City-based instead of province-based?

[unmerged(11796)]

First, I would like to appologize if this, or similar, idea has allready been presented, and if it was, I urge the admins to delete this.

I was thinking a few years back, before EU III was even an idea, how convinient it would be if the game was city-based instead of province-based. Meaning: Molecular units of micromanagement would be cities, not provinces. Each larger/more importante city would be on the map, corresponding to about 4-5 cities in an average EU2 province. City would not mean only the city, but allso it's surroundings. Each city would have a "influence radius" which would depend on it's size, importance, infrastructure and so on. That surrounding would determine the resourses and raw materials a city produces, overall population, and so on.

Provinces would be default and automatic for the AI (not necessarily), but the players could create and name provinces as they see fit. So you could have 6 cities in one province, or each city could be a discreet province. Both large and small provinces would have it's pros and cons. One should be able to give out orders or laws on province level.

All this would result in the following: Provinces made of cities and their surroundings, so at peace negotiations you could cede/ask for cities instead of entire provinces. Adjustable management for forming provinces and giving orders on this level. And so on...

This would also make exploration and setteling more interesting

This is just a basic, undetailed idea, feel free to comment.

 

[unmerged(11600)]

This would also make exploration and setteling more interesting

This is just a basic, undetailed idea, feel free to comment.

OK, I will.

How does one explore territory without cities? I see vast problems in modeling almost the entire Western hemisphere, plus almost all of SubSaharan Africa and all of Australia.

-Pat

 

[unmerged(11796)]

OK, I will.

How does one explore territory without cities? I see vast problems in modeling almost the entire Western hemisphere, plus almost all of SubSaharan Africa and all of Australia.

-Pat

Exploring would be tricky under these circumstances, but there should be an implicity division into provinces, so exploring would be similar to EU2. Implicit provinces don't even have to be visible, and would serve at least two purposes: 1st it would enable exploration and colonizing (you couldn't select a place for a city when colonizing, but would rather send a settler in an implicit province, and once the cities have been built, you could manage the province borders as you wish). 2nd, it would aid the AI in it's province managing.

So for example, Imagine this scenario: You are playing Spain, and discover an implicit (invisible) provinces on Cuba (3 or so). You send a colonist there and it builds the first city with it's radius, influence, and all. Every next colonist bulds another city, which is automatically merged into the same province as the first one. So, you send colonists in aproximate locations, not specific areas. Later, when your cities (or, first, helmets, villages or wathever) are laid out, you can manage your provinces.

I think that this city-based thing could be great for another reason. Not only that the provinces could be managed and borders changed as you see fit, it could be possible to make the terrain (which would be made of thousands of little invisible hexes) produce certain raw materials, which are added to those of all other hexes belonging to a city radius to produce final output of that city.

 

[Bismark776]

I think this idea has potential although I'd like to try taking it in a slightly different direction. First of all I'd like to say that I think this idea would only work under the condition that units exist at coordinates instead of inside of provinces. By this I mean that you don't move your armies from one province to the next as in all previous paradox games but instead move your your units more like a traditional RTS. This would add a great amount of flexibility to the game.
Now let me move onto my second point, since their wouldn't be any need for provinces anymore there would need to be new levels of management. I think that having cities be one level of management is good, you can build buildings, recruit troops, etc. in your cities. However, the city's "area of control" should only be the borders of that city. The rest of the map should be divided into "rural countryside" zones. These areas could have their own buildings available as well as the option of recruiting troops. This would allow the game to model city states like venice much more accurately, as well as modelling areas that are less developed such as
Africa or North America.
Lastly, I'd go with your idea of newly colonized areas would have new cities created (presumably at pre-determined coordinates for each general area but since units move freely why not have cities be placed wherever). These changes to the game design would definetly make the game more dynamic and realistic at the same time.

 

[unmerged(27106)]

Well, to me it really just sounds to me like you're suggesting smaller provinces, breaking the existing provinces into small provinces centered around significant cities...

 

[unmerged(7537)]

This sounds exactly like the province system, only with smaller provinces.

Mechanically speaking, there is really no difference between nodes that are made up of cities, or nodes made up of provinces.

 

[Bismark776]

Thats rather one reason I suggested moving away from this "node" system where each province is simply part of a large network of points and instead move to a system where the map is simply a map and the units move across it occupying space instead of provinces. In addition, although the original suggestion may in fact mean making smaller provinces I think you'll agree that splitting the "provinces" into city types and countryside types is not the same and would really be a useful feature.

 

[crusaderknight]

Here Here! (or Hear hear, however its spelled)

 

[unmerged(21937)]

Here Here! (or Hear hear, however its spelled)

"Hear hear" as in "Listen to this".

 

[Henning]

Sounds good to me though I don't think paradox would change the game that much. Your map sounds a bit like the rome total war map to me. Kind of like that one though I don't like the game that much