TaxIt/Cities

City size and area of influence

City size is determined by the goods it is contracted to receive.

So if a city has contracts for 2 Food, 4 Power and 3 Materials, its size is the smallest of the three, so size = 2

I'm thinking that the influence of a city upon a particular hex is the city size minus the distance from the city.

This is a little strange. You only need linear increase in resources to grow a city, but as it grows it has influence over a quadratically growing area? --AC

: I'd like to see how that plays. If that's too much, we might alter the linear relationship, so growing a city costs a bit more once the city is already large, if that doesn't add too much complexity. But I'm afraid that might just result in the optimum strategy being 4 cities of equal size, which is a bit boring. --DR

We could handle ties either by some criteria (such as largest wins, or closest wins), or say there are no ties, and that a merchant will only change who he pays taxes to for that hex if the current influence level is overtaken by that from another city.

Founding new cities

New cities can be founded by paying Ł10 at the appropriate point in the /TurnStructure. This is often worth doing because it grants an extra victory point, and allows (for further cash) a new production spot to be created, or (for free) a tollbooth to be placed in any of the six spaces around it (that don't have production spots or other players' cities on).

Restrictions:

New cities can NOT be placed in a megahex containing a city of yours, nor even a megahex adjacent to one with a city of yours. New cities must thus be at least one full megahex distance from all cities you currently control.
New cities can NOT be placed within the area of influence of an opponent's city. (But it's fine for a city to grow to include another city within its newly-expanded area of influence.)

Role once on the board

Cities count as a road.

: Should they count as a tax-1 tollbooth for their owner? I'm inclined to say yes. --AC

Cities allow creation of /ProductionSpots and tollbooths within their area of influence.

City costs and benefits:

City size = range of influence = VP city gives:

City size                    1   2   3   4   5   6
Cash for new contracts         4   6   8   10  12
Goods needed for contracts     2   3   4   5   6
Production spots             1   1   2   2   3   3
Tollbooths                   0   1   1   2   2   3