Comment by jakamau | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jakamau | Hacker News Reader

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I enjoy this vein of thought. It would feel more satisfying if escalation in difficulty (e.g. "Deity" level) added mechanical complexity and trade offs rather than just giving opponents artificial advantages.

- Tile focus can damage the output of surrounding tiles

    - Mines might temporarily/permanently reduce nearby food production or appeal

- Longterm tile focus can outright destroy the resource

    - Overfishing, Strip mining, Soil depletion

- Bring back or re-emphasize some of the old mechanics

    - Population explosions also increase civil unrest

    - Corruption quickly eats away economic output

- Opponent choices can cause cumulative/permanent damage to your cities if they are nearby, downstream, or downwind.

If you want to add a 'modern' political issue you could add a dynamic where city growth results in a backlash from "original" city participants who push for laws/policies to keep the city the 'same', increasing real estate prices, zoning issues, subsequent gentrification as no new internal growth pushes the wealthy out into low income housing areas, lack of low income housing as it can't keep up with gentrification (or development of low income housing lacks profitability due to laws like rent control or other well intentioned laws), and generally hampers growth and increases conflict/unhappiness within the cities.

"Sid Meier's San Francisco"?

Now in Smell-o-Vision, so that you can really take in the "ambiance"

That's already modeled, both in the exponentially increasing food requirements for growth (growing from 10 to 11 is much harder than 1 to 2, for nearly the same benefit), as well as the housing cap and amenities mechanics in the latest iteration of the game.

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