City Spam - A different idea

from Elemental Forums

I was reading the posts and it seems that an awful lot of the tweaks and rebalances on the strategic side of the game revolve around the dev trying to convince people no to spam cities - merchants take food so you don't spam cities for gold etc etc. This causes annoyance due to the fact that by and large most maps are random and you can't be garunteed enough of one resource to justify the 'conversion' buildings Frogboy has mentioned unless you make one for every combination (food -> mat, gold -> mat, mat -> iron etc.) which is just cumbersome. I recently had a game short on material if you can beleive it - crystal cramming my warehouses but material was literally more precious than gold.

That said, I have a different idea on how to dissuade people from spamming.

In GalCivII mining ship could venture out and secure asteroids and link them back home for a production bonus so I have taken inspiration from that and put together this system-

Create a new class of unit - settler - this one founds new cities and its cost increases each time you build one (differences increase as you go up)

Change the function of the pioneer - it founds an outpost - a sort of unimprovable city hub, can't build, can't train and doesn't produce an influence area, the only thing it does let you do is build improvement on any resource in the 8 surrounding tiles - that's it. It links itself to the nearest city by a trail (not a road) and any enemy unit standing on the trail cuts off that outpost. This is so that you don't claim resources on the other side of the planet - chances are someone will stand on the trail somewhere. Trails vanish with the outpost if it is destroyed. If an outpost come under an influence border it automatically is dismantled and it's resources return to a wild state - unless of course it's the owners influence, in which case the outpost will become redundant as the resources will switch to directly supply the city it's in range of, so it's up to the player to dismantle the outpost when it is useless

I think this will work as it will mean that your primary use for cities will be for territory (influence) and you can place them in strategically useful positions and use pioneers to link resources that will later join to the city when it has a big enough influence. This mean that if theres a gold deposit and a library to the south and a temple to the north but i really want to plug a mountain pass in the middle with a city for security, i don't have to place three cities - I can plug the hole and link up the resources until it is large enough to encompass the whole lot.

There we go - I now await the onrush of people telling me I am being daft.

6,798 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I recently had a game short on material
End of quote

Seriously, how?  Early on I can believe it, but in the long-run I just don't see how this is possible.

 

I don't think a scaling "settler" cost will solve the problem.  This probably will have no effect on tiny maps, while crippling your expansion on larger ones.  This is also pretty much a death sentence to anyone who loses a city early on, something that's already a pretty nasty event.  It also further advantages a conqueror who captures rival territory, since every city captured is a city that didn't require on how of his own settlers.

 

I do however like the idea of different kinds of settlements fulfilling different roles.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

"pretty much a death sentence to anyone who loses a city early on"

sorry I should have explained that a bit better - rather than it just increasing I meant it would be a  function of the total number of cities and settler you had at the time - my apologies for thinking things in my head and not writing them down. As to smaller maps - why not have different scalers for different sized maps?

EDIT: the material thing was more early on - I don't know what happened, no-one on the map (tiny map btw) had significant amounts of material for ages - it actually made for an interesting game.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

The scaling is perhaps better to be connected to maintainence than construction

Training pioneer #1 and pioneer #9 is much the same - same gear, etc.  

But if maintaining units/cities increases, then that works better to spread out city spam.

Now losing a city isn't a killer on these counts.

HOWEVER, I do like the outpost idea - a basic 1 square ring, very limited range of improvements  (walls, tower, etc), and limited range of training options. 

Perhaps maintaining an outpost within an enemy Area of Influence is a hostile action - like a squad of troops are just squatting by resources that they have no legitimate claim to -- so placing outposts on distance resources may gave short term benefit but not by long-term once everyone spreads out or someone moves in and actually founds a city as a proper claim! 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm really liking the "outpost" idea more and more.  They wouldn't need to be devoid of economic potential, and probably could have all of the same upgrades available to level 1 cities.  However, they'd be highly limited in how big they could grow, and their influence would never expand.  We'd probably have the same number of settlements as we do now (perhaps even a few more), but the vast majority would be small outposts.  Because outposts would have very tiny influence areas, this would leave the large swaths of wilderness necessary for a fantasy setting.

The difficulty is in how to implement it, which isn't obvious at all. 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I can not see it is too problematic.

There are 2 ideas here - outposts to supplement cities, and to substitute for cities.  Subtley different.

I would see an outpost is there to lay claim to resources.  It's not a fortress by design, nor a growing-city.  So let it have access to upgrades appropriate to the task (e.g. materials, but not arcane research) but also to it's own defence.

So it would need some duplicate coding to cities, but with limitations built in.  Possibly a size of '1' limitation - so no outpost leapfroging.

Let the AI react to them in a similar way to cities - if they are vulnerable then raze them, etc.

Some AI coding around when it would uses pioneers, and when it would want to make an outpost.  Suggestion would be around valuing locations - if a location has a value of up to X then it's an outpost, if it's over X then make a pioneer (e.g. similar to human reasoning?).

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I do not see how this addresses the spamming of cities. Spamming cities is building the in locations with no resources or strategic value. Outposts would just let those that build a few big cities already control more resources with fewer cities.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Having outposts instead of cities by itself does not "fix" spamming   (read above)

However, rather than 10 cities, it could be 3 cities and 7 outposts... with outposts being a lesser version, less permanent, etc.

Combine that with a scaling cost. (e.g. reply 3). 

Maybe outposts are cheaper to make, but harder to maintain.  Early spammers can get out fast, but then their economy half-collapses, and their people starve as they are shipping it around the region.