What's to stop a particular mining outpost from growing into a major settlement?  What the hell was San Francisco?

 

A mining camp needs a keep?  Calling it something else at a lower stage is irrelevant.  I don't care if it's a village, town, city, metropolis, whatever.  The organizational structure is entirely optional.  To set up a mining operation, you don't need any of them.  All you need is food delivered by the same supply train you'll already need to haul your ore to market.

 

In important gameplay mechanic terms, you wouldn't need the place brought to life in order to set up some tents and a fire pit.

 

San Franscico was a Phenomena. It benefited from a huge population influx driven by a mad rush for riches. This population the was soon sustained by California being granted statehood, major banks moving to San Fransico to set up shop and US army creating up bases. It also had an excellent bay for shiping and trade. It quickly became more thant just a mining outpost. It became THE commerce/trade capital of that entire region. I'll shamlessly plus myself, and say this all ties in nicely with my post on regional commerce centers, and how they naturally prevent city spamming in real world terms.

You're assuming Psychoak, that the mining outpost is located at a stable site, with no outside influences whatsoever. The initial expenditure to get the site up and running is not just getting the land nearby up to farming-grade soil (though it certainly wouldn't hurt the long-term viability). You also have to take in to account all the other factors, creatures not destroyed by The Cataclysm would be roaming free since the land is only just being occupied by civilisation, any predators hanging out (we can safely assume) wouldn't be detered by your mighty tents and fire pit. Any humanoid tribes nearby that haven't been assimilated into your culture yet could be mighty resentful of your success... A keep and in extreme situations, a wall would both be vital to the long-term success of the operation under many conditions one could expect in- what is the world's name or is it just "The World of Elemental"? The "organisational structure" isn't just an official for the sake of more red tape, the skill of the gov' represents your investment in the site overall and since we're trying to rebuild and repopulate the world, there is much more to consider than a simple mining outpost.

TBh, i  don't really like the idea of govs, but anything that keeps city spam down is something i can handle. I love me some wide open wilderness .

TBh, i  don't really like the idea of govs, but anything that keeps city spam down is something i can handle. I love me some wide open wilderness .

I would simply like to state that I oppose the whole governor idea with all my heart, though I do vote yes for the satelite expansion idea. But the only things the whole succesion idea would make me do is either function in a constant state of war against anyone who took my cities from me, or just refuse to marry out at all and completely ignore the dynasty system, as while heroes are nice I refuse to risk my cities for the chance of getting a good one.  I also oppose any system which would prevent me from being able to completely conquer my foes, simply because I have ran out of heroes skilled enough to manage the cities I am trying to seige.

Besides, if someone wants to make the strategic decision to spend some of his or her precious and limited essence on making many large cities, why not let him? Instead of trying to punishing people who make many large cities like this system does, you should make it a strategically non-optimal choice. Something I thought was already being done by making each city you make cost non-replaceable essence that you could be using to bind monsters of legend to your cause, or to increase your channelers personal power. Or other such options.

Edit - I am not opposing a governor system as an idea, but I truly think this version of the idea is deeply flawed.

Actually, thats a really good idea. It also would prevent disasters if the gov of a city dies, since the sov can just manage it till you get a new gov in.

1. Is a big problem already and we've not seen a lot of improvements yet to be available for the game. I'd also like to be able to go beyond the current size 4 limitation in the game, though it should be limited.

2. This is a big annoyance. Found a great resource... but I have to plop a city right next to it and there is nothing else good around that I really want a city for.

3. I've had some rather unrealistic development sizes. I also think the populace should sometimes force an issue.. like housing. In many parts of the world, unlicensed development is a major problem. Might some unwanted slums creep up if situations weren't just right?

4. It would be nice to have some control over this, though it shouldn't be too unrealistic. Are people just going to stop having kids? Your first city or capitol city should be mandatory as unlimited population growth, everybody has to have somewhere to go.

Sounds in many ways like replacing city spam with hero spam, which I personally like even less. To start with an outpost size 1 shouldn't require any leaders. I like the idea of requiring governors and vassals to help oversee your kingdom though.

How will one stop exploiting it with governor swapping? or governor assassinations? Vassals need to be static and you shouldn't need the governor outside the city much.

I love this one. Hopefully others at Stardock listen to the proposal.

I've also got an idea of my own to propose.

A city can grow into a metropolis or a giant trading megacity. It doesn't happen automatically and a number of disadvantages are added to it to prevent megacity spam.

To even qualify it has to meet these conditions:

• Two or more cities have to overlap "influence" zones. That is they're already growing together.
• They must have an overabundance of food for both of them.
• They must have an overabundance of trade routes (roads or ports more than needed).
• They must both be at size 4.
• They must both have a certain prestige threshold.

You then have to select the two cities and allow unrestricted development into a metropolis. This gives the following advantages and disadvantages.

• They share resources as the same city
• Share bonuses from buildings (only one needs a barracks to treat both as having a barracks)
• Additional tiles for development are opened (tiles must be inbetween the two if there is any space, else along roads or ports). No more than 2 or 4 tiles for both cities combined. The masses might obliterate some nearby farms in favor of housing, it is a risk you take.
  
• Commerce bonus for taxation purposes. Trade bonus to the city with other civilizations.
  
• Prestige bonus for the metropolis as its size makes it into a major of the kingdom/empire. This prestige bonus is equal a prestige debuff applied to all other settlements of any size. The main city in the civilization simply eclipses the prestige of any other settlements and impedes their development and ability to attract new citizens.
  
• The reduced restrictions and increased commerce also increases crime in the city. You become more unlucky with random events. (Piracy, bandits, disease, whatever are all more common in larger cities).
• Espionage penalty. It becomes a lot easier for enemy spies to sneak into the countless masses of citizens. Defending yourself from espionage becomes more difficult. The sovereign and his governors will be at more risk of assassination or other clandestine activities.

The idea is to create just a few "epic cities" in the world. Having more than one of these should be an allowable recipe for auto-disaster. Prestige in non-metropolis cities would become negative, crime unstoppable, espionage by your opponents unstoppable, the second metropolis might just rebel and decide their army is big enough they don't need a sovereign any more. Many civilizations will prefer to go without any of them, but the few that do will make a major name for themselves and be a sought after target for trade treaties and espionage.

Each city does not cost Essence.  Only cities founded in un-restored land.  Once you restore land it expands outwards with your prestige.  It's quite possible to city spam using this.  It is perhaps a bit slower than other methods, but after the first batch of cities it grows exponentially (if you have land available) especially if you've research the pretige boosting techs.  In the current beta it happens fast enough that I'm usually annoyed that I need to stop exploring with my sov and found some cities and I'm often limited more by my economy than I am by available restored land.  In the long run you probably end up with more cities this way because you have to plant them somewhat closer than you might normally.  Unless there are major changes, I think founding cities with essence will generally be limited to expanding to a new continent, doing a major expansion push, or claiming important resources, especially shards.

Keep in mind, as I read it this wouldn't require heroes.  You could train regular units for government work as well.  There will probably be a limit on how high normal units can go.  I'm guessing maybe topping out at 4 at the pinacle of the tech tree.  And of course there could be spells and wonders that might help with this.

I still stand by my statement regarding mining camps.  The miners need someplace to live and someplace to spend their wages, and somebody to enforce the law, and people to maintain the tools, eventually they might have kids and you might need a school (okay, that's a modern notion, strike that).  Sure, you can ship food in, that's not a problem.  You can't ship the other things in.  The only exception I can think of is if we are talking slave or penal labor, in which case it can definitely run on less, but the guards still need something to do.

Here's a thought Boogie. The quote isn't working so here it is directly:

"4. Not really solved, in fact this approach favors large cities. Maybe my idea and the governor idea could be merged, and this would be the area where needing governor's would really help. In fact, it will also factor into balancing between problem #2 and problem #3 as well. So the governors should still definitely be in, imho."

Perhaps have cities that are built close together auto-join together when they spread too close together. The player could gain a small boost or even minus for a set time as the two settlements merge. If both settlements were doing well when they merged the city would experience a growth spurt or added tax income or production until things even out. If one or both of the smaller settlements weren't doing that well they would receive a minus in something until the populations settled on the idea of being one city.

If done right this would solve city spam and still allow the player to snake out to a resource. The trade off is the player gets the resource but when the cities grow bigger and they over-lap they become one city, thus the player is losing a city but gaining a larger city or what would be a boost to the original city depending on which way you look at it.

Then again you could also just let certain things like mines or other resource gatherers be built outside the city then connected to it with a road. The cost of this is that the "mine" is now vulnerable to attack and needs to be defended plus you're now paying upkeep on that little bit of extra road. If you have a lot of resources outside of cities the costs of the roads and keeping them protected is going to add up, so it's cheaper in the long run to try to keep your resource expansion inside your cities.

Much appreciated, Boogie. Steps in the right direction if they are implemented properly. My reservations about cities are quieted for now knowing that you at least share the community's feelings... solving the problem won't be easy and will probably evolve through the beta. Good luck!