[Idea Brainstorm] City and Economy Revamp

Making cities interesting.

from Elemental Forums

As it stands now, cities are bland. This is a discussion to make them interesting. This post will include ideas for topics to discuss. I think an all encompassing thread is needed for the subject so a unified system can be thought out. (my own ideas will appear in later posts, and it will be later today befor I have time)

Buildings:

Variety: As it currently stands, there is not a lot of variety in cities other than resources and a few with with unique structures. The simplest solution is to add more buildings, both unique and common. You should have to think about what you want to build. Ideas for new buildings please.

Building Repeat: More buildings than just houses  should be repeatable. Of course some mechanic would need to limit it, discuss.

Upgrades: It would also be good be able to upgrade the effectiveness of building and maybe even select diffrent upgrade paths.

Placement: Placement currently only matters for influence buildings (e.g. town halls). Building irrigation next to a farm should provide more production than one that is surrounded by comerce related structures. Also some improvements (wall) should not be placed, though they could still count against the building limit.

Housing: Housing as it is right now is has little meaning that I can see because usually once it levels up it can support about as much population as it took to level up even if you remove the housing. Remembering to build it is a bother, so an adjustment to how it is handled is needed.

Maintainance Cost: It has been suggested buildings should have an upkeep. But which ones and how much? And is it even a good idea?

City Types:

Beyond just increasing buildings, there should be specialized towns (not refering to the current mechanic) that are more limited in building options but can get relavent buildings at lower levels (e.g. a military base that get unit production, fortification, and equipment prerequesites at at lower levels than other towns), go up fewer levels, and might have specail rules (e.g. a military base would not collect resources, it would just be to place in an area of military importance).

Economy:

Food: Food is currently used by buildings, it should be population based (and maybe affect population growth). Then positive food lets the population to grow (rate for each city determined by other factors), no food would halt population growth, and negative food would cause it to shink.

Basic resource production: I consider the basic resources to be food, gold, and materials. All cities should be able to produce some, though only those with resource tiles would have significant production. This is needed because losing access to these will cause serious problems for you and the AI (who has trouble holding cities). Therefore the ability to always have access to some is needed. Discuss, but be sure to include methods of keeping it from encouraging city spam (e.g. make it scale with city level and require research before becoming availible) and be reasonable. 

Resource trading structures: Stardock is adding buildings that allow for a shift in production when you make too much of X and too little of Y. I would like to see ideas for more buildings.

Market System: Sins of a Solar Empire had the black market. It would be interesting to see something like that in EWoM. Anyone have thoughts on how it would be implemented?

Resource Tiles: Currently they are everything in the early game, and by the late game aquiring more does not help much. Some people also feel that you are handed too many at the start. Should they be changed? How? And what should you really start with?

City Spam:

Current comments indicate Stardock is going to use the uncreative and uninteresting route of simply making cities without resource tiles or strategic positioning worthless. I have seen many ideas that seem far more interesting and would like to see more. Alternatives to making spammed cities worthless are those that make having too many cities a burden or make founding cities harder.

Rebellions and Loyalty:

Currently you can do nothing that makes your people hate you, and captured cities are quick to get change sides. Having city loyalty / happiness might be good, though it can be argued that without a channeller, the nation cannot survive. Ideas and opinions would be appreciated. Talk related to civil wars and family members revolting and such belongs to a discussion of diplomacy and dynasties, so try to avoid it unless needed.

Civic Victory Condition:

There is a military victory (Conquest), a diplomatic victory (Diplomacy), an adventure victory (Master Quest), and magic victory (Spell of Making). Where is the civic victory? The intro mentions restoring the land to what it should be, so something related to that should be a victory condition. Ideas please.

Other:

Thought of another related topic? Post it and I will see about adding it.

6,934 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

There is that...

https://forums.elementalgame.com/397209

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Housing and Food:

I think housing should not be something you build, but rather when a city is not contructing buildings then it is being expanded to hold more people (like it does on level up now, only it would be on a per turn basis with small increases). The rational for this is on level up kingdom cities are then capable of housing more people than was required to gain a level, so after its level maxs out there is no reason to keep the housing as it is redundant.

If housing in its current form is removed, food will need to be changed. I suggest that it be tied to population (for every N people, 1 unit of food is consumed). Then it could be made so population grows as normal when food is positive, halt when there is no surplus food, and decline when there is a shortage. Additionally, large surplus/shortage could apply and brith/death rate bonus/penalty to a city's population (this would replace the "rationing" income penalty too all cities when food production is negative).

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Resource collection:

As it stands, nearly all resources come from resource tiles; however this is not the way things are in the real world. With enough technology, most places can produce food (as a note, the "Fertile Cresent" where one of the first important civilizations arose is not a good place for growing till you have good irrigation and flood control). I prepose that cities be able to produce buildings that have low output food production (1), take 2x2 tiles, have the number limited by tech and/or city level, and maybe require a technology upgrade to research.

Similar to food, materials should be producable (they are with a workshop already), as there are more places to get them than the major sources represented by resource tiles (e.g. non old growth forests).

Both material producers and food producers would be limited to just a few per city (2 to 4) so as to leave resource tiles meaningful as they reap greater rewards.

Finally gildar are up. Gold mines are not a nation's primary income source, taxes are. There should be a base rating for how much you get per capita (tax level changes are only possible when there is a chance the people will rebel). Caravans would not be buildable and not generate food, rather you build merchant guild / market type buildings and roads (which would be built by and engineer or dedicated road builder, and caravas would follow rather than paving it themselves). Caravans then increase the amount of taxes the city generates, the amount depending on the number of cities that are reachable by roads that belong to you or factions that you have a trade agreement with. Roads that enter lands owned by a faction you do not have a trade agreement with are not useable. The effect of trade and taxes would need to be on a scale that Gold Mines are still a big deal, as a taxes will fund a nation but (a) gold mine(s) makes it rich.

Next post will be on reducing city spam. I would like to hear feed back and the ideas of others (especially on topics I have not covered).

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

City Spam:

Currently, mass producing cities is a way to easily win, and is the dominate strategy as opposed to a few large, well placed cities. The goal does not need to be removing city spam as a viable strategy, but to make it require some effort and not make a better planned approach pointless.

My plan has two parts, one to make founding cities more difficult and one to make it harder to have a larger kingdom.

Reviving the land is suppose to be part of the game, so make it part of city building. Limit cities to revivied land only. Some new features to suppor this are: a global spell to revitalize a part of the land, and the ability to channel your magic into expanding the revived land faster from your cities. Everyone would start with the spell, and it is free when targeting a tile containing your sovereign. The option to revive the lands would be like influence, except it would spread faster and not be limited by city level. Choosing to revive land reduces mana income while doing so.

The second part is to impose an "adminstration cost" for having a large realm with lots of cities. The impact of a city would be measured by X*(DistanceToCapital / YZ) = N. X is city specific, possibly size and/or type based. Y is a map constant the changes with the map size. Z starts at 1, and can be increased incrementally by a specific tech that can be research infinitely. The sum of N for all cities would be placed into a formula to determine administration cost, one that would cause a few cities (early game) to cost nothing and rise exponially. An additional method for reducing the cost besides making distance less of a factor that is worth considering, there could be a re-researchable tech that allows provincial goverment centers that could count as the capital if closer that the palace. They would only function if a member of the royal family is present (making offspring more important).

The admistration cost would simulate all the things that make running a large nation expensive: having orders delevered, moving resources to where they are needed, corruption in the officials of cities far from the capital, ect.

Adding a greater chance of rebellion is another idea, but I will save that for later or let someone else start off discussion about it.

Next is an idea for a civic victory condition.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Civic Victory:

"Making the world as it was meant to be" is suppose to be a large part of this game. As I see it, one way of doing this would be to bring back the golden age. To this, I suggest you should have to construct all the "per game" unique buildings (wonders) from the civic research tree. In addition, there would be a new upgrade for "golden age" (or something similare but better suited to the faction) that unlocks a wonder that has no purpose other than acheiving victory. As prerequesites for the "golden age" research, you would need that techs that unlock the other wonders. The special wonder should take as much time and resources to build as a large, well equiped army. Once you have all the wonders, your faction will over shadow the others and all people will flock to your nation.

Next is resource tiles, particularly those seeded at your start location.