might i add that i am also almost never held back by the citizen requirements; gold is almost always more of a factor. there are towns i have maxed out, but that's only because i have a desire to spread my production across my towns; as a faction i always have more space than i need citizen wise.

that's not to say i want players to be more limited; i'm still limited by population in that i need want more pop so i can get more taxes to fund more buildings and i find the pacing just about right there. the tax per population was justwhat the game needed (though i find it odd that my principal source of income is listed under "other").

suggestions: in the same way that hovels appear to being upgraded automatically to shanties as i level up, upgrade my materials/research production buildings (both existing and available) when i level up too (with the same maint cost ideally). that way you give people an additional incentive to reach levels, AND you reduce how many i have to build in the later game. if it was up to me i'd use the % bonus buildings for this and move all the % bonuses to the level up bonuses instead. this would give much more purpose to the level up idea (and meaning; currently i don't see the point in level up bonuses because everything they do could be better handled by buildings)

suggestions: reduce or remove gold maint from some buildings. i really don't see why i need to pay to maintain a wall. for me the cost in that should come from the research and construction itself. same goes for unique wonders and the such like. i should only have to pay to maintain buildings that produce stuff like research, materials, training facilities etc. instead maybe add citizen requirements for some of the buildings that don't have them now, or increase requirements for those that do.

suggestion: remove the requirement to build an actual building when you build a city wall. what does this achieve other than get people nearer to the tile limit?

i was told there was some bug at the moment that stopped your outposts getting their base non housing population. this should not be considered a bug but a feature. it makes perfect sense to me that a village with no housing can house no people. if it was up to me infact, i'd remove the food requirement for new outposts. buildings don't eat food, people do. people using pioneers to grab resources is not a problem; the problem is that all settlements are becoming developed. give an outpost with no people no influence, and just the ability to build on adjacent resources. if it enters another faction's sphere of influence the outpost is destroyed and they get the resource. give people an incentive to grow their towns, instead of a penalty for grabbing vital resources in the early game. that's how you beat city spam.

¡ A huevo!

means I agree or in more colloquial terms 'f-ing-a right/damn straight/word to your mutha!

  Great feedback in this thread and I appreciate everyone who took the time to add it.  Please check out the changelog for 1.09o so you can see the next step: https://forums.elementalgame.com/400468

  Brad's done amazing work with the AI and as you can tell from the list the team is working hard.

  Toby and I have been thinking a lot about the the population problem lately and trying to get prestige under control so that a single pop matters and players are making strategic decisions between making that archer, building that pioneer or creating a study.  As many have mentioned since population isn't much of a constraint (because it comes in so fast) players choose to do all three.

  It's a hard needle to thread because we also don't want the player sitting with nothing to do, especially in the early game.  Finding that balance is crucial and I will be interested to hear what people think after 1.09o on the balance between fielding armies, exploring the world, threats form other players, creating infrastructure and magic.

  Please keep the great feedback coming.

alright some good points here.

on the first matter: brad actually announced, spookily enough that this is exactly what is going to happen in the dev journal just hours after i made this post. spooky no? personally, i always preferred the idea of limiting the number of buildings by city level and having them produce proportionally to population because i thought it was simpler. so i agree there. it's always going to be tough to get people to use up 1000 citizens worth of buildings. what they seem to be doing now is limiting the number of buildings by pop and determining their production by level, which is not great, but still getting towards the combination of the two factors that is necesarry.

yes, walls take time and money to maintain, but so does housing and any other building you care to name. yet we do not charge maint for all these things. people like building walls and a lot of such things, and right now the gold factor is a much stronger limitation than the pop factor. so why not reduce some of that gold consumption and give people more fun stuff to play around with? choosing between food and heating is also a meaningful tactical choice, but it's not exactly fun to make. if nothing else a greater profligation of walls would really help slow down the steamroller conquest effect.

the tile limit is a hard coded maximum that is there as a last resort for performance reasons. if the game was working as intended, players would never have the opportunity to reach it, so i very much doubt that the footprint of walls is intended as a balancing measure.

I think a cap that cam be raised by controling crystals, and researching and building certain structure is a good idea, don't think it's vital but it would add to the game.