Megapoles and Regional Capitals

from Elemental Forums

So I was playing Galactic Civilizations II and, as always, I found the game was getting tedious as my collection of planets became an empire.  While managing a small number used to be fun, zipping around the galaxy trying to keep track of my scores of planets got tedious pretty fast, and AI governors were just never as good as the real thing.  How might this stumbling block be averted in Elemental?  

So I thought about how empires were historically managed and came up with a possible solution: Megapoles and regional capitals.  Basically, when your civilization starts to get too large to manage, you assign your largest cities as megapoles or regional capitals and they manage the smaller nearby cities.  Let me ellaborate.

You build a large imperial palace to assign it as a megapole and then "tack on" the nearby smaller cities of your choice.  In this arrangement, you lose the ability to explicitly customize smaller cities (this is done automatically by the AI with general instructions from the player along with a variable stipend of gold) but you are still able to customize your megapoles.  Your megapoles will gain a net growth benefit but the smaller cities will frow more slowly.  You gain stability in the smaller cities, lose some efficiency, but all of the non-food commodities, military manpower, and resources are shipped from your smaller cities to your megapole cities where they can be easily managed (which means large armies in the region can be raised at one single site, rather than 10 separate cities).  The smaller subordinate cities would be managed with possibly a slider or two, denoting how much military garrison to post in the city or how close to revolt they might be.  Small time unrest in smaller cities can simply be managed by "sliding" more soldiers to the smaller city rather than having to march an entire army to the "unruly children" every time they get upset. 

The net effect is that you end up with about the same number of cities to manage in the late game as you did at the beginning of the game, which keeps empire growth from losing the charm of early game city management.  Also, there are other implications with Megapoles that would make the game less tedious and more interesting.  For instance, it makes warfare between two large empires less monotonous as well.  Rather than having to march to every city to defeat an opponent, large battles can focus around capturing megapoles.  Also, if your empire begins to fragment from over strain, large scale declarations of independance become a lot "neater," with, say, an entire megapole splitting off from your empire and taking all of its subordinate cities with it (perhaps some of the smaller cities that were more loyal, though, might remain with you).  It's important to mention that with this feature, once you grow to a large enough size, it would be essential to assign megapoles to avert instability issues involved with governing so many cities.  In games like Civ and Galactic Civs, even though there was a governor, many players that value efficiency (but hate managing a billion cities or planets) are forced to keep them off anyway.  With megapoles being a mandatory element of managing an empire, the player doesn't have to sacrifice effiency in order to manage a large empire.

After we open the phones to the audience, I'll ellaborate more on the implications of megapoles :-)    

11,925 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I love the basic idea.  (Which I got from the topic headline, didn't read text as I need sleep now)

 

But yes I think this would be better/cooler then vassalage, or vassalage alone.  Course have to have quite large maps for it to work realwise if not gamewise.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Great idea!  What I understood it sounds like you're talking more about large empires developing "regions" with regional capitals, like New York, Chicago, and Atlanta.  Many metro areas are referred to as a group.  I live in the DC metro area, but is it MD, VA, DC?  It doesn't really matter to most people in the rest of the country.  Alexandria and Gaithersburg are part of the region. If a portion of the country were to cede from the union, it wouldn’t be Huston, Dallas, or El Paso, it would be large chunks of urban, suburban, and rural area in the state of Texas not bound by city limits.

One modification I would make to your system is to have the regional management mechanic be optional, and player-defined.  Also, instead of having the AI handle management I’d like to see the option to keep management of the region in the hands of the player so you can tell the St. Lewis area to focus on ship construction.  I think this type of mechanic would really help to trim a lot of the tedium one runs into with large games, and could lead to a more sensible way of managing large empires.

 

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

It is a good and workable idea.  When I am playing Civ type games I have used this methodology frequently.  I would divide my empire up into regions based upon the characteristics of the region (border, economic development, trade maximization, military unit recruitment, etc) and then manage the area appropriately.  I found that this also helps in the organization of the militay since each region can have its own assigned army in charge of regional defenses.

Pretty much the Roman model.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Something I noticed in Elemental which is the same as Gal Civ 2 is you'll be able to "specialize" cities by the types of buildings you build in them. Let me explain by going over a part of Gal Civ 2 real quick.

In Gal Civ 2 I had 3 main colony (In Elemental Cities) "types". Colonies that brought in money, colonies that did research, and colonies that made my fleets. One "type" had almost nothing but buildings that made money (Planetary Exchanges), another type had nothing but factories, and another had almost nothing but research centers. Once those colonies were built up to the maximum they required no micro management at all unless I was building new ships. Literally once I laid out the colony the way I would want it to be I left it alone and almost never had to go back to it to micro manage anything. I see Elemental being the same way.

Say you make a city that is lucky enough to be in close range of two Shards. You build the appropriate buildings for mining shards and making things out of them. You've put down all the buildings the city will allow because of it's population. Until the city grows and you can add more buildings you won't have to go back to it all unless you make a unit from that city or you need to make a item of some kind from that city or it's shards.

Managing a Huge Empire was never a problem for me in Gal Civ 2 once I learned how to play the game properly and understood what everything did. I think it will be the same with Elemental.

Also there is a thread here where they talk about your Empire "splintering" into smaller vassals and factions once it gets too big to manage. The computer will basically take over the day to day running of good sized chunks of your Empire. I'm not too sure how I feel about that part, but, it should waylay your fears of a bulky Empire that will bog you down with Micro Management.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

In response to Raven, I don't think anyone that has played Galactic Civ II has played it any differently than you (except the AI, who often builds a little bit of everything on every world.)  The problem arrives when you hit the 40 planet mark and you have to start garrisoning defense ships on your planets or post outrunners, build up all of your spacedocks in every sectors, return to each planet every time you get a terraform upgrade, rally your ships, and then be prepared to redo a lot of it once you go to war and it all gets trashed.  And Gal Civ, I imagine, will be easier to manage in many ways than Elemental.  For instance, in Galactic Civs, your military vessels didn't take up population, except for transports whom have a massive offensive advantage when invading anyway.  In Elemental, I am lead to believe that soldiers will, which means that raising a large army can't be done from 1-2 heavily industrialized cities.

With Megapoles, if you want to build an empire, it's a lot easier and streamlined than visiting each individual city on a regular basis and, best of all, it actually resembles a true to life empire.  

And in response to Jeffries, I was hoping to avoid keeping non-poles in explicit management of the player because that would encourage players to continue managing it anyway even though it isn't any fun.  I think it's necessary, though, to have similar AI governors that you would normally see in Civ and Gal Civ managing over the subordinate city states with the player setting priorities.  The way I envision it, an Empire with megapoles would gradually become more and more of a cost effective alternative as one's civilization grew, with a non-megapole or non-vassal system gradually accumulating more and more disorder or sentiments for self-autonomy on the part of cities as one's civilization became larger.  If you make a megapole management system optional, than it's unlikely hardcore players will use it.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I see what you're saying Demiansky and it will have it uses that's for sure. It is a good idea, I just don't want to see the minor cities get lost to all PC control. As you state we won't be raising armies from cities that manufacture armor and weapons. They just make the goods then ship them off to the city with the barracks and high population. They initiate the drafting and conscript the units. This is why guarding your caravans in Elemental will be so important.

I think implementing your Megapoles is a good idea but I would hate to see it become useless when every time your empire gets so big one of your children decide to break off and govern themselves and just pay tribute to you without you having direct control. I wish I could find the thread I read earlier. I want to say it talks about your Empire breaking off into smaller pieces that more or less rule themselves but also belong to you like vassals. If that happens all the time for many reasons I can see it being hard to even build a massive empire without part of it wanting to be a vassal and do it's own thing. If that's the case then Megapoles and even most types of Capitols would become useless.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Raven, reply 6
I see what you're saying Demiansky and it will have it uses that's for sure. It is a good idea, I just don't want to see the minor cities get lost to all PC control. As you state we won't be raising armies from cities that manufacture armor and weapons. They just make the goods then ship them off to the city with the barracks and high population. They initiate the drafting and conscript the units. This is why guarding your caravans in Elemental will be so important.

I think implementing your Megapoles is a good idea but I would hate to see it become useless when every time your empire gets so big one of your children decide to break off and govern themselves and just pay tribute to you without you having direct control. I wish I could find the thread I read earlier. I want to say it talks about your Empire breaking off into smaller pieces that more or less rule themselves but also belong to you like vassals. If that happens all the time for many reasons I can see it being hard to even build a massive empire without part of it wanting to be a vassal and do it's own thing. If that's the case then Megapoles and even most types of Capitols would become useless.

Sorry, I hope I didn't offend you, you definately make a good point.  Hm, I think there might be some murkiness in the topic.  I think that the vassalage system that Frog Boy mentioned was a means to prevent the tedium that often comes with large scale governing, the same way that (I hope) megapoles would, and it would be interesting to see, for instance, both elements in the game as two angles of approaching the issue.   Vassals might be generally more loyal (because they don't feel as though they are under your thumb as much) but you exert less direct control.  A collection of megapoles might have more control but could fall to bits when things get too messy or soldiers aren't abundant enough to form an iron fist (a distant war from a specific megapole saps away money from its infrastructure projects, and they decide they are better off deciding what to do with their own resources...) 

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

I think a combination of vassalage and megapoles would be great... my Roman empire could very well splinter as my german barbarian vassals invade and my megapole "provinces" begin to look to themselves.  Very realistic.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Very good point Demiansky !

I played a lot (I mean a lot !) of Civ games and late city micromanagement is really boring.

Furthermore, it is absolutely not realistic to have all those big cities/planets, all similar. If you look at our history trends, you'll see that there was always a huge center (Venice, London, New York), many big cities linked to the center and a lot of margins (this has been analysed by the french historian Fernand Braudel).

There is competition between cities and the winner takes all.

How to translate this into gameplay is a nice challenge.

We could have a measure of the competition between the capital and a regional center. A risk of revolt/secession would appear if the regional center becomes a threat for the capital.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

I like the idea academically, Demiansky, but I'm having a hard time seeing the implimentation of the largest benefit (namely: military)

 

I too tend to get real tired of the massive amounts of micro that go along with the super-late game. The one rub I see is how do you elegantly take away the garrison micromanagement from the Megapoles' subsidiary villages? If you go with the slider approach, does that just mean that you build X-number of troops at your megapole and assign them to the slider pool? Do you still have to garrison some there one top to prevent a hostile takeover?

 

If the economics work out as a supply-chain, we wont have to worry about that portion in terms of excessive micromanagement, and it looks like the research is going to be pretty explicitly based on population. That pretty much leaves us with nothing but military to worry about anyhow.

 

One thing that may be cool (and similar in spirit, I think), would be when(if) your heirs break off small vassalages and exchange tithes, research from population, and trade goods for military units/equipment. You send men, they administer them, and give you stuff. You would be wise to keep them well equipped, and rewarded with their safety, but all you would need to is send the troops to the regional capital, and they would be dispersed accordingly.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Malsqueek, reply 10
I like the idea academically, Demiansky, but I'm having a hard time seeing the implimentation of the largest benefit (namely: military)

 

I too tend to get real tired of the massive amounts of micro that go along with the super-late game. The one rub I see is how do you elegantly take away the garrison micromanagement from the Megapoles' subsidiary villages? If you go with the slider approach, does that just mean that you build X-number of troops at your megapole and assign them to the slider pool? Do you still have to garrison some there one top to prevent a hostile takeover?

 

If the economics work out as a supply-chain, we wont have to worry about that portion in terms of excessive micromanagement, and it looks like the research is going to be pretty explicitly based on population. That pretty much leaves us with nothing but military to worry about anyhow.

 

One thing that may be cool (and similar in spirit, I think), would be when(if) your heirs break off small vassalages and exchange tithes, research from population, and trade goods for military units/equipment. You send men, they administer them, and give you stuff. You would be wise to keep them well equipped, and rewarded with their safety, but all you would need to is send the troops to the regional capital, and they would be dispersed accordingly.

Yeah, how a system like this would be implemented would pretty heavily depend on how the in-game economy works its self out.  My vision for the military slider was to simply have a "strength score" that you slide to that would correspond to whatever abstract value your soldiers would have.  The difficulty would come in, though, in the AI's decision of what exactly to send to the city.  If every soldier or division of soldiers had their own levels, special gear, etc. then how do you prevent an AI from sending your best wizard to some backwater?

Well, there could be a few solutions.  You could have an option which would prevent soldiers above a certain level or strength rating from deploying to satellite cities.  Also, you could have a sort of "town watch" system by which you would "shift click" across a swath of soldiers and authorize them to be deployable units in satellite cities (similar to your idea).  You might also be able to design basic soldiers that are specifically built with the town watch quality already built into their behavior, at which point they would deploy after being trained.  If had a particular city that was especially strategically important, you could always just send some special units the old fashioned way and garrison them at the site.

You have an interesting idea with the concession of soldiers too, BTW.