One Tile Cities: Portents, Predictions and Perdition

seanw3

Join Date 12/2007

+141

One Tile Cities: Portents, Predictions and Perdition

One Tile Cities: Portents, Predictions and Perdition

In a tiny little review thread Brad let it slip that cities will be moving the direction of the original Civilizations game. One tile cities with a viewing window for all our buildings. This deserves its own thread, where we can make irrelevant predictions and doom or praise the idea in turn. I think the biggest reason they are moving this direction is the very valid view that the current system has a terrible flow. There is too much gaminess and not enough strategy. City snaking is just terrible. It bothers me to no end. Also, one must see the game on a quantum level to make sense of how a single building could take away hundreds of square miles of space out of the game. Beyond that, cities allow teleportation. This is a -5 in my Metacritic score system. It ruins strategic movement. There are many problems with the current system. The memory costs of each building are also astronomical. That is probably reason number two. The game will be so much more accessible when the memory requirements are decreased. That seems like a no-brainer. So here we have their most logical reasons. The third might just be their love of Civilizations and the remembrance of how well this design worked for GalCiv.

The negative will be that all the wonderful tile art is going to be locked away in a view city option. The least we can hope is that this screen is fully 3D and we can zoom in to look at all the little details, like people and magical effects. Many will overlook this completely after the initial glow wears off. I hope they realize that the cityhubs need to be extremely varied if they are the only representation of a city. They need to be completely redone to look like a full city instead of a mere hub. The scale needs to much tinier too. That single tiles needs to have the look of a massive city at level 5. That means spires, housing, palaces, and walls. It would also be nice if the hub fencing was morphed into a function to put small village huts around the outside of a cityhub. This is really an ambitious undertaking.

It also means that the tiles within the city view can have many many more objects added to increase the detail and wonder of buildings. I am greatly relieved by this, as many of my custom tiles are only usable on the best of systems. I hope the devs adopt staggered buildings that overlap on each other's tiles a bit. It is a great way to make the city feel connected. The current tiles are too neat. They too clearly separate buildings, preventing the whole from seeming like anything other than clearly spaced improvements. I also am hoping for some good UI here. This should be the screen that shows us the function of each building. That means mouseover tooltips and being able to go straight to the Hiergamemnon for a more detailed description.

What do others think about this move?

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juryal

Quoting Satrhan,

reply 47

3) Ability to manipulate the zone of influence for the city. Essential in my opinion...

This will likely still be possible by 1) leveling the city to increase it's area of influence, 2) building a new city (I think minimum distance can become smaller now), and 3) building outposts.

So you want smaller but more cities, how will this increase the factor of more wilderness if you just have smaller but more?
Outposts as they are now seem like a poor way to manipulate Zone of Control and I innerly hope they wont keep it to those squishy silly towers, cause that would start making ZoC feeling Empty and easily destroyed.

Quoting Satrhan,

reply 47

Barring this, if you find it particularly gamey, don't use it...

By the same criteria I guess you would have all the terraforming spells removed from the game. (Please no...)

Please yes. Maybe not remove them completely, but at the very least move them WAY up in the magic tree. Lowering mountains and raising seabeds should be epic late game spells, not your starting set of utility spells.

Want to use your logic for a second, I think the people should remove heroes, cause they seem far too powerfull for units, or move heroes way up the research tree...

I for one like the easy access to the terraforming options, though I still think they should be improved graphically, and meaby be moved up to 2nd level spells, also increased mana cost for such important spells.

These things aside, I still feel cities go too big atm. But I want to have the visual feeling of my cities expanding, I will like to see how this is going to look so I hope I will have alot of time to comment on this before you release the game, since I will predict my own feeling being city development going to be very "oh lvl 2, now my city is twice as big... for some reason".
I still favour the idea of having big cities with smaller garrisons that need to be captured for control of the town, so units will spend movement to walk inside the city too.

Another thing I feel would help the game would be upgraded (and defendable) outposts, and fewer cities, (with more levels), making the cities more important singularly, but not having too many cities per emire, instead you will have small forts or garrisons spread over your kingdom to keep you borders safe (and in general keeping it YOUR borders)... Abit like medieval Europe.

I guess its all about taste about the game, and I feel we can discuss this endlessly without any consequence... Thats just my feeling so far ^^.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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Quoting sweatyboatman,

reply 50

I think the problem is that we are talking past one another. I understand your issues with the scale, and I too think the world should be vast and wild. But I believe it should also be conquerable. Reestablishing your empire and pacifying the world is kinda the whole point of the game, after all.

We're not so far apart then. I wouldn't mind if a large part of the world becomes civilized by late game. It is indeed the point of the game, sort of. Covering them in cities is just not the way to do it imo. I think the main problem with it is that there is nothing to do on the map besides building cities and claiming resource tiles. The later only take one click and no other interaction ever needs to happen, and if they're not around the map seems empty. Which leaves cities to fill the gap. The solution to this could be allowing us to build satellite villages around our cities. Let us build farming villages on the otherwise useless tracks of fertile land surrounding our cities, logging camps in forests, fishing villages near bodies of water. Maybe one of these 'outposts' per city level?

Besides, it won't be strictly one tile. Probably two for most cities, maybe more for certain cities. I wouldn't mind if cities grew by one tile per level for instance.

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Quoting feelotraveller,

reply 49

With single tile cities it will be impossible to include any resources within the city walls. You will have no choice or strategic decision, everything must be vulnerable.

There has been no statement on whether resource tiles will be included in the city limits if it is next to the city hub. For me it depends a bit on what resource it is, but I wouldn't mind terribly if they could be included.

Yes, influence can be expanded but, barring a new mechanism, we will not be able to change its predictable block shape. Personally I think it will be aesthetically horrible but feel free to differ on this. Importantly though it takes away from strategic concerns - cities become entirely predictable and staid with the area and shape they can encompass resources within.

The difference isn't very big. Right now when you place a building on a new tile next to a city, you are just adding a new square block of influence, centered on that building. It just happens to overlap with your previous area of influence. Having the centre of a new block a few tiles further doesn't change much IMO.

Actually I would like that . But I understand we had that discussion long ago and I'm not trying to dust it off. More than anything the game resources needed to implement it are way beyond what I reckon the dev's have got to offer. But it is a question of scale. Teleporting units through a city 'cheaty gamey exploit' - teleporting resources across half a world 'no problem with that'. To send a unit there will take years of game time but we get the resources immediately, huh?

I agree with you here, I just think it is strange to say 'well, apparently resources can be teleported, so it's fine if my troops can too'.

As to the scale of city size to the world map I have some agreement with you. However to me it is a problem of too many cities rather than each city being too large. There should be more wild lands - agreed - but the problem is that within the first 10% of a game the world is completely colonised and territorial borders are bumping up against one another just about everywhere. Reducing the minimum distance between cities is just going to make this worse. Nowhere in the world will a unit be more than a couple of turns from a city. What 'big hostile world'?

Reducing the minimum distance doesn't have to lead to cities everywhere, if the maps are designed properly. But lets say we build 4 cities in a square grid with a minimum of 5 tiles between cities. These four cities cover 1 tile each, and exclude other cities from being build on 17x17 tiles area around them. That is 289 tiles, or one city in 72 tiles. Even with two tile cities, only one in 36 tiles is covered. But this is mostly a balancing and map scripting issue.

As to your point - I don't get it. You want to stop me pressing the 'I win' button? (Why would it be any of your concern?) You can't stop yourself pressing an 'I win' button? (That could be a problem, but not with the game.) You don't like me telling people not to do something they profess to not like? (I would have thought that this was sensible advice.)

It seems to be the last, or some combination of it with a lack of self control or transparency as to your own desires. But I really can't undertand what you are getting at.

Maybe it is in a small part an self-control issue. But I really don't like it when I have to actively force myself not to use the most efficient strategy available.

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There any way we could get an option to set the max distance between cities in the workshop/custom maps? I want the 30+/- factions to really have to travel to get to one another, someone said they would like it lowered from 7 to 5 well I would like it increased from 7 to 15, adding even more room for wilderness/independants to grow

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Solam

Join Date 03/2007

+16

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 27

The specific plan is as follows:

The city hub gets 1 tile. As a city grows, it would add 1 sub-tile based on the city's specialization. Each faction would have their own look and each specialization within that faction would have its own look. So at a glance you will be able to tell what type of a city it is and how big that city is.

A separate screen will display the bustling full city. This allows us to add a lot more city improvements without it taking over the main map.

This sounds terrific

That window with all the improvement makes me thing of the MOM window when you finished building something. I wonder if it will look like that

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Quoting Satrhan,

reply 52

... The solution to this could be allowing us to build satellite villages around our cities. Let us build farming villages on the otherwise useless tracks of fertile land surrounding our cities, logging camps in forests, fishing villages near bodies of water...

Now that would be a sensible solution to any of my dislikes, cause I just want civilization to conquor my part of the world .
And I would in most terrific ways enjoy choosing which hubs of lands I want to build tiny little villages on.
Though alot of the other stuff you say I dont completely agree with, I like this one ...

As for the little panorama view of your own city (or what you are going to call it ) I am personally not going to use it, the thing I like about the current cities is the grandness without having to look "on some other site, at some other place" before I see the actual city...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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Quoting Satrhan,

reply 53

I agree with you here, I just think it is strange to say 'well, apparently resources can be teleported, so it's fine if my troops can too'.

Actually we agree more than you think.

Neither resources nor troops should be teleported automatically (as opposed to by spell). Unfortunately 'single tile' cities* will not stop units teleporting. We still need an independent fix for this and (I believe) are less likely to get it. (The reference to resources was one of scale - they are teleported each and every turn over much greater distances than units tend to be teleported through cities.)

(* They are going to be at least 2 tiles wide - once level two - and, if you are correct that resources may still be able to be encompassed, may easily be commonly five or six tiles wide.)

It is a similar thing with the chokepoints. They are not going to disappear, there will simply be less of them. The cpu players will still cope as badly with them. The real fix is to program the AI to use/subvert them. Then their prevalence is of little concern in terms of cheese. Again maybe the smoke is getting in the way of the fire.

I think seanw3 is correct in the real reason for this - they want to save RAM. Another case of bling getting in the way of a solid game.

I quite like the art but I am not playing the game to look at pretty pictures.

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I think the main flaw in changing the system would be ... how can I build towards forests and rivers now? To get the special bonus bulidings?

Would make initial city placement a lot more important. (unless docks and lumbermills can be built independent of cities now ... or can be built in the city if the 'Influence' of that city reaches a river or forest)

Overall I'd say that I think such a move would be an improvement on the system.

I agree that, if we go for city screens, it might be interesting to 're-address' the problems of implementing Seige Battles ... to see if it can be done.

Certainly having Towers/Walls for archers to sit on, and for melee to hide behind would be interesting.

Scalable Walls and destructible walls.

(buildings can just have a %chance of being destroyed, nothing need be changed about that I think)

Would also open up the possibility of city-capture "Destroying" any 'One-Per-Faction' buildings that may exist there. Which would nicely solve the problem of multiple Towers of Dominion simply because of a successful war. Shouldn't the city itself, with its existing population, be enough? Gaining more through conquest than is possible through building (in an abstract sense) does seem a bit odd, although I guess there have been empires with multiple palaces.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 27

Hmm.

Yes, being able to tell the TYPE of city sounds very nice.

If we can tell the size as well, all the better.

I would wonder ... how large are these subtiles?

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Seriously, how can we defend enclosing ressources in the city wall as strategic? That is just some meaningless exploit. I will welcome not to spend time everytime I need to raze a buidling anymore. It was pretty indeed, but the impact on the game strategy was negative, as it added nothing that was not an exploit (or at least compltely gamey to the point of completely trashing any suspension of disbelief). Same with creating chokepoints with a 503 km long citywall. That just does not make any sense, nor any deep strategy. I'd rather have each unit and city have a ZOC that blocks movement around, and the ability to build forts on the map than the old system.

I just hope we can still build lumber mill and watermill if a river or forest is enclosed in the influence radius though.

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Quoting feelotraveller,

reply 57

I quite like the art but I am not playing the game to look at pretty pictures.

But... I am... ^^

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 27

Sounds good to me. One tile cities (plus subtiles for specialization) is the right move. It concisely conveys what your city is supposed to be doing.

That is one of my gripes/annoyances with Civ and Colonization (and I still do it with FE). I'd have to name my cities ridiculous things like "Oretown" or "Librarytown" to keep my strategy straight. It would be nice to still have "Jamestown" or "Alexandria", but still know why I built the city, and my plans for it.

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Quoting Kongdej,

reply 61

Quoting feelotraveller, reply 57
I quite like the art but I am not playing the game to look at pretty pictures.

But... I am... ^^

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I don't blame you, pretty pictures are so hard to find these days.

Good games, on the other hand, are a dime a dozen.

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I've always felt the city building made elemental unique in the 4x genre. What I like about the city mechanic is sometimes if the conditions are perfect I can make a massive city almost like Minas tirith. Or I can make it into a huge wall to close a choke point like Hadrians's wall, or the wall in game of thrones. People like to create stuff. Look at mine craft, sims and ship building in 4x space games. Also if you design the city yourself you have more of an emotional attachment to it.

Whats bad about it is I usually end up building toward a river or forest for the special buildings or incorporating a world resource its protection and my city becomes ugly and snake like anyway. I know people like to use it to game the movement but I think strategically its a bad idea as your enemies can conquer you just as fast as you can move through your own area. So I think the exploit on that is really more about the AI and current lack of MP.

If we end up with square/symmetrical cities it'll be a pretty big downgrade. Can anyone actually point to a square city in real life? No city is the same and that's the big plus to the current city mechanic.

I think in the case for saving ram. less cities then what we can currently make would be better. My mental image of a fantasy kingdom are more like city states with just a few big cities then a a country or empire with lots of cities.

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As a lover of Civ games, I'm all for a one-tile city system. I'd love a proper city management screen with tons of info and numbers...!

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Please correct me if I am wrong, but I am under the impression that the city's zone of control shape is a function of the city's buildings' placement. If so, will our zone of controls simply become circular with this change?

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Quoting Gammit10,

reply 66

I feel it is still somewhat circular even before the change.

Remember that the cities will have 1 tile at creation, and then 1 more tile each level (as I understand Frog's representation).

But yes it seems borders are dependant on how the city looks.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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I use so many outposts on my borders that there is no reason to even think about the shape given from cities.

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At the moment you can snake your city's and block of travel (if you have a non attack policy, the AI can travel through your land but not over a city)

You can also build on a 5+ grain and snake your city towards a river so you can build docks/watermills.

I even snaked two cities to join, so I could travel 15 squares for free (which is so wrong!)

I would like to see a middle ground. The starting city takes up a 3x3 space, and everything you build has to be full up that space first, then the city expands to a 5x5 space and you have to fill that, and once that's fill, you can not build anymore. (will need to make some building smaller)

This stops people snaking cities in one crazy long lines to get free travel.

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Quoting seanw3,

reply 68

I use so many outposts on my borders that there is no reason to even think about the shape given from cities.

Hmm, I dont... ^^ Not anymore, the reason is purely cosmetic.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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Quoting Natjur,

reply 69

I even snaked two cities to join, so I could travel 15 squares for free (which is so wrong!)

How did you manage that? I cannot build buildings within 6 square/tiles of each other (in 2 different cities).

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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Not gonna lie...I'm loathing this idea.

I love how the cities currently are...snaking and all. (I don't even abuse it) I'd hate to see all that beauty go to waste.

If I wanted to play Civilizations (aka 1 tile city land)...I'd play Civilizations.

Anywho...if done right it might be bearable...but only just

If this becomes reality I DEMAND outposts become more strategically useful rather then ZoC color ink-wells (think GalCiv2 starbase awesomeness).....pretty please?

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Are the outposts upgradable? Because that might be cool.

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City snaking is a problem, but I don't want to stare at a city that only takes up one tile. Letting your levelup buildings and Tower of Dominion take up a tile on the map, and requiring all expansions to be adjacent to your city's starting tile, is an easy compromise (for me to think up). I'm withholding judgement on this until I see it implemented.

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Quoting charon2112,

reply 65

As a lover of Civ games, I'm all for a one-tile city system. I'd love a proper city management screen with tons of info and numbers...!

Agreed as a lover of CIV and AOW:SM one tile cities (with some subtiles) is the way to go. Make it so

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