As many people have pointed out the current food & housing system is a bit odd and not well liked. The reason I think is because you use food to build houses which doesn't make sense as those houses could be empty. And once the houses are built you can proceed to lose your food production and while it will become negative there is no real penalty. Also once a city has reach the desired level there is no incentive to maintain the current population. You can simply demolish the houses in favor of putting up production facilities. The same goes for the Prestige buildings as once you have reached the max amount of people needed the buildings become useless and ripe for demolish in favor of better buildings.
That being said what I propose is a real shift on how these things are looked at and used in the game. The objective of these changes is to makes sure they make sense from a strategic point of view and that they stay important throughout all stages of the game. Also since this is more concept then hard numbers I'll try to stay clear of using actual figures as that falls under balancing which can be worked out later. Anyway down to business.
Food
Obviously food should be used to feed the people. So the question is how to go about doing this. Well since the economy is global with all resources treated to one giant pool it stands to reason that food should be the same way. Though it's not just resources but also population that shows up on your global resources.
This provides a bit of a unique opertunity as we can use the global population to determine the food consumption as it also includes your army units. Thus if you build a large army it could end up eating most of your food. This way late game players won't be able to simply withdraw large numbers of their population into their army as a way of avoiding having to feed them.
It seems obvious that while food is in surplus the population should grow. The real question is what happens when there is a food shortage. Well a couple things can happen, first the most obvious is some of your people die from starvation and second your military units become less effective either from some penalty of maybe some HP loss. The exact amounts and figures to be determined during a balancing phase.
The question on how to manage a shortage can be handled several different ways.
1) The player has not control over which villages starve.
2) The player can assign priority on a sort of resource priority page which simply list the order in which towns should be given resources in case of shortages.
3) Similar to 2 only the player could choose to spread the shortage evenly thus no one city takes a major hit. Including possibly a mix with a High/Med/Low priority setup.
4) If a military penalty aspect is in play for food shortage then the player can choose which gets priority the military or the civilians. This would work best if the military actually takes an HP hit and can't heal until food comes in surplus again. After all if the player is damaging his resource gather base by starving out then the other option should also be damaging beyond simply a weaker atk/def for a single round. As in both cases the losses can be naturally recovered once food supplies are restored.
This also allows for the option of sieges that cut off food supply since as the mechanics for a starving population will already be in place.
Prestige
Prestige I think is ment to represent how popular and atractive a city is to potential citizens. While right now it serves as little more then a counter for how many people move in each turn. I think a much better approach would be to use prestige as a more dynamic tool that is sort of another cap to population as well as housing.
What I mean by this is the higher the prestige the more people move in just like now but at the same time the more people that are in your city the slower it grows. After all as the city fills up it becomes more crowded and less atractive to new citizens. Unless you continue to improve it with things that will draw people's attention like inns, pubs, theaters, and town halls.
So it becomes a bit of an uphill battle as the more population you get the slower the city grows which means you need more prestige to help make it grow faster. And of course there will be some point at which having too low of a prestige will mean that people actually start moving out of your city. This means that you will need to maintain a decent amount of prestige to keep your citizens happy and staying in your city. It will also make many of the currently useless prestige buildings serve a purpose.
Housing
Obviously given the change to food the houses shouldn't require them anymore. But given the changes to Prestige I think most of the housing buildings should give some prestige. Though I also think huts, housing, and Villas shouldn't be auto upgrade. As the higher ones should give more prestige and cost more as well as giving more population cap like they do now. The option to upgrade without having to demolish the old building and building a new one should be implemented as this would be a good feature in general since many modders will likely want to have building upgrades that are not automatic.
This new setup could make houses with high prestige such as estates more worth the investment. Along with even more potential to make the slums matter as a choice. Several people have already noted the slums need either more population support or less food usage. Under this setup though the food isn't really an issue though it probably would need a larger population cap. But overall it does open up some possibilities which would need to be worked out in balancing issues but the basic concept is there. As it's a trade off with faster population growth of high prestige but lower housing cap vs a higher housing capacity with slower growth. So it'll be kinda like it is now except growth slows down as the city gets closer to being full and you need to maintain a curtain amount of prestige to keep your citizens.
Final thoughts and other ideas
This setup makes it so in a way you have 3 things determining your population capacity but each one has a different effect so it's a bit of a balancing game. As food not only applies to your citizens but also your military there is the need for large amounts of food. While prestige has more of a morale effect on cities by not only effecting how fast they grow but also how much over crowding they will tolerate. And lastly the housing is of course the population cap for the city but also allows more types of bonuses to be applied to different housing effects in not only prestige but also possible other things like gold for "taxes".
While the proposed system includes some changes to all 3 areas they are not really dependent on one another. Like the food change could be made but the prestige could remain the same or have a completely different approach. And like I said before this is mainly an exercise in concept rather then specific numbers and balance. So things like how much food a farm should produce of how many people 1 food should support and all that stuff can be addressed at a later date. Even the figures currently in use on food, housing, and prestige haven't gone through any balancing so don't rely on them as a basis of comparison when it comes to numbers but rather compare how their mechanics work.
Before I wrap it up I'd like to close by covering another problem that exist under the current system, which is population only matters for leveling up the city. Once a city has reached level 5 there is no real reason to keep the population around. The city will not de-level even if you demolish all of the housing/prestige buildings. This quite frankly is not a good thing as you should want a player to need to keep that level 5's city at or above 1000 people to really get it's benefit.
I think the easiest method to make players want to keep the city's population up after reaching that level is by having a modifier of something like (Current Population/Required Population for Level) apply to the output of buildings in the city, it would max out at 1 so you'd need to put a cap on it since it's only meant as a penalty if they go under. Thus a level 4 city which requires 500 people to reach with only 400 people in it would only produce at 80% efficiency. This combined with level multiplier I've read about mention would really make a huge difference.
I only recently read about the multiplier and didn't really notice it in the beta so not sure if it's in, was planned but then scraped as some post in forums are old so this next part could be off. But supposedly a level 4 city has it's buildings produce at 4 times the amount thus a market with 1 gold is actually producing 4 gold. Well under the suggested modifier above a level 3 city with a base produce of 10 would produce 30 goods. While a level 4 city would produce 40 but because the level 4 has a higher multiplier it could drop to 75% of the needed 500 population before it's production was less then that of the level 3 city.
Of course that is a very basic setup which is easy for the player to understand. A much more complicated one with the population production penalty more closely matching the curve from level 3 to level 4 population vs bonus given could be down but then you'd probably also need to take into account the increased number in building slots and such. But that seems like more of a headache. Especially when the goal is quite simply have the player keep their population above the level required by the city's level.
Anyway I'd like to know what you think of my proposal. Questions, comments, and etc. let me know.
I would prefer this method of output. Seems more intuitive, AND actually gives you more information at the same time without seeming complicated. Good point on the oddities that can occur with the current house need food system too! I'd be quite happy with splitting food usage away from houses with your suggestion for the UI output in place.
As for your research demonstration, have you played Master of Orion (original)? It had a random tech tree, however it was done slightly differently to how elemental is currently done. You'd research a field (same as in Elemental), but then you'd "unlock" 1-3 techs to actually research. Then the next time you complete research in that field, you can choose anything you have unlocked, plus if you researched something of a higher "tech level", you would unlock 1-3 more techs to choose from. At the end of researching ALL normal techs in the field, you would get the ongoing bonus techs like you do in Elemental, improving housing, farming, etc. Perhaps locking away the improvement techs in Elemental in the same way would mean a greater balance for technology early to mid game, only when the game is mature will empires start getting the advantage of less housing tiles, and greater population from their more efficient farms.
PS/sorry for explaing MoO tech if you already knew!
PPS/ I REALLY like the MoO original tech system
You know, prestige seems like a weird mechanic to determine population growth. I understand the quality of palaces attracting adventurers and dragons, but I would have thought that survivors of the apocalypse would be more concerned with pragmatic matters like food, water, shelter and security.
I'm just saying: when you've got palaces as a way to improve population growth in the early game, it doesn't make all that much sense... especially in a post apocalyptic setting. I feel like things like that should be reserved for later in the game to attract the big guys rather than normal folks.
"Hey, let's live in straw huts at the base of the awesome palace!"
I agree. Also it feels like you have your priorities a bit messed up. You've only just build your first outpost, attracted a hand full of people, and then you demand that they build this huge palace just for you to live in. If i were one of those people, I'd tell you where you could put that palace of yours. Perhaps the Palace could only become available once you have reached certain population, say for example 500. This way you will probably have build a few settlements already, which allows you to get rid of the 'the first town I build will be my capital for all of time, no matter what happens' mechanic present in most TBS's.
More on topic, I like PryoMancer's suggestion of displaying your current population and your maximum sustainable people in the top resource bar. Could your troops also count towards your population? So even if you train a thousand soldiers somewhere, you still would have to feed them. At the same time, living space becomes available in your city, so if you have food enough your population can still grow.
Very insightful and lots of detail is divulged. I am trying to suggest a different take that adhere to Brad's design philosophies and the problems OP has posted. Some of below is what all of you said, but the combined effect is different.
1. Food, Prestige (and material) is globally stockpiled. No change here.
2. 1 pop consume 1 food, 1 prestige and requires1 housing capacity per day. Assuming in a case that you have 0 food and 0 prestige globally stockpiled, you can sustain a global population of 200 IF you total food and prestige production is both 200 per turn.
3. Housing is a local pop cap for any city, controlling where pop goes. City A will have a max of 150 pop, when there are 150 houses there. If you build 100 more houses there, its pop will gradually grow to 200 when your current Global food and Prestige production per turn is 200. There is over supply of houses.
4. Building house requires material, labor and/or money but not food.
5. After some unfortunate event, your total prestige production is reduced to 150 from 200 per turn, City A will gradually lost pop until 150. Houses will not be demolished, they just become empty.
6. Now, there will be surplus +50 Food production per turn, as food production remains 200 per turn. Any surplus will be stored into the Global food stockpile.
7. 10 turns later, you have 500 Food accumulated globally. At that turn, you managed to raise your global prestige production to 250 per turn. City A population will grow backs to 200; where +50 Prestige is stockpiled per day.
8. You build 50 more houses there, so City A has a housing cap of 250. City A will grow pop until 250, however there will be food deficit of -50 Food per turn since food production remains 200 per turn.
9. At this point of time, you either try building more farms, or find alternate food sources, e.g. by trading or raiding. Otherwise, the global stockpile will be gone. When this happens, City A will start loosing pop until the equilibrium of pop 200 is reached.
10. Siege, Rationing, Caravanning and road mechanism remains the same as Brad mentioned, while modified slightly when adapting to above .
Globally stockpiled Prestige, Food serve a lot of purpose. They act as the cushion when cities are under siege. The stockpile can be used for trading too.
Global Prestige production is just the sum of local prestige production in all cities. So, local city prestige production still control how fast pop grows. Local prestige production per turn is reduced under siege. The longer is the siege, the lower it becomes. Local population that loses its 'prestige' will not contribute to production.
Under siege, local food production (minus local food consuming) affects how fast pop decline. The mechanism is similar to what Brad mentioned. Global food stockpile is evenly distributed proportionally amongst the whole population. That means when a city containing 10% of your total pop is under siege, its local warehouse will have 10% of your global food stockpile (actually prestige too). If your enemy capture the city, whatever stored in that local warehouse is also raided.
Humanoid army leaving a friendly city consume more food, e.g. 2 food is consumed per turn per unit, instead of 1. Thereby more food should be globally stockpiled before anyone planning to fight. (They still consume 1 prestige and need 1 housing capacity). Army is not productive irregardless whether they are stationed in city or not, they just simply do not contribute to production.
Paying for "stuff" up front is still there, as everything is still globally stockpile. The only thing I add here is that normal humanoid consume 1 food, 1 prestige per turn, and capped by a shelter over its head. Stockpiling most other material is only different that there is no such recurring daily consumption. Water, money or any material can handled in a similar fashion.
The description is verbose, but the main idea should be simple, intuitive, yet fun and flexible.
Food isn't stockpiled presently. It's based on your production because it's perishable.
Hm... can surplus food production be stockpiled? My reason (related to the suggestion above) is to provide a more consistent model for all resources. It is simpler that way.
OTOH the suggestion above can still work if food is instantly perishable. But making it stockpile-able give us something more to play with. (And of course, if you don't find it too complicated for players, food surplus should be perishable somewhat slowly; forcing player to use them up asap)
When most resources are globally stockpiled, why can't we make food also stockpiled (if the cons is not significant)?
Well I think Prestige is suppose to be fame and desirability wrapped together. The people are wandering the wilderness and they here of towns forming. Knowing that there are nice things like inns, pubs, theaters, town halls, and etc make the town more attractive. It's like people hearing of the "promised land" while out in the wilds trying to survive. The palace is the seat of power for the government and usually well defended so people want to leave near for protection along with attracting people who want to get a glimpse of the might ruler.
On the topic of Palace I'd have to check but I think you can't build it until you hit level 2. Regardless of when you can build it though it's your choice to build it or not. The citizens are hardly demanding that you build one right away. Besides other games like Civ series you automatically get a palace in your first city for free so it's not like it's unusual the only difference really is you actually have to build your palace. Given there is an administration expense listed that currently doesn't do anything I suspect the palace may end up working similar to Civ in that the further a city is the more expensive it's upkeep besides doing what it does now.
Ya having the troops count towards the population limit is kinda what I had in mind. Since your total population currently includes your military units it would be easy to include them into the limit. You can get around food shortages in pretty much any system by putting lots of people into the military unless the military also use food. Right now with people using mostly individual units it doesn't seem like an issue but late game when your training large armies of hundreds of guys it could be a real problem.
No.
We very much want to stay away from the micro management of food. It isn't fun. It's never been fun (for me anyway).
The reason other resources can be stockpiled is because you use them when you build something. People, by contrast, continue to consume food. We don't want to get into a situation where people are spending time having to deal with internally created food crisis. It wasn't fun in Civilization. It wasn't fun in Master of Magic. It's a bad game mechanic.
While I'm not married to houses requiring food to construct, I am married to the concept that food is perishable. If the entire game took place over the period of say 3 "real" seasons, we'd have to look into food storage. But the game period in Elemental is approximately 300 years and at that level, food storage has to be abstracted.
My kook room is stacked with MREs and I can assure you, they don't last particularly long.
Housing costs food because we use housing as a way to let players determine WHERE people will settle. Every other solution I've seen suggested in the forums ultimately involves players having to monkey around with sliders or have to figure it out on their own which cities are going to have the highest population in the end which isn't fun.
Also: To Repeat: It's not a post-apocalyptic world. It's 100 years after the cataclysm. Civilization is returning. But it's not like the land is all nuked or something.
Well I made this post in one of my threads.
Housing- Housing as I suggested before shouldn’t be directly controlled by the player. The player should assign tiles of his choosing to be residential land. These tiles could house X number of people with research available to increase how many people can live in a given tile. As population moved into the city people would construct their own homes. The player would have a major decision about how many tiles he should flag as residential each city LV since that would be one of the limiting factors on a city’s population.
Food- Food as stated before should have a per turn income which controls how many people your nation as a whole can support. Food would be a global resource but it wouldn’t stockpile globally. If a nation is producing more food then what its population consumes the population can increase. If on the other hand you have more people than what you can feed the nation’s population will drop. A building would be added to allow individual cities to store a reasonable amount of food for emergencies like a siege or the loss of a major food producing city.
In my hypothetical system the player wouldn't have to fool around with any sliders or have to use critical thinking to figure out which city would have the highest population. I had envisioned cities leveling up similar to the sovereign except the only thing you would select is how many tiles would be residential. Now the only calculation the player has to make is "More residential tiles = higher population" or "Less residential tiles = less population" simple, clean cut, and effective. The player would of course still have to make sure he was producing enough food globally to feed potential citizens.
It just seems to me that a King really wouldn't have to decide how many houses to build rather just where on his land they can be built. There have been several revolutions throughout history when a ruler didn't take steps to ensure food was available but I've never heard of a ruler also having to control housing availability.
This seems to be the main concept of your whole suggestion. All that other stuff seems like superfluous turn by turn details that clutter up the issue.
As frogboy said though Food doesn't store which is perishable. You gotta remember 1 turn is not 1 day as you mention the requirements to maintain a pop per day. If the game went that slow you couldn't expect to have children and grand-children in the course of a single game because that would be thousands of turns just for one of them to grow up. Personally I think it's fine food perishes instantly(aka each turn) as in a lot of 4X games this is how food works.
On the topic of prestige what is the purpose of your global prestige value? In your example it serves the same purpose as food since it's a global resource. Yet if you figure the same rules apply of 1 prestige per pop in cities then it's filling the same roll as housing on the local level. Which then begs the question what purpose does it serve since it seems to double for both limiters already? Prestige both currently and in my suggestion serves as the growth speed. The only real mention you have is losing Prestige and the population declines but again that is the same as starving with food.
As for my suggestion of the change to prestige it seems I need to clarify things. As when I say it was a cap I meant is as kind of a soft cap. I think it's best if I give an example of the mechanic I had in mind.
Population Growth Per Turn = Base Prestige - Population Overcrowding Modifer
Population Overcrowding Modifier = Current Population / 100
Now of course the 100 is an arbitrary amount that can be anything which is determined by balancing. But given the system above that means if you have enough buildings to give you 12 Prestige then when your population is at 800 your growth will be at 4 pop per turn because (4 = 12 - (800/100)). Thus once you reach 1200 the population growth will have flattened out so in a way it becomes a cap. But the amounts at play could easily be changed like instead of 100 it could be 200 so the city stops growing at 2400.
The ultimate goal of this change is not really to make Prestige act as a cap but rather to help curb population growth at later points in the game so that you actually want to keep a high prestige value. I know this is kind of a balancing issue but right now large army units like companies, platoons, and that only take 10-20 turns and with prestige working the way it does it's easy to have a default prestige in level 5 cities of about 10 meaning you'll get 100-200 more people in the time it takes to train those units so why would you need more prestige buildings beyond the basic amount you get? And this will hold true with any of the static Prestige setup.
Now when it comes to Prestige and Sieges we are lucky that Frogboy has shown us some inside info on this. While I'm sure the numbers aren't final as that's a balance issue the city only having -1 Prestige per turn cumulate as a siege progresses means the city could easily hold out a long time even without any prestige buildings to help. But if for you uses the example above with the city who's modified growth rate is 4 then it won't be long before the city goes negative.
With prestige being static players only need to get a decent amount at the start plus it naturally increases as the city levels up and there is no reason to build more prestige buildings beyond 1-2 are the start. By having the population growth decline it gives a reason to focus more on prestige buildings as well as making the larger cities harder to get since population = city level.
So if you use the formula above you only need 10 Prestige to have a city at level 5 but someone who only relies on 10 Prestige to get there is going to take 100 turns to get from 900 pop to the required 1K. Meanwhile someone who has 20 Prestige will go from 900 pop to 1K in only 10 turns. Under the current system someone with 10 Prestige will take 10 turns to go from 900 to 1K population while someone with 20 Prestige does it in 5 turns. But the question is all those extra buildings really worth it just to save a few turns?
While under my system the difference is clear and thus a lot of value is added to having more prestige buildings. The current static system will always suffer from the diminishing value of prestige buildings. As in the above example a 5 turn difference isn't much especially when you consider it becomes unless once the city reaches cap and there are other production buildings that could be built instead with the resources and space. While under my suggestion the difference is 90 turns which makes the prestige buildings a much more valuable investment for someone trying to grow their empire faster. And the larger an empire grows the more important the prestige buildings become to it. Which I think is kind of what's intended.
This sounds like zoning in Sim City. In the end though it's basically the same thing as housing right now so I don't see the difference? The only thing I can think of is you intend to have "zoning" land free as your issue is having to pay for the houses your people live in instead of them paying for it themselves. Because ultimately your suggestion seems to be the same as the current housing setup minus paying for the houses either in food or other resources. If I'm mistaken and you intend to have players pay to "zone" like sim city then it's basically the same as current housing only you don't have food tied to it. But even with "zoning" they could still tie food usage to the tiles.
Food would still be tied to it just at a higher level, the global level as it is. However individual city population level would be controlled by the residential tiles. My system isn't meant to be something "different" from the current system just achieving the same goal in a different manner. I like what Brad is trying to do I'm just not a fan of the vehicle currently used to get there.
I hadn't thought of having zoning costs to residential tiles but that really goes beyond the scope of what I'd like to see. I mean if you wanted to get overly complicated with this idea you could but that wasn't my goal. I wanted a simple population and food system that felt natural which I believe this does.
I like this idea. Its intuitive, and isn't a hard limiter.
This is a point which is still confusing me. How are the mechanics going to be arranged that would make it a decision of where the population is going to go. At this point I am still of a mindset that all my cities are going to be built so that they are L5 cities. And I can think of no good reason to have a city anything other than maxxed out. Yes housing dictates max pop. But 10 villas and a slum will cap the city out at 500 pop. Why anyone would want to build less than that I cannot fathom. Even building a specialized city resource output is still multiplied by level of city. therefore a L5 city tudy will still produce 2 more research than an L3 city study. And with the added tiles of an L5 city you end up being able to almost balance it out. But the L5 still has a higher pop to recruit from.
And while I would love to see the strategy decisions like this included in the game. I just cannot wrap my head around how you plan on accomplishing it.
Well I don't know what iterations the game has gone through but it seems likely that when they went to global resources they had a problem of all cities drew from the food pool. So players had no control over which cities grew thus allowing for run away growth and running out of food. So they added housing to allow players to limit how far cities could advance given the limited amount of food. But concern over the potential over growth issue that a player might have to many houses and run out of food so they start starving again. At least that is how I see the development testing/meeting playing out which arrived us at the current setup.
I think the reason "not" to level a city up to level 5 will be based more on being limited by food. But even then the benefits of having a level 5 city seem much better then not given all the exploits in the current mechanics. Which again is part of the reason behind my suggested changes. Population and by extension housing/prestige buildings being meaningless after you reach level 5, R&D housing size increase effectively also makes food more effective, food being tied up on empty houses, training units to avoid feeding population, and etc.
Also since growth seems to easily snowball as prestige naturally increases as a city levels it seems to get easier to just level up to 5. It could just be my imagination but it seems like getting to the first 3 levels are slow then level 4 and 5 fly by. It could also be because by that point in my game I'm just hitting the turn button repeatedly since there is nothing else to do. But either way I figured since level 5 is suppose to be the high point then it should feel a bit more like your working for it rather then throw down a few houses and get level 5. This was why I proposed the reduced growth mechanic in a previous post which I'll post again for reference.
This helps curb the growth so someone who is not overly concerned with getting to the top level city will still gradually make it there. While those who really want to focus on growth have a greater incentive to invest in prestige buildings. I go into that in more detail on why this setup achieves that in post #35.
As for making the choice I think again it boils down to having limited food supplies. As in Elemental just like in most other 4X games your going to want all of your cities to be as large as they can be to support as much production as possible. I'm struggling to try and think of a 4X game where this is not the case. In some games like Civ4 they make cities cost maintenance based on the number you have which encourages the player to have fewer but they still want to make those cities as large as possible.
There is a number of things that could potentially play out to make it so level 5 cities are not all that optimal. Such as bonuses based on the level of city, administration expenses, and etc. Under the current setup ya there is no reason not to have all your cities level 5 but that could change.
They have mentioned how prestige could effect the population in neighboring towns in some post. So the question is what kind of mechanic do they have in mind for that? Or is it just sort of a fancy way to explain where the people are coming from that cause your city to grow?
Well, N/100 is actually incredibly high as a growth modifier, particularly because it effects Cities of Size 2 and Size 3.
I don't mind if such a modifier affected Size 4 and 5, although sizes 2 and 3 I don't think need to be penalized because of "overcrowding"
Shortly after posting I realized why this is.
Level 1 you got 1 Prestige which becomes 2 if you build a Town Hall. You need 40 population so level up which means it will take you at minimum 20 turns but it's more like 25-35 since the TH is rarely your first building. Next to get level 3 you need 250 and as I recall a level 2 city with 1 TH has 4 Prestige meaning (250 - 40) / 4 = 52.5 turns. Now assuming you build a 2nd TH that raises your prestige to 6 and thus it takes 35 turns.
At this point I don't really have hard numbers cause it was not really a concern crunch the numbers so I'm going from memory. But at level 3 prestige was usually about 8-12 depending on the number of THs. Getting to level 4 requires 500 population so you have to gain another 250 which takes 20.83-31.25. Once you hit level 4 you need to get to 1000 for level 5 thus and I often have 10-14 Prestige if not more. So it takes me 35.7-50 turns to earn the addition 500 population needed to level up.
As you can see the levels do kinda take about the same amount of time turn wise depending a bit on how much prestige you have. Well the thing that makes it seem it is going by so much faster is that you are doubling your population every time you level. To get your first 250 people and reach level 3 it took about 60-87 turns. But to get the next 250 it only took 20.83-31.25 or roughly 1/3 the time. This means hitting 500 and level 4 took a total of 81-129 turns. Mean while you can cruise down the home stretch and double your population in less then half the time it took you to reach level 4 for the first 500 and you can do it quite easily.
The individual levels are not really that much faster and in fact the later ones are slightly longer. But because you gain so much more population each turn then you did at the start it seems to fly by that much faster.
Well as I said that's a balancing issue. The amount I just choose at random as a nice round number for easy math to deminstrate. How high or low the modifier is can be worked out in balancing phase. It's the basic concept that's important.
..............
I vaguely remember Brad talking about a trade off for getting a city to the highest level and or leaving it at one of the lower levels. I'm of the opinion this system just hasn't be implemented yet or perhaps still needs more refinement. However, just making it harder to reach higher levels wouldn't be a good decision in my opinion. There should be two incentives one to keep a city smaller and one to make it larger so the player has a choice. The make it hard approach is an uninspired way to persuade a player from trying to get every city to the highest level.
The only 4 ways I can think of to accomplish this would be to-
A: Make certain levels of cities better at certain things like smaller cities are better at research, medium cities are better with resource, and large cities are better at production. I don't really know how it would be done but that would give a clear incentive to keep a city small, medium, or large.
B: Alter the build-able structure menu to where only certain important buildings can be constructed in certain levels of cities. Once again not sure how you'd go about doing that but it is an idea.
C: You could include upkeep on cities based on level where a smaller city could produce things cheaper but in less quantities, medium cites could produce things in moderate quantities for a moderate price, and of course large cities could produce a lot for a higher price.This would seem a tad generic to me.
D: Limit in some way shape or form how many types of cities (particularly large) can be built. Brad's comments on fresh water make me think this could be the way they are moving. That would really make a player want to ration his cities more than anything I feel. It does however add some complexity to city building, wouldn't have been my first choice but it could be worse as well.
I wish I could think up some more ways to persuade a player to either choose for a city to be small vs medium vs large but I'm drawing a blank. Anyway I thought you brought up a good point and wanted to comment.
Excellent! Rivers increase food, commerce, and defense (assuming you're on the opposite side of the river from the enemy).
Frogboy. Thanks for your reply. The suggestion I've made should still be quite nice even if food is instantly perished. When food (& prestige) is perishable, events in step#6 to #9 will not exist but the main concept remain intact.
Then my central idea becomes:
1. Material can be globally stockpiled. Food is not. Prestige... should be.
2. 1 pop consume 1 food, (1 prestige) and requires 1 housing capacity per turn. Thereby:current population of your empire = MIN (current per turn food production, current per turn prestige production)
3. current population of a city is further restrained by the max capacity of local housing
4. There is time lag for any population fluctuation but equilibrium mentioned above will be eventually reached & without player's intervention.
Globally stockpileable food does not necessary means micro of food. Referring to my (modified) suggestion, whenever there is production surplus it is stockpiled. But whenever there is production deficit, it population just drops (just like the case where food is instantly perishable, aka no stockpile) without using the stockpile. Food stockpiled can be used for trading, and especially used for supplying your army ration. Some simplistic supply mechanism should be in for this kind of game, and food is essential part of it.
(Another point here... the global food stockpile is distributed in local warehouses without player's control, more to where its daily need is supplied mostly from far away farms. Local warehouse is still displayed only under siege situation as per Brad suggested. This means when you have a big food stockpile, even import dependant cities can withstand a siege better)
Since Brad has mentioned to keep one valuable has only one meaning, my idea can further simplified to "current population of your empire = current per turn food production" , although I personally don't prefer that. Having a double cap forces player to make decision on how they cluster their food vs prestige production. For example, food production is more cost effective in rural city (e.g. city level 3 or less), while prestige production is more cost effective in largest city (e.g. level 5).
PyroMancer2k, my main point aren't affectd by whether it is 'per day' or 'per month'. I should have written it as per turn. As always, for this kind of discussion, balance/quantity is not the point of discussion.
I did admit the illstration is verbose, haven't I? Step#5 to Step7 is a detailed description of Step#1 to Step#3, seems like you don't need to read that part, that's all But it does show the central idea can fit to other aspect of the game.
I think the biggest deciding fact is food. People keep stating there is no reason not to go to level 5 as if they have an unlimited amount of food. I've played games with 7-9 cites and getting them all to level 5 is hard because of the food requirements. Once they hit level 5 though I can exploit the current system easily by demolishing all the houses to free up the food but hopefully that will be addressed. As it's one of the reasons for the start of this suggestion thread.
As for the water issue to make it harder to reach level 5 I'm not that fond of it. As it will make city location dependent on two factors now. Already you really need to be close to farm land, especially at the start, otherwise your space gets eaten up with lots of gardens. Sure once you setup multiple cities that can trade you can have farming cities supply large population cities.
But you would still be very restricted on your advancement based solely on "luck". And this is a factor you can not really change as it will always be a "bad spot". In other games like Civ sure you can start near desert or jungle while others start near plains and grasslands. But in that game you can help offset that with terrain improvements like cutting down the jungles to make farm land, or setting up windmills/workshops/etc. And you expand your empire towards more favorable lands. The water requirement seems to make is so that only a few key areas will be "favorable" lands. As where ever the few rivers on a map happen to be that's where you need to build your cities if you want that level 5 bonus.
A) I don't think that is very intuitive or simple. Players tend to think bigger is better. And I can already see a bunch of bug reports in the forum, "I upgraded my city and suddenly my R&D decreased."
The game already has this as your currently required to have at least a curtain level to build some buildings. But it sounds like you want it in reverse where if the city gets to high of a level they can no longer build it. Again not very intuitive and I can already see players reporting as a bug. "When I hit level 4 city I can no longer build X".
C) Not sure what you mean by things cost more to produce. Troops and buildings are the only things that cost anything right now. All other buildings simply produce resources for free (aka no input). Also this model doesn't tend to fit historical economic trends since larger cities often came better equipped and more assembly line style things were made in greater amounts for less. This is why small villages often bought their metal works and such from trade merchants who came from large cities. I could however see a higher administration expense on larger cities as the details on that expense aren't clear yet.
D) I stated my take on the fresh water idea above. I think food already does a pretty good job of limiting city growth. It will come down to a balancing issue of how much food farms produce and how much food population consumes. Right now it's easy to start near 2-4 plots wheat/fertile land spaces and have 1-2 orchards/beehives near by getting you 60-120 food. With un-upgraded villas you need 17 and thus 68 food to support a level 5 city. But you can get a 25% food increase from granary so food is more like 75-150 and a single house upgrade drops you to only needing 15 villas or 60 food. Thus you can support 1-2 level 5 cities very easily. On the small map this is noticeable since your so cramped but on larger maps I can see it becoming an issue. And setting the rate at which food tiles spawn is probably a better way to help curb lots of large cities.
In a way there is already a method to persuade a player to have smaller cities. That is food since a level 5 city has twice the population of a level 4 city that means you can have 2 level 4 cities for the food upkeep of 1 level 5 city. Right now food is so abundant on this tiny map that people don't really see it as an issue.
I think besides food people don't see the choice as much also because there is a problem in the city building setup. Right now it cost essence to build a city and your SOV only starts with 15. This means you can only make 3 cities to start with which is HUGE as it's also the amount of mana you can have. This makes the cost of city building very prohibitive so of course people don't want to build more cities. In other games the cost of expansion was in renewable resources while in Elemental it's a non renewable resource.
Granted you can level your SOV up and get more essence but this means that even a stay at home empire management SOV style player has to go out and grind to build more cities. And the irony becomes the most aggressive style players have an easier time expanding both in the conquering of new cities but in earning essence from leveling up to build new cities. The other down side is if your constantly spending your level up points on essence for your SOV who needs to constantly fight tougher enemies to level up will have a harder time given their combat stats haven't improved.
This Essence for city problem is not obvious on this small beta map when you can easily get a few levels and earn 30-40 essence on top of your starting 15 for a total of 9-11 cities but who knows how fast you'll be able to level in the final game. Also this could become an issue on larger maps as a typical HUGE map in Civ 4 you can easily have 20-30 cities if not more. In a current game of FfH2 I got 35 cities and only control about 1/3 of the map. So if you have to use essence to found cities that would mean you'd need 100-150 essence on a map the size of Civ 4's Huge map. However elemental's biggest map is going to be 5 times that meaning you could end up needing 500-750 essence for cities. This insainly high cost for an extremely valuable resources means that lots of small cities is out of the question. It doesn't even become a matter of choice for the player it simply becomes impossible for them to do. Being unable to expand the players will of course want to maximize their current cities as much as possible further fueling the need to reach level 5.
I will admit that I didn't really see essence as an issue until recently. And of course it was outside the scope of the Original discussion. But having played several Beta games and founded or captured 7-9 cities on a regular basis followed by building them up to test long game stability and see late game techs, even if not functional, I often encounter food as a stumbling block to getting my cities all to level 5. Which is why I used every trick I could to get them all to level 5 including discovering demolishing houses didn't lower a city's level thus no need to keep it.
So when I hear all these people mentioning there is no reason not to get to level 5 I keep thinking if they fix the cities not deleveling or suffering a penalty abuse that I use then I won't be able to get all my cities to level 5 without lots of gardens in my games. And I began to think what is it that I'm missing? Why is it people think level 5 cities are so much better compared to a bunch of lower level cities when 1 level 5 uses the same food as 2 level 4 and food is limited.
Then I realized that it's because I had figured out the value of essence. As it is the only thing I put points into on my SOV since nothing else is worth it. I have an army marching around grinding on trolls so I can get more essence to build more cities. Without a lot of essence or essence grinding you can't make any more cities. The ability to build 2 more cities each time your SOV levels up far out weights any of the other stats. For players who don't spend their points on more essence each city is that much more valuable and the option to expand is practically nonexistent. Sure capturing other towns is an option but often times there are huge open areas that would be great for a city but you simply don't have the essence to build one.
I don't know if it's a bug but I discovered champions can get essence from leveling up but they can't seem to spend it to found a new city. That might help curb the essence cost problem but even then I think it's still a rather poor mechanic. Because it forces you to trade off the power of your SOV, or potentially hero units if that is a bug, in order to have more cities. It's not even potentially a "larger" empire as 4 level 3 cities have population & food cost of 1 level 5 city. Plus it can penalize people for not planning way in advance. Such as several turns down the road your short on essence and you've found large open areas with several resources but used all your essence to build cities else where and didn't spend your level up points on more essence. This happen to me my first game in beta which is why I spend only on essence now.
I like the idea of essence as a mana cap since later in the magic system you can have lots of different mana cost spells to make true mages need lots of essence. But making it cost essence to build cities means that having a lot of cities with mage who has a lot of mana is only possible through conquest. And if you can essential get a city so easily with the cost of renewable resources (aka cost of building troops) then shouldn't the peaceful building of those cities also be achievable through the use of renewable resources?
In closing I think I've managed to help derail my own thread a bit hehe. Any other opinions on essence as potential the root of problem when it comes to wanting to have several smaller cities vs a few large ones?
I think the idea is to avoid having a Gigaton of cities. Currently City maintenance is purposely left out ... so the people spamming level 5 cities are really just lambs waiting for the slaughter that will come with new and improved mechanics.
Okay, so you might have 4-5 cities in a decent sized game. Maybe by turn 200 (or so) youll manage to get enough food to turn them all into level 5.
Then, theoretically, you will either have SO little food left that building another city isn't worth the extra maintenance OR you save some of the food and have only 2 level 5s and 3 level 4s.
Then, with the extra food, you build a few more cities ... but now you need to focus on money producing buildings to pay the extra maintenance so that you can have both cities AND a decent army.
In the final analysis, having a lot of cities AND huge armies is going to require a Specialization in Gold/Gildar production.
Also, in having several (all) HUGE cities, you will probably need to get a LOT of that food from caravans and Pioneers ... which makes that food very vulnerable.
And let us not forget, in most games you will fighting against an actually competitive AI or Human.
That depends on how the mechanic works. In most games I've played maintenance is based on the number of cites not the size. Which ends up only reinforcing the need to have large cities not penalizing it. Also with the mention of potentail modifiers such as Output = production * city level then a level 5 city would produce 5x as much as a level 1 per building so the maintence cost would have to be staggering to offset that benefit which then begs the question why have the benefit?
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