Decentralised Production

Gameplay suggestion

from Elemental Forums

By recheacking my thread title, it might better be called, "centralised production".

The first time I played civilisation, I found it very weird that everything was organised by cities. At that time, I remember saying that in an area, there could be way more cities available. It became even more illogical when playing on a real world map which for example, allowed you to place at most 2 cities in england.

So my suggestion is another way of doing things that could bring other problems of their own but it might interest some people. To visualise it better take civilization IV, remove the cities and only keep the tile development. Which mean that all development and production is done by devloping a tile (placing a mine, placing a farm, etc) some tiles would have houses with population but they are not a central city, there are spread as you like on the map. Tile with population might also have different levels of density.

So it creates the idea of developping and changing the land. Since there is no centralised production it would mean that everythings that control your production will always affect your whole empire since it cannot be divided by cities.

How would you produce? You empire would give you a production income and you pay for what you want to build by spliting that income in various tasks. You could be allowed to place development tile from X squares from your current population tiles and you could place new military units in population tiles.

For combat, it can become complicated if there is a tactical map. Because there is nothing that clearly define what is a city, so the whole map can be a battlefield. Cities could also eventually fusion together and become 1 city.

 

 

4,526 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

While this seems like an interesting idea for another game, I think Elemental is far too deep in development to implement such a thing now... That would require a complete reworking of the entire kingdom and city development systems... And it would affect pretty much every other mechanic in the whole game...

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Perhaps it could be implemented if cities were allowed to be closer together?  Influence already merges...the city then just becomes an abstract concept, if any given tile can be built upon by multiple "cities".

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I think in civilization the cities were the big center of population... not the only ones. Villages and towns were there, producing resources for the larger city.

However, considering the world of Elemental, it's pretty safe to say there isn't that much civilization outside of cities, being haunted by monsters and spiders and such.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

While I like the fact that you think out of the box, but a no-city system had to be definitely a mod (no chance for such major game change), and I don't find it very effective. Cities make it possible for you to manage everything and centralize in the borders of a city. It's easier to know where your units are built, what city (place) are they guarding and with what city you are trading. It's a real life simulation that works, so you can't go wrong with it. You posted a short (no offense) suggestion which would require so much game changing that you would have to spend like 2 days (ok, exaggeration on my part) describing how should caravans, unit production, tile protection, trade, money income, roads and hell lot of other things work.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

One of the thing that annoyed me in Civ and MOM, is the idea where you must not make your cities to close to each other and you don't want to waste space by making them too far from each other.

At least in MOM, there is a 3 square limit between each city, but in civ, sometimes the computer build 2 cities really close to each other which makes them eat eachother's ressources and you end up with an over population problems where you lack of food.