Fixing the City Problem: what do you think?

In a recent thread I found building cities to be pretty unsatisfactory, despite really liking the basic idea that specialized food tiles (etc) are pretty rare, thus limiting city spam, and the idea of needing to station heroes/family members in cities to get them to the next level.

Basically how I feel about the current implementation of cities is that they feel mostly like clones of whatever their current tier is, and that they just become utterly stagnant when they hit a cap (food, housing, etc) with zero real growth.

So I figured I'd start discussion on what other people think could help improve the city system. Any thoughts?

elemental

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I myself had one idea, let the max level of the city control the types of building that can be built.

i.e, an outpost cannot support good-quality housing, nor can it support anything more than rudimentary military or resource gathering

Level 2 adds things like elder council, market, grannaries, inn etc

Level 3 adds schools, libraries, mills etc

Level 4 adds theatres, restaurants, universities, mansions, bakeries

Level 5 adds tower of sorcery, bazaars, etc

The better buildings only become available as the city increases in status and gains the logistics necessary to support large institutions like towers of sorcery. However anything better than tier 1 still grows over time, although the population growth rate would be lower in cities at lower tiers of prestige, and there would be a maximum, but

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TCores : it's already like that : you can't build houses in a level 1 city.

And I think the 6 houses for 1 other building ratio will change before the final release. And there surely will be better housing in the tech tree. There's already the appartment.

And I think dev want us to take hard decisions : you need housing, and so you have little space for something else, so you will have to specialize your cities. A farming city won't have enough space for barracks or anything else.

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Yeah, another building you have to wait for a certain population level to build is a Tax center and, I think, banks.

Has anyone been able to build mansions yet? I've researched it a few times, but I've been unable to build one, even in a city I had with access to more than two fertile tiles and an orchard/apiary or two, IIRC.

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I remember being able to build one. Maybe in a level 4 or 5 city. Don't forget to research advanced farming to get increasing bonus on the farms.

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