FE is making progress mechanically but as I have played more games there is one thing that has really begun to stick out like a sore thumb. When a city is destroyed, by any method, the ground around it is left barren. It is not possible to build a new city there. I believe this is by design (certainly it has been there since WoM) but I also believe it goes against the philosophy of FE. I will explain.
For an empire-builder player like myself the greatest satisfaction in most strategy games comes from building up my empire of cities/planets/whatever (and in FE's case, also my heroes). Losing a city in any strategy game is a kick in the guts but such is the ebb and flow of war, one must try to retake it or if that is not possible then rebuild. However FE has the ultimate punishment here, the complete inability to rebuild that city (I know there is a rejuvenate ground spell, but it is so late game and rare as to effectively not exist). The punishment is so extreme that I virtually always reload an earlier save because my fun is ruined.
Because city defenders are so weak it can happen very easily - in my current game a wandering bear wiped out one of my cities of almost 200 people. Similarly the AI can destroy prime settle spots near you by doing silly things like settling beside a dragon and getting it destroyed two turns later, or settling in a terrible place right beside a 3/3/3 (this happened in my most recent game). In either case there is no come back, the settle spot is gone and the empire builder in me dies a little bit inside.
This extreme punishment doesn't fit with most strategy games (cf Civilization, MoM, etc). But it also doesn't seem to fit with the 'fun' ethos of FE. Since FE started there has been a move to make sure the game is challenging but fun. A couple of examples which come to mind are:
I believe it is fine if cities get destroyed (although a bear? seriously?), but let us rebuild them. If Stardock want it to be difficult then by all means make the ground blighted but let the sovereign go there and spend 100 mana to allow it to be settled on again. Or make an option on game start for whether ground should be barren after a city is destroyed.
Do any other empire builders feel like me?
I think I would also prefer having tiles re-settle-able in some way (especially after a monster attack). In the games I've played, building a few unrest-reducing buildings is just as if not more effective for me than would just razing and rebuilding from scratch (unless I wanted a different city type). It's not hard to get a conquered city near 0% unrest, just takes some time so I wouldn't see raze/rebuild as an exploit. But I do like being able to raze cities I can't hold.
I ended up creating a spell like that, changes the terrian type to barren. Called it Drain Land, gives mana in exchange for making the land unusable, mostly as an idea to drain the life energies of a swath of land to power other spells, at the cost of a net loss if you later want to restore it to build on.
What would be nice is if the engine was open to scripting so that more functions can be created, modding .xml is nice because a lot can be done with it, but ultimately hinders the longevity of the game because then only so much can be modded.
Just yesterday I asked Heavenfall if the tile yields could be directly manipulated, and they cannot. If it was possible I would add that functionality to the game so that it was something that could be accessed through the .xml files for modding, but that cannot be done at this stage. Perhaps after launch Stardock could open up the game to that kind of modding in a patch.
I would be happy with a 'salt the earth' spell as one way for warmongers to stop the AI resettling land.
I would still want a way to fix the earth too but as SeanW3 has suggested the rejuvenate land spell could be at an easily reachable level. Not completely thrilled about it being Earth 3 because if you don't have Earth 3 magic then you are just as screwed as in my original post. I would prefer it to be a spell that all sovereign's can cast from the start. However I also think it should ONLY fix salted land, it shouldn't be able to rejuvenate land which started the game as barren... that would probably need to be a much higher level spell (eg requiring Earth 4 or Life 5?)
I've seen the effect of such a city destruction range much too wide. Even if the salted earth effect is one Stardock wants, I'd like to see it narrowed--or a spell somewhere around Earth 3 that allows the player/AI to reinvigorate destroyed fertility (and only on barren land created by a destroyed city). Either that, or remove the barren condition within 6-8 seasons.
Earth magic is the easiest magic to find via heroes. I have never gone even one game without getting earth magics. That said, my mod now makes recruited heroes very seldom have magic. Even some Clerics and Spellswords just have to rely on path based magics. It's painful, but Sovs matter so much more this way.
My current game I didn't have any Earth magic until I bought a tome (I was a Channeller).
I agree with the OP, especially as it seems contradictionary to the design of Heroes: Those are basically immortal (thus forgiving "mistakes" easily" while Cities are not just razed in 0 turns, but the land turned uselesse as well (thus not forgiving anything at all - you cant even rebuild the city, as if losing your whole production would'nt be bad enough...).
Would rather see a more middle-groundish approach as well: Heroes (might?) die after 3 or 5 Injuries and cities will get razed (and thus you'll lose any population/progress/buildings), but at least you can rebuild on the same spot. Alternatively some mechanic to stall razing (like: it takes 2-5 turns to raze a city - time you get to reconquer it) would be an option as well.
[just my 2 cents]
Agreed. This is a game where expansion is essential to win. Starting up many cities as soon as possible, on what little land is fertile enough to support them. Suddenly losing a city and a large swath of fertile territory where you were about to plant further cities can pretty much knock you out of the race in the early and midgame.
I would like to see the land restoring spells moved to a dedicated early game tech, require Life/Death II, and given a high casting cost. This is too deal with several issues. Firstly the above mentioned destruction of the land under a razed city. Secondly sometimes you play a game 50+ turns only to realize that there is no where to build a second city. Every once and awhile I get this and it is really annoying to find out you are surrounded on all sides by a huge area of infertile land, not only do you get only 1 city but you don't even get roads to travel trough that wasteland. I usually end up restarting. Obviously this would need to be balanced so that players aren't always using it, but with random world generation there needs to be a way high cost way to build another city when the random generator gives you the shaft.
Instead of being able to be cast anywhere you could make it so it only expands existing borders. Thus instead of a free city spell it would simply allow you to expand the fertile area around your territory so you can squeeze in a city somewhere where you couldn't quite do it before. Thus it could be a spell you cast on cities that expands the fertile ground they create. Perhaps it could even be an enchantment that causes a city to slowly expand the fertile ground around it. Thus players that are stuck in a huge wasteland could research the tech, build up the mana, and slowly expand their fertile territory until they could build another city. This would prevent abuse for city spam but allow players that really need more fertile land to survive. Something needs to be done about the pitfalls of random maps and restoring the land using magic is an important part of the lore.
Why create an overly complicated mechanic? If a city is razed, the original land tile values should be stored away somewhere so that they can be reused, i.e."Fortunately, I keep my feathers numbered for just such an emergency." Being able to destroy fertile land or create same seems like it could be messy and be highly abused. If you only keep it within a certain spell mastery, or a combination, then you are forced to develop that type of champion just so that you can deal with a rampaging monster's after affects? Seems awful complicated to me.
Great idea. Far better to make something optional and keep everyone happy than take a feature away.
I have to agree with city razing being excessive. I have seen the AI capture a city (which was better than any of his) and then raze it for no reason. That is something that makes no sense at all.
Other games like Civilization allowed razing because they have an occupation/revolt mechanic in their game. This gives a better reason to raze a city, raze it because the resources to control it outweigh the resource income of the city.
I agree with this. It sucks. In my most recent game, i got my first expasion city, and it got destoryed a turn later by a monster mob. Being unable to resettle the land sucks because settleable lands are so far and beyond, that the enemy AI seems to beat you to them, because for some reason they don't have any issue with settling in lands surronded by monster mobs, while you need nothing short of an army to expand without fear of losing settleable land instantly.
One turn? But what were you doing dropping a city so close to a mob? I think you'll agree, it sounds at least on the surface as though you hadn't thoroughly explored the area, first.
According to the new change log, they're changing this.
we are looking at this issue and are also not fully satisfied with how the system works... It's a complicated issue though (as I'm sure you guys know) that can create other problems flipping it on/off, so we will see what we can do
I think you've already softened the blow by making Third Book of the Magic = 100% and monsters can no longer raze cities in the next patch.
Great post and I agree 100%. I'd like to also add how frustrating it is building a city that won't grow into a nearby dragon's den, then the AI puts an outpost near the dragon and it decides "ok I'm in ass kicking mode". It then comes to me and wrecks my city but ignores the AI's outpost. That's just lame.
Anyway I love the idea that the salted earth is removed from the game or at the very least a toggled option. Like you, I end up just loading an old save. This happened in my last game that I was really enjoying but I can't stop a dragon (and won't be able in time).
But that creates more issues then it solves. Now you can just sneak into the lush fertile lands of the elemental lords and colonize those with impunity.
I was referring to "monsters cannot raze cities" not the "restore land spell was made low level and available to all"
I don't like the idea of completely Razing cities in a single turn which is really counter-intuitive. The Razing mechanism should drop a city's level by one tier and destroy random improvements. I know this creates potential problems with City incongruity but that's a design issue (aka, not my problem). The Salted Earth problem is also a pain and really problematic when trying to find suitable city sites which is already hard enough.
I think it should depend on the force's strength and there should be a counter attack. Each unit should have a "kill pop", "damage buildings", and "resist villagers" score. The weakest forces (eg a pack of wolves) might kill a few people but not destroy buildings. And will end up dying without destroying the city (but they will kill off some people).
A dragon might single handedly destroy a town, kill the entire pop, raze all buildings, and take no damage due to have a high resist villagers score (a farmer with a pitchfork might get lucky against a lone human soldier trying to set his barn on fire, he isn't gonna get that with a dragon).
This comes together to mean that:
1. If there is no army the city cannot be razed.
2. The stronger the army, the faster they can raze a city.
3. The bigger the city, the longer it takes to raze it.
4. Really weak armies trying to raze a big city will end up dead.
But if he do I want to promote him to hero!
Really do like your idea Taltamir, both for player razing and monster razing!
Sincerely~ Kongdej
Yeah, good ideas. Will see what Stardock come up with but I hope they aren't going to stop with the band-aid half solution they currently have.
Oh, one more idea... since "salting the earth" thing was done because players actually WANTED it to happen sometimes (and sometimes they DO NOT)... how about making "raze city" and "salt earth" two different things?
Heck, make it three options.... When you click on "raze city" it should popup a window with options of:
1. Salt the earth: Kills everyone, destroys all buildings, salts the earth in the area preventing farming (and thus rebuilding) in the area for years to come
2. Kill the population: Slaughters all the population and leaves behind a husk (which takes DoT from neglect). The husk can be reclaimed (or can be made irreclaimable by colonizing nearby at a different spot) by a pioneer of choice as a new level 1 city which keeps only the generic buildings the previous city had (aka no buildings specific to conclave or town or what not). Prevents the "conquered" unrest.
3. Burn the town: Destroys all buildings leveling the town and allowing recolonization, a percentage of the pop survives and escapes to join other cities with a preference for other sides' cities.
Monsters would have their own special attack modes like:
1. Eat the populace: Kills everyone leaving behind a husk that can be rebuilt upon
2. Destroy town: Kills everyone, destroys all buildings. only available to monsters of specific caliber, like dragons or giants or the like.
No matter which option is chosen it then is resolved based on town population and army/monster strength in the way I described above (with pop kill, building destroy, and village resist figures for attackers and the city taking damage to its pop, building having HP based on cost, and villager resistance being based on pop count)
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