XeronX

Join Date 06/2006

Special Resources Taking Up To Much Space

Did a playthrough last night, really was focusing on city building and balance of space vrs requirements (Food and housing vrs other improvements) and one thing really stuck out to me.

Started my city next to the mine spot but as I played I was finding incrediably hard to utilize it.

At Level 1 I obviously couldn't make use of it which of itself really is no suprise. Farm took up four spaces, hut took up 1. And of course the requisite merchant, workshop, temple, command post, the RP building, and tower of sorcery only left me 1 spaces.

At level 2 I of course needed 3 more huts to get to level 3 plus another garden. then of course to keep my basic production on par another round of merchant, workshop, RP Building, SP building and again after the very basics.. only 1 space left again.

Level 3 was even worse. due to the fact that I needed to uptech to houses and add 3 more plus the requisite food supplies + Granary. Add another round of basic buildings and I couldn't utilize the mine again.

Unfortunately I didn't write things down but if I remeber correctly by the time I got done setting up my infrastructure in level 4 I had 3 extra spaces for special builds.

And at level 5 when I finally didn't have to add to the housing/food infrastructure I was finally able to allocate the 4 space the mine needed.

Now I know metal could be considered a late game resource, but I am thinking it is more a middle game resourse. so not really being able to capitilize on it till a L5 city just doesn't make sense. Also the fact that all special resources are 4 square. I find it pointless to try to get them in cities, better to use pioneers for them (Even at the half production penalty which I am thinking truly needs to go away).

Of course pointing out problems and not possible solutions is not helpful so here are some ideas.

1. Shrink the sizes of special resources to 1 or 2 squares. Not sure if this is possible from a coding point of veiw, but it is the most straight forward anwser.

2. Special resources inside cities only count as 2 sqaures for building purposes rather than 4 even if they still take up 4. This would make founding cities on the resources a very sound strategic choice.

3. Reduce the amount of space we have to dediccate to housing/food in a city from .5 to mabey .25 of city space. Almost any city I build has half it's space taken up in housing and food production prior to hitting L5.

Now I am aware some people may be saying make specialty cities. But personally I find having to build specialty cities to make your empire work to be extremely distateful. Add to that the essence limit (what did we start with this round 10 if I remenber correctly) and unless you are going to dedicate most of your leveling up points to essence it is not really a viable option.

Also some could be saying well make less workshops/merchants/rp/sp buildings. And while that aurgument holds some merit. Those 4 building as the very basic infrastructure building for the 4 most improtant resources. and until we can test some MP I can only theorize that not maintaining a healthy production of those 4 most basic resources will lead to a long term defeat. Near the end of my playthrough I made 2 companys of basic soilders. and they were taking 750 materials each not to mention a chunk of gold each. Companies are only 10 man squads. And of course Rp is absolutely vital. Lower tech civs are almost always destroyed by higher tech ones in any game. And lets face it when they get around to the magic part of the beta, Sp is going to be just as important as RP.

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Good observations but Froggy already said that you need to build too many houses to level up your city right now. I'm pretty sure they already know the balance is off but just haven't devoted the resources to really try to fix it yet. I think at this stage they are mainly trying to get to Beta 2 which means making the game stable and making sure the multiplayer is working.

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Well ... I don't see it as a big problem. I mean, if you want all cities to look the same, then you will inevitably miss out on some opportunities. Plus, mines are fairly late-tech ... or at least you generally can't access too much metal until fairly later on. A "Cache of metal" event will give you 2 metal soldiers, maybe 3 if you spread it out (or 1 if its a late tech suit of armor).

Mines, in their own right, are fine for me. Try not building next to the mine initially, and then building a pioneer to harvest the mine ... or even build an outpost (city) that only builds the mine. Maybe the mine and a house if you want to make it level 2.

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I had a thought that perhaps when your Outpost is first placed, any resource that lies within a 4 square grid(adjacent in all directions) should not be counted against the available build spaces.

Example:

I find a spot that has a Farm resource and a Forest resource close together.(inside a 4 square grid) I move my SOV such that when my Outpost lands, both resources are adjacent to it. Seen it many times in game.

So now, I still have to Research the tech to utilize those resources, but being as they are "inside" the Outpost boundaries, those tiles are not considered as used up against the Base available build squares.

Given the Farm and Forest example, even if we got a 50% rebate on those tiles, that would free up 2 more early and help open some options, that otherwise might be sacrificed to to building space limitations.

I agree thought. Balance is not yet in place and population #'s have been adjusted already. Maybe a simple increasing of the # of "huts/houses" allowed per tile will solve it.

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Quoting edpfister,

reply 1

And while I know they aren't worried about the balance phase as much atm. I have a more long term concern for the AI due to lack of balance right now.

Someone made a very good suggestion that as we test the multiplayer systems that we utilize the playbacks to help refine the AI's strategy. Now this will be very hard to do if the Strategies that we use against each other in MP are not close or even applicable to the final cut because the balance isn't even close in the most basic of sense.

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While I am glad to hear that and I hate when I miss posts from Devs. The problem is not just housing but also food. Food Production takes up the same 25% of a city as housing does moreso in fact. They both need adjustment. The Fact that one Garden produces 75% of the food necessary for a single house, You need 4 Gardens for 3 houses.

And while I know they aren't worried about the balance phase as much atm. I have a more long term concern for the AI due to lack of balance right now.

Someone made a very good suggestion that as we test the multiplayer systems that we utilize the playbacks to help refine the AI's strategy. Now this will be very hard to do if the Strategies that we use against each other in MP are not close or even applicable to the final cut because the balance isn't even close in the most basic of sense.

Well if I understand things correctly Beta 3 is where they will really start trying to get some of this nailed down. As Beta 2 is only scheduled for 2 weeks that is right around the corner. I don't think you have to worry about things not being representative of the final version for too much longer.

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Hello XeronX,

I experienced basically the exact same thing with 1G. https://forums.elementalgame.com/377694

Which was a step by step breakdown of building a city in 1G. It's better now, but still things bother me about it.

A lot of stuff was addressed in that thread (better visibility of what I needed to do, transition of the housing to cost Food, etc) but I still do not feel like I am getting the most out of my cities.

"I never bothered with the mine tile and don't think I could afford it without giving up the shard. Perhaps that is meant to be a tactical decision, but I found myself quite limited."

At the time I also suggested resources should take less tiles to get.

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I was able to get a size 2 city with both Shard and Mine in most of my games. I didn't focus as much on maximizing the lesser buildings. You choose what your city does ... either it maxes econ buildings and only harvests one resource, or it harvests both (or more) resources and chooses which econ to build.

My first game it was my second city, and as such I ended up building some gardens in it.

In many of my previous games I have not needed to build gardens, but now I will generally build a couple.

While this city was my 2nd in my first game, I later expanded south as a primary opening move, and waited to fill this city in later. Sometimes it was my third, fourth, or even 5th city to be built.

I usually build the same 4 cities, the Starting location, that one, the southern fertile land, and the south western wheat and gold mine..

The two southern cities usually get to either size 2 or 3, while the mine/shard city always stays at size 2. Meanwhile my capital will often grow to size 4 or 5.

After getting housing relatively early, I will focus on grabbing literacy for schools. Usually I get economics as well (usually before literacy). With my southern two cities, I will potentially build a market or two, usually make one my main military city, and then will spam schools as soon as literacy is Discovered.

My capital will either focus on markets and schools, usually a hybrid (and will have several town halls as well). Using this strategy I can relatively quickly catapult my tech from 10ish to 30->50->70 tech per turn.

If I do this strategy fairly strongly, I generally get Literacy right as my southern cities are nearing size 2 and my capital city is nearing size 4.

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You know the more I think about it.....

I think the housing/food imbalance is being deliberately left in to help Froggy and Boogie make sure Beta isn't to much fun.

I beleive it is a conspiracy to keep the Beta man down and miserable

I beleive injustice is being perputrated at the highest levels to make sure we really really are greatful for Beta 3

Or I beleive we could just shut up and be patient. But where is the fun in that.

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I've not had big issues with food or population with my cities. But I think the special city resources, such as the scenic view, are in many cases not worth their space cost.

Unless there is some benefit I am missing, 1 prestige for 4 tiles, is a very heft cost. I'll build temples and town halls thank you.

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