Over on the RELIGION topic, I suggested something very like Xin Yu's example. Here's a quotation from the RELIGION summary, giving the bare bones of the idea:

"Each populated tile would have its religion, and in end of turns each would try to convert others... Missionary units would try to convert tiles they are walking on. For every N (N being parameter set at config file) tiles converted to state religion one citizen would become content, and temples and cathedrals would lower N locally. On the other hand, for every N tiles unconverted one citizen becomes unhappy."

In other words, you would pick one religion as a state religion; citizens belonging to that religion would then become a little happier, and citizens who didn't would become a little unhappier. Temples, cathedrals, and similar improvements would intensify both these effects. And missionaries (a special non-attacking unit) would wander over the map preaching to, and hopefully converting, any citizens they met.

You will see at once that this would create a neat subversive tactic: sending missionaries into enemy territory to convert the other civilization's people from its state cult to yours. The enemy's temples slowly change from riot-suppressors into riot-generators as the religious balance shifts.

first off i have a few questions i'd like to see clarified.

1.when you build a village with public works does this automatically add a point of population to your civ?

2. is there a limit to how many people can be brought into the city? lets say you have 15 village sqaures in your region and your city has a population of eight people, an army invades. can you suddenly bring in all 15 people?

3. how is unhappinessy handled in the villages?

hmm that's all i can think of for now.

here's a list of specialist that you can have in your city, the first name is their ancient name the second is their modern name. like in SMAC a certain technology upgrades the specialist. some of the specailists have subsets of specialists.

1. artisan/laborer: these specialist process minerals. starting off each of these specialist can only process 2 minerals. later on after the discovery of the assembly line or something, each one of these can process 4 minerals. if you have only 2 artisans then your city can only use 4 minerals on production, even if your mining villages are sending more minerals than that to your city.

modifers: process 2 minerals

2. merchant/trader: these specialist generate money and they allow your city to open trade routes. your city cannot engage in trade with other cities until you have at least one merchant specailist in it. the maximum number of trade routes are limited by the number of merchants in your city.

modifers:+4 to economy, establish tade routes

3. wise men/scientist: self-explanitory. these specialist allow you to discover new technologies. the more you have the quicker you research.

modifers: +4 to labs

4. actors/entertainers: these specialists make your citizens happy.

modifers: +4 to pysch

ok now these specialist are less conventional but would add to the game.

5. military specialists: these specialist represents the military-industrial complex of your empire. they represent soldiers, support, and the people making weapons. it takes money to support them, working for the army is a good job, and military research speeds weapons research. units are no longer supported by sheilds but instead by support points. each unit requires from zero (guerillas) to three (stealth bombers) support points. each city generates a small amount of support points (1 point for five people in a city) after that you have to have military specialists to generate more support points (your level of support in social engineering determine how many support points each military specialist generates)

modifers: -2 to economy, +1 pysch, 2 labs (+2 if researching war tech, -2 if researching peace tech) + support points (depends on your level of support)

6. official/buerocrats: these are the representatives of the government. they collect taxes and help to assimilate the population into your civ, and keep them loyal. however too many of these can be a burden on the people and make them very upset.

modifers: +2 economy, 1 psych (+1 pysch if you have two or less in your city, -1 pysch if you have more than two in your city) helps to assimilate people into your empire

7. priest/clergy: these represent your religious organization. these priest convert your population to your religion and in general make people happy.

modifers: +3 pysch +1 economy -1 research, converts people to your religion

8. philosphers/philosphers: these people look for the meaning of life and man's place in it. they seek for each person to find their place in society. however they look at the consequences of all actions and they are conscientious objectors.

modifers: +2 pysch +2 research -1 support point

so what do you think?

don't see why philosphers are so good, I think that they where just an ancient cross between wisemen and preists (there have been more recent ones too, no argument, but they where like social sceintists and social priests), beauroctrats should take down corruption or something, maybe even certain se choices would demand certain levels of beauractrats for every 5 citizens

well i just came up with most of the specialist ideas today after i read the village idea thread. it is just a rough idea but iu think we can work it out. and the thing with philospheres is that i wanted to come up with around 10 different kinds of specialists. each one will have some kind of special ability (hence the term specialist). and they will provide positives and negatives, where they are balanced. so that you wouldn't just have one kind of specialist in everyone of your cities in every game you play.

the idea about stockpiling minerals is a good one. maybe you can only stockpile a certain amount, but you could have some kind of base facility to increase your storage ability.

i like the idea of beurocrats taking down corruption and making your people less likely to revolt. each specialist needs some kind of special ability. i have a challenge for everyone, come up with a balanced specialist type with some neat special ability. keep the discussion going and lets refine these ideas. they are really good. i really hope firaxis listens to the village idea.

korn469

Factors to calculate score:
All demographics except these which lead to calculating twice the same things (i.e. family size affects the future of population so it should not be included).

At the end of the game also should be included points for city improvements (you cannot sell so easily the useless universities to buy spaceship), reputation, foreign affairs (war, peace, ceace fire, alliance, hostile, enthousiastic, cordial etc.).

It is totaly unacceptable by me that units can disembark ships and attack at the same round. When a unit disembarks from a ship it should have no more moves (as in Civ1). The exception of marines should remain but their power should be reduced by 50% when they make amphibious ansault. Similarly paratropers must finish their move after paradrop and do not be able to capture cities with paradrop.

At last, every army is vulnerable when disembarks from ships as well as a paratrooper during paradrop.

wisemen were ancient religious leaders as well

we could have artists (mucisians, sculptorists, paintists, ect.): they would get better by certain technologies

such as classical music, maybe others (technology in arts)

different techs would give different powers to the artist special unit

most of the pluses would be in luxuries with maybe a similar minus to philophers in being pacifists (with certain technologies)

we could even have rock&roll be a tech (or electric guitar)

To your questions.
1. NO. You can set the city/region to autobuild villages. Normally this would be about half of your pop. points in the city, half out, but it requires growth to make new villages. Under this system you would need twice the number of pop. points as with civX, so growth should be twice as fast.

2. There doesn't need to be a limit. You just have to have the infrastructure to deal with all the overcrowding and some way to get food and resources from elsewhere...
It would probably be easier to tell you villagers to pack up and move to a new location than into the city. In the late game (after UN built?) killing villages would be a minor atrocity. You can still pilage the mines and farms, etc. without penalty.

3. Unhappiness doesn't seem to much of an issue to me. Beacue the number of pop points in the cities will be the same as before, the happiness sytem can be the same.

On your ideas for labourers, I see idustry somewhat differently.
Labour is not directly related to resources for making units/structures. Labour represents the number of man-years needed to build things. Resources represent the physical material needed.
A legion and a musketter take the same amount of resources (iron, etc.) to build, but it takes much more work to build the muskets and assemble the unit, than a legion.
Some units only require one type. Spy's and other special units only require labour.
Labourer's (the specialists) are still good, they would just add much more industry than anyother city dweller.

I would also add some later types to your list, like the middle class for modern times, the middle class is overall more productive than any other type before, but is generalized (produces a bit of everything, rather than just idustry or trade). These would repalce earlier generalist types, like sefs or peasents.

A lot of the concept of speciallists is sort of silly. A whole pop point doesn't become scientists, only a few do, the rest are regular citizens. Maybe of your citydwellers only half the citizens after the 4th can specialize.

you lost me again
i don't see how your system works.

1. Under this system you would need twice the number of pop points as with civX...
Unhappiness doesn't seem to much of an issue to me. Because the number of pop points in the cities will be the same as before, the happiness sytem can be the same

you said that there needs to be about twice the people than in civ2. however you said that happiness really doesn't matter for villages since you have the same number of people in your city. on transcend in SMAC after your first person everyone is unhappy. in the village system if you have a city size 4, that means you have 4 villagers in the fields who are happy. and then only three in the city who aren't happy. that needs to be addressed. there needs to be some system for making the villagers happy.

2. The city only gathers resources from it's square, but all the extra population is in the form of labourers, traders, and scientists...
A lot of the concept of speciallists is sort of silly. A whole pop point doesn't become scientists, only a few do, the rest are regular citizens. Maybe of your city dwellers only half the citizens after the 4th can specialize

are villages a terrain improvement? if they are why have people live in them? what is the advantage over the current tile/city system? if you have to have a point of population living in the villages then what do the people in the cities do if they aren't specialist? the villages harvest the land and the city workers harvest the land? i thought that the idea was for all the people living in the city to represent specialized labor. in your system you have people living on the land working it, and what you are saying is that you have people living in cities working the land. it offers no advantages and only more micromanagement.

those are some ideas that contridict each other and they make the system hard to understand.

i'm not sure if i understand your industry system. tell me if this is right. it takes 10 shields to make a legion and it requires 10 industry. it takes 10 sheilds and 20 industry to build a musketeer. a artisan/laborer generates industry right? if that's how it works it an ok idea. but there still needs to be some wayto limit the number of resources a city can process in a turn. maybe you have to build factories or something to increase the amount of resources you city can process.

for this system to work it needs to be fairly simple. it needs to reduce micromanagement not add to it. it needs to address and solve the problem of ICS, and help to curtail an early cheese rush. it needs to add to strategy and give flexable paths to victory.

How about having a tab-feature for the powergraph. The user could select which feature he or she wanted to examine. There would be an OVERALL, a MILITARY, a MONEY/INFRASTRUCTURE, and a TECH tab. Each one would rate the abilities of each nation.

ember: You said you don't like the idea of spontaneously generated cities... I agree totally, the villages shouldn't grow into cities without your explicit permission, but I think it should be something you can do. Make the AI in control of autobuilding villages from cities never allowed to build a village past the limit to make a new city, but if the player wants, they can build the 3rd village on top, or whatever the number is, to make the village a new city. I think it makes things easier. For real newbies, or those concerned with other aspects of the games, have an option to let the AI make you cities.

I had sort of assumed that villagers were content. Most factors affecting happiness are within the city... If villagers' happiness is affected, it should only be by famine.

As I saw it, bringing in the villagers is unlimited, you can bring in however many you want. As for shipping them to other cities, you can only do that along a clear road. So if the enemy blocks off your road (a move which I hope to see very important in Civ3, for many reasons) the only place you can put the villagers is in the city. If your city is a 13, with 6 city-folk and 7 villagers, this will be horrible. This is a city designed to hold 6 people... It has no aqueduct or sewer system. Now it holds 13, and disease runs rampant. In addition, a city that formerly required 130 food, and had that much coming in, is starving. It makes a seige a very dangerous thing, as well as over-building your cities important if you plan to have wars. Making the granary a simple food storage device, abd bigger, would also be good.

If a settler builds a village on a distant sea shore, where does the food go, and (in terms of justification) how does it get there? I disagree, settlers shouldn't be able to build villages. Also, that amounts to free population. (Make 1 settler, then build lots of villages with it.)

What I mean by twice as many pop is that the cities will have teh same # of pop points, but there will be about the same number of pop points in the villages as in the cities.

In the cities the bulk of the population belongs to the 'average citazen' class.
'Workers' for communism, 'middle class' for democracy, 'serfs' for tyranny, 'peasants' for monarcy, etc.
These classes produce a bit of everything, so a bit of labour, trade and science.
Specialists can only be a certain fraction of the pop in a city. (remeber the people in villages do not belong to a city, they have nothing to do with them...) Specilaists are the types you listed. Labourers, merchants, scientists, clerics, etc. They have much more specialized uses, but can only be (1/3 or something like that) of a citie's pop.

I don't see why you need to limit how many resources a city can use because they are limited in how much industry they can use, and each unit will require a fixed ratio of industry/resources.
The city is still limited in how much it can sustainably use by how much your villages can produce...They can stockpile, with a decay rate for higher difficulty levels.
Same for food.

To limit ICS, make it so that the square a city is on does not produce any resources or food. The square the city is on is critical for future development because it will affect rate of growth and trade. Costal-river squares should be the best for cities.
Hills are bad, but well defended.

Advantages to this system.
1 City radius is no longer used. You can use every square in you territory if you desire, and keep the cities in logical places, like on the coast and river junctions, where cities historically thrived.

2. Rural population is represented. These are a ligitimate target for a pillaging army to kill of enslave. If captured, most historical villagers were not very loyal to the king. They were taxed, and if they weren't mistreated, they didn't care who was in charge.

3. Makes the logical split between resources and industry easier to manage.

4. Would work well with regions. The villages belong to a region and send food straight to it. Cities in the region recieve it as needed. All resources and isdustry could be centrally managed to ease micromanagemnt. Infrastructue is still placed in induvidual cities, but the the industry is calculated centrally. Regions are also good if multiple resource types are used, to reduce micromanagment.

Disadvantages. Some managment of village placement needed, but this is not much harder than for placing citizens. This could be helped by autopalcemnt and 'flaging' squares for development.
Use a setler to 'flag' a square, and the next available villager moves there. This is what I meant by building villages with a settler without using them up.

I feel that to build a village, all that is needed is a pop point. It takes as long as fortifying before the village is productive. Villages can be moved by click and drag, but take the same fortification time to move. Pop from city to city should be easier than it is now, maybe the same click and drag, limited to one a turn (by roads)?

ember: I understood you were saying that villages can be clicked and dragged to a new location. This makes a village a unit, doesn't it? Sort of a worker for hire, in effect? I'm just seeing if I understand you.

Really good concept that villages funnel resources into cities. I guess I need a definitive answer as to which comes first, the city or the village. Is there some reason why a village can't become a city? Whether on its own, or with the player's approval, I'm a little unclear where people stand on that.

By the way, I posted what you could call a pretty "radical" idea for getting religion into the game, under the religion 2.1 thread, here. It's a pretty clear idea, I'd appreciate any input on it...

raingoon

The population of cities are recorded as x.xxx. This allows fractional population points. The fraction has no gameplay effect until it reaches the next number. It allows groth rates to be experesed as an increase per turn. Attacks that hit population centers can now do fractional pop. points of damage. maybe 0.1 or 0.05 per hit.

The purpose of this proposal is to seperate growth from straight food production.
Growth rates can be expressed as a percentage per turn, (eg 2.5%) to give a familiar sort of look. What this means for gameplay terms is that 0.025 pop points are added every year. This gives a groth of 40 turns.

Pop is recorded as fractional points, but it is easy to convert that to a real pop number.
The formula:
Actual pop = 5000 x (pop points + 0.5)^2 - 1250
Follows the civx model exactly for whole numbers, and can give good values for fractional numbers.

Effects on population growth. All numbers are arbitray and should vary depending on SE choices and tech. This system is desigend to be compatable with the idea of villages.

I have made use of a 'happyness rating', which is (#happy - #unhappy) / # total. This gives 0 for all content, 100 for all happy, and -100 for all unhappy. This can be applied to a city, a region, a civ or the entire world.

Base growth: 10%
Happyness : + city happyness / N. N depends on SE.
villages : + 0.2% per village
medicine : + 2%
etc.

Immigration. To take into account people moving around in your civ and between civs.
The advantages of including this is that large unhappy cites will tend to slow down growth or shrink, while your smaller cities will pick up the extra people.

In civ immigration = (city happyness - civ happyness) / Y. Y depends on SE and the overall level of transportation availabble. In cty immigation tends to have larger volume than between civs.

between civs migration = (city happyness - world happyness) / Z. Z depends on SE and transport of all players. For this calcualtion government types can influence the happyness used. democracy might add 10 points, while communism subtarcts 10 points, to reflect that democracies never have had problems with too many people trying to flee from them.

Wonder: Iron curtain. Prevents all between civ emmigration. (for gameplay all cities count as average happyness level)

For fractional populatio I see villages as just having whole number pop points (up to 2-3) to make things easier. Pop is added only when a city has a whole pop point to send to the countyside. Any growth from the villages is added to the city as a small boost to growth.

Secondly I believe that perfectionists must have better chances in the game. I would like to see one of the followings:
1)Libraries, factories etc. lead to 100% increase instead of 50%
2)there can be many libraries, universities etc. Each of them has a 50% effect but if 1st library requires 80 shields and maintainance 1, 2 requires 160 shields-maintainance 2, 3rd 320 and 4, 640 and 8 etc.

Similarly RR, mining irrigation should have stronger effects and for the balance weapons should be more costly.

Tornado7: Farmers and miners, in traditional Civ, were represented by the "normal" people, i.e. the nonspecialists, that you put on the terrain squares to work them. Specialists are people who stop working the land and come into the city to do other things. Nobody leaves the family farm and moves to the big city to be a farmer!

itokugawa: Yes, villages are currently represented by the city radius. This is what we'd like to see changed. Here are some reasons:

1)You don't need to worry about the city radius! This would make a weird, nonregular map (geodesated, cubic) a possibility, which is something some people would like to see.

2)It allows you to spread out beyond the city radius. There must be a way for transportation to limit this, for instance, goods can only be shipped to a city within 3 regular squares, 5 road squares, or 10 RR squares.

3)It allows the efficient usage of space, which is currently not possible in Civ, because you can't Tesselate city radii.

4)It more accurately represents the population in the countryside for combat.

5)It more accurately shows the rural/urban population shift brought about by better agriculture. Early in the game, a single village could probably not support a single city population point. Rather, it would take 2:1, or maybe 3:2 to support the people in the city. However, as the game progresses, new technologies and TIs are discovered that gradually improve the food and resources that can be gathered from a terrain square, and you end up being able to support 2 or 3 people in the city for each one in a village. This is how real life worked.

A synopsis of things said earlier in the thread, that should have been made clear:

Right now the length of game turns is arbitrarily determined by the game designers and pegged to the approximate dates of the historical Enlightenment and Industrial Revolutions. Why not allow game turns to reduce from 20 years to 5 years once Philosophy is discovered. Game years from 5 years to 2 years once Enlightenment period is discovered. Game years reduce from 2 years to 1 year per turn once the Industrial Revolution kicks in. One could make the arguments that the Information age, Genetic Age and Nanite Age would allow for even greater Productivity.

The second part of this recommendation is that civs who are lagging on the tech tree would either get fewer turns to play or have all facets of their production factored down to when competing civs discover the key advances. For example, using the example above, if Greece discovers Philosophy first, then all others civs have their production divided by 4 until they discover Philosophy too. This effect may have to be attenuated to maintain game balance.

Do I understand then, that:

1. In this model every time a city grows by one you are automatically given a corresponding village population?

2. And village are placed where you like?

3. And villages have non-specialist populations that are limited in growth potential to size 2 or 3?

4. And city radius is done away with, because villages now produce all resources and those resources are listed at the Civ level only (as opposed to city by city)?

2, Within reason, yes. We have proposed that villages must be placed adjacent to anouther village (or city) and within a certain amount of MP of a city...

3 yes.

4 yes. Especially works well for regions, then you can just worry about regional borders...

I'm getting closer...

"You divide your pop between villages and cities as youlike. Generally you will have 2x the civX pop points available. You can focus more on resources/food when you need them, then shift to trade/labour at other times."

1. So my civ has a "pool" of regular population points equal roughly to the number I get when I add up all my city sizes?

2. And it is from this pool that I draw to create villages?

3. Which I can place within my borders to maximize resource making? I can futher move these villages around whenever I want?

4. And the work product of all these villages is stored on the civ level, or at the region level, but again, not at an individual city level?

5. But cities still are where units are created?

Of course there on some limitations on moving pop. and a certain % loss of resources dependant on transport infrastructure. With fractional pop used, then the total pop points stays exactly the same, no matter how you move them around (not counting growth).

Some pople want villages to send food to induvidual cities, but I favor empire (or region) destributed stuff.

The difference between a village and city with the sam epop, is that in a village square there is not just one settlemetn, tehre may be dozens, but a city is 1 settlement.

I think that the difference between an agrarrian civ and in industrial one is very important and should be shown in Civ3

(the village idea does this)

in earlier civs they approximated this by considering your industrial workers as built in (its the reason why 1 pop = 10000 people and 2 pop = 30000 people), I think that it is very important to diffreentiate it

growth can now be devorced from food and production from resources

This means that population growth can be linear and that the cost of units and buildings can go up properly, its because later on civs have a whole ton of workers in their cities

each pop takes a set amount of n to grow (it is unhappy and dies if it does not have enough food, food can be stored in graneries to give time to solve this problem)

this amount is always the same so that your cities are getting really big but most have to be workers because the later units and buildings take so much industry to build

workers are the main (specialist) person inside cities in order for them to build anything

allow for multiple growths a turn to show a fast growing city

allow a city to produce up to like three things, make how much can be given to producing one thing dependent on the SE

you could then have some workers producing luxuries, some a particular building, and some money

here is a big radical idea of mine first let loose at the SE thread:

imagine that certain SE settings allow the people more control of the government

these AIs will have programs of what to do when they are generals and/or civic administrators

people will be able to program there own

each AI will have different strategies that they favor to deal with certain problem

in some SE choices you will be able to choose the AI (but you won't know the program name, you will have to figure out if it will be good at a particular job) and what level of power it will have and some will impose even further limitations on you

In some SE setting you will not have to have an AI at all

these AIs will be programable by gamers so gamers can add new ones to the choices

each one will be in certain bins with the ones that the game is told to consider better in better bins

these bins will be what the computer picks your AI out of when you promote one into your AI pool (each will have a random but historical name)

in the harder difficulty levels you will get worse and worse bins and the computer player will get better and better ones (the computer player would come from extra good ones)

think about it, is the President involved very much with the strategic operation of cities, regions or military?

no, because of the US SE setting

you would give in AI an instruction like this: "use these troops to take these cities" (or you might be limited to: "use these troops to attack this enemy" or "use troops (and the AI picks the troops) to attck this enemy" or a variety of other ones (limited by SE setting)) and then it would go through the strategies programmed into it and use the one that is best suited to accomplish its mission

AIs can be given generalships and/or city administration (a certain military SE setting might make it so that your succesful general are the only ones that can be city administrators) and it would have strategies to deal with both types (most often an AI with good general stragies would not have good administrating strategies but some would be good at both)

the AIs with better stategies would go in better bins making the harder levels a true challenge

you would then have a hard and realistic choice

choose SE settings that give good bonuses but take control away from you in the three areas (military, civil, and national; an example of a loss of national control is the Senate in civ: there would be different levels of loss of control) or you can choose SE settings that are perhaps more despiotic (and bad bonuses) but give you more control over your civ

this would also make the hard levels a lot harder and add more internal action

also this would hopefully make it so that we would have a decent AI and make a lot of the differences of the harder levels based on AI difficulty

a civic administator you would give instructions to like "build these things and keep the people happy" (this would be good civic control but not complete control) and then the AI you have manage that city (or group of cities or group of cities and military units) would choose based on their programmed strategies what order to build the things listed and in what manner to keep the people happy (make an entertainer, build a happy improvement, etc.)

you would be limited in how many AIs you could have by how many cities you had, your SE structure, ect.

if you draw in AI out of that bin it does not go away from that bin, instead it just gets harder to get from that bin (you still hve the same chance of drawing from that bin as set in difficulty level, ect.)

this AI idea could work with a lot of different SE ideas not just mine like in one similar to smac: free market would decrease your control of civic, democracy would decrease you control of all three, power would decrease your control of millitary (the reason for this is that in a power society the military has a lot of power so it would be more independent), fundamentalist would decrease your control of national, wealth would decrease your control of civic, planned would increase you control of civic, etc.

I gave a lot more info on this in the SE thread

(I got thinking about this by thinking about SE, smac governors and auto settlers, and talking to a fellow civer/smacer)

It is true that in cities we expect only specialists and workers but it is only a matter of definition. If for example we have Londonshire, Delhishire etc. instead of London and Delhi everything would be OK.

On the other hand I do not like the idea of specialists working in cities because I have bad experience from colonization (the game goes too slowly). The only necessary change in this point is that technologies should let you i.e mine more effectively and factories/libraries etc should rather have 100% effect instead of 50%.

I find the village idea interesting, but I've got a few problems.

1. Resource allocation. If villages are the resource-producing sites, and must be built over several turns, the player loses a tremendous amount of the resource allocation flexibility that made it possible to handle emergencies in Civ1/2. For example, if I have been focusing on food production and am invaded, it will take me several turns to reorganize to get the resources needed for defense. I don't think this is realistic -- for most of history, various sorts of manual labor have been essentially interchangeable. I also don't think this is fun, as it greatly increases a perfectionist-type civ's vulnerability to surprise attack.

2. Vulnerability to attack. The village concept makes it far too easy for an invading army to destroy another civ's economy. Again, history shows that this was rarely a strategy in the old days, since peasants could run from invaders and reestablish their relatively low-tech farms pretty easily. Even in the modern age, invasion has not had a long-term impact on agriculture. Also, this vulnerability reduces fun. It's already annoying enough in Civ2 that an enemy can waltz in and in a single turn wreck an improvement that I spent many multiple turns to make. The village proposal means that the computer civs can also knock off huge portions of my population with ease. I don't think the refugee concept solves this problem, since it will be relatively easy for the computer civ to send villages packing turn after turn.

3. Complexity. The village concept adds a lot of complexity and -- dare I say it -- micromanagement to solve a problem (the city radius) that really isn't that troublesome.

My suggestion is to use real population numbers ( ie 10,390 or 20,300). growth would not depend on food but on other factors. Default pop growth might be like 3% (pop increases by 3% per turn). The factors would add a few percentage points up or down. Food would only determine if the growth is positive or negative. (food deficit would make growth negative, surplus would make it positive).
Citizens would not work squares. Instead, there would be sliders that would allow the player to distribute the pop among tasks (like agriculture, industry, economy, military, happiness) With the sliders, the player would change percentages of pop in each sector NOT actual numbers of pop (this would reduce micromanagement since a player can handle percentages better than actual numbers especially for large cities).
The more people in agriculture, the more food (facilities would enhance productivity).
The more people in industry, the faster a facility or weapon would be completed (facilities would enhance productivity). etc for the other sectors.
The city radius would determine what ressources are available to the city. If a city lacked ressources or used them up, it would have to get the ressources from somewhere else (this would make trade very important).
I will be more specific when I finish working out the details of this model.

My suggestion is to use real population numbers ( ie 10,390 or 20,300). growth would not depend on food but on other factors. Default pop growth might be like 3% (pop increases by 3% per turn). The factors would add a few percentage points up or down. Food would only determine if the growth is positive or negative. (food deficit would make growth negative, surplus would make it positive).
Citizens would not work squares. Instead, there would be sliders that would allow the player to distribute the pop among tasks (like agriculture, industry, economy, military, happiness) With the sliders, the player would change percentages of pop in each sector NOT actual numbers of pop (this would reduce micromanagement since a player can handle percentages better than actual numbers especially for large cities).
The more people in agriculture, the more food (facilities would enhance productivity).
The more people in industry, the faster a facility or weapon would be completed (facilities would enhance productivity). etc for the other sectors.
The city radius would determine what ressources are available to the city. If a city lacked ressources or used them up, it would have to get the ressources from somewhere else (this would make trade very important).
I will be more specific when I finish working out the details of this model.

My suggestion is to use real population numbers ( ie 10,390 or 20,300). growth would not depend on food but on other factors. Default pop growth might be like 3% (pop increases by 3% per turn). The factors would add a few percentage points up or down. Food would only determine if the growth is positive or negative. (food deficit would make growth negative, surplus would make it positive).
Citizens would not work squares. Instead, there would be sliders that would allow the player to distribute the pop among tasks (like agriculture, industry, economy, military, happiness) With the sliders, the player would change percentages of pop in each sector NOT actual numbers of pop (this would reduce micromanagement since a player can handle percentages better than actual numbers especially for large cities).
The more people in agriculture, the more food (facilities would enhance productivity).
The more people in industry, the faster a facility or weapon would be completed (facilities would enhance productivity). etc for the other sectors.
The city radius would determine what ressources are available to the city. If a city lacked ressources or used them up, it would have to get the ressources from somewhere else (this would make trade very important).
I will be more specific when I finish working out the details of this model.

Will:
1) Villages don't cost resources to build. The time to change over is the same as fortification time for units. This represents the time (1 turn) needed to move the people, and plant the crops, set up a blacksmith, etc. It is realistic that way. Constantly swithcing citizens is more flexible, but there should be a small cost to do it (1 turn lost production, in this case)

2) It does add a bit. This could be helped by requiring all laning units to use all MP to land, giving you time to counter, and allowing you to attack units in your borders with the same diplomatic impact as asking them to be removed. It would also require perfectionists to keep some military prepardness to avoid raids. Most perfectionists are like Poland at the start of WWII, expecting to be left alone, even though they had obsolete defenses.

3) I don't think it adds that much. You set the ratio of village / city pop. Civ automatically pumps out new pop where it is needed. You can set priority 'flags' where you want villages the most if you have a special preference. They are visiable on teh mpa in some alternate terrain view mode, so you can set your whole civs at once, without going to all the civ views.
There are no improvments to be built other than normal TI's... I don't think it adds that much.

4) Villages allow more flexibility, and allow the rules to remain consistent for every square. You don't have the wierd situation where you can gather stuff without pop living on the land and velnerable, but the moment you go outside of a city radius your unit is a target. It still doesn't help the wierdness of positioning a city so that a coal mine is 250 miles from the city center as well as the rich fish bed, while cities really rose at ocean river squares first,t ehn along other river squares or ocean/lake areas next, and rarely inland unil moderen times.

Jimmy, look at fractional pop growth, in the city improvment/other/this thread. It is similiar, but keeps pop points.

Your sliders are similiar to assigning citizens in cites to be laboures or merchants (or soldier speicialist, if they take off the penalties). Pop in cities do not work the land under this system.

1. Micromanagement. It has been covered by most other people.
   
2. Growth into cities. To be historical, most villages next to major metropolitan centers would be the next to turn into cities. This could create a new ICS problem as huge numbers of cities are clustered together.
   
3. Supply. Which city gets which supplies? How to keep track of them all?
   
4. This also creates the question of whether the city screen is still necessary. The city picture is unnecessary at the very least if villages aren't bound by a radius around the city.
   

My thoughts:

1. Leave villages as a TI. They increase the value of all food/resources/trade by a %, more if more laborers are placed in the same tile.
   
2. To fight ICS, you don't get a citizen to place in the field until size 2. This would require a minimum amount of food, etc. in the city square for it to grow, build, etc.
   
3. Limit the distance villages can send supplies even more than Gordon proposed: 1 square w/o roads, 3 with, but further with rr's.
   
4. Set/Eng/public works build villages. These are needed to create a new city. The only way to allow them to grow into another city is by settling on them with a settler, or by having the village build a "town center", costing the same as a settler. This is the only thing a village can build, and would only require a small box to show % completion instead of an entire city window. In this case there should be a minimum distance between cities; 2-3 squares at least. Your palace counts as a center.
   
5. Regarding specialists: I am against them normally, but if this system is adopted I can agree to some of them (worker, scientist, merchant). However, the ability to switch one to another must be severely limited, as changing tasks isn't that simple. This wouldn't apply to changing something to a worker (that's easy, and they shouldn't count as specialists) but to switch from a worker to a scientist would require some time , money or something else.
   

Quote from my post:

" ... Foobar has a good point there too that once you've properly established your civilization (i.e., have enough cities), there just isn't any real threat to you no more. If you have a counterpart of historical Rome on its' height in CIV/CIV2, you simply can't lose it to a bunch of barbarians!

I think you have a good idea, Foobar. Maintaining a large empire especially in ancient times should be a difficult, yet not impossible, task in CIV3. Yes, there's already the "increased unhappiness from too many cities" factor, but the effect of it alone is all too weak to really make a difference. Besides, this factor was originally patched to CIV1 explicitly to discourage a certain abusive strategy ("despotic conquest"; you stay in despotism, crank out only military units and conquer everybody), not to reflect some historical experiences in ruling large empires.

The unhappiness factor could be just a first step in a series of increasingly severe penalizing effects taking place the more cities you own:

1. increased unhappiness [starts when # of cities goes over limit]
2. increased corruption = less science, money, production
3. low military unit morale
4. chance of spontaneously falling to anarchy = civil war, or throne war, can happen several times
5. increased military unit costs = military service less appealing to populace
6. chance of massive barbarian hordes invading = they are looking for an opportunity to plunder a weak, overextended empire; may happen several times
7. chance of empire breaking up [may occur when you have more cities than three times limit]

Also the strength (or chance) of each effect would increase with increasing number of cities. Note that items 4, 6 and 7 are _chances_, so there's also chance that they won't occur.

I've tried to design the above list roughly according to what historical Rome "experienced". The Chinese did not (?) break up (item 7) while Alexander the Great's short-lived empire did not face barbarians (item 6). To certain extent, the penalties could be applied even to such a relatively advanced empire as the czarist Russia.

If a civilization breaks up, one or more new civilizations split off from the old empire, and the above penalties are then reapplied to each (including the old) according to their new number of cities.

Later, new inspiring ideologies (and religions) and more advanced forms of government would increase the city limit and thus reduce or even finally eliminate (with Nationalism) the penalizing effects. IMO, Nationalism should then introduce a whole new set of problems in ruling a civilization, but I won't get into that here (see posts in TECHNOLOGY and CIVILIZATIONS threads)."

Quote from another post:

And to be clear: the barbarians can found a new civilization IF they have captured cities (I think this feature has been proposed also before).

Ember:

It seems like your village concept is a clever concept that is basically unnecessary. Theben's proposal of allowing only the second population unit to go out into the field would eliminate ICS much more easily.

I've heard it said that the village would represent the fact that rural populations were exposed to attack. But that really doesn't reflect reality for most of our history. The type of scorched earth combat that this view tries to represent didn't really begin until Europe's Thirty Years War, and wasn't prevalent until much later. Prior to that point, barbarians might occasionally raid to steal food or slaves, but they very seldom destroyed whole villages. This tendency is amply represented by allowing barbarians to destroy improvements.

I've also heard it said that villages would reflect a city's resource pool better than the artificial city zone in Civ1/2. I disagree. In ancient times, most cities' resource pools were defined by proximity to the resources or to a river or ocean. Road transport of all but the smallest items was prohibitively expensive. I believe that this would be better reflected by making the city radius one square in the early part of the game, with perhaps an extension to include river tiles two squares away. Perhaps in later parts of the game, we could have something like the SMAC supply pods, which extract resources outside the city radius and ship them to the city.

I think these suggestions would remedy the asserted problems of the city radius without adding the massive complexity and unrealistic vulnerability of the village system.

If we accept the idea of villages why villages cannnot grow to cities? I would prefer a different definition:

Village: 1-4 citizens, no specialists (except entertainers and farmers) and non-militaristic buildings requiring more than 1 coin for maintainance (i.e. bank) are not allowed.
Exception: Aquedact for village of 4 citizens. Required for further increase.
No increase of population with luxuries.
Village radius 1.

Small city: 5-10 citizens, 3rd level improvements (stoch exchange, research lab, mfg plant) and superhighways are not allowed. City radius as now.

Large city: 11-18 citizens. Requires sewer system. City radius 36 squares (radius 3 except 3 squares for every corner).

Huge city: More than 18 citizens. City radius 48 squares (radius 3).

Specialists: Entertainers, scientists, traders, workers (only for factories), farmers. Every new citizen is unexperienced but he can learn any one of these specialities in school (workers-farmers), college (entertainers-traders), university (scientists). A skilled citizen produces +1 if he works in his speciality
(similarly as colonization). With 1 restriction: You can have no more than i.e. 20% scientists (there are few grear brains), 50% workers+farmers (not everybody is strong) etc.

Wonders: You can build ancient wonders everywhere, medieval not in villages ... modern wonders only in huge cities.
(not realistic for manhattan project but good for the game).

No, world conquest wouldn't be ruled out "until really late" in the game. Like I tried to point out, it would still be possible although challenging to build or conquer a large empire in ancient times. For example, player might simply get lucky and not experience any of the items 4, 6 and 7. Nationalism wouldn't be the only advance that reduces the penalties, but the last. There would be other things earlier like adoption of a religion with higher moral code, or some Wonders to build. And the reduction very much depends on your tech advances, so the quicker you research the sooner you get rid of the penalties. Hey, have Nationalism by 2000BC, go conquer.

But really, world conquest shouldn't be an issue without proper development first. How CAN the world be conquered with primitive technologies and as leader of people who about remind cavemen in their thinking and moral? World conquest requires global logistics, communication networks, means of transportation, etc., resources that didn't exist in ancient times.

The village system, as I believe has already been mentioned, depends upon a difference between industry and resources. How many resources belongs in different threads, but assume for all discussions of villages that there are two things, industry and resources. The villages produce resources. The simplest division is between two resources: food and "shields." The food from the village (minus its own requirements) is distributed throughout the region, as a regional surplus in food. There have been ample discussions in varied places about the effects of food, I think we don't need to go into that. The food is divided first by need, then the surplus is divided by population. Shields (or more distinct resources) are used for production, but cannot be used alone. They require the workers in the city. Each city "produces" industry. Industry is produced by workers. Industry represents the amount of work that can be done in the city, and industry is where production comes from. If your Phalanx costs 20 shields, you need 20 shields (from villages) to build a Phalanx. However, the city you are building the Phalanx in can only build it so fast... If it's industry is 2, it takes 10 turns. If industry is 20, it takes one turn. If industry is 60, three in one turn. However, the villages must be producing enough "shields." Shields are divided up like food, equally within each region. Basically, this means that if you have a shield defacit, all cities in the region begin to get a % drop in production. If you have a surplus, it can be stored for later, with some percentage decay rate.

On village placement: I agree with Theben's limitations. Count rivers and coastlines as roads for these purposes, though.

On villages becoming cities: Like Ember said, a settler can turn a village into a city (this ends up with a slightly bigger city than if you'd just built it with the settler in the middle of nowhere, but also ends up with a city in the same region the village was) Also, a village can build a "town hall." I like this idea, but here is a question: What does the village use to build? By definition, it has no industry. Maybe only allow the settler route.

I suggested to make supply units a TI instead, then the issue of maint. came up, and when the maint. was a pop point, 'inhabited squares' the need to differentiate between within city radius and farther away evaporated...

I favor the idea of special Village TIs for other uses. For example, an inland city with shore tiles in its radius could use a village on a shore tile to serve as a port. The city could then build ships, but not port improvements (other than Harbor). If some improvements are necessary for ship production, an idea I favor, then building the improvements would confer only the ability to build that type of ship; no other ship effects (vet status, fast repair) would accrue.

I prefer the idea of special TI's rather than Supply Crawlers. A Village TI could be used to assign the resource to a city if connected via road or rail. Road would offer some partial utilization of the resources, and rail the full value. Could coexist with mine, fortress, airbase, etc. Or a Depot improvement could serve the same purpose by a different name (especially after RR).

I would also like to see a Suburb TI only for plains & grasslands. Preq: Automobile. This represents small cities economically tied to the major city (heard of SMSA?) that, in ages past, would have been cities in their own right by population size. Could coexist with irrigation & farms (these tile are 50-100 miles across, ya know). Would allow an extra "worker" in the square producing only trade (2 trade units, perhaps). This allow for much bigger cities, as we have in the real world (Mexico city would be size 49).

I have a really radical idea (have had it for a while, didn't think this forum was the place to post it but here it is)

my idea is massive multiplayer online civ

what made me post it was sovereign

my idea was that on an earth world that is much larger in size than any civ one (maybe real size with real size cities) you would build cities and civilizations

the management would be such that you can have people under you (and that they can rebel and try to start their own civ)

the game would start as all civ games do at 4000 bc

you would control a bloodline that could marry with others have children ect

if your bloodline dies out you have to restart the game

if another player captures all your blood line you then play under them in the management role they set you too

marrying out your bloodline would than be advantageous and would mean that you too would be allied

each member of your familly would be listed and you would have very complete government

government would be such that you can set different players, if you have completely captured their bloodline, to control a region for you

they would do this under the threat of eradication

you would of course have to watch them to keep them from rebelling against you

in a republic the players in that civ would control different factions in the senate and would have to do actions to get them more popular so that they get more power

early on you can be let men or women rule or both

if you have men only than you are introuble if you have only female members and you lose control of the city

besides the stuff to make this good for massive online most rules could be found in these forums

play could move like in smac simultaneous mode

play would go on over like 3 years to take the world to 2000 ad (turns would of course be less time as would tech learning)

new players would start along the edges of civilization and in historical areas

if there are no more places for cities of a bloodline to start one would start in the freeist, largest nation with the fewest bloodlines in it (a new family moving up in the world) or maybe after a certain time you can choose what to do

governments will be extremely customizable so that you can mske all sorts of ones even like the US or Rome

this is a crazy idea but I had it a while ago and I want it

humans are funner to play against then AI

I think this would be cool

I lied, many things would have to be changed because of the scale change (and many things would/could grow more realistic)

maybe we could even make it real time (but with speeded up time

maybe we could even make it play to two turns and die of old age

time could be linear in it in any case

wouldn't it be fun to launch huge realist campaigns against others, or manage a real looking and acting civ

maybe even we could make squares much much smaller and have it so that cities can spread and become larger

I'm being taken to the asylum now