Is there a way to increase the “can’t build city” radius from 5 to 10? (to decrease city spam)

I'd rather see it fixed economically. the 5 tile limit already makes it hard enough to expand existing cities. a 10 tile limit would result in fewer cities, but they still wouldn't have room to expand.

imo make any lvl 1 cities past your capital have a higher upkeep that lessons with each level. that would lead to fewer, more prosperous cities i think.

edit: sorry i forgot i was on the mods forum, not general discussion. this isn;t a mod I'd be interested in, but dont let me discourage you from trying!

Apparently, the radius is hardcoded (for now).

I'd like it inverted instead. So you could only build cities close to each other. 

Either way, I was just trying to alleviate the city spam headache.  I figured it was hard-coded since I couldn't find any file on it.

Really though, I'm hoping the devs do come up with some solution.  I just wrapped up my 4th game where my powerful stack rolled through around 8-9 near-empty enemy cities.  The enemy had no real standing army, and it gets tedious rolling through so many cities just to "finish" the game.

The city spam is what I really don't like in this kind of games. I even made some Civ4 "modmods" to reduce it and force the player to found cities gradually and leave some wilderness areas in the early stages of the game (Civ4 fixes this issue economically using the city upkeep costs, but it wasn't enough for me and I created some extra restrictions).

Not only the minimum distance should be increased, but also there should be some extra costs related to having a large number of cities (of course you should be able to have more cities on larger maps than on smaller ones). Maybe there should be a city upkeep cost that increases with every city you build or conquer (like in Civ4), or something different, like a limit to the number of cities that depends on technology, which gives a big penatly for having too many cities, which forces you to raze them or release minor factions.

It would make it impossible to colonize a remote island, for example.

While I agree that some anti-spamming is needed, I think part of it is just realizing that you -don't- need to spam at all to get the most benefit. Unlike Civ, cities in elemental readily and easily increase their influence area. Likewise, cities in Elemental can link resources from much further away than in Civ.

A level 2 can generate an influence bubble of a 4 tile radius; as the link radius is 5 tiles, a level 2 can reach any resource within that zone. Add in a town hall and your link radius goes much further (it generates its own bubble of influence among other things). A level 2 can cover a quarter of one of the large canvas squares while a level 3 can cover one of those squares in either direction.

Really, unless resources are further apart than 8 tiles, you can go away with 1 city in the location at a minimal cost (1 food). The only time spamming would be useful is if you're short on food to level cities up. Or you're rushing land and/or want to encircle a resource. Otherwise, it's just as well to allow a city to grow into resources. Especially for things like crystal or a second old growth forest, these are late game resources or don't get any major benefit from growing cities immediately so there's no reason to rush to grab them versus letting the city grow over it down the road. 

Honestly I have to say it's probably better to have the tile limit at 5, if you set it any higher they'll just fan out their cities more, meaning even less room to build and more cities in places they really shouldn't be (that's always annoyed me about games like this, got an empire going with fairly well consolidated borders and BAM a pioneer decides to start a new city right in the middle of your area).

I'd really like to see a mod to buy and sell cities in the Diplomacy window. Best way to stop city spamming is probably make it costly somehow, like have an increasing cost in gold and materials to build each city.

In modern iterations of the Civ games, the "other player sneaks a town builder through and builds right in the middle of your kingdom" issue gets stymied pretty reliably by the culture system (their city will just be swallowed by your influence, and then you can destroy it).  In Elemental I've gotten around the issue by rabidly seeking choke points and just never signing non-aggression pacts with anyone.  It would be nice to be able to "influence out" someone creeping up on your borders, rather than the only option being to tolerate it, or declare war and wipe them out.

Another strategy I've found useful to controlling adversary expansion is aggressive use of the 5-tile limit and town halls.  Most of my cities are a long line of small buildings with a town center at one end and a town hall at the other.  Always aiming your "you can't build here, nyah nyah" line at conspicuous empty spaces helps to keep the varmints out.  It looks kind of silly (none of my cities would be easy to defend in the real world, snaking all over the place), but it's relatively effective.

i already asked the question, look at the last post:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/393977

edit: i modded things a bit and the AI seems to spam less but with broken improvements, i wouldn't advise it unless you want broken things too.

"""I'd really like to see a mod to buy and sell cities in the Diplomacy window. Best way to stop city spamming is probably make it costly somehow, like have an increasing cost in gold and materials to build each city."""

devs said AI doesn't handle this too well. I have a cost of 100 for each new city and it seems fine.

Well I hope you find it because I would like to do the opposite. I like City spamming so to be able to have the option to increase or decrease would be great. I just wish this would have been in the Game Options.

I think a method would be to implement a system where the more cities you build the higher a "risk of revolution" you have. 

What I mean by this is cities start leaving your empire/kingdom if this "risk" rating gets too high, just like your borders expand if you have high influence.  The break-aways would become new independents (or if captured could revert to original kingdom/empire)

Really the AI needs to build cities more intelligently, building fewer cities in a more centralized location and holding them until borders get more consolidated before creating another.

I would prefer to see the upkeep costs increase the further hub cities are from your main city.  This would mimic increased economic costs to maintain far reaching cities as well as corruption.  Buildings could be modded in (courthouse, jailhouse, executioner, etc.) to reduce this upkeep.