city growth idea - make population growth for the kingdom as a whole

from Elemental Forums

We've discussed many methods for trying to persuade players to make only a few cities.  Here is yet another.

A lot of population growth in Elemental comes from people wandering in from the wastes, not from having babies.  People wandering in from the wastes should be driven by prestige only, and they should be split among existing cities.  That means that if you have two cities, the growth rate for each city will be cut in half.

This could be balanced in several ways, including having a kingdom growth rate based on prestige and a baby growth rate based on population (although the baby growth rate arguably could be a quadratic - cities historically were very unhealthy places and became more so as they became bigger - much of city growth came from people arriving from the countryside, again tying back to a kingdom based population growth rate rather than a city based one).

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Although I can see your logic, your system implies that only a set number of people are willing to give up the country life for a life in the city. This is plainly nonsense, as there might very well be a lot of people that are willing to live in the city if it is prestigious enough. Prestige of course is a hollow entity, but let us assume it is all those things that speak in favor of a city and that the country life cannot offer. People are pursuaded to join your city if the city itself has enough power to draw people in. These people made the decision to join a certain city, it makes no sense to assume that these people will make a decision to live with your people and then have them decide where to live. It makes no sense.

Also I do not see what your method does better than the existing method. Why would we want your system as opposed to the system that is in place?

 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

One thing I've found is that while the essence factor limits ICS at the start of a game, once your borders are well expanded, you can build on good terrain without worrying about essence.

 

One possible solution to this is to have prestige take a hit when near other prestigious cities.  Why should I go and live there when there's a better city over there?  Possibly you could limit it further, eg "due to the proximity to CITYDELUXE, this settlement will never develop beyond a village".  So ICSing inside your borders isn't such a huge advantage, while if you wished to build near some resources or set up an outpost somewhere strategic, you could still do it.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Wait... What... you can build inside your borders without incurring an essence cost?

You sure that is not a bug?

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Your borders usually grow at the same speed as the land is revived. Therefore, if you build within your borders, chances are the land has revived. Therefore, no essence cost.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

The essence is not to build the city, but to revive the land.  Revived land = no essence cost.  Only possible once you have quite large cities, aince there's limits on how close they can be.