[Discussion] City Layout + Ugliness

Let's Hear Your Opinion

from Elemental Forums

At the moment (and, pretty much, all throughout WoM and FE) there're two effective city layouts and that is all. There's no real design to it, just follow these layouts and you're done.

These layouts are:-

Main Layout: The Snakey City

This is where you loosely (ie. either diagonally or just connecting one by one) each building along a corridor-esque path, in order to connect up to other resources within your zone of control AND to make a superfast-highway city to facillitate quick troop movement.

There is no reason not to do this for any city, except for one possible one I'll be putting below.

What this provides is:-

  • A nice fat zone of control (speaking as a strategic term). You've heard of controlling the centre of the field? That's what this does.
  • An expansion of your natural zone of control, which gives you access to more resources and pushes monsters off.
  • A superfast highway for your units to travel down, which can be useful when you've got your capital stretching across 10+ tiles.

However, this design is HORRIBLY UGLY. Seriously, has anyone ever seen a city that looked like this? Real world cities are more often shaped like a circle-hub. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the simple fact that designing your cities differently makes them less effective.

How to Fix This...

Provide bonuses for surrounding city tiles with other city tiles (prevents snakey design, at least), or make it so that units have to move on city tiles the same as road tiles, whilst still taking up a slot. Don't let building cities like this expand your natural zone of control, either?

Defensive (Secondary) Layout: The Roadblock

This is where you plug a chokepoint with your city by building in such a way to prevent any units to get past. Can be hard due to the fact that mountainsides can currently be walked on but not built on, but is certainly useful when placing cities in the middle of peninsulas etc.

What this provides is:-

  • Preventation of enemy getting past during war.
  • Stops neutral troops getting through.
  • Prevents enemies ravaging your nice juicy economic cities.
  • (I think) Prevents enemies colonising where you have yet to get pioneers to.

In terms of economic and movement efficiency-wise, this is still inefficient compare to the Snake model of city design.

I have literally zero problems with this form of city design. I quite like it, in fact.

Your Opinion

So, let's hear it. How do you feel about the current mechanics of city layouts? Do you use these or different ones?

8,526 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Hate the city buildup mechanic. It's unbelievably gamey, looks ridiculous, and makes late game city buildup a pain in the neck.

It's also yet another area for the AI to fall flat on its face, or another way for the world to look even more ridiculous (can you imagine if the AI learns to abuse insta-city travel and has all its cities set up across the map in long lines, so no matter where you travel, the map is one long procession of city corridors?)

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

A level one and two city should only have the adjacent 8 tiles to build on. Level three and four the next ring. Level five the next ring.

OR I'm starting to like seanw3's idea of simply using the surrounding eight tiles, then everything from there builds up.  Eight tiles = 32 city tiles, which should be plenty of tiles. 

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top


I think the simplest solution is just to not make zone of control expand with buildings (like you mentioned) and to not let troops "highway" through cities.  Just make it so they have to move to the city center to garrison it.  Problem solved.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I see several possible solutions.

 

  1. Change it so you can only build orthogonally (no corner to corner) 
  2. Limit distance from city to a distance based on city size, perhaps extended by buildings like the bell tower.
  3. Have resources within a certain range "count as" part of the city so if attacked the city garrison will fight with its bonuses.
  4. Enter & exit a city via the central hub only, leave the rest as a graphical effect only. 
  5. Fill empty spaces with housing type buildings that only appear on the strategic map, not when in build mode.
  6. All/some of the above.
Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting mqpiffle, reply 2
A level one and two city should only have the adjacent 8 tiles to build on. Level three and four the next ring. Level five the next ring.

OR I'm starting to like seanw3's idea of simply using the surrounding eight tiles, then everything from there builds up.  Eight tiles = 32 city tiles, which should be plenty of tiles. 

That'd work for me.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Bump!

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

I actually like the look of the cities but I think they could use some work. I REALLY enjoy seeing a big completed city.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

I'd much prefer a city icon that takes up one square on the map. Or a pregenerated look for different levels of a city, with special 'one per faction' and 'one per world' buildings visualized.

The manual grid building is just pointless and makes the cities look blocky and unattractive. Their zone of control should just be a circle with the option of building Guard Towers or Outposts to expand to a desired resource.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting James009D, reply 7
I actually like the look of the cities but I think they could use some work. I REALLY enjoy seeing a big completed city.

I quite like the look of cities when I'm not building them like giant corridors in order to facillitate insta-travel. When I am, though...? Yeah...

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

The current plan (I am guessing based on hints in the forums) is to have just click build and the city will place the building for you. No more snaking. Problem solved. I would guess that it uses a spiral system to make the cities more or less square. I am a fan of the 9 tile limit, but it has drawbacks that are probably giving the devs pause. I think it forces the player and the designer to have a more efficient improvement system. 

The other glaring issue is that cities take up tiles that represent hundreds of square miles of land. Each improvement deletes a huge amount of space and so should be very efficient in using that space. If you allow an autobuild system and go past a radius of one tile, you are still negating almost half a year off of an army's travel time. This should be taken into consideration. 

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting seanw3, reply 10
The current plan (I am guessing based on hints in the forums) is to have just click build and the city will place the building for you. No more snaking. Problem solved. I would guess that it uses a spiral system to make the cities more or less square. I am a fan of the 9 tile limit, but it has drawbacks that are probably giving the devs pause. I think it forces the player and the designer to have a more efficient improvement system. 

The other glaring issue is that cities take up tiles that represent hundreds of square miles of land. Each improvement deletes a huge amount of space and so should be very efficient in using that space. If you allow an autobuild system and go past a radius of one tile, you are still negating almost half a year off of an army's travel time. This should be taken into consideration. 

To be fair, you could handwave that as them not having to camp or whatever for a few nights and being refreshed for the march.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Creslin321, reply 3

I think the simplest solution is just to not make zone of control expand with buildings (like you mentioned) and to not let troops "highway" through cities.  Just make it so they have to move to the city center to garrison it.  Problem solved.

 

I agree with this. I'm more than happy for the game to place the building itself as well. 

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting KPAC77, reply 12
I agree with this. I'm more than happy for the game to place the building itself as well. 

I'd just be worried about ugly cities with that.