100% agree

they are all totally shit

gildar is useless in the actual game

but even if it was useful someway its too low to make it worth

agree apart that there has NEVER to be a global bonus...

this is city level up, bonus need to stay confined

right now unrest is broken like gildar is totally useless

so its impossible to balance it because first it need a good balance pass on whole concept of unrest

water like you said is situational

id like anyway to have them be same tier if they really ahve to be there

so tier N should be maybe fire or water or air shard at choice

immune to spell is situational but possibly nice

these bonuses are ALL broken

1st there has not to be so much global stuff

production per material is a joke are we kidding? on all cities???

unrest is so useless... its impossible to evaluate it but ok in general again no global bonuses....

just local plz

you are right, fortress lvl 5 will neve exist cause you will built them on high production/essence site and so most likely with low grain

Overall, the question we must be asking is how does leveling a city further specialization? The current levelup options are unfocused and feel scattered about. It lacks the great choice design we see in normal improvements. Perhaps it is good to look at each level 3+ choice for how it furthers the choice we made at level 2. Even though Fortresses are the main troop training city, it would be a mistake to not have the option for each city type to have some level unit specialization. There also needs to be a way to specialize cities for the most benefits to heroes.

The weird thing is that each city level for every specialization adds research in large amounts. This needs to be cut to +1 research per city level. Getting +12 research from a level 5 city makes towns much better than conclaves as they can get there twice as fast. A towns only approach should not be the best tech strategy. 

Towns

Towns are about growth, production, gildar and territory. The advantage here needs to getting to high levels quickly with growth and having those high levels produce lots and lots of gildar and food. The units they train should be hearty tanks. The bonuses they give to heroes should go to governors focused on growth and gildar. Here is how I would balance things:

Level 2: +1 Materials

Choosing a Town means you have massive build queues here throughout the game. +1 Materials is much more useful than +1 ZoC, which can be left in or done away with. This extra boost to production is a perfect one time bonus to balance the city out with the other choices.

Level 3: +2 Production per Materials.

+1 Gildar per Grain, -5 Food per grain.

+2 Hp per Grain to trained units from this city.

+50% Growth, -5% Unrest.

Level 3 should be where the player decides to either rush growth or gain immediate gildar benefits. If your city is not going to get to level 4, you might take the immediate bonus. But, if you think you can make it to level 5, getting there 50% faster will make you much more powerful than other players very early in the game. It is worth missing out on the extra gildar in some cases. The other way to go is to start setting up this town to produce a powerful tank unit. For a group of swordsmen, that makes +10Hp per Grain in the city. So with 6 Grain you get a unit that starts with +60Hp at level one. That might be only about the same Hp as a trained Fortress unit, but your unit is level 1 and theirs will be level 3-6. So you can level yours to be a massive tank, utilizing the natural bonuses of a town's high production.

Level 4: +20% Gildar.

+25% Food, +2 Growth.

+1 Influence, +1 Prestige.

+10 Defense for trained units.

Level 4 should just give us the gildar bonus we are all expecting at this point. The choice should be about accentuating the ones we made at level 3. The food and growth bonus lends well to cities that are close to getting to level 5, but can't quite make it. The Influence and Prestige would be great for an influence based faction like Kraxis, who can steal a city for 500 Influence. It is also needed to get monster lairs built. Then the defense bonus is there to level the playing field between Fortresses, which give out a total of +6 defense to trained units. The benefit of specializing here is you don't need to go through hundreds of turns researching the Warfare Tree to get a decent defensive unit. But I would not suggest trying to use it as an attacking force, until you level it to level 5 or so. Keep in mind that a civics minded player is going to only have light weapons and armor. This unit will still be less powerful than a faction specialized in war. The point is to make a supreme defender.

Level 5: +2% Gildar from population in this city.

+15 Food per Grain in all cities.

+4 Prestige.

+1Hp per Grain in all cities. 

Now you have the final choice. Does your empire need Food, Growth, or Soldiers? The best choice, Gildar is given for completing the level. The choices you are left with off huge bonuses, but in very difference categories. Level 5 needs to be about benefiting the whole society. It should be large and extremely powerful. 

This is moreso an example of a well focused leveling system. It might not be perfectly balanced, but the main idea is right. The choice we all choose every time needs to be given for achieving the level. The choices should be focused on a few things. They need to be specializations or subscriptions to a particular strategy. As you level, they need to get bigger and better. The research bonus needs to go. It doesn't make sense.

I could do this for every specialization, but I am not the developer. I am just a concerned modder. I can make a mod for this and show people how it would work better. I might do that later when other people fill in the blanks. Essentially I think Fortresses should give +1 level to trained units per city level. They should focus on 2 trained unit choices and 1 economic choice. Conclaves should get +1 per level additively. That would be 2, 5, 9, 14 for the four specialized level. Conclaves should offer a research, mana and trained unit bonus each level. Conclaves should be making really great magical units and even gaining some special summons in the magic book. 

Well I'm with sean on the idea that global effects are what we want to go with for level 5 cities - other than for high essence cities, they are hard to reach. I'm actually not really a fan of towns giving bonus food to other towns though as it causes a looping effect both for the base buildings and for level up options.

Your suggested level up options seems a bit on the high side I might add. I presume you've got a whole set up alternate level up options to balance things out for towns / conclaves / fortresses, but some of these will throw game balance completely out of whack - The hp from grain thing and +10 defense comes to mind.

Fortresses give +2 levels, and while that may equate to +8hp, it is not a permanent bonus, and the difference between level 1 and level 3 is minimal. The bonus for defense from buildings is +6 if I recall correctly, not +10. You are also overlooking spells that could break this: grain + hp..

Additionally, the benefits from city levels come from researching the civilization tree, which provides research, growth and production, while the benefits from the fotress buildings require researching the warfare tree, which provides warfare type bonuses (and some production). Granting a level up bonus to towns that also gives them a way to generate amazing units while researching the civilization tree just seems like a no brainer.

The reason that city level up bonuses should at best be on par with buildings from other tech trees, is that there needs to be an opportunity cost for rush researching the civ tree. I'm not saying that your suggestions aren't viable, just that the current numbers you are using would throw the game out of balance and require a rework of most of the tech tree, possibly buildings and even items.

glad to see city upgrades being talked about in the forum.  i'm sure SD was hoping for this kind of feedback.  i'd just like to say that i'm not a fan of specializing troops for each town type... i think troops should get buffed in a fortress only regardless of troop type making fortress clearly the best choice for troops.  i would like to see conclave more clearly the best option for research and magic.  and finally, i would like to see towns be extremely average at best when producing troops, research, and magic.

i've noticed that the AI is building all three types.  i'd be interested to know what brad told the AI to consider when choosing that upgrade or is it totally random?

I know a "what he said" is not adding anything to a discussion, but I am totally digging the proposed changes here.

The only issue Conclaves sorta have is food but otherwise they're incredibly easy to grow thanks to Sovereign's Call and the starting spell (can't recall its exact name atm) which grants additional Grain per Essence. That +1 Essence building especially helps here (it's like a free Inn). If anything, I find the Growth buildings in Towns to be subpar by comparison.

And once you've got a late game Conclave the amount of research you can pull in is truly astounding.

As for the Town idea I am mostly in agreement. I'd rather the +HP per grain and other unit boosters being completely dropped from Towns though. In my mind I've got the following idea for how the settlement types should work:

Towns - Expand your empire (ZoC), provide food and growth bonuses to the rest of the empire, and serve as your commercial center. They already do much of this so I'm rather happy with them right now, although they could do with a few tweaks. As I mentioned, their own growth is somewhat slow (even if going for the high-cost festival), and I think doubling the well/inn growth bonuses would be a good move. It would also be neat if high-end towns could provide a faction-wide growth bonus to further enhance their usefulness as the primary support-class city type.

Conclaves - Provide magical benefits, serve as the research centers for the empire, and be the center for magically trained units. That last one currently isn't in the game at all, besides maybe the +25% XP bonus. I feel that while the Fortress could provide hard hitting heavily armored front line soldiers with its all around bonuses, the Conclave could be used to improve the mage-class units with better magical attacks, support abilities, cheaper crystal costs, etc. It also doesn't really boost magic directly as it stands outside of providing mana. I'll provide my own ideas for Conclave upgrade improvements later.

Fortresses - Military centers, heavily fortified, but also exert a larger Zone of Control and, more importantly, should provide field benefits to friendly armies while interfering with enemies. The military stuff is already adequately handled I think, but I also believe fortresses should be used as historical ones as a means to control the area. To do this, I think they should share the larger ZoCs of towns and have internal buildings which can accomplish many of the same features of Outposts (such as reducing enemy movement through them). This will help make Fortresses an incredibly potent tool for keeping a tight hold on your empire even if they aren't placed across the entirety of a chokepoint.

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Conclaves

Currently I feel the purpose of the Conclave isn't fully realized. You've got some research perks and a better Essence count once you've taken the upgrade (which tbh feels essential currently, although that's already been pointed out), but we don't see much in the way of magical improvement outside of a mana generation bonus and a single upgrade choice for a single mana type. So I propose the following alteration in level-up upgrades to improve that.

Level 3 - Element Selection

The first possible upgrade list I believe should follow the same type: a bonus to spell power. There would be a total of 5 possible upgrades randomly determined (so you won't always get what you want), each coming with its own +1 [Insert Element Here] bonus. Kingdoms would get access to the Life booster, and Empires to Death, as per their usual restrictions. This upgrade choice will help solidify Conclaves as something greatly favored by magical types without being limited to only a few specializations (right now, fire).

Level 4 - Specialization

This upgrade level will help establish the Conclaves true focus. This can be either an idle Research Boost (but as suggested, much higher than +20%), the Oracle's +1 Essence, and something specialized for the magical warrior aspect. I'm thinking an upgrade that adds across the board to elemental damages with a percentile increase. I haven't used mage-soldiers much so I'm not sure what would be balanced, but it should be sizable enough to justify building the troops at the Conclave instead of a Fortress. In addition, this improvement would reduce Crystal costs by 25%.

Level 5 - Achievement Bonus

These should be truly impressive additions to the city as a reward for reaching Level 5, possibly globally oriented. The global +10% to research improvement is an obvious choice to cap off a primarily research oriented city. Something else that should be considered is moving the Alchemist Laboratory (the one that adds +1 Material per Essence) here instead as normally it has a massive production cost in a city-type that gets most of its bonuses by being idle. As an upgrade the city won't need to wait 30+ turns for construction on an improvement which only helps build more things, when it's usually amongst the last things you build. In addition, the lab could open some new potion options in the shop. Finally, there needs to be a magically oriented focus. Rather than boosting magic power directly, the final upgrade would be a massive golem able to cast any spell the sovereign knows with the same modifiers. The golem itself would grow in power based on shard counts (Earth adds Defense, Life/Death adds HP, etc.) and able to move around the map. If it is destroyed it must be retrained at a Conclave at a sizable production and crystal cost. The player can have as many of these golems as the number of improvements which grant it. Thus, a magical sovereign may be able to spread his or her magical might further than a single location or collect them together for some truly terrifying spell power on a battlefield. Even non-mage sovereigns can benefit from what is essentially a warmachine boosted by any shards they've acquired, although obviously this option is less appealing than if they were primarily casters.

City spaces aren't that common, but late game it could become an issue sure. Even with the randomization of upgrade selection to spread it around. I guess moving it up to Level 5 might not be a bad idea.

well why?

is there a tactic involving heroes not needing research?

even full adventuring or warmongering sovereign need a lot of research to get better gear or recruiting, or mana to cast spells etc

research is the center of the game whatever thing you do and all benefit greatly from it

tbh i dont see this

cities are just plain better

WHATEVER you do with them

if you train ppl, build improvemnts, or idle its just better to have a city than not

Well there's supposed to be a tradeoff between expansion and growth.  But my point is that if you have three high-level cities with tons of production, taking one of them offline to get the idle bonus cripples your empire's capacity.  But if you have a dozen crappy level-2 cities taking one of them offline has a negligible effect.

 i hate city spamming but i agree with you

once we have spammed cities whats the problem if some of them are better of building troops, other building mana and some idling to improve research?

ofc there shouldnt be any city spam at all to start

its a stupid questions

4x means STRATEGY

means CHOICES

means trading something for other stuff

spamming is the absolute opposite of strategic

you spam brainless cities and dont care at all of them

like it was in civ

its not strategy, even a console player could do it

its waaaaay more strategic having few HIGHLY customizable cities you really care about and you check constantly to improve them at best

it doesnt happen in city spam

you are right

the idea of expanding is cool

id like to do that

but REAL expanding in gaming is so bad it hurts

end game in civ was so boring i often stopped playing bef4 i could achieve the victory

it sucked really

expanding shouldnt be boring, should be repeating the same stuff over and over again, until some game succed changing this i rather have few good cities than 10 that dont matter