I could go either way on the 9 tile limit or 3x3 tiles or some new idea. But right now we have a snaking issue that is worse than a level one teleport spell. 

Making buildings upgrade-o-rama instead of taking their own tiles would certainly fix the sprawl abuse, but I fear it would also bee-line every city. I mean, you'd pretty much lose every interesting choice that is currently in the game for cities. Or is the plan to have mutually exclusive upgrades? Ie barracks can become garrison - extra militia - OR fortress - extra defense for stationed units?

Another thing is that we should be getting more than +% and +X from buildings. Where is the option to design magic users? What building will give me special weapon options? Which citylevelup improvement will make water magics more potent? Where do I forge items? 

Combined with leveling improvements, these kinds of features could increase in variety by allowing the player to choose between mutually exclusive upgrades via the Tech Trees. Quests and Wildlands should also unlock some upgrades for buildings. For that matter they should be giving me whole new buildings or even World Wonders. 

Of course, the more interesting OR choices the better.  And maybe different factions' buildings differentiate differently!

Not everything needs to be an upgrade, it it'd be good to get some degree of that. I especially second the notion of upgrading the central structure.

Awesome. I would play such a mod for FE.

It's a bit like the total war series - but more differentiation. You've got 8 "slots" (being tiles) around a city (which is 3 x 3), which you can fill with a number of choices. Those choices can then be upgraded, but there are distinct "hard" choices for the upgrade paths.

Higher level cities look like higher level cities because the central fort is, essentially, taller as it develops with upgrades.

This keeps city development interesting, generates differentiation, without too much micro, and prevents sprawl.

What's not to like?

100% great idea,  ,  I love it. Would greatly alleviate many city abuses such as:

And really help reduce the tedium of building construction. At late game I feel I am just building everything so I have stuff in the queue, sort of like late game civ games. This would mean less buildings, still lots to fill up the queue (as advanced buildings would logically take longer), and actual choices. Instead of having multiple buildings that give +1 diplomatic capital, or +10 food, you could have buildings that upgrade into +2 DC, or +20 food, and don't have 100 buildings that do similar things to choose from when upgrading your cities. You could also simplify building maint by having tier 1 buildings cost 1 maint, tier 2 cost 2 maint, and tier 3 cost 3 maint, for example. Personally I think FE could use a solid building line like town hall > city council > palace, that does something like reduce maint/unrest. Building construction just seems very unorganized overall.

On the note of upgrading I think that instead of a proper linear tier as you proposed (Granary-->Mill-->Bakery-->Bread District), it would be strategic to have to make choices on level up buildings with benefits and drawbacks. This would help you further specialize your cities and make it so you aren't just upgrading everything. So for example:

(1)Granary which might be +20 food per grain could upgrade to

(2)Mill which would give +30 food per grain, or

(2)Bakery which would give +20 food per grain and +.5 growth.

(2)Mill could then upgrade to

(3)Advanced Mill which gives +40 food per grain, or

(3)Horse Mill which gives +60 food per grain -.5 horse.

(2) Bakery could upgrade to

(3) Bakery District +20 food per grain +1 growth, or

(3) Food Stockpile, +20 food per grain, -25% unit cost/training

So instead of having 50 buildings that give random food bonuses to grain you would have something like the above. For a more interesting example the gildar line could look something like this:

(1) Market + 3 gildar

(2) Barter + 5% taxes, -10% shop prices

(2) Merchant +6 gildar

(2) Barter + 5% taxes, -10% shop prices

(3) Bazaar, -20% shop prices

(3) Tax Collector  +10% taxes

(2) Merchant +6 gildar

(3) Trading Post +10% per caravan

(3) Merchant Quarter + 9 gildar

Good ideas. An interesting minigame within the game is ALWAYS good.

The real question now is how big to make each improvement?

A full tile improve saves memory and alleviates the empty lines inbetween improvements. With an upgrade system like this, you would be getting so much from each improvement, that an 8 tile limit would be a good limit to construction. On the other hand, assuming that the devs don't like/hate the idea of a tile limit at all, and even moreso the 9 improvements per tile proposal, mixing and matching some 1/4 tile improvements with 1/1 tile improvements would be fine I suppose.

The larger 1/1 improvements we have now are too small for my tastes. I learned from WoM that with only another 10 or so extra props, you can make a tile really seem epic. 

Here is an overview of my concept of a level 5 city:

It's large and has many towers. The streets fit together, but wind inbetween buildings. There is a good amount of chaos, buildings connect to each other or are built on. It is miles away from the current tile art we get for improvements. 

Here we have the City Hub, a large castle, dwarfed by all the level 5 buildings around it. 

I would probably make this castle bigger for a real level 5 City hub, but this one is still much larger and ornate than what we have. 

The upgrade system I was going for in WoM has some really nice tile art that goes from par with the current art to more epic looking towers in a rather clean progression. 

Some things will only get one upgrade if they start to be buildable at high levels anyway.

Some buildings will only be upgradable to level 3, favoring a nation that has little grain but is making strategic choices to use what they have. 

These are jut some of my WoM designs that could easily be transferred to make up some of the 1/1 tiles. I would probably make at least 2 upgrade paths for each 1/1 building. It all depends on how the 1.0 version chooses to implement improvement improvements. 

Bumping this thread for awesomeness.

Some of those tiles look pretty amazing seanw3! They're a little grey and a bit to cluttered when placed together for my taste, but other than that, nice! I love the attention to detail. I was going for something similar in WoM mod, untill I realised that game was never going to be fun for me. Check it out; https://forums.elementalgame.com/403574

Your work there Satrhan is great. At least some of this stuff needs to be in FE.