[Suggestion] More City Leveling Up Options

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I personally would like to see the bonus come in the form of a unique building in the city that bestows said bonus, rather than just some arbitrary stat boost. I like your ideas to expand options though.

There are already some unique buildings in the game. Besides you unlock a building type with your level pick then build it seems overly combersome. I mean odds are people are gonna build that unique building since they picked it for their level up bonus anyway.

Sorry, I wasn't clearer. I meant when you choose your level up bonus the UI takes you to the building placement screen directly.

Then why bother with the level UI? Simply have build menu update with the new option. A you can only have 1 of this group (level 2 unqiues) in the city. That would be an interesting mechanic if they added it. I wonder if the current system supposes that were if you build 1 building it prevents you from building other ones of a different type.

Besides I think there are better things they can do with buildings then have them be the Level Up Bonus. I feel more like the level up bonus should be the city specializing in something. Buildings should be more for unique things, like training different unit types, and production.

Though I think it would be interesting if they had it so that level up bonus options could be tied to what buildings a city has. Also if you could put off leveling a city up. Like on the city detail page there was a level up button so you choose later. This would be key if you had the level up options tied to the buildings in the city. Like for example "Archery Specialist" could be a city level up bonus which gives archer units built there a +1 ATK but you need an archery building in the city to select it. So if it's not finished building when you level up you may wanna select your level up bonus later.

The level Up mechanic was added kinda late in the beta and seemed like a quick way to try and address the users complaints that all the towns seemed alike. I think a lot could be done with city upgrades to make them feel truely unique but right now they don't really do that other then give the production bonus to 3 areas. The cities still feel very similar.

I'm not married to my idea, and I like where you are going with this. I agree the mechanic was added late beta and seems fairly arbitrary. I was going for something more coherent to draw the player into the game.

Similar discussion was occurring here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/395895

In that discussion he actually suggest what I did in a reply on another thread, which is the basic buildings increase their output as they level up. It wasn't really new buildings as part of level up process.

But as for buildings and level ups in general I original didn't mention them cause I started the thread just to get something more added that was "simple" to get the ball rolling. I figure the unique level up options tied to what buildings a city has would be a bit more difficult to get through. I would honestly like to see a city level up setup more like the Feat choices in many RPGs. Curtain bonus would be unlocked by the resources they have access to, buildings in the city, current level, and so on.

So at level 1 you would have a couple bonuses to choose from. Then at level 2 you'd have even more including the level 1 bonus you didn't pick. The same at level 3 and so on. That way if you really like the level 1-2 bonuses you might take 5 of those when you level up your city to 5.

Here's some other ideas for level up tied to buildings/resources.

• Traveling Merchant - Requires Merchant and gives gildar bonus in addition to food to any trade routes coming from city.
• Miner's Union - Requires Miner's Guild and gives +% to Metal Production
• Farm's Union - Requires Farmer's Guild and gives +% to Food Production
• Organized Farming - Requires Farm, Irrigation, and Granary and gives +% food production
• Thriving Economy - Requires Merchant, Market Place, and Trade Center and gives +% to Gildar Production
• Experienced Armored Smiths - Requires Forge and gives +1 Def to units that have full armor (helm, chest, and leg pieces)
• Experienced Weapon Smiths - Requires Forge and gives +1 Atk to units that 1HD weapon and +2 Atk to 2HD weapons
• Arcane Affinity - Requires 2 Arcane labs and gives +1 mana regen to any units in city
• Book Worm - Requires 2 Lost Libraries and any Champion with the trait that gives +1 Tech in the city gives a +10% research bonus to city
• Gold Rush - Requires 2 Gold mines and gives +5 Prestige to city but -10% Gildar production from crime
• Welfare State - Requires 2 Refugee Camps and gives +10% to house but cost -5% Gildar to support the refugee influx.

These are just some of the ideas. Obvious the bonuses would need to go through balancing checking and what level they are would also depend on the buildings that they require such as Thriving Economy requires trade center so it would have to be a level 5 option since that's when you can build trade center and you'd have to pick after you got to level 5 and built the trade center which is another reason to put off the choice.

The multiple resource buildings needed though is a great way to encourage players to build fewer cities the encase more resources as they only way to get them would be to get multiple resources of the same type in one city. I only gave example of requiring 2 but it could also have 3 building requirement as I've had 3 gold mines in a single city before.

As for the + bonuses to units trained in the city I'm not sure the current system supports it. However since we have seen champoins with unique abilities it's likely to assume that you could possible give those unique abilites to normal troops. And then possible make one that simply gives the flat bonus much in the same way a lot of Civ 4 mods would do interesting things to units in the same way. The more the other areas of the game get fleshed out to have more variety and be more interesting the easier it becomes to think of city level up options.

This system also makes the upgrades feel more like they are tied to the unique features of your city rather then simply flat choice that everyone gets. Since not all cities will be the same a lot of times the level up choices between two of your cities will be very different and that is the way it should be since it makes them feel even more unique.

how about turn city level up bonus to city trait and just have a bunch more.  like each time it levels up you get to choose another trait to add to the city.

example: 

level one you choose wealthy which gives a 10 % gildar bonus.

level two you might choose high alert which gives a bonus to defense

level three you choose Merchant city which gives you another 10 % gildar bonus, but you can choose this only because you already chose wealthy, its the next level of wealthy.

and so on till level 5.  have a large pool of abilities and have them have 5 levels so that you could have gildar bonuses all the way to level 5 for 50 % if you want.

All your really doing is changing the name. But yea the level up bonus should be are more like traits, feats, or whatever you want to call them from a typical RPG.

Honestly I would like to get away from the generic bland bonuses like wealthy, and merchant city, which any city can simply pick. I do like the idea of them requiring previous trait choices. Much in the way RPGs have feat lines which you need to pick in progression to get better and better at a specialized area.

The more I think about the more I like the idea of having the trait choices tied buildings as it not only contributes to the unique feel of a city but also helps focus inexperienced players. Like right now you can pick Arcane or Tech bonus in cities that have none of those Libraries and never will have them after it fully expands. It's a waste to get those bonuses for that city since the base building produces so little.

In general I imagine the traits across the 5 levels to play out like this.

• Level 1 - Very Generic - Won't really have any pre-reqs.
• Level 2 - More specific - Most require 1 building type or Level 1 Trait
• Level 3 - Fairly Focused - Require 1-2 building types or 1-2 Traits (Or combination)
• Level 4 - Pretty Specialized - Requires a combination of 2-3 Buildings and traits
• Level 5 - Extremely Specialized - Requires at least 3 or more buildings and traits.

So while your leveling up you could choose to focus or spread it out a bit more. You'll also notice I included a level 1 while the game only gives you 4 level ups since you don't get one for level 1. This is because I think cities should start on the road to being unique the moment they set down. Also it gives a great source for pre-reqs at the later levels.

In my previous post most of those suggestions would fall under level 3 or higher which was intentional cause I wanted to show some of the more interesting ones.

City building and planning needs more development in general, so I agree with this. All in all, cities should be something very delicate to create, and they shouldn't be spammable like they are right now. Also, lvl 1 cities should be almost useless, at this point, they are WAY too useful, since you can build studies, arcane studies, workshops AND markets on them. And pioneers take almost no money or time to make so...

I'd like to be able to examine the city in question when I get the option for whatever bonus (+20 essence, +30 gold, etc).  I lose track of which city is specializing/sort of specializing in what, and when the menu appears you can't move the map around to see what's there.

I suppose I could name my cities 'gold town' 'arcane town' etc, but that kinda spoils the flavor of the game...

Yea I know what you mean. I use to try and do that but even on small maps you get some many cities the names start to overlap. So I've just been trying out adding G/T/A in front of the name depending on which Level Up I plan to choose since in most cases it's obvious from the start. Minus the few times a good resource appears next to it after the adventure tech tree.