Making a city cost 1 food isn't going to stop city spamming. First of all, there's the problem of the capital city, which will starve as soon as you found it. Secondly, the way caravans work right now, making a city and sending a caravan to your highest food city will more than make up the 1 lost food. You'll usually gain 2-3 even, even more as you expand further outwards. Essentially, if you make cities use more food, people will have to build even more cities and use those caravans to make up the new food cost. Thus, as long as caravan produces food, it will negate any attempt to limit city building through food.

I'll also add that increasing the ZOC doesn't do much to help, all it does is allow some players who don't like to spam cities to play that way. It doesn't change the fact that you can still build little cities inside your ZOC to make 1 gildar, tech, arcane, mat, and a couple of food per turn. In fact, it makes it even easier as you won't have to protect those resource outpost since it'll most likely be covered by a large city's ZOC. You also have to remember the map size problems as well. If you make the ZOC too big or require them to be too far apart (as some have suggested), then you essentially disable city building on smaller maps. Not exactly an ideal solution IMO.

The way to address this isn't to put a limit on anything, but rather to give more incentives to building up your city. This will give players a choice on how they want to play. The easiest way is to allow more of the basic buildings to be build as the city levels. Something like (city level - 1) gildar/tech/arcane/mat building per city. So a level 2 city can build 1, a level 3 city can build 2, a level 4 city can build 3, etc... and more importantly, none at your spam outposts.

As for city specialization, one of the thing that I've been asking for (mod ability wise) is the ability to have cities become certain types when you choose a certain level up option. So if you choose the Gildar bonus, the city will become a Commercial City, if you chose Tech, it will become a Scholar City, etc... after you choose it once, the rest of the bonus is automatic (since you usually choose the same bonus for max efficiency anyways, might as well reduce the micro management). Then, you can have things like the market requiring a lv2 Commercial City, and higher level markets for higher level Commercial cities (or just more of them). This kind of system not only uses the city level to force each city to be different (and thus giving a role for all types of cities), it also gives incentives to focus on leveling up your cities instead of just spamming a bunch everywhere.

Excellent post, I agree entirely.  

That sounds like a pretty good idea.  You're definitely thinking in the right direction, but I'm not sure if it's the best.  I don't know if I like to be pigeonholed into building a certain amount of buildings per city level.  It seems to take a way too much of my freedom since I may actually want to build a nice market at one of my spam cities if it is beneficial.

I am still most fond of the idea of having an upkeep cost on your improvements in the same way that Civilization does it.  This way, you'll be picking and choosing which city is worth spending your hard earned gold and material on.  If you have too many improvements, you'll go into the negative in the same way as having too many units, and you'll be forced to demolish some.

The nice thing is that the upkeep system is already in place for your individual units.  This system could be very easily applied to improvements and would kill many stones with one bird.

So the biggest reasons I see are:

1. It looks bad / stupid

2. I don't like the strategy OR it lacks strategy  (as one poster put, similar to zerg...which everyone criticizes so much so that the name lives in infamy)

I was thinking of a few options. Make level 1-2 cities cost money, level 3 cities break even, and level 4-5 profitable (gold production based on population and taxes). If balanced, a player could only support a number of cities based on economy. Could also add maintenance for buildings (this would tend to limit every city building everybuilding...it could be done but would make you weaker in the long run).  The big issue is that making cities would reduce available gold, which reduces your ability to wage war and defend.  So I can see why Stardock tried to pick something outside of gold (such as food) as a city regulator.  Maybe food needs to be tweeked? 

Maybe the cost of cities/levels in food could be added to a starting game screen customizing city growth limits in each game?

Good post overall, but I disagree with you about increasing influence generated by cities. The whole reason I like this idea is precisely because it does allow choice: players who don't want to spam cities no longer need to, players who do want to spam cities still can. Right now I have no choice, I have to spam level 1 cities to fill in the gaps between my big cities that actually have resource nodes. I do not want to be forced to do this. But I have no issues if any other players want to spend the time spamming level 1 cities wherever they feel like. Expanding the influence generated by cities is a win-win in the short term because it will accommodate both styles of play and then the devs can go onto longer term balance and game mechanic issues that will take longer to implement.

I also find it a little inconsistent that you don't like the increased influence idea because it still allows the player to make a choice, while in your very next paragraph you recommend more incentives to building cities upwards because it allows more player choice. This is true, and its a good idea that I'd also like to see implemented in some form, but these are separate issues and they are by no means incompatible with each other.

How about a system where overall population growth is not tied to number of cities and planting more cities actually hurt the growth of your core cities?  Instead, you'd have an empire-wide fame value that would determine the total number of citizens you gain in any given turn, and they'd be divided up amongst your various cities.  Fame would be gained through 5 means: civics, warfare, magic, adventure, and diplomacy.  City-level prestige buildings would allow you to control which of your cities received a larger chunk of the incoming population.  If a city would normally go up a population point, but its current housing level did not permit the growth, the population would be lost.

In this system, building a bunch of outposts would hamper your ability to have large cities at the same time.  If you tie increased productive capacity to larger cities (such as suggested by Kalin above) you might create an interesting system full of advatages and disadvantages to building additional settlements.

But it isn't a choice.  Spamming is strictly better for your economy right now.  Increased influence isn't going to change that.

The problem with the increased Zone of Control idea is that there is still nothing stopping players from gaining an unfair advantage by spamming cities within their own ZoC.  So what...they may lose the ability to build cities at each resource node, but they will still be gaining the extra economy benefit from each new settlement regardless.  This does very little from stopping someone from spamming to gain an advantage within or without your ZoC.

The heart of the issue lies with the improvements within cities, not the cities themselves.  The improvements must be limited in some way to kill incentive for spamming a million cities.  If there is no economical or strategic reason for building a new city, they will not build it.

It's a possibility however you run into the un-intuitive notion that population growth is independent of population. That is, if I have 20 people in one city, I grow faster than 10 people in two cities. It also does not seem to necessarily limit spamming as there still isn't a major benefit to big cities. As well, we also don't want to hurt big empires just because they're big; if, despite all penalties and setbacks, a player can still manage a large empire into productivity, they should be rewarded, if only by the fact that they can produce more faster.

I think it boils down to the fact that level 1 cities cost next to nothing and yet can generate a disproportionate amount of resources. I don't think it's the city spamming itself that is the problem especially since how much 'spam' is depends heavily on map size. On a small map, getting to 8 cities might be huge. On a large map, 8 cities might be small.

For the cost of a pioneer, you can generate +1 of the major resources (gildar, material, tech, and arcane). I think this is the major issue with city spamming. I think it's more the strategy of overly aggressive expansionism that's the issue. There's no real investment in getting a city to productivity and what drawbacks there are can be overcome easily. In effect, any city you place can only help - a city can't ever be in a position where it must be supported by other cities. A level 1 city is already self-sufficient. Making it harder (or longer) for a city to get to that self-sufficient stage would help limit aggressive expansion, perhaps.

So the problem is solved if Caravans stop magically creating food out of thin air? That's great. Fix it. As is Caravaneers are more powerful mages than sovereigns.

Also, first city gets 1 free food.

Problem solved.

No, it's really not better for your economy, or only better over the extremely long term.

How much gold and other resources does it take to build all those one-resource-per-turn buildings? And then some people are building the really expensive multiplier buildings to multiply that 1 resource per turn (which I think is nuts, btw)? Have you bothered to do the math on how many turns it takes for these spam cities to pay you back all these resources and start turning a profit? It takes a really long time (at least for gold, for spell research you're effectively converting gold and materials to research at a horrible exchange rate - only really worth it if you can't find any libraries and temples).

In the same time it takes you to build and develop a half dozen spam cities, I can pump out some squads and some fire giants and go take a half dozen gold mines and other resource nodes from the AI. So you tell me, who's economy is further ahead at that point? The only use for spam cities is to spread influence to keep the wandering monster away from your main travel routes so you don't need as much defenses in your core areas, freeing up even more troops to go take the resource nodes you need from the AI, or farm gold from monsters in the wilderness.

Trying to use spam cities to boost your economy is a waste of time in my opinion, or in other words it has a high opportunity cost of resources that could have been put to better use elsewhere. The only exception in my opinion is when you get a truly horrible start and can't find and take the resource nodes you need. In that case, sure you might as well city spam your way outwards until you start running into resource nodes and city sites that are actually worthwhile. Once you have more resources than you need for troops, sure you might as well build more buildings in your level 1 cities, but it shouldn't be a priority if there are more useful things to buy with those resources instead.

This game is really all about capture-that-resource-node-and-multiply-the-hell-out-of-it, if you're not constantly getting more nodes your economy will fall behind (or it would if they AI could put up a half-decent fight). I really wish the game's economy was more complex than this, but currently it's really not - it's all about those resource nodes.

Plus I believe I already mentioned that spamming level 1 cities all over the place is boring and tedius micro-management!

In the game as it exists today, population growth is independent of population.  Instead, it's dependent solely on number of cities and prestige buildings (which itself is dependent on number of cities).  My proposal would be twofold, 1) tie population growth to something other than the number of pioneers you've managed to produce and 2) tie resource generation to population.  More than likely, though, because my suggestion relies on a new game concept (fame), it is beyond the scope of a thread like this.

I agree with the remainder of your post.  A new city has to have a real drawback and should not, except for rare circumstances, be completely self-sufficient from the word go.  At the root of it, a new city has to have an overall negative impact on your empire as a whole for some meaningful period of time.  There needs to be a time when it is coming up to speed, consuming resources and not paying anything back.  At some point, after sufficient investment, it may start being a net boon to the empire, but that should depend upon properly placement of the city.

If someone is building things in the spam cities that they dont need, they're doing it wrong.  They exist to turn resources you have a surplus (let's say gildar) into resources you lack (tech research).  If I'm swimming in materials, I'm not going to build labor pits.  If your economy is perfectly balanced then they are of no effect.  If your economy contains imbalances and shortages, they are of great effect.

EDIT: I'll also add that the importance of city spam increases on higher world difficulties as resource nodes are fewer and farther between.  On ridiculous world difficulty, I often have to take my first library by force.

Agreed, that's what I'm trying to say too. Except I'm taking the argument one step further to argue that they are only of great effect up until the time you are able to go conquer or found new cities with the missing resource nodes you need. After that my only use for them is to fill in influence gaps to keep the monsters out of areas I don't want them.

Edit: I'm playing on large normal difficulty maps with 9 ridiculous difficulty AIs.

I think our opinions are pretty much in line.  I'm not saying spamming is super overpowered.  I am saying that if I have an idle unit queue I'm better off building a pioneer to plop down in some available space so that I have options down the road.  There is no downside, no choice, and that's a problem.  What you decide to build in that spammed city is interesting, to a point, and has the potential for mistakes.

I can see the logic in that if you really have nothing more pressing to be spending those resources on. I don't do it because I couldn't be bothered with even more micro-management for marginal future gains, but you're right that there's no real downside to it.

I like Sythion's solution(s).  A small straightforward change or two is a better than a big rework, and it would have the added benefit of being thematic for a 'fallen world'.

The only problem is that it makes players ability to develop their empire far more dependent on getting food resources than it is now.

Slightly unrelated suggestion:

Only your capital city starts with the magically 'purified' land, that grants food bonuses. (This would be a way for a capital to get food bonuses.)  Purifying more land requires that city be like level 2 or 3 and an expenditure of mana. 

QFT

Strategy games are about interesting decisions. If one option is ALWAYS the best option then there are no meaningful decisions to be made. Much of Elemental is too much that way at present.

In my opinion Civ 4 is actually the best game in recent time at achieving this balance. Because of how everything is so well interlinked and counter-balanced there is virtually always a trade-off in every big decision, whether it be to settle another city, change civics, pick tech to research, adopt religion, what to build next, which wonders to go after, etc. And because everything is interlinked your resources are in competition and you can't do everything so you have to make decisions.

You might not like Civ 4 but I think it is hard to dispute that the mechanics are pretty smooth and moderately tautly balanced.

I don't think Elemental can achieve the same level of polished gameplay mechanics as Civ 4 (it is after the 4th version of Civ, maybe Elemental 2 could) but it could get close enough that the imbalance and meaningless choices no longer get in the way of enjoying the game.

Just wanted to say we are reading this thread closely. Very interesting stuff.

The problem with making every city cost food by default and taking out caravan bonuses is that food becomes -incredibly- valuable and the player is encouraged to rush pioneers to grab food resources in the early game.  It means that empires become incredibly small and whoever grabs those first food resources has a massive expansion advantage. It also still does not encourage any sort of city specialization or give any benefit to having large cities; it just makes it a lot harder to get. It also does not reward the skillful player who can set up efficient cities and economies though smart expansion.

1 Food resource right now equals 4 level 2 cities, or 2 level 3 cities or 1 level 4. If every city cost 1 food to begin, 1 Food resource (the one in your capital) would mean 4 level 1 cities, 2 level 2 cities, or 1 level 3, And that's it. If you don't find any additional food, you're stuck with 5 cities at best. You would be best served in this situation by hyper-aggressive expansion to claim food resources (no matter how far away they were) or pumping cheap military units to grab capitals early game. Once you get food, you can then get a huge resource advantage. If you don't get food... you're screwed because you won't be able to expand or improve significantly. If you don't expand early, more than likely, the other players will have grabbed food resources by mid-game. And again, you're screwed.

I apologize if I come off as "against" the ZOC idea, I just don't think it addresses any of the problems. To be honest, right now I have no problem building lv4+ cities and having rather massive ZOC, easily claiming every nook and cranny of the map except a small patch I intentionally leave open to hunt (admittedly I play Kingdom with a royalty sovereign). Even then, I still use small outposts in between my large cities to generate the most important resource in the game. No, it's not Gildar, my main city with a bazillion Gildar bonus, with several gold mines, and palace covers my Gildar needs easily. If not, I can always stab some random monsters for extra cash, the dozen extra Gildar a turn is almost pointless. Arcane is also fairly pointless after a certain point (depending on what you're after), which usually happens really fast (for me, level 3 with blizzard and deflect). Mat is usually something I build, because I tend to use mats a lot (catapults) and I can easily trade any spare to the AI for something useful. Tech, on the other hand, is EXTREMELY important. Got Elite Lord Hammer Company First? Congratulations, you won. As a result, I end up with a bunch of small outposts with studies/workshops sending caravan to my food city, allowing me to build more level 4+ cities. Right now this strategy is just so out of balance that in my mind, it is really not a "choice". You can certain "choose" to play that way if you like, but that's more like taking a handicap. IMO, a real choice is when you get to pick between two options that have similar value, which is what I tried to do by giving more incentive to develop and at the same time specialize the cities.

Well, efficient cities naturally synergize with limited food... :^)

But I agree. One way to limit this is to limit players ability to produce food in the early game, like with the essence purification mechanic I was talking about. IE: Flat food bonus for purification + unpurified cities have a food production penalty.  I'm certain theres other ways to handle it.

For Elemental to be a believable post-apocalyptic fantasy world, like Road Warrior with spells, food has to be a limiting resource, and cities cost food.

Here's a simple fix to make someone think twice about city spamming: have a ransack option, where if an enemy takes over a city they can steal some supplies.  This would benefit a few well placed and well-defended cities over many small poorly defended ones.

I really dont like having a limit on cities other than rescource based restrictions, like if you dont have the food you cant grow the city.(If you have the rescources why cant you build as much as you want?) Also if your empire is wealthy why not have a bunch of cities to show off your wealth, I personally love building lots of cities then leveling them up to level fours and fives. At the very least have the city limiter as an option for those who dont like "city spam"

Also I have seen times where an enemy empire lost a major food producing city, and then several remaining cities get a fish skeletion and something else over the city and the population crashes so thats another factor, no one likes seeing their people starving...

And of course if you capture an enemy city thats been spammed and poorly defended you should have the option of looting rescources or a tech that they had researched.(The amount of loot and techs you can take should also depending on city level.)

Ahh but that's because you're adding in other fixes that increasing the ZoC automatically fixes. Yes, players "Could" build another city within their ZoC, but why bother if what you want is already yours? The problem is Too Many Cities. The only reason the AI (and players) spams so many cities is to grab up resources on the map. Increasing the ZoC spread fixes that with a minimal amount of effort.

My problems aren't with getting Gildar from my cities or anything like that. It's the very simple fact that there Are Too Many Cities, period. Multiple fixes "could" be used, which is true and in the long run probably what's needed. In the short term, they simply need to stop the AI and players from needing to build so many cities to grab up resources that are four tiles away. The playing, having human intelligence, will wait until the ZoC spreads and then build on the new resource. The AI, not having this intellect, Won't, and will simply build a city and then build another city four tiles away, which looks incredibly bad/stupid.

Increase ZoC, increase minimum distance that cities have to be away from each other, then the AI won't spam cities every couple steps. Problem solved...for now.

Of course a lot of the other ideas from this thread should be incorporated as well, like building maintenance costs and some of the other ideas others have had here. Right now though the Devs have a LOT to do to fix things and we need a fast and easy fix. Devs like implementing Easy Fixes. Seen this first hand.

Next, later on at least, the economy needs to be retooled to start working with "Real" numbers instead of 1 and 2 and small numbers. Let's face it, they used small umbers because they are easy to balance, not because they are fun and interesting and make for complex game-play, which they don't.

The number two best fixes out of this whole thread are simple, which I'll state again:

Increase The Spread of ZoC

Increase the Minimum Distance that cities must be away from each other to something like 10 or 15 tiles.

If a third idea is really needed, then Take Away the ability to build another city within the players ZoC, though that may present problems later, I can't think of any off the top of my head at the moment though I'm sure they're there. Still, the number one reason everyone builds so many cities is to get resources on the map. If these resources are already within the factions ZoC, they'll simply build on the resource and won't build another city. Problem solved

Note: Maybe it's because I Always play with my custom Empire faction, but I don't ever see or build a palace, just like I don't ever see or use the Teleport spell. Maybe the Kingdom factions have these, but as a Empire player I don't, so they've been non-issues for me.

Edit: Kalin: I think the reason you're against the ZoC thing is because of your play-style you show in your post here. You like to Spam out cities so you can build more research structures. The problem with that is it makes the maps look like sh!t. Maybe you enjoy that, but most of us don't. Your main issue seems to be you need more research structure or should be looking to add more research points to get the tech you want. Adding more cities isn't the answer to this. Adding more research structures or re-balancing how much research income you get from those structures is the answer you're looking for and why you seem to be "against" the ZoC increase. Simple fact is, everyone (Ai included) builds more cities to get resources off the map, which someone else stated earlier in the thread.

I'm not sure what you mean Raven, I was talking about the base game, with a royal sovereign and a kingdom faction using pubs and inn, getting to level 4 isn't hard at all (the palace and great theater makes getting at least 2 level 5 cities very easy). It's true that I've been trying various mods to see if it helps, but I wasn't referencing those tests at all.

As mentioned earlier, the reason I end up building outposts inside my ZOC is mainly to build a study to beat the competition at research. I also use it to get more mats (which can be hard to get in large amounts), and use the food caravan to feed those lv4+ cities. It has nothing to do with grabbing resources. In fact, most of them are usually sitting in some random corner, some are built on "terraformed island" in the middle of the sea, lol.

I agree completely though, in the end, there are waaaay too many cities, and not only does it look silly, the empire tree becomes practically useless.

Having said that, I still think making min distance larger is a bad idea. Even if you vary it base on map size (min 10-15 tiles on a small map = no other cities), there are times when you want a city defending passes that will be inside that amount. There's nothing wrong with these, and should be allowed.

Edit to respond to Raven's Edit (lol): It's not about how much I'm producing, or how it's balanced, it's about producing more than your opponent. Research drives the game, and more is always better, and having tiny outposts that has no downside give me research is a no brainer.