City - satalite estates/villages

[wodinoneeye]

Cities are usually sinks for raw materials (especially food) which is brought in from adjacent areas. Few 'Cities' in history were self sufficient, instead tapped into the food production of outlying farms, villages and estates.

In Egypt farms lined the Nile for miles to generate enough for for the 'large' cities.

In this game, once the capitol actually grows to be a city, only a tiny fraction of the food it requires will be produceable in the city environs.

How will the adjacent areas and their management work?? Since a major percentage of the food will come from these, their proper control and maintaining their production (grain, vegetables, fish, meat) is critical to the
cities existence. The larger the city grows, the larger the adjacent food production areas will need to be.

The politics (external -- abstract control outside the city) will be needed to maintain the supply flow (saw some hints of estate managers and scribes to
keep them honest. Even simplified, there should be dozens of these entities.


I hope that a significant effort is being made to make the AI scripts that control these external (abstract) entities (including foreign powers and territories/mines/traders/vassal cities etc..) as complicated or more so than the people inhabiting the city, so that they too will respond to situations and the players negotiations/actions flexibly and that the player will have a variety of commands/action to solve problems in a imaginative and intuitive way.

Since it will be handled in the game in an abstract way, the information of the 'external' situation will also need to be flexible (allowing clues to a building problem be observable by the player well before a crisis -- and allowing multiple attempts/approaches to solve the problem).

[EmperorJay]

In this game, once the capitol actually grows to be a city, only a tiny fraction of the food it requires will be produceable in the city environs.
The key point is that we don't know this. Perhaps the scenarios do provide enough floodplains.

How will the adjacent areas and their management work?? Since a major percentage of the food will come from these, their proper control and maintaining their production (grain, vegetables, fish, meat) is critical to the
cities existence. The larger the city grows, the larger the adjacent food production areas will need to be.
If any additional sources of food are needed outside of the city map, my guess is that you won't be able to see them just as you wouldn't be able to see other outposts; if the additional sources of food can be seen on the city map, you'll be able to control them.

The politics (external -- abstract control outside the city) will be needed to maintain the supply flow (saw some hints of estate managers and scribes to
keep them honest. Even simplified, there should be dozens of these entities.
You're correct that you need scribes to prevent (too much) corruption, again we haven't heard anything about the scale on which they operate. (AFAIK)

I hope that a significant effort is being made to make the AI scripts that control these external (abstract) entities (including foreign powers and territories/mines/traders/vassal cities etc..) as complicated or more so than the people inhabiting the city, so that they too will respond to situations and the players negotiations/actions flexibly and that the player will have a variety of commands/action to solve problems in a imaginative and intuitive way.

Since it will be handled in the game in an abstract way, the information of the 'external' situation will also need to be flexible (allowing clues to a building problem be observable by the player well before a crisis -- and allowing multiple attempts/approaches to solve the problem).
I hope so too (about the AI) but I'm fairly sure everything will be as "common sense" as the behaviour of the people (with perhaps different degrees of complexity).

[wodinoneeye]

The key point is that we don't know this. Perhaps the scenarios do provide enough floodplains.


If any additional sources of food are needed outside of the city map, my guess is that you won't be able to see them just as you wouldn't be able to see other outposts; if the additional sources of food can be seen on the city map, you'll be able to control them.


You're correct that you need scribes to prevent (too much) corruption, again we haven't heard anything about the scale on which they operate. (AFAIK)


I hope so too (about the AI) but I'm fairly sure everything will be as "common sense" as the behaviour of the people (with perhaps different degrees of complexity).



I figured that alot of the food for the large city scenarios will be coming from those adjacent 'external' entities. Hopefully the 'food' sources will be scripted to be fairly stable (not to have a continuous set of crisis) and or
and adaquate opportunity to take prevenative measure (many granaries filled in years of plenty etc...)

All the specialists in the city are dependant on an uninterrupted source of
food and on the (70%+ rural population) that produces that food.

Will be interesting to see what mechanism the game will have to represent the internal egyptian politics (nomarchs, priesthoods, subordinate cities etc...) as well as those with foreign powers.