For the first betas, the player was restricted to (city level * 8) tiles when building city improvements. That was the only restriction. While I personnally liked that system, it caused problems as it often left cities unable to grow (lets say after building one farm and one mine, you couldn't add the necessary huts).
In beta 1G, this has changed to have a large number of tiles available, even at city level 1, but even this limit is supposed to go away soon. To compensate, now cities have limits for each building. They cannot build more than (city level) farms, (city level) libraries, etc. Houses are exempts, but I haven't checked all the buildings to see if any other was too.
So what is the point of this post? Well, it is simply to say that I dislike the new system. Here are my reasons :
- It allows huge production towns without the population. You can have a level 1 hamlet (with 10 citizens) with 1 farm, 1 mine, 1 stone pit, 1 lumbermill, 1 orchard, 1 library and 1 market if you find a lucky spot. The advantage of big cities is lessened to increase research and cash (and building many times the same building when possible).
- It actively discourages specialized towns in favor of generalist builds. There is never any reason to not build a market in your research heavy city, except if you don't have the ressources to build it. Same for a library in a economy heavy city.
- Hum, I though I had a third point, but I must have forgotten it...
If I had to make a suggestion for a replacement system, it would be to have all limited buildings share a common limit (increased of course).
Any opinions on building restrictions?
