Darwin was asexually homosexual. He didn't have the equipment, but was also attracted to others who didn't have the equipment. I liken his theories to his number one hobby, air masturbating in the mirror.

Queue the Evolutionary Off-Topic Foam-Rabid Debate in:

3....

2....

1....

Disclaimer:

The above comments were made in jest and were not intended as serious items for debate, or for the purpose of derailing the thread and causing it to deviate substantially from the topic in the original post. Kindly leave the stage by the red door. There's a fifty foot drop on the other side, but we're still good friends.

None of us have played 1.1 so we can't really answer the rather subjective question however 1.1 does sound like it will encourage fewer and larger settlements rather than spaming lots of small one e.g.

1. Population is a resource used to man most building as well as build armies and most buildings are no longer 1 per city so getting a large population is key and that's much easier through a large city than lots of outposts.
2. Outposts now cost food to build as they should so they are not free any more, you have to think would you rather invest that food in leveling up another settlement which gains you a lot more population.

So yes I think this will encourage less settlement spaming since it all costs food and population goes up rapidly in larger settlements lot's of small ones will no longer be an attractive option. Indeed you will only build them to capture vital resources and strategic points until you max out your first settlement I would guess and you will need to think twice about if a resource is worth it.

well, the problem is that the system is so rigid and in the event of a food shortfall you get situations where "i can't do anything because my food supply is too low," potentially even aquire more food, resulting in paralysis. in other words, simply reducing food availability could be even worse than the issues currently caused by oversupply.

if you use food to limit the number of houses you can build, you have one of only two possible situations at any given time: you have more than you need because all your cities have enough houses to grow at any given time (and if you have much more than this you gain no advantage from it at all) or you don't have enough to expand (potentially devastating). it's no suprise that over the course of development supply has increased to make the former more common as it is the lesser of two evils.

if food is used to determine pop growth in the manner i described, the system becomes much softer: it is an inabler, rather than a limiter, which as a concept is much more fun to work with.

really, if we use food for pop growth instead of charging food maint/building, we're within striking distance of removing maintenance costs for all buildings (other than research buildings obviously) which would IMHO be awesome. most players have the tendency to want to build everything and get their settlements as developed as possible, and i think it's best to work WITH that instinct. when you have building maintenance you end up with horrible situations where players have to get out a calculator to work out if a market brings in more money than it cost in maintenance, which is horrible as a prospect. strategy games are more fun when players have to choose between different positives, instead of having to work out if a decision will benefit them or not. this is a conversation for another time however.

sorry, double post.

The more I looked into this game system, the more I see the over-simplified combat mechanism that it is: Int only used for spellcasting, no magic resistance (or rather magic resistance = to physical defensive strenth ????), shields that alway apply when worn (which should be missed in a flank/rear attack in even very simplified combat systems), a combat system that is basically an "attack range" vs a "defense range" and takes everything from hit to miss and damage simultaneously. The concept of hit/miss and damage effects should be seperated at least once. I don't know, everthing is just too simplified for me. This game needs some drastic overhauls big time.

Let's see; playing in a resource challenged world where big developed cities generate little income or are income negative; yeah, why would I want to expand? Far better just to have a couple of cities, miss a bunch of key resources and go bankrupt slowly. Sounds like fun! Or not.

As of 1.09, expansion is not really optional, it is mandatory. Or at least it would be if the AI wasn't completely incompetent.

1.1 is clearly going to change some of those dynamics, especially the pathetic income generation model currently in place. At that point, other approaches might become viable, especially if the AI continues to suck (and really good AI is really difficult to do in complex games). But I suspect in resource poor worlds, then expansion (positive twist)/city spamming (negative twist) will remain the easiest path to victory. As there is little else to do in the game, not sure why you would play the game if this isn't your approach of choice.