ok, so I have been beta testing and i have a sugestion for the city building mechanics of the game. i think that you should be able to mark off land in your control as diffrent districts then specify what kinds of buildings can be made in this district (EX. district N = light residential - hovel; hut; small market...)
once the district has been set up the ammount and types of buildings made will depend on the needs of the people in the disrict.
you would still be ablt to build certain buildings (barracks; palace...) but all housing, markets, and some recourse buildings would use this system
Comments and questions please!
So zoning? Like in SimCity? I would rather have residential structures be built automatically as your city grows in population, or an automatic upgrade feature where your buildings grow as needed to support population growth. (I hope the anti-automation police find this acceptable)
I agree. Anything that you are forced to build in beta like "housing" should be built automatically (if it MUST be built, the only difference with letting the computer do it is a few less clicks. I was hoping to see building construction move more in the direction of organic growth rather than planned. Basically, you would be responsible for building certain special entities or encouraging special activity and your citizens would build around them. Citizens would build their own houses, for instance, and if there is a lot of wealth floating around, they build manor houses which would give you prestige. Also, instead of the player building inns, they would sprout up depending on how much trade passed through the city or whether you sponsored adventuring guilds.
I made a similar suggestion some time back
https://forums.elementalgame.com/369655
I just have this nagging voice in the back of my head that the city building can be done better. I mean the current system works, but sometimes, even if something works its still not quite enough.
Yeah, I also think that the city building system could be done better. First, it doesn't work - at least till 0.255; it's bugged, so it's even hard to discuss it. Second, it feels a little strange. I mean, as it is now, if you want to achieve higher city level (based on population), you have to build houses almost exclusively. Building placement is also an issue - it's bugged, and even if it works, it forces you to build cities that are awkwardly stretched, so that you can cap a resource spot.
Nevertheless, the game should require us to make decisions - e.g., whether or not we want to get higher level city that will be able to provide us with more money/research, or a city that exists solely to cap a few vital spots.
That said, I don't like the current solution (i.e. houses). As it is now, houses rise the population cap and add some minor prestige bonus. This features can be easily transposed to other game elements. That is why I would like to propose different system:
Introduction
Houses will be automatized, meaning you won't be able to build them, but they will be built by the city. The number of houses (i.e. the absolute city population cap) will be dependent on the city level. Houses, together with the food supply, describe the max. population. In case when there are not enough food and/or houses, the population of the city will decrease. Prestige, as well as the current population (but to much smaller degree), are factors which decide of the city's growth rate.
Houses
Food
Prestige & population
Red, the current system does work, it simply needs to be tweaked and have its bugs fixed.
I guess the point I'm after is that the current system lacks something I can't put my finger on, and is a system that has been used for awhile now. Interestingly enough, the city building system currently in place has alot in common with RTS base building mechanics. At least thats how it feels to me.
What am I looking for in the city building? This is a question we should all answer, not everyones going to agree on mechanics, but basic concepts and notions can still be satisfied.
So here's what I'm looking for:
I'd like to see cities that expand more naturally, and depend less on stretching out to connect with a resource. Historicly quarries, mines and the like were established on their own, and towns grew up around them as the workers moved in nearby with their families.
A more abstract city building design, where I can build up a town with specific functions such as food, research, money, etc. And improvements being a thoughtful process, involving a strong bonus but at a penalty of some kind. Not building an improvement on a tile should be as viable an option as building one.
Towns with a natural balance of population, prestige, and output based on the cities design. A city designed for agriculture will not be able to grow very large without the players direct influence (by spending money, magic or whatever). And in turn a city designed as a large economic hub will have its own limitations without help from the player and other cities, such as the importing of food.
An indication as to the condition of my citizens within each respective town. Civility, happiness, whatever you want to call it, I think its an important statistic. Personally I prefer the concept of civility, because you could have each end of the spectrum recieve its own bonus's and penalties. You have a city with low civility? Well maybe those savages make good soldiers, aggressive and experienced in a fight. It shouldn't be nation wide, and one towns condition shouldn't affect anothers.
Anywho, thats what I got for now.
i like the ideas here!
one thing i was tyring to get across but i dont think i covered well was that there would be no set zone types, you would be able to designate districts then dicide what can go in that district. ( District 1 = small markets, taverns, small house...)
Automatic build of the housing would be nice. The system that is now has some drawbacks: first, you build simple huts, because you can not build anything else. However if you have better housing options later, the best thing is to build the best housing you have and nothing else. And if you build simple housing first to achieve the high population (to speed production of better housing), it requires a lot of micromanagement. I think better approach is Caesar III style adjusted to the Elemental: mark living quarters. If people come to your city, they build simple huts. If you have enough food, the housing evolves. If you have enough other resources as well, it evolves even more. The better the housing the more people you can accomodate and better the prestige. Ideas about goods distribution: 1) if the city produces the "resource", it uses it for itself. If there is a surplus, the largest cities get it first. Or the nearest, however it may be more difficult to calculate.2) you should be able to limit the city population somehow. If you need food for your troops and build a farm city, the growing population may eat it.
yes, i don't like the system they have implemented at all. Because by the time ive built my 3rd city, its filled with mansions because of my research (which does not even make any sense to me- research should not affect housing development directly [as in mansions are automatically always going to be available once the technology has been researched]). Because in the medieval world, cities were filled with all sorts of housing. From huts to hovels (where the slaves and the poor lived) to more grandiose apartments or villas of merchants or wealthy nobles. Id like to see this sense of development in what the devs have described as the "living, breathing world" of Elemental!
This to me would be far, far more appealing in this game, for the sake of immersion. Because as a sovereign, you would be able to welcome the people into your city, but they would have to earn money/ make a living to move away from poverty.
Honestly I don't like the way city building works at all. I think it clashes terribly with the feel they want associated with the game. From one perspectice cities feel far too small. At first a city includes only 8 'buildings' including houses. And that's for a city accomadating what 200 people? Then we get new tiles for more people but still only 4 'buildings' per tile. So then from that perspective each tile should be a small area logically. So when cities get into the tens of thousands of people how many tiles will they take up? 50? 100? That sounds like tons of tedious micromanagement no one wants and then that clashes with the other side of the coin that makes cities feel far too large. Cities can be established only ~5 or so tiles from each other. This means that as cities expand the whole world will suddenly feel like a maze of urbanness but then outside the cities is barren wasteland because nothing can be built unless it's inside a city's limits which in turn forces us to build cities all over to grab those vital resources. It just feels wrong.
If peoples of "medieval" type societies (or at least early post-renaissance, such as the american colonial period when the many cities on the eastern US were founded) had modern city zoning. I would likely hate driving less.
There is a possible solution (with "as is") type of housing. I don't like it as zones, but it might work too. At the beginning better housing = more people, but buildings with reputation can accomodate less people. The finest estates should accomodate only few people, but have the highest prestige.
You know, i could actually see this working very well. If by the end game, we are still building every type of housing because its still strategic to do so, i think it will have been done right. As long as we don't have mansions in every city i think there will be a better chance of us being able to say "now that looks like a city straight out of a fantasy world"
The current system for those not in the beta is as follows:
hut: houses 10 citizens
hovel: houses 15 citizens
house: houses 10 citizens, and slightly raises settlement prestige (+1)
estate: houses 10 citizens, and significantly raises settlement prestige (+5)
mansion: houses 10 citizens, and greatly raises settlement prestige (+10)
see how mansions would be all that would be built?
Heres what i would propose if i could:
hovel: houses 30 citizens, significantly decreases settlement prestige (-5 to -8)
house: houses 5 citizens, slightly raises settlement prestige (+1), provides slightly better tax revenue
estate: house 2 citizens, significantly raises settlement prestige (+5), provides greater tax revenue
mansion: houses 1 citizen (or possibly lord's family?), greatly raises settlement prestige (+15 to +20), other bonuses based on lord's traits
-pre-requisite: A Lord (sons or daughters could be deemed lords of a settlement, but i hope that we will see a court system in the game as well so that sons or daughters could be used in greater roles rather than as underlings )
I kept the prestige values relatively the same as i don't think we know what role they will play just yet. In truth, i suppose it really all depends on how much of a factor prestige plays in the final game as to whether or not it would be a valuable tradeoff for a loss in maximum population. Since population is going to be necessary in order to build troops id imagine prestige is going to have to play a pretty huge role... Aww well, i still think its necessary to somehow make it so that we will see all types of housing in big cities. Perhaps you could have resource pre-requisites for houses and estates (similar to Caesar III) and they would give you even greater benefits.
I like the idea, but not the numbers... An estate that only houses 2 citizens? I really think that isn't enough. When I think about an estate, I think about a big, rich family (maybe even more than two generations) with servants living in the same big house with big gardens... So, instead of decreasing the number of citizens, how about increasing the place taken up?
- Hut, Hovel, House all take 1 square in the city
- Estate takes 2 squares
- Mansion takes 4 squares
The number of citizens and prestige given should be balanced accordingly...
I think we all agree that the current system has some critical flaws:
- too much micromanagement with the different house types and the need to renew them to the new (and superior types)
- the need to connect to ressource nodes forces snake-like cities that try to cover as much ground as possible
- city spam is still possible and encouraged to take as much resources as possible
I'll propose a solution to this problems. My inspiration came from the asteroid fields in the GalCiv2 expansion DarkAvatar. In this game, you have asteroid fields away from planets, where you usually build upon. You can build extractors on those fields to remote mine them and then send the resources to a nearby planet.
I think a system like this would work perfectly with the vision the devs have of Elemental. Especially the vision to make the game look like a rpg world and not like the typical city spam you have in similar games (especially in Civ-alikes).
Lets take a look at a crappy mockup of the current Elemental map.
We can see the following resource nodes:
- a field for a farm
- a shard for a shardthingie
- a mountain range for mines
- a forest for woodcutters
- a lake for a fisher
With the current system, the smart way to build a city would be like this:
You build the city in a central location and then try to connect as many resources to it with houses as possible. Not only look those cities very bad, they are also bad to defend and need lots of micromanagement to function.
The micromanagement problem is the following. After you've built the city, you try to connect as many resources as possible to your city via the building of houses. Let's say we connect the field to the city and build a farm there, since food is very important in the beginning. After some turns, when our city has grown and we've got more tiles to build upon, we connect the next resource with houses, etc. etc.
Also we need to upgrade those houses to new types as soon as they've been researched since they new ones are superiour to the old ones.
All in all, the city above is ugly, messy and not much fun to build, since the design is forced on you by the need to get those resources connect to the city.
My solution to this problem is the following:
There are two key differences to the old model. Resources don't have to be connected to the city with houses anymore. Instead they are connect with roads. Also houses can be built next to resource nodes to simulate small shoves and villages that usually have sprung up next to larger farming or gathering places.
It works like this:
Resource nodes
- on every resource node inside your borders can the appropriate harvesting building be built on (may need a worker unit or not, debatable)
- those buildings need to be connected to a city (by a road, debateable) to bring resources into the resource system
- distance from the resource to the city has dimishing returns on the amount of resources harvested (this is to make super cities impossible) there are no penalties till a certain distance though (so that city spam won't be necessary to not lose too much resources)
- houses will be built automatically next to resource nodes in a small amount (those houses simulate the people working on those resources, it also creates the feel of small villages in a fantasy world, which is usually missing in games like this), amount of houses built depends on type of resource node and, if exists, upgrade level of resource node
- the population of those houses is added to the population of the city they're connected to (which means, buildings in a city that effect people also effects those remote villages)
- houses in cities themselves are built automatically too (very debatable, not necessary) or get built automatically in designated areas
- houses don't count as city extensions themselves, only special buildings do (like inns, armories, etc.), special buildings increase the build range by 2 tiles though, to compensate
- houses get upgraded automatically and require certain amounts of resources to do so, a global setting can forbid the upgrading of houses to help in times of resource shortages
- houses can be upgraded automatically till the level of house (hut -> shovel -> house) if the necessary research is done
- houses can be upgraded automatically further -> estate -> mansion only if for every estate 3 houses are available and for every mansion 3 estates (to prevent the silly filling of cities with estates, also prone to balance of course)
- huts have 5 inhabitants
- shovels have 10 inhabitants
- houses have 20 inhabitants plus 1 prestige
- estates have 20 inhabitants plus 3 prestige plus a slight increase in tax generated
- mansions have 25 inhabitants plus 5 prestige plus an increase in tax generated
Huts cost nothing to build, so if they're built somehwere you don't like, you can quickly destroy them, shovels and houses have a slight upgrade cost. Estates and mansions have a quite high upgrade cost, since they give much higher benefits. (All numbers can be changed for balancing of course.)
Well, that was quite a wall of text I'd say. Anyway, it is a complete revamp of the current system, but imho it would lead to a much more organically looking and growing world, would remove some annoying micro management. Would help against city spams and would free city designing from the need to only care about resource connections. This would open much more interesting city designs imho, giving players more abilities to make cities look like they want.
As long as it is optional. I like to micromanage my TBS game.
i can see how the amount might not be enough, i was just going for balance, but i really like the idea of taking up multiple squares!
definitely a wall of text lol but at least there were pictures, it kept me interested. Id say your last picture looks like an idea RavenX had about not making improvements have to be connected to the city, which is an idea i liked.
I also thought about this, but i didn't know if we should have such definite guidelines in city construction, of course, its the devs decision in the end, i just hope they are watching this post, lots of good ideas im seeing
The idea is whats important, numbers can always be tweaked, so they are only useful for elaboration in this thread.
Vandenburg, I agree with you on all of these points. I'm keen on the idea of not having to build homes and manage my cities on such a small level. In an empire building game you're job should be about managing the purpose and production of your cities, and less about if they have homes or inns. At least thats my take on it.
There is one more good question: what is the prestige good for? At this moment the high prestige has no value. It increases the speed people move to the city, but this number is very limited anyway. However, the overall prestige is the good candidate to influence the diplomacy. One more idea: cities have the level. What if the housing at 1-st level may accomodate 10 people, at 2-nd level fifteen people etc. If you want to achieve the next level, you should allways build some new residential buildings, but you don't need to fill the whole map with buildings.
I think this number is good. The number of people in the city is the usable workforce. There are servants and some support personel in the mantion, but they are employed there and so you can not use them for other purposes.
I like your idea, and some of the similar ones that have been tossed around in search of a way to get resources without having to build a city close to it. I really hope the current way to get to use a resource get's changed in some way and your idea is as good (or better) as most.
I like the idea. It's somewhat similar to mine which was to take more of a province view than a city view. And each province can have multiple population centers and resource structures. You have the option of spreading out your people more which is better for growth or concentrating your people more which is better for defense. The problem is that in all the games I've seen that use a province based system (Total War, Dominions, Caesar 2) the province borders are pre-defined. I don't like that too much either as it should be possible to make small land gains and conquests without having to take control of an entire province.
This would also tend to make players fear war more because resource nodes and smaller population centers could be destroyed without your opponent having to storm your fotified city which is logical and interesting.
I also dislike the current system. I'd rather let cities grow to the limits of available food, and spend my time building either RGOs (resource gatehring operations) on the map, or special structures in the citys, rather than gerrymandering my city all over the place connecting resources. Housing techs could be used to unlock certian levels of city growth, perhaps you need huts to grow to a hamlet or villiage. Or just research the hamlet and villiage tech for all I care.
As for the resources themselves, I'd rather just be able to capture them by building on them when your influence grows rather than having to grow out to them, with the resource going to the nearest city - the one providing the boundaries.
Probably my least favorite part of the game, other than the frequent ctds.
Little screenshot of the new beta 1c to show my favourite snake city.
Be awed at my great city building skills.
But seriously, the new beta has made housing an even bigger annoyance imho. (I think it's so since the new beta.)
Ressource gathering buildings need 4 tiles each. Per level of your city you only get 8 tiles though. Which means you can only build one ressource gathering building per city level, since you need the other 4 tiles for houses so you can grow your city to the next level.
And if you build a kingdom palace for the gold and a woodcutter first in your city, you can't build any houses anymore, stagnating your city till you destroy one of those expensive resource buildings.
I really wish they would reconsider the whole city mechanics. I really would like a system that distinguishes sparsely settled frontier lands from civilized lands. Something that would prevent the whole world from being cultured and civilized by mid game. And one that felt more natural and RPG like in the land feel. I'm not entirely sure what the best solution is. But I know that it's not what we have now.
Houses I think should be removed, and a straight population cap on a city should be phased out as well. Galciv2 had no pop cap and it worked well enough, and while that system had its own short comings that doesnt nessecarily have to happen here. This is a reiteration of what I've said before, though with some tweaks to the basic concepts.
The primary stats a city would have are the following:
Food - Food determines how many people can live in a given city. Food is either gathered from local farms and/or imported from nearby cities.
Prestige - Prestige determines the attractivness and reputation of your city. The primary stat is population growth, but should also provide defensive and maybe other bonuses. Almost everything in a city and around it (resources) can raise prestige.
Civility - Civility determines the condition and state of mind of your citizens in a given city. Its less about happiness, since you can't make everyone happy, and more about keeping people complacent. If the civility gets too low, your people might riot and even revolt. When it gets very high, people are content and boost output (research, economy or resource). Civility could also apply a percentile modifier to prestige, when its low it'll deflate to less then 100% and when its high it'll inflate to more then 100%, making a precieved attractivness.
Resources should be built seperate from a city and connected to it similar to astroids fields in GalCiv 2. These can be captured or destroyed by enemy forces. Farms should function the same way.
The idea really is that your city will grow naturally, and people will build their own lodgings. People will live in your city as long as its prestige is high enough to attract them, and food is available to feed them. And the needs of people should rise exponentially. Maybe it takes 1 unit of food to feed 5 people, but 10 people need 3 units of food, the exact numbers obviously would need to be fiddled with but the numbers arent the point I'm trying to make.
The city building itself would need to be revamped, because without houses, you could just throw inns or libraries down. Perhaps instead of zoning, or buildings determining the shape of your town you could clear out tiles building the size and shape of your town, and then these cleared out tiles would be where you could place improvements. Each improvement would need to have some kind of ongoing cost or penalty, whether that cost is prestige, income, food, civility, etc., would depend on the improvement.
Examples of Improvements:
Estates: + Prestige, - Food; Wealth attracts people to your cities, but the wealthy are indulgent people.
Tax Office: + Income, - Civility; More money for you, but people aren't pleased about parting with their hard earned gold.
Barracks: + Military (faster training), - Income; A place to house and train your troops, a bit costly to maintain.
Give and take, is what this kind of mechanic would need to work properly, nor would you have to fill every tile with a specific improvement. Graphicly the cleared tiles wouldn't be empty, they'd have buildings built by the populace, if you place a specific improvement it'd appear amoungst the civilian built ones.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
