To be totally honest I hate the direction that cities in elemental are moving. The idea of placing building individually and having every building be a discrete location in the city. Yeah it seemed like a nice though. But in the end it seems nothing more than no value added micromanagement and meta-gaming (spider-web cities). Furthermore the differences it creates in cities seems more cosmetic than anything. So the big question. What really does make a city unique and memorable? Simply put it would be the character of it's people/location/development that differentiate it from other cities. In the civ games what differentiated your cities was the terrain that surrounded them and the special resources they had available and very rarely it's strategic location. That determined what type of city it would be. But really that was rarely enough to truly differentiate one city from another to the point that it was really memorable. The people had no character. And although you could build wonders often the decision of where to put a wonder was more decided by the city with the production to actually build it than anything else.
So somewhere in that giant thread about making unique cities I saw someone with a suggestion that I think has some serious merit:
Treat cities as RPG-characterlike entities.
It sounds a little crazy on the surface I suppose but it's not so far fetched. We already do this a little with factions. We give a faction a culture and then with that culture comes pre-defined bonuses and penalties. And sometimes in games you find things that give empire-wide bonuses. Kinda like little level-ups. So why not do the same sort of thing with cities only have the culture, history, and traits of a city emerge dynamically based on what happens to it. Make building up, developing, and nurturing your cities more important than just plopping as many down as possible to lay claim to as much land as you can.
So here's my idea in detail. Give your cities a kind of giant info card or stat sheet (like a character). It might look something like this:
Basic Stats:
Here would be things like population, wealth level, education level, health, etc.
Characteristics:
This would be the interesting part. Here would be characteristics that the city had developed that defined it's character. These could appear from historical event, surrounding terrain, randomly, or by your own actions. Characteristics could be changed but not easily or simply. Here are some possible examples.
Military Tradition:
This town has been a center for military development for quite some time and the people here feel they have a proud heritage. The youth aspire to one day become soldiers and the most respected men are vetrans of wars past.
Cause: Over time a large percentage of the of population of the city has been recruited into the military.
Effects: Military units created in this city are stronger than average. Higher chance of hero generation. Lowered production due to the fittest being drafted.
Hidebound:
The people of the city have little interest in learning new things. They know what they know and they have stuck to these things for many years and have no desire to make any real changes.
Cause: Ignore a cities development for long enough and allow it to sustain a low education level for some time.
Effect: Raising the education level of the city becomes more difficult and the people are less willing to benifit from new ideas reducing the amount they benifit from advances.
Longstanding enmity with (insert empire name here):
The people of this city have a deep and abiding hatred of one of your neighboring empires. The people will obstruct any sort of peaceful coexistance or amiable relations with them but will be eager to help in their downfall.
Cause: Has been attacked/raided/looted many times by the other empire
Effect: This city will not allow foreign trade with the empire in question. If you make peace with their bitter enemies expect their happiness to plummet and possible unrest. On the other hand if you go to war with their enemy the cities happiness will increase greatly and their military unit production will be boosted.
Resentful of your rule:
These people don't like you. They don't want you ruling over you. They might even prefer you weren't alive. Be careful.
Cause: Treating the people badly for too long. Especially in a captured city. Capturing a city that had a longstanding enmity with you.
Effect: Bad things. High unrest, poor production, potential for revolt, etc.
Hardened Populace
The people of this settlement have been hardened from long years in an inhospitable environment. From facing danger on a daily basis they are canny and tough.
Cause: A settlement in hellish like conditions (like swampland or dangerous mountains or something)
Effect: The people are tough and the cities health will not drop as easily as others. In addition soldiers recruited here will be stronger. However the people are more interested in survival than learning or the aquisition of wealth.
Gregarious:
The people of this city are very friendly and welcoming. They enjoy making friends of all sorts.
Cause: Maybe faction based with a random chance or encouraged by the actions of your sovereign...
Effect: Boosted trade and a diplomacy bonus for empires with cities close to this one. Easier to infiltrate if spying is in the game and technology and the like can be stolen easier.
Zealous fervor:
The people of this city are fiercely devoted to their sovereign and will follow him to the ends or the earth and to their death if need be.
Cause: Your sovereign spends time in this city preaching to the people.
Effect: Happiness boost every time the sovereign visits. Cheaper to recruit soldiers and they have a significant bonus to strength when with the sovereign. However if the sovereign doesn't visit for some time happiness will go down and eventually this will be lost.
Elnightened:
The people of this city are free and forward thinking. Always looking toward the next new discovery or advance they seek out knowledge and adventure.
Cause: Can randomly develop in a city with good education, wealth, and health
Effect: Boosts idea creation in the city greatly and it is cheaper and faster to implement new ideas. Education levels are easier to raise. Slightly more expensive to raise troops and may cause slight unhappiness but city is more likely to spawn heroes.
There are many many more... I could think of dozens just off the top of my head and hundreds are definitely possible. Also you could have rare and unique ones brought on by artifacts or special events.
Hmmm...I don't see how this type of system couldn't be added on to the current one?
Sorry boogie... You're right. The ideas are actually separate though related. I couldn't decide between making two posts and cluttering the topic list and risking thread confusion. I don't imagine what I'm saying as a complete replacement to the current city system but rather as a supplement to the city system though I still feel the current system needs some reworking. I hope you guys aren't offended by the criticism. I just feel your goal of being the sovereign of an RPG world and I want that dream to become a reality.
I love it. It's kind of like the Total War system only for cities instead of generals.
Pretender on the Rise:
The people of this city are falling under the thumb of a local pretender, he believe HE can do a better job than you!
Cause:
Enemy espionage or prerequisite to thave the "Resentful of your rule" trait.
Effects:
Increased on unrest added to "Resentment", greater potential of revolt, etc, basically the same thing as "Resentful" but this would provide you with further warning when the loyalty of your city should trully be in question. Perhaps even spawn the pretender as a unit which resides within the city.
(Note, the same thing could be done for one of your children attempting to take one or more of your cities.)
I really like this idea!
This would go a long way in making the game feel like taking place in a living and breathing world.
Also, to your second point, it'd to take an amazingly strong argument at this point to take city building off the main map. I'd personally fight that one to the bitter end. And I promise we'll be able to find solutions to any annoyances that may arise ('spidering', etc).
Just want to add encouragement. I'd love for the characteristics of a city to be varied and not all set on founding. Also, having base and derived stats, or other seperations could be interesting. I suppose you could make it as complicated as you want for calculating population growth or production as long as you don't add new things.
Say if you had your races default values for health/education/craftsmanship/magical aptitude/belief in you/etc. of 11/13/11/11/11/etc and have them level up with enough points towards them, build a school and an alchemists and have an education of 16 a short time after the buildings are completed. Maybe give +1 for each unique production building, +0.5 for the next 2, +0.33 for the next 3, so 1 school=1point education, 6 schools=3 points education:
need 14+ to unlock educated. (chance per turn, after 'n' turns, or, chosen on city lv up? - I'd like on lv up personally)
16+ to unlock enlightened (requires educated).
I do think that for all intents and purposes it'd work the same it'd just link in fun extra layer. I'd like it, however it's done in the end. You could link starting values, hidden or seen in some infocards to the racial picks. Maybe crafting history as a pick actually boosts your default craftsmanship to 14 and gives you a 'crafting history' characteristic to your first city. Want strong magic? lower your default values to 6 and get a chance to have harsh negative characteristics in all your cities until you raise their lv. Maybe have some replaced by the next level, barbaric with civilised, but barbaric history would remain.
Not sure if I'd want too many to be random, but as long as you could try to counter the negative randoms in some way... 'pretender on the rise' requires a hero sent to the town. After a battle it becomes 'pretender slain' which increases your support.
(my only worry is that too random and it'll seem false, two cities founded at the same time, one builds all labs the other city builds 1 lab and all the rest production... random differences in events are fine, but the city should have more character the longer it's been doing something like research. Rather than a small chance of being better at research.)
So how would levels work? based on population, age and buildings all giving xp? xp gained for each building on completion or over time after it's built? maybe xp given for defence of the city or battles within the city radius. All things to think about
I'm not really against the building of cities being done on the main map. More I'm having a problem with many of the other aspects of it. Basically I think that any decision that the player is *forced* to make in the course of a game should have strategic significance and preferably should be non-trivial. I would like to see such decisions automated by the computer. With the current system though the placement of buildings on the map is a decision that seems to have no strategic significance other than things that IMO should not be in the game. Like forcing the player to have every resource structure connected to a city which causes issues like 'snaking' or 'spidering'. Worse yet you could make a city essentially into a wall by simply building a long thin city that consists primarily of housing. Then since your army is considered to be everywhere in the city at once you would have not only one awesome fortress but also a pretty nifty instant transmission system...
I would really like to see elemental be province centric as opposed to city centric. I think I'm going to go write a post about that now actually...
Honestly I think having cities 'level-up' might be too much old-school RPG like for my liking. I think cities should feel more organic. Levels of basic stats should be affected dynamically and should be able to fall as easily as they can rise.
I like this idea, but I'd like to single out a specific point in the original post.
I'd like to say: Treat everything as RPG-character-like entities.
The nations, the cities, the sovereigns. This is a bit of a shameless self-plug, but I think it'd tie nicely into my thread on national traits.
I love this idea...
Here Here, Great Idea.
For those of you who see an influence from the ancient Master of Magic game, I would also like the Grand Vizier back, or something like it.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Grand Vizier, it was a preset program that auto-built improvements for you. This would be handy for beginners like myself who are veteran's of 4x games but haven't quite gotten the hang of how I should build my cities. I consistently get owned on novice because I can't seem to build them right. It would be nice to let it auto-build for a few turns so I could figure out how the designers meant for me to build successful cities.
I have modified my idea of the Grand Vizier though, the Master of Magic Vizier insisted on building Triremes after a certain point, a perfectly useless unit. Imagine a Vizier that would do the following.
User programmed build profiles: For the most part players already know what type of building pattern they want for a city when they set it up. It seems once again like pointless micromanagement to have to turn by turn monitor who is building what when the real action of the game is elsewhere. Personally I find no excitement or entertainment in telling the city to build a house. Imagine templates defined by the player from day one of the city to Metropolis level.
The player could design a Military template, a Tech research template, A Magic Sanctum template, really any pattern they wanted and then assign it to a city. Need to ramp up military production for unexpected hostilities from neighbours? Just swap all your cities over to Military for the time being, or be judicious and keep some in Production mode while letting others follow the Military template.
If you want to keep the city customizable just have the city ask each turn where you want to put a unit, or better yet set the template out for the player from the beginning and let them place the intended layout of the city. (This also spawned a thought on time magic when I was thinking of it unrelated to this game, if you knew where and when a player was going to build a critical building you could sure use magic to screw with them. In this game Terraforming magic in particular.
The RPG Element: One thing I would love to be able to do in a city is walk around in it in 1st person. That is one thing I like about this game, the potential is there because the cities do have a layout. Imagine going into your city 1st-person sovereign style and dealing with the mentioned "Characteristics" Intrigued anyone?
Also, what if the Characteristics of a city affected how they want to follow your build template. A Military Tradition City following a Production template or Magic Research template? Give appropriate modifiers from characteristics on building types and you have an all new type of dynamic that would make city building interesting. Sovereign: "You will build this farm" 12th generation Earl of a military City: "Respectfully sir you can stuff it, my subjects are busy training for war."
boogiebac, please try very hard to add this idea to BOTH E:WOM AND E:FE, it could possibly compleatly rejuvinate the games and make them more enjoyable.
harpo
I agree wholeheartedly with this idea, it is very well thought out and interesting. I did love the traits system in Total War for generals and how many variables there were for gaining them... Would be very interesting indeed to see a similar system applied to cities.
Brilliant idea, Sarudak. This idea is the kind of thing Elemental needs: RPG-esque personalization that colors the world and brings it to life. Adding traits to cities would really transform them from mere resource factories into something far closer to real cities with their own individual cultures. I thoroughly support this well thought-out proposition.
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love the idea as well. i could picture each race having a talent tree of sort for their cities as they grow you can really make them unique and flavorful. you could even tie in some asthetics to the traits that way the look of the city changes. farming heavy looking cities to cities who specialize in mana that they light up with lights. i think think all in all this would be a real fun way to really make lots of different styles of cities that could really make the game more intresting.
and i hate spider web city sprawl. i find that as the game progresses makes the map look like some massive urban sprawl and less like a fantasy world. keep the wilderness wild to an extent. if you conquered the area i can understand placing the faction flag flying over or something minimal but i just hate seeing mass city sprawls from all directions.
i agree with sarudak on this
This is one of the best ideas I've seen so far.
A few suggestions: make these traits rise out of actions that are actually logical. For example, your citizens fight off an enemy attack against odds, so they become "heroic". Your city becomes the highest-income in the game for x period of time - its fame spreads and income increases further. You have lots of tech researchers and studies all in one location, innovating - your city becomes a center for knowledge and research increases. Basically, the "good" attributes should mainly be rewards for doing well, rather than "luck" events.
City sprawl most definitely needs to be taken care of though. Not sure how you guys plan to do it...
im a fan of keeping the player doing intresting this other than having to have to decide wat direction or where to place that new barracks you just built. keep all this stuff COMPUTER AUTOMATED for pete's sake. and again i hate the city sprawl eating up the map. keep the cities in a squarelike zone larger or smaller depending on its population and have the computer auto place your buildings.
now before you flame what seems to be a design that makes every city on the map look absolutely the same. we need to add the real layer that will give the cities the unique touch.
firstly for asthetic purposes each faction needs to have differnet looking buildings cuase lets face it goblins and elves use differnet architecture and color schemes.
lastly the touch that will add global uniqueness to all is each faction/race should have a rpg like city tech tree that as the city grows or something special happens persay will let you add a point in watever category which in turn can change the physical look of your city. examples as such a heavly upgraded city in talent for magical research and mana production would have the buildings having magical energy eminating towards the sky. or a city whos talents have been speciallized for army training will have lots of traning fields with miniature figures in formations training marching around.
anycase something along this avenue would really make the game shine.
How about doing something like NationStates? where each law you decided upon added a phrase to the description of the nation,.
Each city could have some backstory, not written by players manually, but created based upon certain actions in the city, adding predetermined phrases (or one of few alternatives as to not make it repetitive) sort like the characteristics Sarudak said but having no effect whateversome.
Say a city has the biggest production of food, the story would say something about the city being the main food producer of the empire and the dependance on it for food.
Another one could be filled with studies, and say something like it is the center of knowledge of the wolrd, cholars flock there in search of enlightment.
I'm inspired from GalCiv little description of each world (it was only one according to the planet quality, but said thing could be improved upon) and it would help give the feel of time for the game (it would also help us remember what has happened on said city over the course of the game, sort like a timeline but nicer to the eye)
Perhaps it is too hard for no effect at all... but those small things add in the end IMO.
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