Refactor City Population Growth (as a function of city age)

[Alex]

Currently, cities increase in population linearly as a function of age until they reach 4 years of age, at which point the bonus is capped. It was capped because the discrepancy between old cities and new cities is almost a 50% bonus for the old cities, and the idea was just really poorly thought out (or not thought out) to begin with.

This proposal would change the population calculation in cities in a way that would benefit everyone:

• Cities would grow forever as a function of age. There would no longer be an arbitrary cap.
• Cities would grow faster when they're younger, and slower as they're older. This will prevent a "runaway" effect for older players, and help newer nations catch up compared to the status quo.
• Everyone would see an increase in city population as a result of this change. That means increased income for everyone, there would be only winners and no losers, with the biggest winners being young cities.

We can represent the existing formula and the proposed formula graphically to see the difference clearly:

Where i = infrastructure, and on the x-axis we're looking at the age of the city in years. You can see the purple line is current population as a function of city age, whereas the black line is the proposed population formula as a function of age. We're ignoring factors like disease, pollution, crime, etc. here because they're the same in both instances.

As you can see, for everyone with cities less than 4 years of age, it's a pretty significant increase in population to match things up closer to older cities. For a city at 4 years of age (it's not 100% exact but it's damn close) there would be no difference. For cities over 4 years of age, they're capped at that value currently, so they would increase along the black line to some value higher than what they are currently capped at.

The slope of the black line decreases as the city gets older, thus the rate of population increase decreases as a function of age. Therefore cities can age forever and increase in the bonus forever with only marginal benefit. This is both satisfying for older cities as they do see some growth, while also not being overpowered.

I would expect everyone to support this change, but I've been wrong before and so I'm posting the suggestion here for feedback first. Please offer your comment and feel free to use the upvote/downvote to indicate your support/non-support. Thanks!

[Majima Goro]

i agree
Finally one which everyone can agree to i think
 

[Krampus]

I agree with this, but i think this isn't that much important compared to the current market prices and the economic system overall.

[Ayayay]

@Alex I shall accept this change but would still like $4bil or 10 cities as compensation regardless 

[Daniel Storm]

Anything that puts more cash in the economy is fine by me.

[WISD0MTREE]

I approve of your suggestion, but disapprove of your graphing utility. You can't please everybody.

[Sir Scarfalot]

Nooooo! This would conflict with my extremely specific and niche gameplay style and tactics and therefore I will disagree with it on that basis even if it is good for the game in general ?

 

J/k: it's a good change. I just wanted to object in order to make you wrong

?

Edited May 5, 2019 by Sir Scarfalot

[Sphinx]

Removing the population cap is a good thing and helping newer players is also good, so its a win win, excellent idea. 

[Guest Frawley]

This is a great idea.

[Guest Epi]

Brilliant

[Alex]

On 5/4/2019 at 4:19 PM, WISD0MTREE said:

I approve of your suggestion, but disapprove of your graphing utility. You can't please everybody.

Do you have a better suggestion? I've been a huge fan of Desmos, it's super easy and convenient.

[WISD0MTREE]

6 hours ago, Alex said:

Do you have a better suggestion? I've been a huge fan of Desmos, it's super easy and convenient.

No, I was just messing with you. I've never used Desmos, so idk what it's like.

[Alex]

16 hours ago, WISD0MTREE said:

No, I was just messing with you. I've never used Desmos, so idk what it's like.

It's desmos.com if you ever want to check it out Pretty handy tool

[Azaghul]

I'm going to against the grain and say I'm not a fan of this.

Broadly, I'd like to see a lot more dynamic city builds within a nation.  Right now most people have a cookie cutter build that they use for every city.  That's kind of... boring.  It would be much more interesting if the game gave people incentives to create specialized cities.

Right now, city age is the only underlying factor that changes from city to city for any particular player.  It is by and large the only thing that would give them a reason to build some cities differently than others.

What this change would do, by boosting up younger cities so quickly, is make city age less important by greatly narrowing the gap between cities that are young but not brand new and older cities.  It would further reinforce cookie cutter city building.

A better approach, in my opinion, would be to keep the current age gap but give younger cities some kind of boost in some other attribute that would give them more reason to treat young and old cities differently.  Specifically, something like a boost to resource production that declines with age.  Or something that affects pollution.  Or military.

[AkAk]

Looks like it has happened in game

[ReuKinChe]

On 5 May 2019 at 5:19 AM, WISD0MTREE said:

I approve of your suggestion, but disapprove of your graphing utility. You can't please everybody.

oi m8 don't go dissin my boi desmos

[Alex]

Yes, this suggestion has been implemented, and so I am locking this thread to keep this subforum tidy.