Cities should have inner and outer walls. You should be allowed to decide which buildings are on the inside and which are on the outside, as this would be part of a defensive strategy, especially under siege.

For example, if population were vital for a particular city, you might have all the housing situated in the inner section.

The more I play it, the more I hate the housing building. It should be automatic. there's a reason if every other tbs has only one cap for city growth.

There's no interest at the moment in getting prestige housing. Because you won't be able to get a lot of people. Sure they will come faster but it's always better to get more people for armies (for instance). Unless prestige is used for something else, mansions are of no interest.

Maybe the following would be enough : fewer buildable tiles but no house to build. You just ask for prestige or vast houses and the game automatically build them. You just concentrate on the real interesting things : what "special" buildings will you build ?

A sim city design would be good : at the moment building houses or mansions adds nothing to the fun. Choosing between building farms or barracks or pub or .. is fun. Building houses is not.

There could be elements of the game that will make this intresting, but arnt developed yet

I don't really mind housing. I think once there is some variety, and some "zoning coding" which allows for organically flowing cities, yet no snake cities, and no box cities ... then it will be more fun.

Also, at least one housing upgrade per city size, and also probably a refined tech for "every" food gathering resource.

Refined Farming, Refined Orchards/Apiaries, Refined Fishing, Refined Hunting, Refined Herding (for sheep/cows).

all in all, I think Variety in Improvements/wonders, as well as Meaningful decisions, will make it alot more fun. Also, once the buildings are balanced and actually do something (instead of largely be a waste of space) ... things will get cooler.

I too don't really care for building houses. Not that I want to end up with a super-simplified "Rise of Legends" system of building a city, but I don't feel anything is accomplished with having to declare each and every individual house tile.

Every time I have to do something in a game, it should be about making a choice. I shouldn't be clicking something just to get to the next part, where my click doesn't matter because there is only one choice, one right selection. That doesn't appeal to me in a strategy game (or in an RPG, where giving me "one" option in a dialog window also annoys me) it's just makework with no point. Things should either have real choice (like whether to build barracks or war weapons) or be automated.

The thing is with houses is right now (0295) there is always only one choice and even after 0295 it's really difficult to make something prosaic as "housing" meaningful. I'd really like to be able to just declare a certain area fit for housing, and not have to go back to it. The amount of housing I can support should be limited by logistics, and if I choose to make more houses than I can fit in my city walls, I should have a defense problem. The prestige of my city should be a consequence of the social buildings I elect to build (like theatres) forcing me to choose between research, military, production and other useful building types.

Abstract the housing problems. Give each city a slider that sets how much funds is directed to meet housing needs of a population where 100% means building new homes as and when required ( unhindered population growth ) and anything below 20% slow degradation of existing housing ( population decline ). You should not be able to afford to keep all cities at 100% and potential population growth should be strongly affected by food and prestige available on site. Problem solved.

Weakness : food too connected to a given city.

MoM did the opposite of now and totally abstract the concept of food. Food was connect to no given city. In my mind, it's too far from "fun". It's too simple. Yes it works, but it's not an interesting mechanism.

A simple solution would be to dramatically increase the bonus in food roads give. Instead of the usual 10% of food it could be 10% per city level. A level 5 city would send 50% of its food production to road-connected cities. Moreover, as farms would get the bonus of city-level (you spoke about that : the output of a building is multiply by the city level. A bank in a city level 5 would give X5 gold, if I understood correctly) it would be an exponential increase.

An other solution would be to tie the food bonus to availaible revived/twisted land : a farm would get a bonus from empty tiles near it (those tiles should also be revived/twisted).

Other solution : Governors. Some of them would allow farms to get an ever increseaed bonus.

Other solution : a civilization tech (or a diplomatic one?) that allow roads to be more effective in the food distribution.

Other solution : give a "rank" to a city. That would be like traits for champions. when a city reach level 3 and level 5 you can choose a "perk/traits/whatever you would call it" for your city. One of those perk could be "food send - not food poduced - is raised to 75%" or something like that.

Mechanism for deciding which cities should contain our population :

You must answer that question first : will the player be able to control its population (and their movements) totally ? Partially ? Not at all ?

If you want to give total control to the player, then you need an ui that would let you to decide where your population should go. In my mind it's too deterministic. Strategically interesting, but too far from reality, thus limiting the immersion.

No control at all : it would limit the burden of taking cxare of your cities. But ... that would just skip a big strategic thinking. So it would be a bad design decision, I think. Player should have an impact, but not too much.

Partial control : direct or indirect ?

• direct partial control : you ask to your comp where you would like your population be sent but in a rough way, and the computer would do som ecalculation to know how far your citizens would obey you. In my mind it's as intersting as the "total-control" thing.
• indirect control : like in majesty 2, or "La citta" : citizens have desires, goals and th elike. If you build the things they need they will go to the cities you want. Building houses is a good way to say " I want my citizens to live there", but at the moment housing is less than inefficient. You must build so much houses to get population, that you have too few tiles for something else. Maybe it's a choice to push us to take decisions, but it's really disentertaining to build houses only (or almost

So, what would be fun ? To be able to influence things without determining them exactly. You could choose government spirit, and some buildings would be more attractive.

For instance if you choose the warrior philosophy, your barracks would give a +1 prestige bonus and a +10 housing.

If you choose the farmer philosophy, +1 prestige in farms and +40 housing per farm.

But the hard cap from housing would still be there.

Imagine the following fact : a city level 5 has only housing. So they have a citizens limit. And a hard one. At the moment housing would limit your population to 48 tiles * 40 citizens per tile (with apartments) = 1920. And no other kind of tiles.

Or maybe the level of city would apply to existing housing (a city level 5 would multiply by 5 the available houses ?)

Other solution each turn the overall kingdom get new citizens, then to decide in which city they will go you look at the buildings that give work or happyness. So if you have a total of 30 prestige in your kingdom you get 30 more citizens and if a city has only housing a inns and a farm for instance they will surely get the new citizens. A city with only mines and lumbermill won't get a lot of those new citizens.

But what woudl happen if you get people that should go in a city with not enough housing ? Then they would be marauders, or become thieves, etc.. and you would have to take care of your population growth to avoid those nasty things. You can't avoid people to want to come to your kingdom if you have attractive things. If you neglect your citizens then you would have a high level of criminality. But magic, diplomacy, quests, military or civilization could help you prevent those things, or lessens them, or turn them into your favor (free military units from criminals for instance).

A simple solution to this problem would be to have a way to define to which city all food surplus (those in excess compared to housing) are send.

I would like to remove the repetitiveness of building houses too.  To decide which cities contains my population, it depends on how much prestige AND food available in the city.   For a 1000 prestige city that receive 1000 food/turn, its max population is 1000 person.   When food supply is decreased to 600/turn, 400 people will attempt to caravan themselves to neighbouring cities where food and prestige can support them.    That 400 people may get sick, die or luckily reach a city/outskirt/enemy city that can support them.     No houses is built/bulldozed by gamer when all of these happen.

Early in the game, when food tech is primitive, food perishes quickly. Gamers have to place farms inside the city or within 1 day of caravan travel.     There will be a satellite of farms close to a large city early game.  How much food these farms (or farming cities) supply depends on a variety of factors; being close to a polluting city decreases food yield so "rural" farms (with special food resource tile) are the best.   Player builds farm, determine where the farming community will be, inside or outside wall.

When food tech improves, farms become capable of supplying larger variety of food and some of these are less perishable (for example, building a jam factory next to the farm).   Their product can be caravan much further away. By setting WayPoints for these caravans,  player controls where food goes.  Those cities receiving these supply will have a growing pop. 

What if each city has a central structure, like the Town Hall, which can be upgraded.  Without a Town Hall, a settlement will be limited to Level 1.  With a base level Town Hall, it's limited to Level 2.  With the next level of Town Hall, it's limited to Level 3.

If you want a settlement to remain small, you simply don't build the next level of Town Hall.  If you want it to grow, you consciously build the next level of it.  Of course, there has to be sufficient food available for it to grow, so building the Town Hall doesn't guarantee that it will grow, but not building one does guarantee that it won't grow, and that its excess food is shipped elsewhere.

The housing then grows automatically, as population moves in.  Having housing grow automatically will also help limit snaking.  Housing would be placed automatically, and in a more realistic way leading to more "globular" cities.

Switch it so that prestige determines both population cap and growth rate, food feeds the current population and "fuels" the growth rate, and finally housing is simply a consequence of both.

A newly formed settlement has a baseline prestige, and so it also starts with a baseline population growth rate and cap. For example, its prestige allows for a 20 population cap and a population growth rate of 1 person/turn. It currently has 5 people and produces 30 units of foods (each unit feeds 1 person).  First, the current population eats the food leaving 25 units of food (30-5). Next, the left-overs fuel the current population growth, which then leaves 24 extra food (25-1).

The extra 24 food units are then sent out to connected settlements, via roads. From here, it can then either be directed to the city with the highest prestige first. Then once its population and growth rate demands are meet, any extra food then goes to the city with the second highest prestige...and so on.....OR ... The extra food is distributed among all connected cities, and the amount each recieves is determined by prestige (higher prestige gets more of the cut).

Housing is then a consequence of your current population. Houses are automatically built, if the population is there. However, allow the player to create residential blocks or zones where housing can be built. Left to its own devices, the population will construct the housing itself. The types of houses could be deteremined by current tech, city level, location, ect...Also allow the player to contruct certain types of housing on these zones,  in case they want to fine tune it (the player had to pay for it though). If the player builds it, there is no garuantee anyone will live in it. If the player does not set aside enough housing zones, shanty towns will pop up in empty lots in and around the settlement. Bandits (or theives) could spawn from these shanty town tiles. Attempting to destroy the shanty town could automatically spawn a group of angry bandits.

How food production is generated also needs tweaking, imo. It relies too heavily on fertile land, and other food tiles. Each individual revived land should produce food, and fertile land and other food tiles simply add a food bonus to it (and perhaps other types of bonuses). Revived mountains and hills will produce less than revived plains. Buildings on revived tiles lowers the food produced on that tile. Certain building lowers this more than others. Low tier houses such as huts, shouldn't lower it at all (to represent subsistence farming). Farms should be built on any flat revived land, and increase food production. They will of course net more food on fertile land and food tiles.

If you want a large, urban, metroploitan city you'll need buildings that generate lots of prestige to increase the population cap/rate. Buildings such as mansions, palaces, ect... (Please allow players to build over fertile land and food tiles). However, these buildings will reduce food output at those tiles, which will force the city to look to farm settlement for its food. Farm settlements focused on food production will have many farms and low tier buildings to maximize food production....and it will consequently also have low presitge, low population and a low settlement level. Later on the player can research imporved farming techs that will allow more and more food, such as irrigation, plantations, ect...

As far as housing, there should be an inner city wall, and (as a city get bigger) an outer city wall. Further houses (for even larger cities) should be built outside the outer city wall, and will of course be relatively unprotected. At least some of the outside population should retreat to the walls of the city in case of danger. Housing should be almost completely automatic, IMO, except for special mansions (extra money) and high-rise apartments (extra population) may be built in the center of the city at higher levels. I don't want to have to "build more houses" when I have a kingdom of 15 cities. Certain areas of the center of the city should be left open as public land, for only the player to build on. The player may also demolish buildings built automatically, though of course population will be lost. Farms must be built mainly outside the city, as that's both realistic and the way it was done in medieval times. And relatively secure farming towns should have minimal walls, and wide expanses of farms.

Food production simply needs to work like this. A farm will supply all of its needs to the city it is built in first. Then, all of the remaining food will be exported to those towns that need it. There will be penalties for longer distances traveled, and some of the food may be lost. Then, if a population-focused city has people starving, then the most obvious thing to do is upgrade the farm-focused city. There of course will be a statistic as to how much food your kingdom is producing vs. consuming. If your kingdom is way overproducing in food, it may export the food to other kingdoms, which will bring in more revenue. Clearly, your more farm-focused cities should be in the rear of your kingdom, protected, and your population-focused cities should be on the edge of your kingdom, as they will have the manpower to defend themselves.