There are currently only 4 options for city specialization - they aren't too bad to be honest.
It's just, there are many settlements that don't particularly fall under the specializations of gildar, tech, or arcane... and which might not really need a mire skarth (or bandits... eh???). There are plenty of possible specializations that can be awarded to growing settlements.
When a city levels up, I think it'd be nice to display a city level up menu - it should display what resource levels the city produces, what harvested resources are linked to the city, the buildings in the city, and most importantly, what specializations it has previously undertaken.
Some new specialization options might include (in the current 20% - 30% - 40% etc. theme)
Agriculture - settlement produces more food
Commerce - Settlement gains 1 additional caravan per specialization and/or gains additional income from trade caravans
Tourism - Settlement produces increased diplomatic capital and/or units regain health and essence at increased rates while resting in settlement
Industrious - settlement produces increased harvested resources. Does NOT include gildar, food, horses, wargs, or diplomatic capital.
Bastion - defending units gain increased defense
Bureaucracy - settlement's maintenance costs are reduced
Military - settlement trains units more quickly and/or have more HP - does not include spiders/darklings/etc.
Standards of Living - settlement gains in prestige (+1 each specialization)
Naturalists - Settlement produces more horses/wargs and trains spiders/darklings/etc. more cheaply/quickly.
Efficient Engineering - Buildings are produced more quickly
Patrols/Rangers - roads and resources within the settlements sphere of influence are protected from Faction Creatures and Whatever of level 1/2/3/4 ; does not include rival factions, except final tier protects against rival pioneers (but not any other rival faction units).
May have more as I play/remember.
At the moment you can see city production at the bottom of the screen when the level up window appears. However, this is NOT enough. Many times I expected to get new resources after my city reaches level 2 or 3 and I can't see them because the window blocks the way. For example, at the level 2 I expect a gold mine will be within my reach for that city. I need that city to get a gold production bonus but I don't know that because I don't see what's around my city and that kind of info isn't available in it's production screen simply because city isn't producing it yet. It's hard to keep track of all your cities when you have 15-20 of them so that info is important.
If the game could center on the city that is leveling and let us see the city itself and it's surroundings, it would be of great help in deciding which bonus to take. For example, screen could show the level up window on the left side of the screen, while on the right side you see city and area around it.
And yes, we definitely need to see what specializations the city already has.
definately the specializations need to be displayed and some leeway for inspecting your empire first to be allowed but....
generally i'm not sure i even like the idea of levelup specializations. it's like they suddenly thought "holy crap, we need to come up with a way to make people care about levelling up" and just decided to slap on an arbitrary percentage bonus. imo the advantage of levelling up a city should be the ability to build new buildings (or maybe a base improvement in gildar production to represent taxation). if this is not the case already then something is wrong with the building tree.
i'd just rather everything was done with buildings. simple, elegant, and easy to keep track of everything.
Actually, It has happened to me a few times that the resources bar at the bottom is NOT visible on city level up - it is instead focused on something else (due to lack of priority of actions, everything scrambles to pop up at the beginning of a turn) such as a unit, a harvestable, or even nothing at all.
I think that is a great idea, because it makes the cities more interesting and every kingdom or empire unique.
The summon guardian ability is a brilliant feature and idea. It forces a strategic trade off between an awesome unit and long term economic goals. There needs to be options like this:
Draft Militia- Takes able bodied men to fight without training. Uses low weapon but takes no time to build.
Forge Weapon- Uses no resources to have a random magical weapon made in honor of the Sovereign.
Receive Heirloom- A villager gifts to you an ancient magical item to protect you in battle.
These kinds of options would make you decide how much you need a boost to your overall strategy for the city and how well equipped or defended you are for your immediate needs. These would be in addition to those above.
I love your city level-up idea, Jingseng!
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
