simple ways to make cities look more appealing

from Elemental Forums

can any of you guys think of a simple way to make the cities look more appealing?  here is my idea.

how about with the press of a button allow you to rotate a tile before placing it?  this way you can orient it however you want.  since a tile is square, maybe allow it to face one of four directions.  this way you can have houses face each other.  that would look better to me i think.


7,677 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Since we can zoom in and see people doing stuff, what I'd like is to have streets naturally form between tiles, and see people wandering around them. Also wouldn't mind seeing banners and the like pop up more often, showing loyalty towards me, the supreme magical overlord.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Mutliple graphics for same building  - I think they have said this will be in the game already, I know they have said they will graphics for when you have multiple of the same building next to each other (e.g. 4 farms together becomes mega farm). They should also do something to look the borders between towns look more natural.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

IIRC Ctrl+Scroll Whell does the rotation thing (when placing an improvement).

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 3
IIRC Ctrl+Scroll Whell does the rotation thing (when placing an improvement).
End of BoogieBac's quote

oh lol! i had no idea.  will have to try that out when i play again.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

We tend to hook up hot-keys for things before the official UI goes in :)  Hope it does what you're looking for!

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah that's it!  but instead of CTRL its SHIFT.  thanks!

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Roads between the buildings. [...or at least roads around 4x4 buildings] It's a must, because the look of the cities is quite chaotic right now.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

from my thread: https://forums.elementalgame.com/384080

a couple of suggestions to achieve this:

-randomly rotate buildings

-buildings of the same type should merge when placed next to each other (specially huts and farms)

-place road/dirt between different buildingtypes to imitate roads

-walls/hedges should stay even if you construct more buildings or delete old ones (however if you build a new fortress the whole current city becomes enveloped with walls as usual)

End of quote

 

further suggestions:

 

-only allow the gardens to be build outside of cities and don't envelope them with walls. it was very rare that farming space was protected by city walls

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Nathikal, reply 1
Since we can zoom in and see people doing stuff, what I'd like is to have streets naturally form between tiles, and see people wandering around them. Also wouldn't mind seeing banners and the like pop up more often, showing loyalty towards me, the supreme magical overlord.
End of Nathikal's quote

This.  Add this to the game and Cities will come alive.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Architectural themes would be nice. Rather than have everyone looking identical, you could have a list of four or so different themes to apply to a faction which would alter the appearance of buildings. So for example a Classical theme which has a lot of columns, statues etc, or a Desert theme which has minarets, arches and a general Arabic flavour.

 

Adaptable buildings would be nice too. Ditch the four tile housing improvements for example, and just have a single "Residential area" generic improvement. When built, you then get something appropriate to the city - based on say the main resource production. So for your food producing cities you get Estates, while industrial cities get Slums and prestige producing cities get Manors. This could be extended to certain key buildings like the town centre, town hall and similar. As a bonus, it also means you can see what kind of a city it is simply by looking at the building styles.