70 * 2.00 + 20
GOLD: 42
SCIENCE: 55
SUPPORT: 24
list the total output of it's citizens followed by the raw output and multipliers and bonuses colour coded by source.

lower area
left side, lists city improvments, and HP left/HP max.
right side, a list of all improvments that are currently in the regional queue and targeted for this city, and how many turn they are expected in.

bottom
List all units on left, and all units that are in the process of deploying to/from thsi city.

RIGHT SIDE OF SCREEN: Regional stats

very top
Capital name, pop x.xxx (yyyyyy), Rate of growth zz.z%

x is pop points in the region, including villages, y is the sum of the coalculated induviduals, and z is the total growth per turn.

upper area
idicator for overall happyness and village/city ratios and slider for dividing prodcution between units/improvments/woders/capitalization. As well as a spot to buy additional production for one area.
Lists totals of all cites various production counts.

center
Small map of the region, with the city currently viewd highlighted, on left, on right a list of all cities in the region.

lower area
Toggle area includes wonder in production
only one at a time per region
unit queue, improvment queue, place to set unit and improvment priorities.
for units and improvments, the player sets the build priorites for various unit types and structures, given in a ratio of number built to number built of all others. The computer then sets up a 8-16 spot build queue (with turn of completion and destination of each item listed). The player can modify this queue as they wish, incuding the destination. Whenever the priorities are modified, so is the queue. Items in each list are built sequentially, with multiple completions per turn allowed. When a region has no place to put improvments, the priority is temporarily set to 0.
terrifoming settings.
set the priority on building farms, roads, RR, highways, mines, terraform by enginners stationed in the reserves in the region.

Botom area
Lists all units in the reserves in the region (not placed at a specific location.) as well as destination for each unit (none means it isn't going to get deployed)
Deployment occurs from this screen. All new built units are placed in the reserves unitl they can be deployed. Enginnering type units in the reserves cost full maint, but they can build farms/mines/improve paths/terriform while there, in fact this is the only place to do so. Millitary units stationed in the reserves have reduced maint. costs, but take a full turn to deploy, ehre they are velnerable. Units can be sent to the reserves of neighboring regions as well, or deployed to any city or bse in the region and any appropriate ships stationed within a certain range (like carriers)

More thougts
Some of these panes may have to be made into toggles, depending on screen size.
I agree with alot of Theben's suggestions, this assumes different consepts incopirated. Villages locations and future terraform loccations are set by 'flagging' on terrain view toggles in the main map.
One idea that would be good to incprirate to any Automation suggestion is the idea of priorities. These allow you to not just say, to the auto build - build tanks and infantry as well as buildings, but say, build 1 tank for every two infantry and 2 econ structures for every science one.

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"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

The martial law button basically changes the city (only) from a more free political SE (republic, democracy) to a more totalitarian one (police state, etc.). If a totalitarian govt. declares martial law then it gets a large bonus to it's POLICE rating.

A button that shows how the various civilization effects (social effects in SMAC) +technology+ the building's effects add together to effect the city.