So I'm a little disturbed at how the cities are going right now. It seems we have two distinct camps, And I thought we could consolidate the discussion on the level of complication of the city-building element (no pun intended) of this game.
On the one hand we have: Complicate it still further
Frogboy seems heavily in this camp, and seems to have asked us how to do this. For example, Frogboy has asked us to think up additional building that can be built next to the current plethora of buildings to further complement the existing buildings. He has also stated that he believes housing to be relatively simple as it is. Others have also suggested that food is supposed to be a rare resource, hence making it normal to build 5-10 gardens in every city. The devs also seem fine with stretching a city across the map to reach that one rare resource.
On the other hand we have: It's too complicated already
Many other have noticed the focus on garden-building and house-building. It seems that first 1 workshop for materials, then 2 gardens, then 1 hut, must be built before even considering other types of buildings. Then you need research, money, prestige - there's no thought to it - you just have to build it all. And yet food is so rare, you're forced to flood a city with gardens. So you may not even have much room to get that research/materials city you wanted. Cities also seem to look like a mess - it's hard to tell buildings apart, and the square-based build with no room in between the buildings looks unnatural.
In the interests of making this readable, I'v kept the sides short. But please add more info to your side, or develop another side if you think we have one.
I'm liking the direction Beta 2A took, as far as a bit less hassle and more strategy, but we're far from there yet. I'm waiting for Beta 2B so see what direction we're really headed in. Good ideas people, keep them coming!
I can see what they are getting at, but I'd argue that food is not consistent. Gold can be stored for an indefinite length of time while food goes bad eventually (unless you have refrigeration or I suppose an appropriate magic spell that can extend the shelf life). Then there are bad harvests, locusts, flooding, etc. that can influence how much food is coming in just as the right conditions can yield a bumper crop. Not to mention transporting food long distances often spoils it or becomes a huge issue (case in point look at store bought tomatoes versus locally grown ones).
I don't think they'd have to change their system much as it stands to be honest. They already keep track of local resources (see the resource tab on each city), and at the top they keep track of global surplus. IIRC both MoM and MoO (II) had a global food indicator (MoO then had a system where you had to also build transports to get excess food from one planet to those in need of it). If the total number went negative then you had those places in need of food starve and have negative growth.
Now this is what I would do but yet keep that "there is a reason to go after a particular town because resources are global" feel.
Each town/city's growth is tied to its native total food production, the more there is the greater the city's growth and the potential for larger city sizes. If there is excess food beyond what is required this will trend the rate higher. Also excess food can be exported to other cities which will affect the growth rate of those cities.
Building Housing: Instead of building individual houses the player can select a 'build housing' which increases the growth rate of the city ala MoM.
An example to illustrate:
Kingdom Z has two cities. The first city, which we will call X, is a verifiable cornucopia of bounty. They have three special food resource tiles and after several 'years' the land around the city has turned green (I don't know if this game does this but if this were MoM think of this as desert turning into grassland which increases the food values of the tile) and yields 100 food units. It has a growth rate of 10% (this rate would depend on several factors such as security, food surplus, ruler/governor's abilities, race, spells [local and global], etc.), and has a need of 50 food units (40 for the current population and 10 for the growth rate) leaving 50 surplus. However due to spoilage (which is reduced by having a granary, and a minor 'ice' spell called refrigeration) this surplus is reduced to 35. This 35 food unit surplus can then be sent to other cities or stored in the city's granary for future use.
The other city, called Y, unfortunately has not been blessed with such agricultural bounty, but was placed there because of its access to an iron deposit and a crystal deposit. City Y was just founded and yet to move beyond needing more than 5 food units which it's meager farms produce 10 for a growth rate of 5%. City Y due to its small size can have a much larger growth rate but it is limited by the food surplus unless outside food is brought in.
The ruler (i.e. player) has constructed a caravan between the two cities to move the mined goods from Y to X and in exchange brings back food which increases the growth rate another 10%. This reduces the surplus by 12 (one for each extra growth rate and two for transport spoilage --the spoilage would be higher if not for the spell I mentioned above). The maximum for the caravan would be based upon technology/spells etc., so larger caravans or more of them could theoretically send more food up to the maximum growth rate, but for this example the maximum growth rate for City is 15%. This brings the surplus of X down to 23 which is stored in the X's granary for longer term.
Thus the global food indicator at the top would read 23.
The player maintains this rate for several rounds and the stored food in X goes up (but some is lost to spoilage, etc.). However due to increased tensions with Empire A the player needs more troops so to offset the recruiting of them he begins building 'housing' which increases the growth rate of City X (City Y is still too small to recruit too many troops) by 5%. City X's city level has soft cap 10% for growth because on their own the people of the city just don't build that many houses to incorporate new people, but by building housing this allows the growth rate to increase up to 15%.
A few turns later, and sadly for the player, the much larger Empire A conquers their 'capital', City X, leaving only City Y remaining. However due to the loss of the bountiful harvests of City X City Y can no longer sustain any population growth and in fact it has grown more than it's own agricultural resources can sustain. Moreover with the loss of City X the 'global' food resources have crashed down to zero as it's food supply has been looted by Empire A.
In the above example it retains that reason to go after an enemy's city (in this case its food basket of City X), but removes the tediousness of the player having to place individual houses. It allows natural population growth that can be sustained by a city on its own, and receive help from more 'global' resources. Also it takes in affect that food unlike gold or other mineral resources can't be effectively stockpiled in the same manner.
MoM was elegant in how it abstracted some things, and I think Elemental needs to look at it's self in the mirror and ask is it trying to do too much. Cause of right now just looking at it's direction there are elements of city building games, RTS's (resource collection), and RPGs.
Just my two cents.
I don't like this new direction at all. Before this change with the gardens and a few of the farming boost I could have a nice sprawling town dedicated to nothing but food production and have that support the food needs of a larger research/military focused metropolis. It felt, and looked pretty natural. Now all my cities are extremely similar. They have all the possible buildings and I don't have to make any choice early on about what to build where.
The entire kingdom management side of this game is looking pretty shallow. And honestly thats why I play these kinds of games. To be a part time ruler/bureaucrat/general. I was hoping Elemental would tack on magic wielding badass in addition to those things and not watering them down too much. But alas, it is not so
the current 2a city building is boring as it stands now. i need way to many level 2-3 cities to get my required resources. i am hoping they have lots of improvement buildings that will allow you to specialize. i have said in another post that if i have a huge forest next to my city i want lots of improvements to put there in order to take advantage of said forest. i don't want to have to build another city just to get an additional lumber yard or whatever.
i propose this example of what i would like to see.
build a lumber yard. click on lumber yard and you get an interface like when you click on a city at the bottom left. on the interface it has buildings that go with the lumber yard. the green boxes appear around the lumber yard. you choose a lumberyard improvement and then build it. this gives an adjacency bonus to it.
OR
just have several improvements that go on the forest tiles. whatever, as long as i can use a large majority of that damn forest.
What I would really like to see is the current gardens/farms system completely thrown out. Age Of Wonders had this really great aesthetic touch where farmland would pop up around the cities. If I were to construct an outpost and a hut, and I spent my attention else where the people in the town should start turning all the available tiles into farmland. Food production would grow as the population grew. I could freely build over these tiles with improvements to level the town up at the expense of food production of course. It would eliminate a considerable amount of clicky clicky, and still let us choose between farms or barracks/research/lavish housing.
What do you mean by this? Required resources for what? You don't expect to raise armies with only a couple cities do you? Also I have no problems getting what I need to raise a small army. He's a screen shoot of my nice size empire, which you'll notice is only 89 turns into the game.
None of my cities are higher then level 3 and I only have 6 with the resources just pouring in.
Thoughts on 2A changes:
I like that you need fewer garderns to get your cities up and running. I don't however like the fact that you can only build one garden per city now. It really does limit the option of allowing you to setup a farming town.
I agree with what some others have said about Lumberyards in the if your city is near a forest you should be able to harvest the heck out of that. Having a logging town next to the major forest supporting your other cities on the plains feels more realistic, unique, and strategic.
While I would like to see the ability to build more of some types of buildings I like the streamline feel of having only 1 of many of the other building types. I always thought it a bit odd to have like 4 schools or 4 market places in a town. But the current result of that under the exisiting system in 2A is that all cities end up being carbon copies. I think a way to combat this is to increase the type of buildings. Like currently the only gildar producing buildings are Merchant, Market, and Tax Collector. This means your city is stuck with a fairly low income. Since several items were moved down the tech tree there is a lot on the Civics side that don't give you anything thus new buildings could easily be sloted into these positions.
I'd like to see a building of each type for each level. So like the Merchant building is the level 1 gildar producing building, while the Market is the level 2 gildar producing building. You can of course have 1 of each but it would be cool if there was also a new gildar producing building for level 3, 4, and 5. That way there is both a reason to level up your city and you can kind of specialize more. This is aside from the +% type buildings which are kinda a waste of space because of the low output of the other buildings. I only build them when there is nothing else to add to the city.
I know all the content is not in and I do recall some other buildings that were in 1Z but haven't seen in 2 or 2A. But it's still something worth mentioning as I always felt it needed more building types even back in 1Z. The need wasn't as pressing though since you couple build multiple of each type so a level 5 city could have 5 merchants and 5 market places taking up 25 spaces and producing about 35 gildar. Where as now your stuck with one of each so it's more like 7 gildar.
Bring back plentiful resources:
Part of the thing that made 1Z feel more interesting was there was a lot of resources scattered around the map. In 2-2A there are hardly any resources on the map. I have never see metal since Beta 2 started and thus am stuck with low rank equipment stuff. But besides that all the unique map resources really help to define the cities since they produce specific goods while taking up the cities limited building space.
I know it's more of a balancing issue but back in 1Z most of the resources were kinda crappy because they had such low output compared to normal buildings. They take up 4 tiles and produced the same or maybe double the amount that a 1 tile building produce. Even so that is easily fixed with balance but if they are not even on the map at all it just feel bland and featureless. Which means the cities end up being bland, featureless, and mostly carbon copies.
I don't even bother looking for resources any more in Beta 2 because they are just to scarce and not important. I plot down my city next to a forest and then start building. I plot down another city near a forest as well to supply the materials I need to expand. Then 3-4 cities I place about where kinda near by my current ones again near forest if possible because of the lumberyard, and now workshop limit(2A). But other then that there is no reason to track down the resources on the far side of the map.
Also resources like metal should be very common. I mean if ONE builing is going to produce even 5 units of metal each turn that means some of the metal heavy units would take you over a dozen turns to make. That is for an individual unit not even a party or large group. After all this isn't like Civ where one mine is all you need to supply metal to the whole empire in unlimited amounts. They should litter the land scape along mountains so it's more like a matter of having several mines to support a large plate mail armor vs someone who may only have a couple and a few plate mail units. Given the importance of metal and several other resources you should never be stuck in a Civ type stalemate where there is only 2-3 mines on the map and the other player has control of them cause they all happen to be placed near his starting location.
Also I recall hearing how the Devs liked the idea of the pioneer setting up resource gathers. So players would have to choose between defending their cities and defending their land/resources. With more resources scattered about, especially for things like mines, the players are much more likely to send out pioneers to grab those key points and fight over them. But right now because resources are so scarce it's hardly worth sending pioneers half way across the map to claim one.
hmm to me i think you have to many settlements there. i thought that the devs vision was to eliminate the city spam, and i would call that city spam. then again this is based on an opinion.
what i mean about required resources is that i need lots of materials to get my reasonably equipped soldiers made on a decent scale. just 10 is amazingly expensive in materials.
personally the main problem i see here is one of scale. playing a game on a small map should be very different than playing on a huge map. how do you balance this? IMO i think that a small map should have tech and magic as far as the eye can see. you will prob never get halfway through the tech trees on a small map even if you played for thousands of turns.
on the other hand on a huge map you should be able to get through it with around a thousand turns. some things should be so ridiculously expensive you could almost never get it on a small map, while on a large map with tons of resources and space it should be relatively commonplace.
Yea it doesn't really what the devs do I'm always gonna "city spam" as you put it. It's just my play style of fast quick expansion and economic growth. Though I will admit all of that growth is not solely due to me dropping and building cities. The far left city was actually an AI player I captured as my 5th city. Also my SOV ran around a lot killing monsters and doing quest to help fund my empire. You can see from the screen shoot but there is a decent size area to the left I explored. Next I sold every extra item my SOV got to the shop for more gold to build faster. All those health potions, extra weapons, and so on. And lastly I use local heroes as XP/Gold Farms since they are not worth their cost.
Lastly I think Caravans might be over powered as it were since even though it showed my income as like 45 gildar per turn I was actually making more like 120+ gildar per turn it seem like. Since every city is allowed to have a caravan go to every other city that 6x6=36 caravans running around.
Yea I understand how that goes as I mainly build lots of cheap units. Honestly though I think the problem is not lack of resources but over priced equipment. I mean 10 materials for a spear!?!? When you can build a whole garden for ONE, a merchant stand for FIVE, and so on. I think most equipment should cost 1-2 resources and maybe possible 3 for higher stuff. I mean when you figure the average unit has weapon, shield, helm, armor, legs, and boots and cost far more then average building it's just crazy.
That price also applies to the gold cost for the units as well since late game we are expected to build recruiting whole armies of these units with up to 1,000 in a Legion stack. Even my booming economy would have trouble fielding a legion of peasants.
Well you don't usually play a small map for thousands of turns. Several hundred I would imagine so put not thousands. The thing with small maps is that you are expected to defeat the enemy before you build a huge empire and research much of the tech. That is because their isn't much room to expand and your likely to encounter the enemy and wipe them out before then.
For example when I played on smaller maps in Civ I would rarely reach the modern age, let alone complete the tech tree. This is because you just don't have the resources to research it fast enough and engage the enemy in game deciding wars much sooner. Plus as I recall the default speed on Civ has you finish in way less then 1,000 turns. Even the Epic pace is only a few hundred turns above 1,000 as I recall.
A lot of it though comes down to balancing the cost vs income. Also the fact that there is 3 whole tech branches we have yet to see could mean there is a lot more to look into so you won't be reaching the end of the tree as soon as you think. In Beta 2 I manage to basically complete both Civics and Military trees by turn 250ish. Since the other 3 trees are not in I have no idea how long it would of taken. I haven't manage to get that far in 2A though due to bugs. I'm sure increasing the cost would of helped somewhat with that but overall the tech tree just feels short. I kinda hope they plan to add more Civics and Military stuff cause honestly it just seems real thin.
In case you wanna check it out here is a save from that game in Screenshot.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6399047/100%20Turn.EleSav
EDIT: For some reason the URL tag seem to mess up the post and cause it all to be in one qoute with several imbedded qoutes. So I removed it thus you'll have to copy/paste the link.
well, i just used thousands as an extreme example. but yeah, its true that we have no idea how far the devs are gonna take the techs. i hope very far, because those 64 bit map sizes they are talking about putting in will be insane, and i don't wanna hit the ends of the tech tree before i even can explore it all lol!
anyways, i guess we will find out this thursday whats going on with the other tech areas. should be very interesting.
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