[gameplay] building specialized cities

Makeing city building part of the strategy

I have to admit that the part of elemental that disappoints me the most is the city building. There is very little specialization that I have come to expect after having so much of that in Galactic Civilizations 2. In fact it almost reminds me of Civilization, where deciding what to build bears very little to the strategy of the game.

What I suggest is that you continue to have a specified number of "resource" buildings per town level (buildings like the library for knowledge production, or the market for gildar production), but instead of just allowing 1 of each, you are allowed 4 total for each level (so you could theoretically make four markets at the expense of all other resources). This would allow you to specialize each city, and still keep you from making small cities too powerful.

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I think the game handles specialized cities very well.

You CAN build one of every building, but since most of the bonuses are given in percentages, in most cases you'll get next to nothing unless the city has a resource of that type attached to it.

Two different cities with the same buildings can still have completely different resource bonuses.

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What random_target has said is actually true, even though I didn't think so at first myself. But after a few games I realised a number of things.

1) The bonus from city level up is actually cumalitive. It's not simply an upgrade to the bonus percentage, the original level 1 20% bonus still remains and is combined with say a level 2 city 30% bonus for a total of 50%. This bonus cannot be changed once select and could be easly wasted. 2 goldmines in a city that has upgraded gold production on each level up can easly beat a city with 3 mines that has not taken repeated gold bonuses

2) Without a map resource such as a goldmine, ancient temple or forgotten libary, all the bonuses and additional buildings in the world don't mean anything. A city with 2 to 3 goldmines can be transformed into a money making machine if all city upgrades and money buildings are used in that city. A city with no goldmine, but a money exchanger (+1 gold -1 food) and lots of bonus buildings won't accomplish anything.

3) The 1 per faction + 1 per game limits on certain buildings means that those ones need to be placed in a city where you can exploit the usually very large bonus it will provide. So careful consideration and placement in a city that maxes out the bonus is important here.

4) The maximum tile limit of 50 actually does play an important role. To get a city to level 5 and max out it's bonuses I'd personally only place buildings relevent to the cities perticular purpose. When you get down to it all those 2x2 and tons of 1x1 buildings will devour the open tiles when you approch lev 5 or reach lev 5 itself.

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