Number of Cities

They are remaking city building drastically in Beta 2-A so maintenance might be included. If not, it should be included at some stage, but when it is, taxes should also be included to balance that.

The smaller nations are often important because those might swing the balance between two larger nations. And they are more easily run because they are smaller. It took weeks and months for messages to travel from Rome to its provinces. Not so much a problem since the 19th centruy but it was a bother in the past.

Unless you're putting these cities right on top of each other, the cost of building so many cities so quickly is your Sovereign's essence.  While it doesn't matter in 2A, but once magic is in using that much essence at the beginning of the game will probably end up being to your detriment.

Later,
LAR

I hope it will, cause something needs to be done.

After all, the Essence-thingy would also solve the second problem. By building less cities, players would have more essence for other things, increasing the efficiency of their small nation.

Essence is only a part of it. Land creep (land turning green in your zone of influence) allows you to build cities without using up any essence. That said, they've been looking at ways to minimize city spam, so they're pretty aware of it.

It's hard to see how a conquest victory will be possible with small empires.  It's been discussed a lot, and best I can think of (without seeing the whole game or making big changes) is to go with some civics techs (to get a decent economy/etc.), some adventuring techs (to get items/loot/allies/pets/etc.), and then a whole lotta magic techs.

It may be small empires are only viable for the non-conquest victory conditions (spell of making, quest of ultimate doom, and I forget the third one).

The problem with that is, that the bigger nation will still have more research, and I assume that for spell of making or questvictory you need a lot of research in magic tree / adventure tree.

Well, I guess the idea there is a Sovereign who focuses his essence on cities (which does seem pretty trivial right now), will be weaker in direct battle, but one who doesn't will be able to beef himself up. Of course, it doesn't quite work that way currently so we'll have to see.

But I would be surprised if all the victory conditions were feasible for all the different playstyles. Then again, it also depends on just what defines "conquest". If it's just ownership of cities, they can be bought or taken (also not currently in) through the dynasty system, not necessarily military power.

Each city costs more to found than the last in terms of gold already. 

Right now I think the principle is sound in essence.  You have a few large cities, fuelled by the food resources you've managed to acquire, supported by a number of small towns and villages, which are out to harvest resources and claim various strategic locations on the map.  The limit on your overall population is food and level of development, so while there is no hard limit on the number of cities per se, there is (and should be) very much a limit as to how many people you have.

I should have quite a few small villages in my "hinterland" supporting my large city.  But most of my population centers will have a support role for the few populous cities I'm actually able to build.

Gold is not a good measure of balancing city spam because it is an infinite resource. No matter how much a city costs, you can always hit the turn button enough times to get it. Gold may be more of a factor in those short tiny map games, but in the epic large games it's basically a non-factor.

Food, essence, and to a lesser degree the amount of land creep are the deciding players here, because they're limited resources.

Make a city cost some food to found, and immediately you'll see players focusing more on fewer, larger cities rather than plopping down lots of small ones. Likewise, reduce the amount of green land that radiates from your city, and people will be forced to use up essence to do it. Land spreads quick enough now that past the first city, you never really have to use essence for another unless you want to build it way out in the middle of nowhere - which will obviously need to be done to capture shards and other highly desired tiles, but most of city spam boils down to having more research points, spell points, population, gold income, and increased production capacity for military.

The proposed city building changes in 2A sound good too. If you allow us to "boost" these things in our main cities through adjacency bonuses and unique buildings, we're less likely to want to lay down a bunch of cities because we want more tools, or more gold.

Another issue that will, or should, become a concern for the “Many Cities Quick” builders will be the Defense of those Cities. There is now talk about how can we better defend the Cities we have.

Currently, 1 peasant can walk across the Map and if there is no one defending your City(s), he takes the whole ball of wax no matter the Population, in tact.

Building Cities you cannot defend seems rather pointless really. The idea of defending those cities with each other, by layering them strategically, may be moot as a tactic, due to Teleportation Magic. Still in the game as far as I know.

Thus, burning off all of your starting Essence to build 3 quick cities may expose them to capture without a fight, while then spending all of what little Gold you can accumulate, from that point forward, on a Peasant army for defense will obviously be to the detriment of further growth within those same Cities.

So a lot of Cities, that get to grow and become prosperous is wicked good. Getting them to that stage may prove a more daunting challenge given the current capture mechanic.

P.S. 3 quick cities will also leave you with funding for recruitment, and that will create a major problem when it comes to defending those same cities.

@John_Hughes

I'm not sure I agree.  If you have two cities or ten, defending them isn't that different.  With the assumption laid out in this thread that more cities = more $$, you can then use that money to buy adventurers and champions to defend those cities.

Later,
LAR

But Cities in and of themselves don't generate Gold. There Infrastructure does. With No Essence and no Gold, after 3 quick cities, where does the Gold come from for the building that is required. (This is early game)

One should not just assume the enemy will just sit idle and let you grow up a shit load of Cities, and then die to your might...

Not if you start alone on a island, or your neighbour(s) are just not aggresive.

I dont think its a good idea to define the city balance by a military point of view.

And for the fact, that each city costs a one-time amount of money: That means that founding a lot of cities very early is even better, because the longer a city exists, the more you get for your money.

You can easily build a foresttown with lumbermills (not that expensive), and then build lots of markets (no gold cost at all).

LOL! I will have to testbed that approach. Seems a tad OFF from here but hey, Markets R Us!

@AdmiralDan

Good luck on both counts for the first thought.

I was not trying to Balance City #'s versus Military anything, just pointing out, after playing the Beta quite a bit, what might be a couple of drawbacks to the "quick 3 City" game start when you will face real human enemies and or an AI that is/can be/programmed at some level (Hyper) to be quite aggressive.

I don't have problems with the current system....not to mention that you will be able to destroy whole cities with 1 spell.

You will also be able to protect said cities against those spells

As is the case with many things of this nature, incentives should be combined with limitations. For example, as mentioned above, you shouldn't really have to make a city just because you need to build mills for tools. The ability to substantially boost a given city's production of a resource is a huge incentive not to make extra cities for the sole purpose of harvesting that resource.

I'm really looking forward to the building changes that Frogboy outlined that will be coming, because in principle I agree with the reasoning for them. Right now, most individual improvements aren't anything special, so you just build a bunch of them. Want more money? Well, best way to do that is to make a new town and throw up a lot of cheap markets. Another major issue is that build space is at a huge premium because it's so limited. A lot of the 4-tile buildings don't provide near enough production compared to putting down 4 1-tile buildings that produce the same resource (the same goes for the "special" tiles like scenic locations, or refugee camps). The current balance of improvements is by resources, rather than build space needed - which is not so great. Sure, it costs more to put down 4 1-tile structures than a single 4-tile of the same function, but with infinite resources and (usually) a big performance boost over the single structure, there's no reason to build that 4-tile one.

There are a lot of these imbalances currently in improvements, and they're a key factor to dealing with city spam. Improvements and upgrades should allow for powerful single cities, balanced more about build space cost rather than straight resources. If I can get my current city to beef up my gold production considerably through an improvement, I'll be less likely to want to put down another city for the sole purpose of making gold.

One good change would be to make every city founded (or conquered) cost essence.  That's the major ongoing cost to founding a city, and it shouldn't be so easily avoided. 

I definitely do not like this idea.  I'm all for using essence to get ahead early in the game, but to continue taking away what's arguably the most valuable resource in the game is a bit drastic.

I kinda like the idea of food being what limits your cities.  I'd just make food a little more scarce and even go so far as to say conquered cities would have a medium-term penalty to food production.  This would make war efforts to put a strain on your entire country.

Later,
LAR

Agree with larry. When all the world comes crashing down you must have food and water. And currency and materials are useless if the city has starved. I'm a fan of farming output (which historians would tell you matters more than anything else in almost any situation before the 19th century.)

Every population must eat food and founding cities before farms have grown would leave empty stomachs.

There are many ways to limit city spamming. A few:

1. Maintenance increases with more cities (think CIV IV)

2. The worlds population is limited. Cities with more prestige/infra will attract higher population growth. This means that an empire with three well developed cities would attract more people than an empire with seven small cities. I like this one.

3. The cost of essence is limiting expansion

4. Settling a new city could have a high material cost

5. Barbarians and animals could be more interested in smaller cities thereby demanding more defences that will slow down expansion

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Elemental should have a couple of these implemented.

Agreed. Limitation of food is a very nice idea. That way, a nation with less towns could have bigger ones, which should work out well.

Though there is the problem, that a vast nation will also gain access to more foodressources.

I really hope they pull this off and stop city spamming somehow.  There should definitely be more villages and towns than major cities. Earlier I suggested a dynamic global population cap that would be quite efficient. Build one huge capital with several small villages OR choose to build several medium size towns.

I wouldn't mind a system where only your capital is a major city and the rest are just fortresses or fortified villages. The less cities the better. Especially spell research should not depend on the size of your nation. The smallest nation should actually be the strongest magic wise if that's what they are about instead of expanding.

The biggest flaw of MoM is the AI spamming cities everywhere they can fit them and then when you conquer them you have 30 big cities to manage in the end. And none of the cities are special in any way when they're all big.