From my point of view it seems really strange that a group of small cities can produce more gold and research than one large city. Five settlements with 20 people for a total of a 100 population shouldn't be able to compete against a city with 2000 people.
So, it would make more sense to me if let's say a Study or a Merchant or Arcane Library (base buildings) gave a bonus of 1 gildar or RP plus 1 gildar or RP per 100 population.
In that case a city with 2000 people could produce 21 gildar without any other specialist buildings versus 1 gildar. This makes it about 4 times more profitable than five cities (which would produce 5 gildar) that have 5% of the population which is still pretty weighted towards multiple small towns but doesn't take into account specialist buildings that would increase the cities effectiveness.
This would make large cities more useful and desirable and would counter the city spamming strategy. You also wouldn't need to change any of the other buildings that give percentage bonuses. You would however have to increase costs as a consequence of increasing revenue and research but that shouldn't be that hard to calculate the appropriate increase.
Larger cities should also make it faster and easier to train soldiers. A level 1 city won't have the people to train a soldier in all likelihood as the expertise to create well trained soldiers is fairly rare as even people who are good soldiers have a hard time training others to be. A larger city has a more people so it should be more likely to recruit better troops and is more likely to have multiple trainers so they can each focus on different aspects like one training on shields and another on group tactics et cetera so it is more likely take those better recruits and work them into better soldiers faster and more effectively.
This!All of it.
Absolutely, a GREAT idea. This makes it worthwhile to actually build up a city, as opposed to... well, the way it is now.
Altering the system so instead of hard percents you gain points per population would also avoid end-game abuse of deleting houses in level 5 cities.
Plus it'd be a more intuitive system.
The higher level techs resulting in percent bonuses to production still would make sense and allows for specialization of towns.
I'm glad one of my ideas has approval at last. Thanks for the comments guys. I really love the potential this game has and would love to see it reach some of the potential my imagination provides.
I'd agree with this post, or the alternative of scaling the base production by the level of the city.
Notably, this also has the side-effect of making the minors more viable if they are limited to one city that they can develop the heck out of. If SD gives them a little prestige bonus and lets them build the base buildings, you have a fortress city that produces reasonable resources in pretty good order.
Actually this is a common flaw in the thinking "More people get more done faster". There is a limit to how many people you can put on something to increase productivity. If you only have 1 post hole digger then putting a 100 more people assigned to digging post holes isn't gonna get the holes dug any faster. Well in the case of Elemental each city has its own post hole digger so arguing that 5 cities get more done then 1 with a lot more able body diggers doesn't really work.
As for population in general I think they could do more to make it matter. Like collecting taxes because late game trying to maintain a large army is very difficult. When you have companies that can cost over 10 gildar in maintance it's not long before your flat broke from army upkeep. I had like 8-10 cities in one game and after having 1 of the best units I could train in each city I was only able to field a single stack of them for an army.
I think they need more buildings that give bonuses to other types of production at each level. This would really help the larger cities out produce the smaller ones. Earlier in beta the large cities always produced more because of the production buildings you could make at later levels. But after the change to make resources more important and most buildings now give a % increase instead of a flat amount it makes city sprawl more important then ever since +1 for a level 1 city is better then +2 or so bonus from a level 5 city with all it's % bonus buildings.
Also another take besides population and possibly easier to balance would be the basic buildings produce +x where X is the city level. Combined with the % increase buildings they should produce quite a bit.
I could go with a base amount based on the city level as that would at least give some extra oomph to large cities.
Yes, I like the idea of a base amount based on the city level. Because it requires effort to build up a city (ie. lots of houses and prestige buildings) having 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 base production for studies, arcane studies, workshops, merchants etc. would make a big difference, especially as +% bonuses (and more +% bonuses) would make bigger, fewer cities viable *and* competitive.
Stardock, what do you think?
Best regards,Steven.
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