Raledon

Join Date 06/2006

[0.95][Feedback] New city system

In beta 4, a new city system has been introduced. The major changes: 1) Essence has been introduced, 2) buildings can be upgraded, 3) city specialization and 4) re-balance.

1) Essence: the new Essence resource is a nice improvement. The problem is that Essence is very strong, and important to both Fortress and Conclave cities, with low effect on Towns. Also, a problem it posses is that the more Essence you have, the more each Essence is worth. Empires with high level casters will want to buff Fortresses with buffs to trained units, Conclaves are balanced around high Essence in the city, while Towns receive only the basic enchantments of growth, research and such. This turns certain tiles (ones with low Essence) into obvious Town cities, instead of a hard choice between 3 options (with obvious preferences).

2) Upgrading buildings is a nice improvement. I personally like that that I no longer have banana cities running around the map.

3) City specialization: Also a nice improvement, letting the player to further specialize. You could go further with it in level 3, 4 and 5, though. Instead of a small buff at level 3, a city could further specialize: for example, a Fortress in level 3 could decide whether he wants to create stronger troops, opening better/cheaper buildings that improve them, become a more defensive city (bonus defenders/stats, some of them faction wide), or become a "prison" (increased influence and -unrest Empire wide).

Note: the level-up screen is still problematic, as we can't really see the city, only in the background. The city info window should be opened immediately, allowing the player a bit more information before his choice.

4) Currently in FE, there are two issues that bug me, one is the population, and the other is production:

population: In 9.5 I noticed that population do not increase research and production anymore (might've been in an earlier version, or maybe from elemental, but now I noticed). With armies taking quite a few people from the cities, the cities grow and grow, till they get to the max population cap, and continue growing once you increase their food supplies.

Currently, population is a problem, as it requires a lot of effort game wide for no reason.

We get very little from population:

1) Gilder from taxes: Is not really needed, as we got buildings that give us that amount. In my games, unless I wished to waste money on rushing buildings or buying champions, Gilder had little use (no upkeep issues due to buildings supplying money)

2) City levels: at certain amount of population cities would level up and give a 1 out of 3 choices of "pimp me up".

While we spend on population:

Buildings that give happiness, food, prestige, growth.

A chunk of our cities that goes to be Towns, whose biggest advantage is faction wide food increase.

Research to make all this possible.

A 3rd of our resources (grain) goes to to increase the population.

Certain spells go to affect our population.

In the current meta-game, we could scrap the whole idea of population, give cities an adjustable timer for growth, and have a nearly identical game, only better (easier to learn & manage).

The production is in a much better state than the population, but:

1) There are currently 2 ways to get production- materials, which in some city are scarce, and Enchantments which requires Essence.

2) Capped production per city. In FE, there is an issue with producing too much- you can only build something once every 3 turns, no more. So even with a high amount of production, creating a meager scout will take 3 turns, as much as the Ironclad Knights. This is very counter-intuitive, and frustrating.

Either a player doesn't have enough production to build what he wishes (and lets remember we can't decide which city builds the improvement), or he is frustrated that he can't use it. This brings us back to Elemental, when we had a set amount of turns per building... only now it can get higher if we have low production.

I personally believe that a city should build with all her production- the first item, then the second, till either it used up its production or the queue is empty. (This was done in Endless Space quite well)

One more thing: Defense versus Attack- what is the math, exactly? I still see creatures with lower attack than my defense easily hit an armored target for 1/2 per creature in the stack.

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RE: 4)

You are missing some information about population or you did not explain it in full. City levels add a set amount of resources at each level. I forget the exact amounts, but each specialization gives you more in that field. The basic balance is that each city level is twice as good as the one before it. Food is Max Population. You need 80, 200, 400, 800 or so population to get to the next level. So population is really the most important thing in the long term. Growth affects how quickly you reach that potential. Research increases the amount of food you can get from each grain. It is the sort of positive complexity that fosters interesting choices.

Allowing each city to grow to level 5 would rip about a third of the gameplay out of the strategic level. Currently you have to look a the three basic resources and determine the potential of that tile. Low Grain means a low city level. Low Materials means slow production. Low Essence means no way to cope with a low amount of the other two. If Grain was how fast cities grew, every city could reach level 5. Some would get there faster than others, which would be terrible considering how powerful cities are. One level 5 city can give you 30% less Unrest or several other empire wide bonuses. They need to be hard to get. Cutting out the supreme mechanics limiting that goal would require massive levels of balancing. The limiting mechanics are there for a reason.

RE: One more thing

Max Attack = Magical Damage +( Attack * (Attack/(Defense + Attack)))

Min Attack = Max Attack/2

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I've just checked your reply to 4) in game.

Due to a bug, I had a game where my cities actually received the 10%(of pop) production and research(probably a hero from 0.915). Within normal games, the only bonus you get from leveling a city beyond 2 is a level and a small amount of research (1 per level, I believe) and a building.

If you'd change the mechanic so that you'd have to build the city level-up, get rid of population and make taxes based on city level, the changes will be minimal and simplify the game tremendously(which is always great).

The case which you represent is the pre 0.95, where you get the "bug" of 0.1 production and research per population, which make sense to have people in the empire, and the lack-thereof is the reason for 4).

Also, thanks for the math.

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Your not getting it, different levels of cities gives you access to different buildings which give more bonuses to different things. You can't get to those levels without the right population. The way you are saying it is that any city can reach any level and this is just not the way it is supposed to be and you are simplifying something that doesn't need it. I think the way it is now is fine.

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I assumed that each city specialization added some resources to the city. I checked the XML and you are indeed correct. It is a minor research bonus only. Odd that each city has the same bonus per level. I would expect each specialization to get some of all, but much of one. This area needs refinement.

I still disagree about the population change. In my opinion, the population adds to immersion. It gives us a connection to the state of a city that is easily relatable. There are in fact other issues with the new system that could use population as a fix. For instance, taking over a city should not allow you to use that city at its current level. Many people would flee or die in the conquest. As such the game decreases population by 50%. That is fine in beta 3 when population added so much to your economy, but now it has little effect. A good way to penalize players for taking over a city would be to link the Unrest received to the number of people you are deficit from the city's current level. Right now we just get an arbitrary amount and lose half the population. Linking this would add alot to strategy and immersion. It is one of those rare areas where the casual player can gloss over it, while the strategic genius and the hardcore storyteller can enjoy paradise.

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Quoting BlackRainZ,

reply 3

I haven't noticed any city-level requirement on any building in 0.95, besides the level-up ones. Your mechanic is outdated to a previous version, I believe.

Quoting seanw3,

reply 5

There are in fact other issues with the new system that could use population as a fix. For instance, taking over a city should not allow you to use that city at its current level. Many people would flee or die in the conquest. As such the game decreases population by 50%.

Currently, you gain 50% unrest in cities you take over, which hurts a lot more than 50% population lose (not sure what is the duration of the debuff, and if it goes out)

I made a cry regarding the current state of population. The idea to scrap it was to illustrate how useless the population is. If you seek a city growth option, a much simpler system can be made, such as Civ's culture system. The current population system should get a look at, either to get some more into it such as resources (the old production and research bonus, mana per turn), armies being a magnitude bigger (taking out a stack of 20 men/turn up to 300 men/turn instead of 1-3 can also return flavor to idea), workforce for the buildings or some other system, or get simplified for ease of use.

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