Concerned about Laying Down New Cities

Yeah, I'm a bit bothered by this too.  Its an interesting idea, but can become a royal pain when your empire gets larger or your sovereign is simply overcommitted.  Having to zigzag across your empire to found minor cities doesn't appeal to me much.  It might be a better method to allow the sovereign--- through an early spell--- to imbue settlers with essence and then let the settlers do the work.

I do agree that this is a bit of a problem, but I'd rather see scouts come out sooner rather than create settlers.  I don't think just giving the sov the ability to bring back the land is that great because unless I am very far afield I'm going to want to creep cities toward the resource rather than spend essence.  Part of this is just personal preference as I think I'll be a bit of a stay at home sov myself.

Another possible option would be an early game familiar of some kind.  It could be an early, easy summon or even be something you start with.  That would make the early turns more interesting and possibly be another way to differentiate among the factions and possibly even help balance them out (if you start with it).

My assumption was that if the land was restored via death magic instead of life magic then it isn't your environment type if you are a life-magic user....

yes, the GUI doesn't quite make it clear yet. Make sure to adjust the colors in visual settings so you can see the subtle hues and shades that indicate a different environment type. The areas surrounding a dragon statue for instance are already life magic infused you can found cities around them for no essence cost.

I remember at Penny Arcade Expo thinking something similar like "how do I create cities without my sovereign"  and it was explained to me the whole fertile ground thing (which was much more clear in the 3D version than the current 2D UI)  and from there I remember bringing up settlers.

I'm pretty sure I managed to get a confirmation out of boogiebac at PAX that there will be units akin to settlers who can found cities.   But they will not be able to start cities in non-fertile land.   So basically, plant your 1st few cities with your sovereign via essence, and after that you need to use the normal settler unit.

Since said settler unit is not in the game, sovereigns just do all city creation right now.

I was thinking that too. Great idea.

Same here...but again...we should be able to create "settler" type units via modding.

We don't really need a settler unit. We're supposed to be able to imbue units to create new channelers anyway (probably as the magic system gets flshed out), so once we can do that the solution on land that needs essence already exists. For just building on already fertile land, maybe any unit should have the ability to found cities. (Or just the imbued units, either way.)

I have to (humbily) disagree on this point.      Part of our goal is to make a world that 'feels' like a traditional fantasy RPG setting. When you play an rpg, you have some considerable distance to travel between cities (even when those cities are part of the same empire). The moment you have 5 settlement crammed into a corner, that 'rpg' feeling is broken and it just feels like traditional TBS city-spam.

So, if you're finding that cities are a good 10-20 tiles apart and it takes a few turns for units to get from city A to city B, then I feel we're doing something right, not wrong (again, IMHO).

The annoyances of only having the sovereign found cities is a seperate issue in our minds. Hopefully the full realization of the magic system will lead to improvements there.

Functionally though, for most of these kinds of games there is an almost overwhelming need to place cities close by for defense reasons. Having cities that can support one another in defense is almost too valueable to ignore. Unless founding a city without resources actually harms you, I would expect to see a fair amount of sprawl as the norm.

You might alleviate this need with early game magic teleportation, but that could have some negative consequences as well.

The spell "Teleport" [between cities for example] is a must have.

I have to (humbily) disagree on this point.       Part of our goal is to make a world that 'feels' like a traditional fantasy RPG setting. When you play an rpg, you have some considerable distance to travel between cities (even when those cities are part of the same empire). The moment you have 5 settlement crammed into a corner, that 'rpg' feeling is broken and it just feels like traditional TBS city-spam.

So, if you're finding that cities are a good 10-20 tiles apart and it takes a few turns for units to get from city A to city B, then I feel we're doing something right, not wrong (again, IMHO).

End of quote

Oh, i would def prefer for cities to be farther apart, the city sprawl in civ always did annoy me.. and in that regard i think our right it would be more like an rpg. What i guess i should have said is that im concerned about a nations borders being separated by cities of other nations because you were out exploring on the other side of the continent...  

For example:

----= blank land/tiles

A= city of nation A

B= city of nation B

C= city of Nation C

[ ]= borders

Like this would be preferred:

[---A-----------A---][------B-------B-----]

where this is annoying:

[--A----A----A----A---][---B---B----B---]

but this is what im afraid of:

[----A------][----B-----][-----C----][----A----][----C----]

I think Sovereigns will have to build cities (for 5 essence or what-not) ... and settlers can build crappy colonies for nothing more than resource collection. (can grow to Village size, maybe town)

I agree with you Boogie. The problem I foresee though is people building cities too close together so they can grab up resources. This is why I think it will be necessary to allow players to build on improvements (Mines, Shards etc etc) without the need to build a whole city there so long as a city is close by.

I really, Really, think you should consider that option.

Agreed! It's a must have feature in my Book of Elements.

Lol, this is a very good point.  While you grow early on, you might feel coerced to keep your sovereign nearby for fear of another sovereign plopping a city between your own cities and using it as a means of splintering your transportation and trade.

Yes, true. That was one of the problems with Civ. Enemy AI would rush in and plonk cities down in between your cities. If you build your cities too far apart, the enemy just moves in a disects your empire. If you build too close then you will be unable to grab that crucial resource as the dumb enemy AI will move in and rush for the resource.

The dumb enemy AI who overextended to rush for the resource will then, within the next 20 turns or so, will get wiped out by another enemy AI who then takes over the resource. It seems like the AI system literally 'secures gifts' for the enemy AI to turn on you and wipe you out.

To further explain the defense benefits, imagine that your city aura can give you a 5 turns warning that a city will be attacked. If you have three cities within a 5 turn march these three cities can all be defended with the same army.

If you have three cities that are farther than 5 turns march from each other, then you need to maintain that same size force in each of them individually to provide the same level of defense! In this case you are maintain 3x the number of troops!

Funny. What you are afraid of, I WANT. There would be constant conflict and also critical decisions like: "Do I go for early military to prevent him from rushing me or do I focus on improvements and have a scout nearby to see what he's upto...." and "Should I keep my Sovereign close by my city which is very close to an enemy city so it doesn't get taken....?  Decisions, decisions...."

It'll be like two offensive players in Age of Wonders which have both captured a city very close to eachother which makes them send all of their forces there to protect their new city and to capture the enemy city.

I humbly disagree that when 5 settlements crammed into a corner, that 'rpg' feeling is broken.   What if those villiages are just small fishing villages along the abundant coastal resources,  or in an relatively crammed area that has tons of irons to mine but has minimal food to support a large city?

Large city should has its own adv & disadv. against smaller settlements.   IMHO, a smaller settlement CANNOT grow into a large city no matter how much time or $ you throw into it improving infrastructure WHEN its location is not meant to support a large population.    Let me use an example to illustrate what I meant here.   Assume you need "Advanced Market" being built first be4 your city evolve to a high population one.  And in order to build this adv market, you need to have at least 3 different types of "Local" food sources within a radius of 5. 

I'll like that whether you can build a large city or not depends mainly on its location.    If the random map generator gives out tons of food, I don't mind playing a game with tons of large metropolis.   If the RMG gives little food this time, everyone plays with their smaller towns.

Give us variety, a possibility to build cities depending on map resources.  There is nothing wrong with crammed nor sparse cities, when the underlying condition is right (& a mechanism to prevent micro-nitemare)

I'd rather have large cities grow at cross-sections of trade-routes, rather than food density. That seems to be the case in most civilized medieval peoples anyways.

[---A---][--B--][---C---C---][--B--][--A--] feels a little bit strange in my opinion. On the other hand, you have to spend essence, so you can't spam cities everywhere. If you place you city in the middle of enemy's territory, you will probably lose it, wasting 5 essence and the time, which could be used for the sovereign to do something else.

One more thing to remember, is that there are couple of things not implemented into the game, yet; family tree, sovereign's role, magic system, etc. It's hard to discuss founding cities without these things in place, imho.

How do you make a city larger? What I mean is ... if a city grows to size 2, will it gain an extra tile? Or do you decide its tile size before it even HAS a population?