In a game of any length, I'll always reach a point where I'm spending much more time co-ordinating city production and not enough time slaying my foes. Of course I could take a largepox approach, but that's not a winning strategy in the early years.
I have an idea of a method of grouping cities together in order to reduce the number of cities which require active supervision, and allow largepoxers to indulge in early game smallpoxing.
The idea is this:
- Introduce a "railway terminus" city improvement. This is only available when the railway technology has been researched.
- If city A has a railway terminus and is connected by railway with city B, then all of city B's surplus food, production, and trade can be directed to city A.
- City B will effectively become a "satellite city" or "feeder city" and city A will become a "metropolis". Allow any number of satellite cities for a metropolis (say any city within distance 15 or 20 which is connected by rail).
- Satellite cities will become static. By static I mean they will not increase in population or produce new units (because there is no surplus). They will require no supervision while linked to a metropolis city.
- The metropolis city, on the other hand, will become a super-charged city. It will create units and city improvements much faster than before. It will grow quickly, and more effectively leverage expensive improvements like factories and universities.
- It will be possible to build wonders quickly in metropolis cities without the rigmarole of building caravans. In fact, building a metropolis would make lots of wonders a lot more relevant to the game. I've never built Shakespeare's Theatre because it is limited to a single city. With a metropolis, it'd be very useful. Ditto King Richard's Crusade.
- Of course, satellite cities could be turned back into normal cities at any time, for example if you wanted to expand the population, or build something different.
- If the minimum distance between cities was set to zero, then you could build real megacities where you build satellite cities on every single food-productive square around a metropolis city. Keeping a megacity safe might prove a challenge, or it might lead to some interesting urban-warfare tactics.
As well as improving the gameplay, this model will actually reflect historical reality quite well.
-- 203.9.33.7 07:38, July 10, 2012 (UTC)