Absolutely. I would hate to have to build in an analog way that one researched in GalCivII. Before they changed things so that a particular building was necessary to grant units trained there a bonus, having multiple copies of many buildings would make no sense anyhow, but now they do so even more. I am thinking more along the lines of: If 1 forge gives you a +%50 increase in the production speed of all armor and weapons requiring metal, then 2 forges should give you not +100% but somewhere around +%80, and three perhaps +%95 -- something like that. I am not a mathemetician and have no great algorithm at hand. Diminishing returns. But since land is finite, specializing by building multiple copies of one building will mean building less of another type, so that is a tradeoff in itself. I just don't want to be artificially forced to build a *maximum* of ONE.

But cities are ugly when they have several of the same building. Ever been to the Eastern Bloc? They call it that because the Soviet buildings make the cities look like one big block. No, what we need is the ability to upgrade a forge into a steel guild, into a steel district, into a Titan forge. It's simple and elegant. It would be even better if a level 2 city could get to level 4 of forge, assuming there will be instances where metal is located in barren land.

Wow I couldn't agree less. Having an empire with each city having the same things in it (one of that, one of this, one of those) I find boring and unfun, it is by far the single most boring element of the Civilization series, to me. I would like to have the OPTION of building more than one type of building, not the NECESSITY of it.

Really this could be achieved the same way Civ4 handles certain buildings. Just make a limit of one per nation for certain buildings. Every town can build a harbor, only one can build the harbor of the heron king. Any town can build a temple, but only one can build the ultra-rad temple of truthiness.

DSRaider,

Apparently I am misunderstanding the conversation. I thought the gist of the thread was concerning city uniqueness, not building spam. What would you have the cities do after constructing the available buildings in a more limited system? 

P.S. I may still be misreading you, I had a hard time understanding what your first paragraph is about, maybe I need to get some coffee.

9 tiles to a city that make up your food/materials variables, but i think you can grow the city beyond 9 tiles can't you?

I haven't read anywhere that only the 9 tiles are buildable, but I sure hope so. It would be a nice limitation and prevent gamey snaking cities.

Depends on what you mean by cookie cutter. Sure most cities will have different buildings in them but they will all serve the same purpose. Pretty much every city you build will be balancing act between production, gold, and most of all research. Random buildings will be just an extra but largely strategically irrelevant tacked on multiplier. Ditto geographic buildings. I like them and they will be fun but they won't drastically alter cities, they are random so it would be odd if they did.

In WoM you could build workshop/factory cities, magical lore cities, and research cities. Each city was different and produced different goods foor your empire.  Gold, food, and iron specialization was usually added as a secondary specialization because it only required 2-3 buildings.  With the removal of materials, food, and magical lore every city is basically going to be a research city with the occasional iron or gold mine tacked on.

Sure the buildings that comprise them will be slightly different but that is largely aesthetic, and while it may make one city better than another it does not make them different. I much prefer a system where cities are not interchangeable except for the degree as to which random improvements and geography boost them. In real life and as a economic rule cities tend to specialize and trade... they are not completely independent city states that produce all goods internally but for some reason have the same government.

1. Production and food are now local resources. How can you have cities that focus on production? The only point of it is to build local buildings to get other resources. You are never not going to want both food and production, if you don't get both it's just a bad spot to build a city.....

2. Again production is local, and I wouldn't be surprised and if d.cap is removed. I admit I am making some educated guesses here, based on how it works in Civ. Anyway you won't be specializing cities around d.cap anymore then you will be horses... Even metal and mana will probably be just 2-3 buildings tacked on to an existing generic gold and research city. I highly doubt for instance that your not going to build a school in a city just because it has a iron mine. Same deal with production buildings, you are always going to build every one. Which means that cities in this case are not specialized, some are simply better then others. ie they start beside a resource and thus get 1-2 extra buildings. Which is why you end up with generic cities.

As for random improvements they are also not real specialization. For one they are random and can't be planned for. Secondly, they will most likely give small multipliers or bonuses on existing resources. This would encourage later city specialization in WoM but not FE. In FE there are no unlimited improvements. Your not going to decide to build or not build certain buildings in a city because of these multipliers. Since food and production are local you are always going to max these buildings in every city, because they are what let's you build other buildings. Is a 10% gold bonus going to make you not build universities in a city? No.

Even with a tile limit, pop limit, or "shudder" build time limit that restricts it so you can't have both banks and universities you will end up with only two real types of cities, gold and research. Even then the differences between them will be a small, they will both produce some of both.

But the limitation that forces choice and thereby differentiation is rooted in only having 8 tiles to build on. You can have a school, perhaps in every city, though I don't see the point of having a school on a level 3 iron works city. You wouldn't be able to build a university because there would not be enough room. When you do find a nice patch of green land for a large city to make that university worth while, not much else will be built there, except for educational, administrative, and economic or magical buildings. 

Then your big city hits level 5 and you get Library of Alexandria. Now you have the most powerful source of knowledge at your fingertips. Your level 3 city with all the production will never level up since its 9 tiles are hills and mountains. So then, you have to decide what to build that would help out a level 3 production focused city. There is the obvious choice of barracks, normally you would want city walls, but in this case you already have High Walls as a random building. So you might venture down the civilization and warfare tree to get all the metal and production advancements you can use at level 3. With any extra room you might consider an Inn or Pub to attract some heroes to your civilization. 

As I saw in the last dev journal, you can find a place that has food and production near a river. This will probably get to level 5 because of the river. This is a rare position. Most will be less fortunate, forcing one to choose a more polar option. The level 3 city with an iron mine will always outproduce even a level 5 city because all of its tiles have almost only production. Larger cities may not even produce more gold due to high maintenance costs of level 4,5 buildings. 

Random buildings will do more than mere % bonuses. They will give special unit options, provide hard resources (such as +10 to production), new magics, and be completely moddable. Random buildings are always going to add something useful to your Kingdom. You might not get what you want, but your ability to utilize the opportunity is part of succeeding in FE. Limits are set to prevent the sort of productive crawl one sees in the Civ series. The need for units will also be a significant pressure to build things efficiently. Also, it has been said that the really good resources are protected by powerful creatures, meaning most cities will be fought for, further slowing expansion. I think we will be hard pressed to find any identical cities once we get the full game in our hands. 

P.S. What is d.cap?

This theoretical discussion has gone to the point of us just guessing at what the balance will be. Hopefully the devs are reading too and are thinking about specialization a little more. It may be that the game allows the civilization tech tree to fix any city that didn't get enough food or production. It may be that the tile limit thing I read somewhere was in my imagination (I looked but I can't find any specific answer to the question). It would be strange that a city can build in any direction since it can only gain resources from 9 tiles. 

I think it would be terrible balance to allow a city to get to level 5 just off of civilization technology. They should need some serious help from natural food and river tiles. If my level 3 Iron city can get to level 5 with enough technology, that is a serious problem for me. The devs might have a different vision for the game, but I think level 5 cities should be rare. That means no amount of granaries or aqueducts will ever provide enough population for a city with little natural food. I am not saying off of terrain alone. I am saying terrain must be the determining factor of whether or not it is worth it to try to grow a city to level 5. 

Why would you ever want a production city? To have an army. A fast building, professional army. I thought that was implied. War machines are going to be worth much more than metropolises to a war minded faction. 

This doesn't even include the nations that focus on things other than civilization. An adventure or magical nation will certainly have other ways to make their cities and other goals than building the mundane artifices of civilization. 

I was thinking it over; and assuming there is an actual building-in-city limit it would be possible to create a city specialization strategy around this concept:

- Assume that a total of 10 buildings could be placed into a city

- But also assume that the same building cannot be built more than once (so no 10 temples but 0 forges)

- Then that there are several categories of buildings (educational, warfare, production, moral, religion, etc)

- And that each category has at least 5 distinct buildings (school, college, library, university, and laboratory)

- There would be a penchant to build only the most powerful-level buildings for each category; to maximize the overall benefits to the city - which would cause the sameness of cities

- If instead buildings synergized with each other, then the specialization-vs-generalization suddenly becomes more prominent.

E.g.

1. A school adds +1 to research. It reduces the upkeep of the following buildings by half (college, university, laboratory)
2. A library adds +2 to research. It adds an additional +1 research for each of the following buildings (school, college, university)
3. College adds +1 to research. It also adds +1 to production for each of the following buildings (school, university, laboratory)
4. University adds +3 to research. It also adds +10% research for each of the following buildings (school, college, library, laboratory)
5. Laboratory adds +3 to research. It also increases the odds of rare talents by 5% for each of the following buildings (school, college, library, university)

In other words there is good incentive to specialize on the one hand - but also a significant penalty to other qualities that the city may develop if it didn't specialize.