Can I please get an update on this?
From what they've explained in posts: Yes.
Nonsense. Trojasmic's question is too vague to answer in the first place, and the dev talk on the general theme of city spam is hardly a fountain of details.
Signs indicate that there's hard work happening re city spam, but just how much and what kind of fixes we'll see in 1.1 are (understandably) not very specific. From some perspectives (AI personality/diversity), city spam is a symptom and not a problem in its own right. I don't like to spam cities myself, but what I'm hoping for most is a game where some AIs can do well by spamming cities and others can do well with very few settlements and maybe only one seriously large city. That would mean human players have a very broad range of viable playstyles to choose from.
+1 for GW (as usual)
But he's totally right. city spam is not a 'problem' since in theory it could be the name of the game so to speak. Elemental shouldn't be all about city spam, but if it were it wouldn't make it a bad game.
Also, 1.1 is going to be pretty big, but it has a lot of ground to cover before elemental is 'awesome', and city spam is not exactly the highest priority next to some other features and polish it needs. So I would expect baby steps in that area but nothing particularly huge.
I was going for the "bad question, bad answer" routine.
I should have clarified, then. There seems to be significant bonuses to building fewer towns in the 1.1 patch. Most importantly, each new town costs a ration to build, and many of the buildings that could only be built once per town can now be built several times, making it ideal to focus resources into towns with strong %-bonuses instead of building many small towns just to get one of each of the basic buildings. Essentially, if your goal is to maximize resource production, you should be better off with fewer towns, since the amount of buildings you can build will be directly limited by your population, and you'll get better population per ration spent in large cities.
1.1 isn't out yet, we don't know shit yet. And neither do the Devs, so repeating what they said as facts, doesn't mean anything. If it did, they wouldn't have been shocked about the release of the game. Simply, until 1.1 comes out, we won't know if it fixes anything.
Well, for what they said, what COULD stop city spam(or at least not making an advantageous stategy vs not city spam) is that caravan wont have the food bonus anymore AND each new settlement will cost 1 food (exept the first IIRC). They will also add some more important building that you'll only access in tier 4-5 and you'll be able to construct a lot of these. So, if you want to city spam, early game will be ok, mid-game should be a little tough and end game not very viable. On the other hand, few city will take longer to produce army at first, after they'll do ok and they will be pretty strong end-game. You should find balance with when to increase your number of city and when to grow some.Remember that protecting a lot of city will consume specialist AND the building will consume specialist so if you protect a fewer city, you can concentrate on other thing.
City Spam was/is on the list of things to be worked on.
This is a stategy type not a game mehanism. Changing some game mechanisma like caravans & food might affect any strategy to some extent, but not eliminate it .. not that anyone would want to anyway, any more than anyone would want to prevent colonizing multiple planets in 4x space games.
I agree there are a couple things that need some improvement, but for me, the city spamming is one of the biggest turn offs in the game. More than any other feature it is what has stopped me from starting new game until 1.1 comes out.
I certainly want more diverse magic, more powerful magic, race specific units, ability to customize the world with sliders. But city spam just flat out makes the game not fun.
probably not, because they are not touching population growth.
so long as your faction gets a fixed number of people per turn per city, then your population will increase at a rate proportional to your number of cities. now that we have specialist slots and population is even more valuable, city spam will now likely be even more important.
Yes, no, and maybe.
Yes the overpowered nature of spamming cities when compared to building a few good cities has been addressed. No, it is not going to be balanced; in the long run more cities will be better if you can hold them till they are well upgraded. It will just be that building lots of cities will push back the time at which you can achieve big cities (thus linking which strategy is better to game length).
The problem with the AI spamming cities at every resource node may be fixed, depends on how far Brad is with the AI and how much of that will be included.
At the risk of being called a suck-up, Lord Xia is my favorite forum member!
I hope so because it is really annoying to deal with little AI cities next to one resource over the map. You go wipe out that waste of a city only to see the AI has built another one there 5 minutes later.
I'm probably both the most disliked and most liked forum poster! For as many people that like me, there is one that can't stand me and reports all my post.
Finally someone said something! Thank you.
I thought I was the only one having this problem, and that it was probably too trivial to post about it, but those cans are so damn hard to get open sometimes.
I think to some degree there is a disconnect between SD and how big some people view the city spamming problem is. City Spamming is not a gaming strategy, it is a flaw in the game. Unfortunately for me, it is almost a deal breaker. It is ridiculous to watch the AI build city after city that doesn't develop into anything, or just found a city to get an Arcane Library. There is no strategy in spamming, it is just find a resource and plop. I truly hope 1.1 fixes it, and the two expansions make it even better.
*****notice I said some people---I have read where a few gamers truly enjoy the city spamming. I am not sure why but if you do, than the present form of this game is for you*******************
at least you're batting .500.
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
I'm no Xia sycophant either but... your irreverence is refreshing--on line--I have to wonder if you might be acutely insufferable in person
Lol---don't recall reading any posts of those who can't stand you.... at first, I wasn't too sure about you myself but I found that you tend to go upright and vital speaking the rude truth on all ways...despite the faction that is too easily butt-hurt.
Gotta give you props for that.
Cheers.
I am bat-shit crazy, so I am enjoyable to have around if you are not to uptight. But honestly, most people think I am very sweet in real life. I'm super huggable.
I heard you were as cute and cuddly as a pack of baby turtles...
I want both city-spamming and non-city-spamming (I don't know what it's called alright?) to be viable strategic options.
City spamming would be trying to dominate the landscape steam-roller style, whilst non-city-spamming would be about consolidating your power in strategic areas.
There should be advantages and disadvantages to both styles of play. For example, city-spamming may give an early to mid-game advantage by allowing a player to control more resources through a larger ZoC. Whereas having fewer more larger cities may give a mid to late-game advantage by having your bonuses from improvements and resources be much larger due to a greater focus of population per city.
This would only work if the population growth rate increased with city size, and decreased as a whole by a certain degree per city. There should not be a population cap on any city.
A step-based example would be:
N Cities at Size 1: Very low growth rate.
N Cities at Size 2: Low growth rate.
N Cities at Size 3: Moderate growth rate.
N Cities at Size 4: Excellent growth rate.
N Cities at Size 5: Booming growth rate.
1 City at Size 1 & 1 City at Size 2: Very low growth rate.
2 Cities at Size 1 & 1 City at Size 2: Extremely low growth rate.
2 Cities at Size 1 & 2 Cities at Size 2: Very low growth rate.
1 City at Size 3 & 1 City at Size 1: Low growth rate.
1 City at Size 4 & 1 City at Size 1: Moderate growth rate.
1 City at Size 5 & 1 City at Size 1: Excellent growth rate.
The above example is a general idea of the concept. For this concept to work properly, you'd need to have the growth rates adjust more analogously. Meaning that the calculation has to be performed using the current population at any given turn, rather than having the growth rate adjusted only when the city sizes change.
You could also consider having a no penalty threshold. Something like 3 cities before growth rate suffers.
Exactly, *some* people. There is no disconnect because spam is not a problem. Some people have a valid complaint, since at the current time it's the fastest method of victory by far: with a spam & conquest strategy, players should be able to win by turn 300/400 (on large maps) which is at least a hundred turns faster than the other methods. In a multi-player game, this strategy will win every time. This is a problem of game balance not strategy (choice) type.
I enjoy city spamming because I enjoy expandingy my empire, exterminating my enemies, taking their cities, and adding their population to mine so I can build more & bigger armies, explore, finding more enemies, wash rinse & repeat until I own the world .. which is pretty the same reason I enjoy playing 4x strategy games in general. In general, I play games to win & beat my highest previous score, not to admire how nice the fungii looks on the cave-rocks while I search for treasure that I can use to build up my armies.
I do not enjoy this game in its present form for other reasons:
1) The AI is *extremely* weak, thus there is no challenge at this point in the games current version & I'm waiting for 1.1, hopefully I'll see a big improvement there. Un-challenging, weak-AI games are simply no fun at all for me. In general, I don't even want to turn a game on if I'm 100% sure I'm going to win that game .. what's the point?
2) Linked to 1 to some extent is the extremely flawed & weak, simplistic tactical combat system which is first move = win, among other weaknesses such as the completely inept charge-attacks by the enemy. These have been discussed in great detail in other threads, so I'm not going to add any more; I've already said everything I wanted to already in other threads on the topic of T.battles.
City Spamming is not a gaming strategy, it is a flaw in the game.
This is flat out wrong.
Spam is a game strategy that is present in all 4x strategy games, from founding multiple settlements in "civilization" to colonizing as many worlds as you can in space games such as MOO, Distant worlds, Stars! etc.
Maybe 4x strategy games are not for you, perhaps you'd like FPS or MMPOG games more? The second "x" in stands for "expand" ("explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate"). Spam matches the "expand" aspect of 4x strategy games.
This is a very basic concept of 4x strategy type games and are part of their appeal.
Spam is a game strategy that is present in all 4x strategy games, from founding multiple settlements in "civilization" to colonizing as many worlds as you can in space games such as MOO, Distant worlds, Stars! etc.Maybe 4x strategy games are not for you, perhaps you'd like FPS or MMPOG games more? The second "x" in stands for "expand" ("explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate"). Spam matches the "expand" aspect of 4x strategy games.This is a very basic concept of 4x strategy type games and are part of their appeal.
Well a fantasy theme shouldn't allow city spam in the same way like civilization or space TBS do because there should always be an unknown/dangerous wilderness as a source of monsters and dungeons. Normally the time period in which a fantasy strategy game plays is way less long than a civ/moo game handle.
+ here in special, nobody wants city spam as an advantage on places you don't have any resources. You just spam anyway its far too good to have all basic buildings multiple times. This makes no sence and brad already agrees with that.
I am glad some one is finally standing up for the second x. I think city spam is not a bad thing, beyond the current problem of its being OP compared to all other strategies. A lot of people have said to me that city spam is awful because the AI makes a bunch of crappy cities, thus making it a pain to go to war with them. While I might buy this as an annoyance in a game like civ, where you are required to kill each and every city of an opponent to destroy them, it does not hold water in Elemental. Currently the only thing keeping a faction going is the sov. Kill the sov, and all the cities of the faction magically disappear. Yet, I think that without a little city spam, every war comes down to rapidly taking a couple of cities and then mopping up whatever is left. There would never be any war like Germany trying to take on russia only to find themselves overextended.
The thing about city spam is not that you can build a lot cities, as this is actually part of the whole fun of a 4x game. The thing is that level 1, 2, and 3 cities are as useful as most level 5 cities, and you can get far more of them than level 5 cities. Personally I don't think that limiting the amount of cities will actually solve this underlying problem, but will simply mask it by adding arbitrary limitations on how many of these lower level cities you can have at all. As Heavenfall pointed out rightly above, it is the expansion of a higher cities usefulness to produce resources which begins to solve the underlying problem. On top of this, the addition of city improvements to expand the power of higher level buildings will solve the city spam OP problem.
Those wandering should make it very difficult to spam, not eliminate it. In fact, that would be one easy way to balance spam in this game vs other victory types, if the wandering monsters were more efficient against pioneers. As of now, wandering monster are not a factor in city spam, and only a minor problem with caravan trade routes.
I"m not sure we're talking about the same game? There's only one tree resouce that harvestable in this game, and it's unlimited. In the fantasy strategy games I've played: Age of Mythology, age of empires, empire earth, etc trees always get cut down as you harvest them, and this makes sense to me. Trees that stand forever after you've harvested a city' worth of lumber is just silly.
Well, if you're going to build 5 banks in 5 different cities, then you should reap the benefit of those 5 banks. The problem is, most games have associated costs with buildings which typically take the form of "taxes". Banks should be a necessity to build because you need the extra revanue to balance out the costs of non-revanue accruing buildings such as libraries, knowledge centers, barracks, etc.. In a well designed game, there is a fine balance there between income (taxes) & costs (upkeep). As the game goes along, more advanced buildings have increased "cost" but there is usually a corresponding financial building to "equalize" the cost. And, if you build more buildings than you can support, you start going into the red & have less money to support military units, etc. As of now, this game doesn't walk that balance .. the only limiting factor is how much gold you have "now". Frankly, in this game as of now I don't need to build a lot of "buildings." I just want the basic city as a source of caravan routes & resource control/denial, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with any strategy that uses that approach as a vehicle to win the game. This is pretty much exactly the same thing I would do in any 4x game regardless of genre.
It is a game after all. I'm actually playing the game to win. Among the basic ways to win is to gather resources & deny them to your enemy. All those shards, crystal, and other resource types are just big fat targets which are prioritized by my army. Whether they have a city there or not, I'm going to take them. If there is not already a city there, I'm going to build one there as soon as I can because I don't want to have to station a huge garrison there. It's easier to build a city and send forth a caravan to build roads so I can speedily move mounted troops there ASAP if needed (city gets threatened), or worse case it's now within teleport range.
Spam is just an overall part of my approach to conquest. Spam allows major road networks, which improve military army speed, which enable me be better conquer the world faster & beat my previous score which is why I play the game to begin with.
Other 4x games do the same thing. In civ you can build roads where you want with engineers/workers. Typically, 4x space games have a cargo or merchant transportation network (even with pirates) that harvest the worlds you conquer: Distant Worlds refined this to a science with an entire "private sector" which is mostly outside player control but transported resources and luxury goods from planet to planet in your empire & increased your revanue through trade. The difference in this game is that food is gained from caravans instead of money, which doesn't really make sense, and that caravans build the roads themselves (like workers did in civ).
I make a bunch of crappy cities too, just like the AI, so? so what?? If the city is a city and has a caravan route, then I'm happy. I don't have to micromanage all the cities in this game, only their caravan routes from time-to-time (I want every city to have at least one) and a few "good" cities that are my main core, and the cities that are near my enemies which usually house more troops as my armies moves forward.
Quoting Cpl_rk "..In fact, that would be one easy way to balance spam in this game, if the wandering monsters were more efficient against pioneers. As of now, wandering monster are not a factor in city spam, and only a minor problem with caravan trade routes. ",
That statement is very true when in single player, but when I played a few (only 3 or 4) times online, the MP game seemed completely different when it came to early game monsters. My sovereign died so many times he was in danger of losing his manhood (essense) completely and becoming a soprano (squib). I was afraid to let him leave the initial city till he was decked out with some armor and weapons.
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