City snaking

from Elemental Forums

It seems a bit odd to me that the game rules seem to encourage stretching our cities out so much toward whatever resources we want to snatch.  How about tweaking the rules for what square are available to build on to enforce a slightly more-circular city layout.  I think they may have some to that already, just not enough.

Just don't accidentally re-impose the old onerous limits on the number of tiles we can build on, even if the city is hemmed-in by mountains and ocean.

3,135 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Wait, what? I thought they already changed that. A resource doesn't need to be touching your city in order for you to build on it, it just needs to be in your area of influence. The only "resources" that really requires snaking are beaches so you can build a harbor.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I haven't been able to play Beta 4 so much (at least not lately) but I ended creating "snake cities" to make sure I could "influence" as much resources as possible.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm still snaking out to extend my area of influence in the direction I need to include resources in it.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I usually only "snake" two or three squares to get a resource that can be multiplied by a city, otherwise, forget it.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

In the final version, cities can't even build on resources.  You have to build on resources from the main map, not the city UI.

The only reason to snake towards a resoruce would be to get it adjacent to your city so that your city walls protect it (a viable strategy but expensive).

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 5
In the final version, cities can't even build on resources.  You have to build on resources from the main map, not the city UI.

The only reason to snake towards a resoruce would be to get it adjacent to your city so that your city walls protect it (a viable strategy but expensive).
End of Frogboy's quote


I like that implementation a lot better then how it is now, thanks!

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

I snake and then fill in the city in the latter tiers. It all ends up like a square.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

One really simple solution that may help could be to look at one of the reasons cities were contained in ancient times. City walls. I'm not suggesting that there necessarily be a cost in materials applied to snaked cities, but it could be used to apply a defensive factor.

The number of sides exposed from each tile could be used to provide a variable that is applied as one of the defensive factors to units defending a city.

Lets say that a perfectly formed (square) city provides a base defense factor of 3 and a worst-case (diagonal) city provides a base defence factor of 1 then cities would exist somewhere along the continuum.

max_factor = 3;
i = ceil(sqr_root(num_tiles)); // get max tiles to form square
min_sides = i x 4; // get number of sides if square
max_sides = i^2 x 4; // get number of sides if laid out diagonally
def_factor = (max_sides x max_factor)/(actual_sides x i);

So as an example

A city has 14 tiles but is layed out so that 18 sides are shown...

max_factor = 3;
i = ceil(sqr_root(14)) = 4
min_sides = 4 x 4 = 16
max_sides = 4^2 x 4 = 64
def_factor = (64 x 3)/(18 x 4) = 192/72 = 2.7

So a unit with a base defence of say 8 would have this boosted to 21 (8 x 2.7). If the city was perfectly formed it would have a defence of 24 (8 x 3). Pretty compelling reason to lay out defensive cities in a contained manner.

City improvements could then also be used to boost the max_factor variable. Eg. Hedge wall make max_factor increase to 4. etc et.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 5
In the final version, cities can't even build on resources.  You have to build on resources from the main map, not the city UI.

The only reason to snake towards a resoruce would be to get it adjacent to your city so that your city walls protect it (a viable strategy but expensive).
End of Frogboy's quote

I haven't played beta, so I wouldn't know this answer, but..

If we can build city walls, can it work in such a way that the more condensed your city is the less you have to pay to upgrade your walls? Therefore, you can snake all you want, but paying for extra walls could be astronomical. Or, does it already work that way? It's somewhat a natural and realistic boundary imo.

I guess it could work something like..

100 x 12 = 1,200

100 is the cost per square built on, and 12 is the number of squares covered by the city. If a person adds more buildings, they also have to pay for the additional wall coverage.