Don't be sad, this is beta in action. I mean, it's not like we're a month before release. People like the direction, there's just some tweaks to make.

 

I think there's some neat things you could do with this idea, but I've got some concerns.

- How random is the "governor" stat on a family member? It would be unfortunate to go one game with 300 turns before you can raise a settlement to city due to an unhappy RNG.

- Having a major city in the core of your empire suddenly flip factions because the governor died would seem kind of odd. Maybe if you can't appoint a suitable governor, the city should suffer penalties due to mismanagement until you can (with the penalty size proportional to just how far off the governor is from what is required). If you can lose cities this way, I can't see people putting their important governors anywhere near combat.

- Reassigning governors could get tedious without a good UI.

That said, I really like how this emphasizes heroes and family members as important things for your civilization itself and not just to be married off. Prestige could be affected, a new settlement being led by the legendary Lord Bob who just defeated two legions is probably going to draw more people then one founded by Uncle Dave the senile.
 
 

Love it. What kind of range would you be able to use?
 

Strictly speaking a "colony" under that system could be an outpost that can't grow, but that doesn't offer the same possibilities that the governor system does.

Anyway, as I was saying, don't be sad. This is exactly how the beta process is supposed to work, and good ideas came out of it.

Ah, I first want to say, thank you for acknowledging those problems so openly. That's why I love StarDock.

Let's see what your idea would solve:

Doesn't solve it.

Does with low level governours.

Does with the ability to build harvest buildings afar.

Does, with level limit on governours.

Does, with limit on number of governours.

Five out of four, pretty good I'd say.

I really like it that you'd need a governour for every city, it would really help in preserving wilderness and empty areas on the map.

I don't like that, since it could give a city in the middle of your kingdom to another player just by the bad luck of losing a heroe. Imho a city without a suitable governour should just become unrulable, ie. you can't do anything with it and don't gain anything from it till you can send a new proconsul. But it would still count as your territory and the soldiers there would still be under your command (different chain of command). Only after a longer time of not getting any replacement ruler, a city should be able to either declare independency (become neutral) or join another faction if they've an appropriate ruler to send and only if that other faction is close by.

So a player has a chance to easily get one's city back but if you don't act, you'll lose it eventually for good.

Imho watchtowers should also be allowed to be built at a certain range (4-5 big tiles), harbours (1 big tile away only), castles (if there are any) to protect mountain passes for example and to station troops (2-3 big tiles).

Then move some soldiers over there and station them yourselves if you think it's important enough.

Disagree heavily with that. If you want stuff outside your city defended, then move some soldiers there for protection. Having unprotected stuff outside of cities would make raiding a viable mechanic instead of just assaults on cities.

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Now to go wild on the succession system for a moment. When a faction surrenders, how about cities with sons and daughters of other sovereigns as rulers go to their parents factions, instead of having the whole defeated faction surrender as a whole?

So instead of, oh, faction B surrender to faction A, here faction A, get 5 new cities.

It would be like, faction B surrenders. Faction A gets 2 cities governed by grandsons of faction A's sovereign while faction C gets one city ruled by the grand-grand daughter of the sovereign of faction C and 2 cities would go neutral, since they were governed by heroes who had no allegiance to anybody special.

How about, you can control a city by force by stationing enough military units there even without a governour.

So, if you're a rapidly expanding empire you need to have enough military to control your conquest till the bureucrative has catched up. Military controlled cities would of course have high production and prestige penalties which would make them very costly, but they'd be yours still.

As for the amount of governours, it should imho be mostly tied to your dynasty. The more sons and daughters, nephews, grandchildren, etc. you have the more governours you have so you get naturally more of them over time. You could also get hired heroes and professionals at some significant costs (and rarely) too.

If you want to expand your empire without governeurs, send your military then to establish and control very costly outposts. This would smooth out any short term lacks of governeurs while making uncontrolled city spam and conquest a very costly thing indeed. Which sounds good to me.

The reason why it doesn't work is, you don't need essence to build cities. You need essence to make land fertile. But fertile land spreads by itself after you've build a city and then the following cities around it are just free of any essence cost.

Well, it's a random map generator, it always exists the posibility of those things happening (or getting the horrible map where everything is a wasteland...). It should be easier to change those things in the generator than add a new whole mechanic to fix the problem.

I actually find the whole resources in cities bit to be really annoying.  Really, who builds a city on a mine, or a farm?  The miners and farmers might live in the city, but the mines and farms are on the outskirts, not main street.

I'd rather most, or all, raw resources were of a different mold, built and worked by the nearest city, with the transportation requirements increasing the work load.  You could build them inside your city by encompassing them, but they wouldn't be a build location for it.  Not part of the normal system, while requiring sufficient workers housed in the city.

Don't know if I like the governing part though.  A bonus sounds good, but requiring a hero for city growth doesn't.  I'm not going to be popping out cities all over the place once I have something else to do with essence, don't really see the problem there.  I'm thinking heroes would need to be common enough that they aren't really special.  Otherwise you've just shot the hell out of one end of the spectrum.  The guy with all those cities also has a lot of useless heroes that can't do anything, making the guy with the massive channeler and an army of heroes all the more powerful.

Well, I've got a fun idea to throw into the mix...

If a hero is governing a city, the city gets benefits based on the heroes exploits.

Basically, once you get high enough on the adventuring tree, there would be a monument dedicated to that hero in the city.  For instance:

Billy the Ranger has completed numerous wilderness quests and has managed to capture all manners of unique animals.  His monument gives bonuses to all rangers and animal tamers trained in the city...

Samuel the Sorcerer has completed all kinds of special magical quests and has procured many powerful magical artifacts during his career.  His monument gives bonuses to magic based city production.

Ricky the City Razer and Freaking Lunatic has burned a dozen cities and even slaughtered farmer Joe and his entire family after farmer Joe sneezed.  His monument scares the shit out of people, and every person in the city is very, very well behaved.

When the hero dies, the monument can no longer grow in bonuses, but remains in the city unless a new hero governs the city.

But that doesn't really line up with what really happens. Farming settlements don't become cities, because farming takes up so much land that the village could never grow that big, plus there's only so many jobs to go around.

The idea that there's an iron deposit or bees in an area and therefore a huge city will spring up there just doesn't match reality. Cities draw resources in from the smaller places that gather, and are fueled by commerce & industry.

For lack of a better word, "dynamic" walls that move as the city does are a gameplay convenience. Having to rebuild new walls constantly is more realistic, but it's also very very annoying after you've done it for a while.

I would have to disagree. I'd say getting a level 5 would be quite lucky Or extremely difficult and not always possible, very difficult to get a level 4, and level 3's aren't as difficult but are still quite rare (on average 2 or 3 per game/ for each player). Meanwhile, level 0 and level 1 can be quite prolific, with 50% or so heroes/ect having a level 1 or 0, meanwhile most others have a level 2 governing skill. Add to that giving the Sovereign the ability to control 3 cities up to level 3 governing (and of course having massive bonuses for being stationed in one of those cities comparable or greater than a level 5 governing hero).

I say this because 3 - 5 cities seems about normal, and any more seems to approach city spam. 10 cities or so is definitely at the "Boring" factor unless there is something really unique, and they are really far apart, but say, 10 cities all on one large peninsula is rather pointless and boring ... say have 1 city on the peninsula, another city across the bay, another one on a southern Island, and another right north of the peninsula, maybe another on another continent, or further into the mainland. Meanwhile 10 or 20 of the smaller size 1 (or 0) cities to gather resources, and such. I agree with being able to build resource gathering Improvements outside of the Citywalls, and I also agree that it should ONLY be Resource gathering improvements. (well, maybe a Wonder, or some special bell-tower/ training facility ... but those are important enough you would want to defend them I think ... Like a Great Lighthouse could be build on the water if its within 5 tiles of the city, or something. Also I think Cities "close" to the water should be able to build a port directly on the water even if its buildings don't otherwise reach the water.

A level 3 city should be relatively normal, 3 from your sov + 2 or 3 others to get 5 or 6 of these cities. ALmost everyone will have cities of this size, and they will be your basic "large city". Of course, you could get unlucky and only have 3 of such cities ... but then thats probably because it wasn't something you were focusing on. A size 4 city would be due to significant investment in training your heroes in the realm of Governance. Once you get such a Champion, you can truly have a "grand" city.

A level 5 city should be truly rare ... certainly not all players will have one, and no-one will have more than one (other than conquest). Maybe 3 or 4 such champions could exist in a game of 20 players. These would create the truly Awesome cities of Legend that are the Envy of the World. Think Rome or Moscow (for the setting). Or modern Beijing, Tokyo, or New York.

in the summary, you would need quite a few champions to find someone at least 2, you'd actualy have to try educating your people to get a rank 3 governor, all others are rank 0 and 1. You would have to really invest in Governor's Schooling or somesuch to get any rank 4s, or to get even One lucrative rank 5. I'd say it should be near impossible (but not hard capped) to get more than one rank 5 in a game.

With the Caveat that a Sovereign, on average, can Govern 3 cities at rank 3. possibly 2 rank 3 cities for smaller maps, and 4 rank 3 cities for larger maps. And of course, you can probably invest soveriegn points to make him a better governor. I would say max alloted advancement points for Governing would give your Sovereign dominion over one rank 5 and two rank 4s. Less than that would have one rank 5 and two rank 3s, reduce points further and you get one rank 4 and two rank 3s. No points and u get default of 3 rank 3 cities. You could also choose to get additional rank 2 cities, and pay extra points to upgrade those additional 2s to threes. The soverign should not be able to advance his governing skill once the game starts ... unless its at the cost of not being able to advance his combat/magical skills.

I don't like the idea of tying up my hero units that I should be using to go fight, explore and adventure by having them just sit there in a town so that it can actually be developed.

You had to do something similar in Rome: Total War and I disliked it there too.  I like the idea of having governors with stats that level up and such but I don't like the idea of having the governors be capable of combat (which forces you to pick and choose).

The rest of it sounds good though.  But why not just handle resources similar to how they were handled in Civ3?  If they were in your territory and had a road connected to them you could harvest them otherwise you sent a worker (not a settler) there to establish a colony (which was just a tile improvment that let you use the resource as if it was in your territory, it still needed a road connecting it).

My 2 cents

City Succession

Borrow ideas from the Total War games. Once a city's governor dies, allow any hero/family member to take over. If their governing level is lower than the respective city size, just add penalties to population growth, resource harvesting, prestige, ect...I really don't like the idea of the city simply switching sides. If there is no hero/family available to take over, than an AI governor with lvl 0 governing takes over, and the player loses direct control of the city. The player can regain direct control once they find a hero/family member to take over. Also allow players to marry off daughters to the AI governors which effectively makes them family members and allows the player to have control of the city again. Maybe the marriage also increases the governor’s governing level (marrying into nobility increases his legitimacy).

City Spam

The governing levels and creation of resource improvements outside of city limits will go a long way to prevent city spam, but its doesn’t take out the advantage of creating a ton of cities all over the place in TBS games.... more cities = more money & stuff.

Looking at the ancient world (and even today to a large extent) having a lot of big cities all over the place just wasn't viable. Even in places like Egypt that had huge populations (for back then) had Memphis in the north and Thebes in the south as the main cities. Most of the other cities were just tiny villages set up only to take advantage of the Niles rich fertile land. In other words, there were only a few huge cities per region with a lot of smaller villages surrounding them to take advantage of resources (resource improvements), and I think most here agree is how we want Elemental to be like.

How to accomplish this? Again looking back to real world examples, commerce and trade (not resources) was/is the main reason why a few cities balloon up in population while the rest around it keep their relatively small population growth. It wasn't very effective to have a bunch of large cities acting as commerce/trade center. It was/is much more efficient to have one place acting a hub where the surrounding areas can gather in order to conduct business, and will consequentially sky rocket its population.

It’s a player’s job then to decide which city will act as this hub. They could do this by creating a “Regional Commerce Center” building (RCC for short), which marks it as this regional hub. The RCC will increase the city’s population growth substantially (possibly as well as income, prestige, ect..). However, all surrounding cites, let’s say within 10-30 tiles for now), will have a decrease in population growth, since the populations will now gravitate towards the RCC city. Let’s assume for now, that normally Elemental's population growth is rather low to begin with, which will prompt a player to quickly create a RCC. However, creating a city within the range of another RCC city will only lower the bonuses granted by either RCC building, and further decreases the population growth of the villages caught in the crossfire. Alternatively, this could act a sound strategy against an opponent. Build a RCC within the range of a rival’s RCC city in order to compete with them for population.

Put it all together and what do we get?

With the proposed Regional Commerce Center system, creating more cities within the range of a city with a RCC holds ZERO advantage, other than to take advantage and protect a resource within that region. Creating more cities within the range of a RCC city, won’t increase the bonuses granted by the RCC building. Combine this with governing levels, resource improvements outside of city limits and robust city succession rules and we’ll have a rather realistic and organic system to reduce city spam.

I like what I read boogie

A couple of my own thoughts to add:

First, if the governor dies, the town should automaticly put a temporary leader in play. Maybe it takes time for this governor to be elected (with the town being unproductive while this happens), perhaps he'll only be able to hold control for X turns before a revolt, or he could possibly turn the city over to a neighboring nation if there is overwhelming influence.  Further, governors wouldn't nessecarily need to be special units, but if they are not, they lack the power and benefits a more heroic leader would bring. A default governor could perhaps only ever have a city of level 3, or is easily corrupted and/or killed.

Secondly, it might be interesting if the tile limit was a soft limitation rather then a hard one.  Essentially the maximium tiles listed would represent how large the city can be under its current governor without any inherient drawbacks. Should you place more tiles then this optimal number, the city's prosperity would degrade.  Eventually if a city grew too large, or a powerful governor is suddenly replaced by a lesser one, the city could collapse under its own weight and fall into ruin.  On the flip side, a town much smaller then its max number of tiles should have its prosperity increase accordingly.  It'd be interesting to see in action I think, and would let players push the limits of their societies or play it safe based on their preference.

Slightly related to my second point, you could also give the players sovereign a leadership score that indicates the number of cities he can control effectively.  It wouldn't stop you from city spamming, but if you over step what you can control by too many cities, corruption would be a big issue.  I have a fondness of limits that can be ignored, albeit at a cost.

The magic will allow you to raise new land, right?  Or make previously unbuildable land habitable?  It sounds like there will be ways to get more tiles, whether by terraforming magic (with direct analogues in GC2) or by bringing in a better governor to develop a high-priority settlement/building growth buildings/whatever mechanism exists in the city-building for increasing city size.

A minimum distance between cities that forbids new foundings if they'd be within that radius seems like a good idea.

I don't see anything wrong with snaking.  Small towns in the real world often grow along a principal street.  From what I've heard of Elemental's building system, it won't be a case of snake towns having cheap trash buildings with no value except as stepping stones to resources, but rather, a resource-oriented town will build a civic skeleton that can be upgraded into usefulness when necessary -- perhaps in preference to starting a new settlement.  Also, snaking will give intermediate towns distinctive shapes.  And if a player needs more civic buildings, then filling out a snake town's undeveloped areas could be an alternative to founding a new town.

Civ has handled this with capping mechanisms.  If necessary, perhaps the one-shot Essence cost for the land to be revived could be turned into an ongoing Essence commitment for the land to be sustained.  E.g., a given hero has a number of Essence points to distribute between cities which is determined by an associated skill or attribute or level.  Let's say a hero has 300 town-sustaining capacity, which can be provided to a single giant city, or to two major cities, or to one major city and several small towns which serve as forts and mines, and so on.  This capacity might also come with a maximum number of different cities.  Exceeding either will force the player to allocate dying land which cripples existing cities until the limit is expanded or the holdings are diminished.
 

In practice, this sounds a lot like the outpost/real city divide.  Pigsley there is going to limit whatever city he manages to being a tiny settlement only as important as its single purpose.  Re-assigning a better governor to develop an outpost will reduce your safety net of qualified governors and could lead to the loss of a city.

What mechanisms are already in place to determine city growth?
 

These things together sound like they could be a problem for hero use.  This system would reward players for keeping their heroes in their cities instead of campaigning with them -- both to get the bonus, and because losing a hero could result in losing a city.  I don't want to stick my commanders in the back of the base Starcraft-style.
 

Yeah, this way the snake or the blob still have the advantage of city walls.  Put me down in the dynamic city walls camp, BTW.  I want a bonus for making a contiguous city and I don't want to futz around with walls on a tile-by-tile basis every few turns.

I have no idea what went wrong with my quote fields here.