Sorry for reposting, (sort of like regifting!) but I made this comment at the end of a dying thead and was hopeing to get a bit more feedback.
I like the idea of towns/cities not having to follow specific pathways or upgrades as they mature. For instance, maybe one small, centrally located village could have the strongest walls and best defence- in times of war, maybe most of your people would flock to this town (a storehouse of food could be kept here as well). Sure some outlying town might get sacked but with the populance mainly intact, rebuilding may be fast. This might be a viable option for some types of gameplay. Another example-having a centrally located hospital, even if its in a small town, may impart some benefits to nearby larger town, negating the need for each of then to build their own hospital-but also making that one hospital more valuable to defend. Having town rely (at least in part) on building from other towns could really add more strategy to town placement, make town specialization more viable and interesting, and impart the sense of your nation really working together (rather than independant city states-which you could still build if you wanted). I like the idea (and others seem to agree) of having a town really good at farming-producing most of the food for the kingdom, a well defended-but small-trading center, a small town in the mountains that can take advantage of some magic source and specialize in being mainly a magic training center, and so on.
So when we think of buildings- would it make sense that at least some of the benifits derived from them effect nearby towns in some way-so that absolutly every town does not need a grainery?
some suggestions:
-Towns within 10 tiles or 10 movement points for a horse (an attempt to represent around 1 days travel)-If movement points are used this automatically takes into account roads, terrain, and bridges. This makes bridges and roads more stratigic.
-if movement points are not used the standard distance can be modified by the presence and quality of the roads, mountains and marshes slow travel.
-the type of government could also effect the strength of this relationship and give you a real trade-off between building a nation and a series of city-states.
-If a city is underseige these benifits are lost (unless there is an option to build some sort of secret tunnel out of the city)
Some more examples:
-hospitals- towns within range have faster headling rates, plagues or other diseases has less of an effect.
-Grain silos- keeps nearby town from feeling the effects of a famine
-stronghold - (as I mentioned above) could save the population of nearby towns even if those town are sacked.
-Universitiy- nearby towns all produce research at a faster rate.
Actually, that would be pretty cool to be able to specialize cities like that. Then, you could learn a teleport spell or portal spell and even if your city is under siege, you could still get supplies in and out (so much for sieging someone with that spell)! Or, if the enemy did not entirely surround the city (maybe there are two roads and they only blockaded one of them) then you could still make use of those regional buildings.
For those interested in the older, related talk, the thread bleeba mentions is here. I think the notions are well worth a thread of their own. Although we have no idea about some of the major details, e.g. if we'll even have government types or 'commercial teleports.'
Mainly, I really like the idea of a mechanic that would let you choose to establish a regional center of learning, healing, commerce, etc., instead of ending up with a bunch of cities with little difference other than their names and maybe a few generic bonuses a-la GC2 bonus tiles. Regionally functional buildings might also be a good way to enable maps where true cities are rare and smaller population centers are stable with low pop but still gain from integration with the channeler's realm.
What about things like the 'oracle' letting you take advantage of nearby 'night shades' and stuff like that.
I generally assumed a town would be part of a city community (Civiization style) and so you wouldn't se any boost on a per town basis... they just would benifit in general by the nearby city.
I like landisaurs's idea about city object that impart regional influence on monsters or wildlife. This would also be neat to include.
From what I understand of the game, some of these ideas may not be has hard to implement as some other posted ideas. For Brad's resource model to work, the game already has to sense the distance and "connectiveness" of other nearby cities.
I dissagree a bit with landisaurars (of course this is a fantasy game so all opinions are, well....just opinions) but for most of human history, even within identifiable nations, the vast majority of people did not travel. There are all sorts of examples of different dialects (or even different languages) as you go from one valley to another. Folks were suspicious of people not from their towns, it was a big event when someone outside the valley. I think for a great deal of time (including periods when a lot of fastasy stuff is modeled) city-states (in practice if not in name) were at least as common as a truely interconnected empire.
Aside from all that, this threads suggestion can give additional reasons for city specializations, perhaps more thought to city and road placement, and could allow more stratigic battle decisions: Like sending a spy to find the regional city that has the grainery, then specifically sack that city. After that send out a spell that would regionally cause crops to fail. I think it would be fun to use a combination of spies, battles, and magic to take over an area.
I didn't really mean to suggest that people traveled, but just that a boost to a city also effects its nearby towns. Like, "keep it simple" style, rather than creating need to manage a bunch of towns. City states were VERY common in the dark ages. I'd like to imagine my civilization is more enlightened than most of said city-states (the dark ages was a depression of knowledge after all), and less xenophobic... but that isn't the point.
Elemental seems to have a lot of emphisis on trade caravans. Something that isn't classic medieval europe at all. That kind of thing is more common of the roman empire and that sort of thing. To me that means that there is a natural inclination for the people of Elemental to be willing to travel to a bigger nearby city for things like hospitals, grain silos, and schooling. So it seems both simpler for gameplay and logical for theme that nearby hamlets, towns, and farms are just considered to be a part of the closest big city the way they are in civilization.
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