[Gameplay] Survey before you build a new outpost

from Elemental Forums

In MoM (and various similiar games) you could see how large a city could grow at a certain location and what resources it would then be able to tap.

Yes, it's a bit more tricky with Elemental cities having varying control zones but that does not automatically make it impossible.

Right now, I have no clue if a city would grow out of it's outposty infancy or not.

When a food resource is right beside it, it's usually a sure thing but most of the time there is none and some cities still grow larger than an outpost. How? Why?

 

And you can't build additional "food production" because irrigation, which would be required for the city to grow beyond "outpost" and/or tap food resources from further away, requires the city to have grown beyond outpost.

That's why I try hard to hit all new cities with the Bonus Food enchantment. And sometimes that isn't enough.

 

It doesn't have to be a super complicated visual experience.

Just a "survey mode" which I can use when zoomed in and which overlays the terrain tiles with a number, representing their food production.

If this stayed centered like a 4-6 tile radius ring around the cursor, it would "look" better - like the player was actually "doing" a survey - and it would at the same time allow a rough estimate of the final control zone.

5,071 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

As far as I know, there really isn't any food production outside of the resources you can farm, or any resources outside the big ones that are obviously visible.  Basically, the fertile land or such things provides some number of food resources, and whenever you build a housing unit to increase max population, it uses food.  The food resource is empire-wide (unless a city is sieged), so these houses don't have to be built in the city producing the food, but instead can be built in any city.

Although I haven't paid much attention to it, since I always tend to have more food than I need, since there usually isn't much of a reason to upgrade a city that isn't next to a resource.  So you can just build a bunch of 0 food cities (no houses) and build all the +1 buildings in them, and then save most of the food for building housing in cities that are next to gold or research resources or such.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Yes, food is global and (I think) only building houses cost food.

Big cities are easier to garrison, though, and a single improvement built in a big city has a better ROI. =)

 

One obvious way to "farm" would be to create many outposts for no reason beyond having targets for the Food Bonus spell.

To build Irrigation, the town would have to be level 2, which means 4 houses, costing 4 food.

You'd have to wait 100 turns (with normal growth rate) for the outpost to become lvl 2, build Irrigation, then raze the houses, freeing the food for the next small farming community.

 

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Food is global. As long as you're making extra food somewhere, any city can use it. So any outpost can grow to any size as long as you're willing to build the huts and have to food to support it. It doesn't need food next to it at all if you want.