Seriously I cant believe sanitation research and hospitals were over looked! Granted they dont need to be super complex but there should be away to keep cities clean. For example having a sewer system/aqueducts increase prestige as the city is clean and people want to live in clean cities. Hospitals can also increase a city's prestige as well and should offer a tangible benefit like increased unit health when stationed in a city with a hospital.
Of course this does not need to be overly complex since researching various advanced medical concepts is beyond the scope of this game, however there should be basic health and hygiene building/research.
I don't remember this aspect of civilization ever being a concern in any other 4x I've seen. I could be wrong though.
Regardless, I don't think it would add anything interesting to the game. Probably just more tedium, especially when infrastructure expands.
Its in Civ 4 LOL"City health" And you got to research things like medicine and pharmaceuticals and other health related things.
Don't need it, just more micromanagement garbage. Although a hospital or something that let units health recover faster would be usful. Or simply just make health recover faster in cities than it does now, yea, thats even better.
hehe. It's obvious I don't play Civ. No magic. Unless you're talking FFH.
With magic heavy games, healing is in arcane art, and sewerage/sanitation systems don't have the sophistication to warrant a separate improvement.
I'd rather a rift-gate improvement............Did you hear something? ..... Sounded like the ominous galloping of a dark horse, with rider, if the weight of those thuds is any indication..... He's coming! Quickly, we must leave, the Black-Knight comes this way!
Hospitals or healing structures is understandable and I'm also suprised none were included. All the Civilizations had them (minus maybe 5), FFH had them, and I believe that Gal Civ had something to do with it... maybe... maybe not.
Sanitation or sewers... not so much. I can see how they could miss this.
Sanitation micromanagement we can live without, but a healer temple or an hospital could speed up the game by making units more ready to go, and that we do need. You guys know what I feel about teleport and ANYTHING that speeds up the game in a realistic manner, and can add up to make teleport less of a desperate necessity for certain players, is welcome here.
In fantasy setting, sewers are purely a quest area, and have nothing to do with sanitation
In fantasy settings, EVERYTHING is a quest area though. Hell, they even put quests for using basic transportation (deeprun tram, anyone?).
In general, 4x games have used sanitation as a method of curbing rapid growth. In the civ series, you had city health as the problem which required hospitals and clean food sources. In the TW series, you build sewers and baths to help prevent an outbreak of plague which is probably one of the worst things that can happen to a city in those games as it affects stationed units as well as the populations.
I think this is kind of a cop out. Elemental is far from "magic heavy", as every magic user in the entire game supposedly comes from the single source of the sovereign, who himself doesn't really heal people. While I understand that sanitation and health seems like it would add a large amount of undue micromanagement, most games do not implement them with this in mind. Generally, the idea is simply a method to limit city growth by using an understandable mechanic. On top of this, does heavy magic somehow make people no longer require to take baths or use the restroom?
That is what housing is for, and one can easily assume that all the needed infostructure is built with the housing. Now, if there where civic structures like water treatment that slightly improved the effectiveness of existing housing (taking specialists instead of food) then it might have a place in the game. Naturally, it would only be good for cities with lots of housing already or for civilizations with little access to food.
The sanitation was part of the Stronghold series. They had the both Falconeers to get rid of mice and gong farmers to clean up waste. If either or both got out of hand, your castle would start losing population. In fact it was a bad tactic to go in and destroy those buildings. It didn't take long for those to be problem.
Not sure it fits in with Elemental, but it did add some depth to the game. I liked Stronghold 2 the best.
It seems like the only building constructions are those that are: gold, knowledge, arcane, military, and diplomatic related. It's like the game wants to be a city-builder (choosing city sites, buildings to build, research, caravan routes), but stops short & doesn't go the whole way. It's like a 50% city-builder strategy game. In my opinion, it seems they abstracted anything out of the game that wasn't related to the 5 catagories above .. from my POV this game is 50% of a strategy game and 50% of a RPG mixed together.
Personally, I would like to see a huge in-depth city-building mechanism like civ, but most players would not like that level of macromanagement unless there were advisors or automated construction (I'd presume anyway). Sewers & hospitals would be a great way to increase or decrease (their lack) population growth.
Totally agree to this. There is no "micromanagement" to hospitala nd sewer: you build them and they do the rest. Like, you dont need to employ people to the gold mine. You dont have to check c.v. for those who work in the lost library. I don't see any "micromanagement" to implement an hospital and a sewer system that add some bonus to growth or healing process. And of course if we can have some sort of "advisor" option to autobuild city ANd have the choici to micromanage all of our choice, then I'll be very happy . Personnaly, I dont like building a big army and conquer the world. I prefer diplomacy and tech victory.
Then what's the point? Under this model there's no decision making at all. Once you get to size X, you need the building. You spend the time to build it, and then you forget it exists for the rest of the game.
I'm not seeing the part where this adds a game mechanic that contributes something to the game. It's complexity for the sake of complexity.
That is what you do with every building in the game. Unless it gets destroyed. Once it is built, it just goes about it business. The only way to change that is if each building had some type of upgrade it could develop--sort of like Age of Empires. You could upgrade your loggers and miners.
Like Kinghobbit said, you get this for every building, but if you want complexity you can add something with the level of the city: specialisation. I explain: when you level your city, you get certains bonus (20% or random units) but you could simply add another layer for lvl 4 and 5 like if you choose to specialise your city Between Civilisation/Warfare/Adventure/Diplomacy/Magic, then you get special building attach to that specialisation. You make some choice to determine if you want a city that will produce your equipment, finance and health (civ) or maybe some uber army with special abilitys (warfare) or maybe special quest or ressource (elementium) (adventure) or maybe a special unit that can advantage you in your relation like spy or diplomat (diplomacy) or maybe some magic mechanism (magic). That could be fun.
This is pointless. Lets add another thing to worry about, sanitation, then lets add a building that solves it! Holy shit, that was fun! Why bother at all? More fun just leaving it out.
Well, I dont think that the poster wanted to "add" sanitation in the game, but add some building that reflect a good sanitation and add some bonus for clean city.
It could go straight to prestige and increase your population growth. There are things built into the game this could already effect. I am fine with it not being in the game, but if it were added it would be fine with me.
And that's one of the biggest problems with the game. You don't think about bulidings. You just plop them down whenever you gain the ability to do so.
Adding more of that doesn't fix the problem. It's just more problem. Adding sanitation for the sake of adding sanitation does nothing to make the game better. That's the part I'm waiting for - what game mechanic goes with this and how it improves the game.
I'm not saying I want to add sanitation and medical to the game. If it were added I would be fine with it, and I think increasing prestige would make sense. You should join cpl_rk and I in the discussion about city spamming.
It's not so much about city spamming but still completely unspecialized cities. Level-up bonuses don't make a city specialized. Every city is still an economic and military city, just slightly more or less so than others. This isn't specialization..
Well, I think the city building aspect of this game is minimal at best. Like I said, it seems to me the game wanted to be a city builder like civ, but only got 50% of the way there & they didn't get the balance right as far as costs vs upkeep.
Personally, I'd like a good city builder in this game (100% instead of 50%), but only if they get the "balance" right. That's just my opinion.
Right now, I just want them to improve the AI & T.battle side of the game, as that's what's going to keep me playing past the 1.1 patch or not. Expanding the city-builder side of the game is further down the list of priorities. It's more a luxury given the other problems with the game.
I would like to see a richer city builder in the game as well. Perhaps an expansion would be better suited for that than 1.1.
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