Well a fantasy theme shouldn't allow city spam in the same way like civilization like or even on space at all 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 game.
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 not even know why they let us cut down forestes, also not a feature i like to see in a fantasy world.
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.
+ here is pecial nobody wants city spam as an advantage even on places you don'T have any resources just because its far too good to have all basic buildings multiple times. Makes no sence at all but brad already agrees with that.
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.
