City idea

from Elemental Forums

I find the city fabrication is a bit too sprawling.  In the 8-10 games I've played, its far too easy to to get to the second city size and feel as if i've redefined urban sprawl. 

One suggestion: Have each stage of city growth accomodate a certain number of tiles.  During each of the stages of city growth the look of the city could reflect the various technologies researched as you research them.  As you increase your stage of growth areas of the city could represent various facets of research, altering the look and creating the sence of personalization. There are five stages i think..

Stage 1 could be a 1-2 square acumulation of structures changing as various research completes.  Perhaps with a mott&bailey flavor..

Stage 2 could bump up to a 2X2 area and maybe start to have the fort/castle look.  Each square could represent an area of research.  Fort/castle square could be magic and change as the various towers/observatories/libraries are built. one square could relate to War with command post/barracks/tilting area... 1 or 2 squares civil with markets/housing/gardens...

Stage 3 could grown into a 3x3 area giving each area of research 2-3 squares for visuals... etc.

The build method wouldn't really need to change, you could select you building and when it pops out of the Que the city would reflect the new structure.

The shape could arrange itself to the environment somewhat allowing for a strategic use in loactions where you want to block a pass or limit movement.

Farms,mines,crystals,horses,lumbering and other resources could but dont need to be part of the city at all.

Other suggestion: instead of the above, make each of the building tiles outside of the city square (the very central starting square) 1/4 the current size.

 

I think Elemental will be awesome and am glad to participate in the beta.

 

 

5,695 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Well, I rather like the current City structure/ usage. The only thing I don't like is the difficulty in selecting units and moving units through a city. That is a real pain.

I could live with a few more squares in Size 2-5 however. As well as the Palace providing +8 spaces.

While current city size is cool, I wonder if we could make cities "smaller"

What I mean by that, is that 1 space will be 1/4 a tile as opposed to an entire tile. So 4 spaces make a tile. Not sure if its possible, or if everyone would want it (even me), however it seems like Cities could be better scaled to the rest of the world more easily in this manner.

That being said, I don't mind building giant, expansive cities that cover many tiles.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

So basically you are saying that each of the five phases should have a different look? Why is that so? Also why it is too easy to get to the next level of development?

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Not so much a different look, but just moving ahead to a more developed city/castle area.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm not very worried about movement problems, im sure they will be addressed in later beta's.  I like the idea of the city areas being more in scale/proportion to the rest of the world.

 

 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I like the idea of the buildings being a quarter of the size they currently are.  Right now it does seem like they take up a lot of physical space.  Even though a villa that can hold almost a hundred people with housing refinements in implied comfort oughta be fairly large, it seems funny that they are almost as large as some of the surrounding mountains.