Short version, I hate them, quite possibly in totality. I'm sure there's something I like about them, but I have no clue what it is at the moment.
First, the attempt at limiting them via food. Miserable failure. The only thing limiting city expansion is money. You can build a garden, thus a house, thus hit tier 2, thus having research, income and production of all sorts. You have another location to run caravans, another location to produce troops from, another location to gain population. Even if fisheries were eliminated, it would still be the case. With fisheries there, as long as you have lots of coastal cities, you're even spamming large ones.
Getting tanked by a couple hundred coin on the other hand is quite the deterrent. Which is annoying. You can't build a large empire instead of a small one. What happened to the open environment? Where is my trade off between having a powerful Sovereign or a powerful civilization? The answer is nowhere.
Second, cities themselves are incomparably lame. I used to hate the way Civ was set up with the lame access building system, but this is so much worse. It's like civ, without building terrain improvements. The design of the city is meaningless, what you build in the city is meaningless. They all end up almost exactly the same, someone in a persistent vegetative state could build one just as well.
Established points, the food mechanic utterly fails, the monetary pile driver makes every empire roughly the same in size, and the building system is about as interesting as a dentist appointment.
Solution, fix food, get rid of the silly soft cap nonsense.
Sticking to the "resource" model, fishies should be a resource. A fishery should use a fishy resource. No fishies, no fisheries. More than one fishies, more than one fishery. Continuity in mechanics is important.
Get rid of this idiotic one building of a type per settlement system. It's completely devoid of a single redeeming point. This isn't the modern age with fertilizers, most of the civilization is going to be farming. Your ability to produce should be dependent on those left over peons that aren't busy trying to feed themselves. How you use it should be up to you, not some silly one per settlement restriction. A city with no food source should take everything up just to increase the population.
Set costs to building a pioneer much higher, resources to build housing, food through the winter. Include a much higher population cost as well. People don't come from nowhere after all, in return, start them out with more than one population to match the cost.
Disconnect "farming" from the fertile land resource. You know what you grow in shitty ground? Shitty crops. You can still grow food in less than perfect soil. Assuming an expenditure of essence to make land fertile, you simply balance food production below zero use out of a settlement working infertile land to feed itself. Simply amassing cities will then lead to a high population of farmers that can't produce anything else to fund your war efforts.
Populations will now soft cap themselves based on how much work you put into them and what resources you acquire. No "one garden" nonsense required. The population levels suck too, but I'd much rather the suck fest mechanics are fixed than I get to keep using them with a million people instead of a thousand...
Now we get into wishful thinking, things that would be better but I don't expect to happen. Get rid of food and housing construction. It's trivial, it's pointless. You might as well "train" each peasant that's born as micromanage where they're building their housing and farming.
How to do it in a non trivial way that isn't pointless? Automate it, ditch the "food resource" system too. If you build next to fertile land, where do you think the peasants would end up farming? People are stupid, but not that stupid. You start your settlement, begin building things that are of relevance and value to you as the Sovereign. Your peasants handle their own lives. They go out and build houses, start farming, naturally ignoring any demands you make of them unless they can do basic things like eat. Civilization only exists when people aren't starving. When they are, you have bloodshed.
So, you stick a settlement next to fertile ground, your 10-20 peasants, however many you've stuck with pioneers, get to work. Your settlement has a production capability of zero until there are peasants producing excess food that can switch themselves off after finishing their housing. If this settlement is one devoid of productive methods of gaining food, that means never unless you set up trade routes and have excess production somewhere else to get shifted over.
End result, cities that can be geared towards specific tasks, expansion of production controlled by aquisition and creation of resources, no tacky limitations, and, with the latter automated farming and housing, less mind numbing clicks towards the mundane.
I loath the way access and stationing is done in cities as well, but that's more for another subject once tactical combat is added.
You said that you find the local res. model unrealistic. In fact I don't understand your point at all, with regard to realism: "the idea of food being local to the city it was grown in is tomfoolery." If the food is is being produced in City X, why should it be available in City Y, which is 20 tiles away? If City Y needs more food, the caravans will carry it from City X. [Originally we had local resources in the game btw. It means much more micromanagement compared to the global model, so I can understand that the devs decided to go with the global model instead. -> However a local res. & "city" mod is a must have imo.]
I didn’t want to start a new thread so I tossed them here. So, in the vein of sounding dumb, using a lot of space, causing a flame war or just plain banality, here we go.
I. Things I don’t understand.
A. Prestige. Why is prestige used to indicate growth? Shouldn’t items like industry and land fertility cause growth? Prestige would indicate tourism and political clout. Why move to a city and start a medieval life if there isn’t land to grow crops, a military to protect you, or work opportunities (which I’d include trade in)? “They have a really nice library there.” That’s neat and all but how is this important to 80 percent of the illiterate population? For a farmer whom is more concerned for providing for his family and is that troll over there going to level my hut, a library does what for him? Based off the fantasy setting with medieval tie-ins, I can’t see prestige as meaning much to the average Joe other than giving a sense of nationalism and loyalty and possibly affecting how folks feel about fighting for the sovereign.
People should not come to my city because I built a city. They should come because I restored the land by magic or technology and I protect them. They come because they, the people, can build farms and raise a family, perhaps even thrive, and are free from the dangers of the Titan’s corruption. They do this because there is a nice spread of bottom land that I am providing the common defense of. As such, below are some of my thoughts. How viable are they to implement, or even to consider, I have no idea. For what they are worth though, here they are.
More on the point, people go where the food and jobs are available and where they can be protected. In Elemental, food has been claimed to be a vital resource. As such, shouldn’t it be the primary motivator to building a community? Further more protecting people would also be big, based off the size of the town. Why build a house as part of a village if it’s going to be raided or destroyed tomorrow? As such, why am I, as Sovereign, building farms and huts? Am I now the building contractor as well or just a communist dictator creating communal farms and housing or am I just a different avatar for the Empire? The number of hired adventurers and their levels, etcetera, could add an amount to the, “defense factor.”
As a side note, I’d keep the current build and economic system for the Empire. From my understanding, they like that forced labor, totalitarian control. For them, a centralized, governmental, planned economy is a good thing. Revitalizing the land is not needed. As long as the peasants work, who cares? That’s why the Empire has slave pits and hard labor farms.
B. Green Land: What’s the point of the revitalize spell? You put down a town, you get green. I take it the effect is just for show? I mean, I haven’t done any thing other than found a city and I get inst-land healing. I don’t even have any techs to revitalize the land. I think it would be more worth while if rebuilding the land actually meant some thing. Spending those essence points would be very important or researching high techs to return the green. This could then tie in with the attraction of people. The Sovereign heals the land creating fertile soil in order to attract people and farmers. The number of fertile, or replenished tiles, would be a factor in attracting people (along with defense and “industries”).
C. Horses. The horse seems to only provide for warfare. The horses, the poor noble beasts that I really don’t like, are only good for cavalry? They don’t affect the ability to haul material, food, or trade goods? Folks can’t use them for farming? Are there no work horses or is every thing oxen, which I haven’t seen? You build a farm and it comes with a horse regardless if you have stables or not. If I have a horse resource, shouldn’t it affect more than just my ability to create war machines?
D. Harvesting. Why is there a separate tech for harvesting? Harvesting is the oldest way of living, starting with hunting and gathering. I take it this is just a misunderstood name for what is intended? This is more like large scale farming, plowing, or crop rotation or some thing?
E. Gardens. I’d expect every body and their dog to have a garden in the back yard in the fantasy style universe of Elemental. I couldn’t imagine a medieval stylized family building a hut without a garden. Shoot, their barn, as such as it is, is probably in better shape than their home. Also, until you have market to sell goods, I’d don’t see why people would build large farms. You’d probably need a farmers market for this. Otherwise people are just growing what they need to survive with some small excess to barter for goods or services. They could store grain, but why unless you have a place to sell it?
Perhaps, as a tie-in to my thoughts on prestige, have land grants, small and large, instead of farms and gardens? The one problem I am having is in regards to special tiles. Metal, crystal, horses, and the other, how do the tie in? Are they Sovereign owned then? Is there a merchant class? It would appear so since we have merchant heroes. Giving the player the ability to build stuff is important, but is there a way to augment it so it’s just not, “The Sovereign owns every thing,” while fitting into a burgeoning merchant class?
F. Trade. It seems to me, that trade should add a factor into the attractiveness of cities. I don’t mean like Civ trade points either. I am referring to a number of factors that would influence the attractiveness of a town for growth. Trade means jobs and money. Town tile size and the starting location could play a part, though there are no major rivers yet. Basically, each built up tile would add an amount for money trade as well as immigrant growth. Special tiles and some buildings, like harbors would add points as well.
II. Things I find lacking if not boring.
A. It feels more like Gal Civ economics with a fantasy theme than any thing. For that matter, pick any 4X game such as the MOO’s, and this is what it feels like. Maybe this is what the devs want. I don't know. I’m just getting a little tired of just plopping buildings down.
I guess my solution is related to things I don’t understand. I would like to see less reliance and more varied economics than just placing buildings down.
B. A city feels pretty much like a cookie cutter scenario. Fertile land, not fertile special tiles, seems to be every where. From what I am reading and so far experienced, you can build food producing facilities -note the use of facilities and not farms- any where. You sovereign’s spell of revitalizing the land is not required. There isn’t any use in the spell except as a visual commodity. Fertile land or wheat, etcetera, is just a special tile for farms. From what I’ve experienced so far, you don’t need them for a large city. The special tiles are just nice to have. Especially since prestige promotes city growth and not food, jobs, or safety (defense).
C. City creep. Why is every thing I build part of the main city? Shouldn’t the majority of the things I build be outlying farms and villages? I would expect most special tiles to fall into the small, separate village category unless it is right next to the town/castle/fortress/what-ever-it-is-called. When I build city walls, I’d expect it to surround the core, “buildings,” and not the out lying towns. These I would expect to have to protect with patrols or sentries.
Further more, I suppose it’s just the art direction, but why is a building I create just as large as my main fortification? Is my city center even my manor? Personally, I’d like to see some buildings be more representative, and appear connected, to the main city, walled or otherwise. Secondly, I’d like to see the special tiles be more representative of an out lying village. From my perspective, with the current appearance, the map looks like a collection of giant buildings and not a sprawling town with medieval farms attached.
Well, that’s it for now. Here’s the short recap.
A. Prestige. Remove this as a component as a method of population immigration and growth. Instead factor in:
1. Amount of arable land, created by magic or tech2. Industry created or available3. The strength of defending forces and/or cleared monsters and/or political stability (war/peace/border disputes)4. Trade amounts
B. Greenland. Make it mean more than just a visual effect. Make it represent:
1. The amount of arable land2. Create as an impetus for immigration
C. Horses. Make more than a cavalry device. Have them influence:
1. Farming2. Trade3. Industry.
D. Harvesting, the oldest known technology to people. Why is this tech?
E. Gardens seem over the top
1. All people I would expect to be keeping gardens (rural at least).2. Create land grants in arable lands for small villages to pop up3. Remove gardens.
F. Trade. Give towns a base trade factor for growth (attracting people with jobs).
1. Give special tiles developed tiles a trade factor.2. Give some buildings a trade factor
G. City Creep.
1. Make a centralized city area2. Make special tile improvements, unless close to center, villages.3. Make the art fell less like a bunch of giant buildings plopped onto a map to call it a town.
Well, that’s about all the damage and garbage I can spew in one sitting, some times. Hope you enjoyed the show (or not).
Aside from being told I sound like I want to make the game a Civ clone(how does that get pulled out of my posts?) I like this last page's worth...
New addition, demand driven population migration. Build lots of employment, or pop a city down in lush growing conditions, peons flow in from the surrounding cities where they're less than well utilized. More wishful thinking on my part.
20 Tiles, i.e maybe 200 miles if you are being extremely generous... Are you saying that caravans couldn't carry food 200 miles even well prior to the dark ages? That is what I was calling tomfoolery.
Having caravans be required to move food to/from cities makes sense. Having food unable to survive a 10 day trip, that is silly.
Hate to nitpick, but you don't actually get prestige from libraries or any similar research building. It comes from pubs, inns, theatres, fancy houses (villas and mansions), town halls, palaces, etc - which seems to me like a logical connection, buildings that entertain or provide luxurious living or maintain law & order tempt migrants to settle down in your city. Perhaps the word "prestige" is misleading, but it really has little to do with culture or learning and more to do with the things common folk are interested in, I think the mechanic is sound.
Revitalize used to be necessary before you could plant a city anywhere (there was no green land before you revitalized it). They've recently changed it so that you only need to revitalize land of the opposite alignment - so Fallen have to revitalize green land, Kingdoms have to revitalize the evil Fallen land (whatever it's called). But then if you conquer a Fallen city, the land around it automatically switches to green, you only need revitalize if you want to settle a new city on evil land where there's no city yet - so yeah, it's useless, which is disappointing considering how essential revitalizing land was meant to be in the lore.
Frogboy actually posted somewhere that he's considering removing gardens and having the random map ensure that all players start the game near a patch of fertile land (for building a farm). They also said something about a spell that sacrifices essence to create more fertile land (can't remember if that's in the current beta yet or not) - to be clear, not merely green land, but fertile land that a farm can be built on. I'd certainly prefer that, building a garden in every city is dull and takes away from the value of naturally fertile land. Of course, it leaves you with the problem that every player has to get farming first as a mandatory tech to even get past city level 1 - if they go with that change, farms on fertile land should be available by default with techs only needed for more advanced farms (like wheat).
That depends entirely on the food. Rome was largely fed by grain from Egypt; during Nero's reign, about 420,000 tons per year.
Prestige
I have a problem with Prestige, as well. I just think it should be used for more than a population boost, especially when you reach Metropolis. Perhaps if it gave some kind of efficiency bonus to the town's production of everything? I don't know... I just know that as it is now, I don't see much reason for wasting the time or tiles to build Prestige-generating structures. Maybe a city level should be based on Prestige and population, instead of just population.
Green Land
I agree in part, that the 'creep' of growth feels overdone. I simply plop down one city, and wait long enough, and I'll be able to start new cities without any effort to regenerate the land. If things are so dire from the cataclysm, it shouldn't be so easy.
Horses
I agree, a production bonus for having mounts would be nice.
@spicy Mike: definitely agree with those points.
Well given that the unused building Tiles could be used later in case "she/he changes their mind" I can't see why having a small unused # value in the UI being terribly disruptive.
We already have Prestige. It is the definitive growth modifier already and serves its purpose. I would though go for making Prestige generating building also not consume Pop. to allow those buildings to be more available to help offset Pop declines in times of dire need perhaps.
Tracking Pop. would be as it is now. I have 100 pop at L3. I build a School, Pop goes down to 80, Level # declines to L2, all L3 Level up Bonuses are rescinded until L3 Pop. levels are reached once again. Or wait until you have 120 Pop. and them build your school.
It adds thought and planning to City building vs plopping down as many buildings as you have open tiles into the queue and moving on.
Well, I don't see why a city with great pubs is going to cause a population growth. It seems to me, that folks will go where they can go crops. I don't see Inns or pubs giving the ability to grow food. Those businesses pop after an established population happens. I can't imagine some one telling their spouse, "Honey, let's move to City X. It's got great pubs. We'll leave the field to the neighbors. I hear they have good inns too. I'm sure you'll make a great serving girl there!" As for the palace, you ever heard of a farmer or rural person getting all excited to move to a city so they give live near the palace? About the only thing they want from a government is protection and generally to be left alone. I can't see the logic. The only reason I could see them going to these places, which would pop up once a village/town/city has a population to sustain its business, if to get a job. Again though, they start up those businesses because the opportunity is there, not before, which means the people were there. The only place I can think of off the top of my head would be places like Vegas or a city whose industry is gaming or some such. I doubt Vegas started out this way though.
It seems we need a definition of how the people currently live and the condition of the land. From a graphical appearance, the land is all brown and pretty dead. You create a city, and suddently it turns green and vibrant. A bit of a disconnection if you ask me. How are the people sustaining themselves in the Cataclysm? Once that is answered, I would think you could extrapolate techs up. Is it mainly hunting and gathering as large nomadic groups? If the ground turns Cataclysmic brown to green, does this make it arable land, though not choice, rich soil? Also, where are the herd animals and why does hunting give a 100 percent bonus to food produced? If you only have a garden you produce 2 food with game, but 20 food if you have fertile land? This doesn't seem logical either unless people are feeding the deer from their gardens and fields.
This reminds me of Seven Kingdoms (an RTS) where city growth was dependent on things like this. If you had a lot of "employment" linked to your town, you're more apt to attract members of that race to the city in question and their loyalty would increase. You could also get yourself in trouble this way - say you had 12 Persians and 25 Japanese in a city. The Japanese have all the jobs. The Persians would then start to lose loyalty unless other conditions were positive.
Another thing that game had that might would work well in this one is linking.
Let's say you had a mine, if it was a certain distance from a factory, then the mine would automatically send its produce to the factory. If the factory was linked to a market, it's goods would automatically be sent to the market. If the market was linked to a town, that town when then shop at the market automatically.
If the distance was too great for the linking to occur, then you'd have to use caravans to transport goods. You could set up a route via waypoints as well. It worked, but it wasn't as efficient due to time and, in the case of foreign nations, relations. They could embargo you, or if you went to war, trade would be cut off. However, prosperous trade tended to encourage peace as both nations are getting benefit and their people would get upset at shortages and loyalty would drop.
Replace linking with the influence system of Elemental, and I think a similar thing could take place.
Another thing that could work in Elemental that 7K had was levels for everything (I think that's been mentioned in this thread) where a peasant trained as a miner would then get better at mining by working in mines. Manufacturers would get better by working in factories. You gave basic training in a city, and then they get better and better as they work in their field. Elemental seems like it has the capacity for this as well as being able to have something that can attract talent. 7K used inns that gathered "mercenaries" which could be say level 70 researchers or level 40 miners as well as a level 80 general.
Huh? This is what I was talking about as well. Caravans should move all kinds of resources. Everything should be produced and stored locally UNTIL the caravan moves the specific resource [food/iron/whatever] to another city. -> This is the eco mod, which is a must have imo.
And that was the worst part of galciv, planet(city) building and economics. Brad himself knows it was awful in galciv. And even with that I am seeing similar things happen here. Food being a shared global resource is highly akin to the global credit system in galciv. If I see a slider, even with a pre-order, I might have to put the game on the shelf. It's almost like he gravitates towards this global system even though he has done it once and by his own admission he hated the outcome.
Thats what all the civ references are about here, specifically people are refering to food and city growth. Thats probably the main system that hasn't changed since civ 1 and theres a very good reason, it works. It also limits a city by its terrain. A small coastal city in the snowy mtns kinda resembles one in civ. Thats going to be the big problem here cities are all going to be the same size and have no relationship with their local terrain. I think there are other undiscovered consequences as well, just like with galciv. I really really hope they take another look at food before the game ships.
In MoM, I thought the use of a "global" food production value was pretty decent, and could be a model mechanic here.
Any excess food produced by a city was placed in the global production metric and was solely used to support your units in the field. It could not be used to support populations in other cities, so you still had to be careful about where you placed your outpost. A town in marginal territory could easily starve if it was hit with a single, well-placed bunch of corruption spells. (Thus, each game was marked by a rush to produce priests before the fire mage starved you out.) Also, if you wanted a killer stack early on, you needed to make sure you developed a few bread-basket towns or you were done. Having a few good summoning spells available early on took the edge off of needing to build granaries everywhere.
I am struck by the fact that food in MoM (using certain races, anyway) was a far bigger problem during early gameplay than it (currently) is in Elemental. I never seem to have to worry about food in Beta3. It doesn't seem right, given the world background. Food in MoM was always on my mind, because the the fewer farmers I needed to support my population and armies could be used to actually make things. Some games were a real nail-biter in this regard. Food technology was -always- important, even if I technically wasn't starving.
Unfortunately, I agree that I'm not worried about food. Nor about prestige, gildar, spell points, or even research points. About the only major limiting factor I have found so far, until I get 3-4 towns up, is building materials.
Granted, I tend to be a bit isolationist, and have been playing with few enemies so I can play with research & city building.
Still... The only spells I usually cast are Teleport, Raise Land, and Lower Land. I just don't feel the need to use spells, like there was in MoM. And that's even playing as Lady Procipinee, with all of the spell realms.
Yes, there is a distinct lack of tension and tradeoff.
That said, I suspect alot of that comes from the liberal allowance of city slots available. When you can literally build everything, and cheaply, and fast, its all a no-brainer. Brad said that he was going to cut back on the slots, so I hope to see gameplay tighten-up just from that.
I seem to use spells a little more than you do. I use city enchantments to bump materials and research production, and armor and weapon enchantments to beef up my troops for quest work. I agree with you that it is way too easy to research spells. The game also needs far more spells than it has, but the team is certainly working on that. MoM's spellbook mechanic of "going wide" vs. "going deep" needs to be put into Elemental in some form. I really enjoyed the wonder and mystery of what was going to show up in my randomly generated MoM spell book! Some games, my fave spells would never show up...
Dang. The more I think about Master of Magic, the more I wanna just simply go play it. That game was damn near perfect. Broken in many ways, but crazy fun. .
Thanks Eisenhund! Great points I fully agree with. Same to Tormy on the trade stuff.
The only thing I would modify is that the prestige mechanic as it currently exists just needs to be re-purposed in the way you mentioned - arable land/surplus food production, trade, special industries, luxuries and security should all contribute to a cities prestige. Having specific buildings that do nothing but provide prestige (which would somehow encourage immigration) doesn't make sense.
Its not like people were flooding into ancient Egypt so they could go help build the pyramids.
Exactly. Best regards,Steven.
Nice and descriptive post . I figured someone would mod some of the game to fit this type of gameplay, but now that you've managed to type up this really nice post, I'd just like to say that I agree with the general idea. I figured the land around the town is made healthy enough to farm on, in multiple places, after the sovereign had used the ability to raise up a town, multiple times through magic, before the restriction was set to only the first kingdom/empire. Choices are good.
Another good ideas thread! As per usual, here's my diatribe. After a couple hours of reading through and thinking about about my beta 3 games, I think I fall in the camp of not terribly ecstatic about the current city building, but think it can probably be salvaged to something fun with some balancing tweaks. I don't fall into the camp of completely reverting to the old "building anything anywhere" as long there are tiles available though...that seems like it would be swinging the pendulum back too far the other way without some other (more major) system changes IMO.
City Building isn't a particularly interesting aspect of the game in its current form, but I think by doing what Brad mentioned they go a long way towards improving the playability. Throw in one other thing mentioned in this thread and I think the dynamic changes substantially. Specifically, the following:
Other great ideas from this thread (that I think Brad's even mentioned some previously) that would fit easily into the existing system are:
That said, I think some other ideas mentioned could warrant some investigation. Given time and money, I would have them look at the following options (mentioned or not):
EDIT: fixed some typos!
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