need to figure out what to do about terraform magic though.. i think i've destroyed a xtal tile by raising some land near it... yet a reload and after building the mine itself.. it stayed when i raised some other nearby land.

and not sure about forest thing as unlike other terrain.. you can't build up to them (well.. you can chop the surrounding forest i guess..)

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don't like the idea that having mines mean you can't have something else... because chances are you'll have all those resources spawned together in a clump!

besides.. i like my cities half square wide and a mile long i've linked my resources this way for quite a few cities.

Without thinking to much of any consequences I REALLY REALLY like this idea. Resources would seem more natural.

 2 thumbs up

Slightly off topic, but wouldn't it be more interesting if the landscape and resources shaped your civilization instead of just the cities? Examples:

* Civilizations from snowy areas have polar bear mounts with cold strike
* If you have an ore deposit within 5 squares from an Air shard, your weapons get a lightning strike bonus
* If you start near a large forest you get bonus movement in forests
* A volcano in your territory give kingdoms the ability to summon lava elementals, imps for empires

Each game would be different and the factions and their units would end up looking completely different as the game progresses.

City spamming would absolutely get WORSE, not better, with a system like what Op talks about. Then you'd need another arbitrary mechanic to prevent city-spam - like Civ5 had - that makes no sense and isn't fun to play with.

That would be the consequence and yes there is always way to counter things and if we could think of a better way to keep city spamming to a minimum then yes this would work very nicely... Where is einstein when you really need him.

On a side note cities are far to easy to build and I don't care for the classic "pioneer, settler" method of making a city. Maybe a stat in the sovereign controls city expansions? Charisma perphaps? Or maybe a technology?

City Spam Prevention

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Poor Research Example:

Tribe Chieftain (Starting tech 2 towns max)

Village Elder (4 towns max)

Town Council (6 towns max) 

City Mayor (8 towns max)

State Governor (10 towns max)

Nations Senate (Late game tech Unlimited Cities or 12?)

(So you ask what if you conquer a town? Well given a certain amount of time you're either going to have to let it crumble, sack it, pillage, raze, or research a higher goverment because right now you're to boneheaded to handle more than handful of towns. The city would litteraly start to crumble....or maybe the city becomes independent and turns into a minor faction. or both? Gotta make it feel real right? The strong survive and the weak perish)

just my 2 cents.

Could even use this to add a civics tech as Marks1381 mentions -- similar to the tech that reduces city maintenance costs).  As it is, Elemental could use a few more useful techs.

This would undo all progress 1.1 made in eliminating city spam and it took some time to get this far.  Do we really want to go through THAT again?

I think this idea fundamentally clashes with the spirit of a wilderness. I am not saying that the adventure techs are out of the question for spawing resources in better unison with the land, but if you want to drastically change the economy of the game, you need to think about making a mod.

Both those examples are extremely arbitrary.

Still, I see no reason to replace a system that works, and fits the lore, with one that requires additional direct changes, and doesn't fit the lore.

Realistically, you won't see this change come through, for these precise reasons.

The good news is, what has been asked for in this thread is insanely easy to mod into the game - in fact, there is already a "lumbermill" mod.

Realistically, it is how things are -- administering/coordinating/etc. large number of cities is more complex/costly.  Not including this is what's arbitrary.

The second part -- a tech to reduce said increasing costs -- is also realistic, as some forms of government are better at administering larger empires.

As the OP points out, cities have no relationship to terrain, other than special resources.  Cities in deserts are identical to cities in lush plains which are identical to cities with thick woods.  That's missing a good chance to add another layer to the game, which it sorely needs.

If this was done well it could in itself contribute to controlling city spam -- especially in a world supposedly decimated and destroyed, as lore dictates, because decimated/destroyed land would not easily support cities, making suitable city locations rare, as opposed to now where decoupling terrain from structures allows willy-nilly city placement.

I'm talking about the part where all life on the planet was nearly wiped out, and everything else left destroyed.

I agree with Heavenfall on this. Also I don't think kingdoms/empires are very red tape heavy. As king/queen you wield absolute power and when you tell them to do something and it gets done. Also you can light people on fire, that tends to cut down on any bureaucracy getting in your way.

If something is destroyed it doesn't mean you can't gather (scavenge) from it. As far as materials go anyways I mean all you need is a building that makes materials magically (workshop) so how is that any more lore than placing a material producing building next to a forest?

Hmm, IDEA *Light Bulb* So you know how the land starts out barren? You can't harvest from the Barren, hence a reason why your citys bring back life or in the empires case Creep? Which obviously they can harvest off their Creep because they're zerg, er undead.. ack, IMPERIALS 

Fun should be the ultimate determiner, not realism of course, and what is considered 'fun' is personal, so this discussion isn't about right/wrong, but likes/dislikes.

The game just seems to lack depth, especially for a 'strategy' game.  Plopping down cities with no regard to terrain, except for special resources, isn't very 'strategic'.  If there was a plethora of other strategy options to compensate, that would be one thing, but there isn't (spells -- just need a few; most techs aren't necessary; a small stack of troops/heroes suffices to curbstomp the AI; etc.).

Controlling city spam is very important, but I consider it a separate issue from what I'm talking about...which is simply that I want some strategy involved in where I place cities.  I want it to matter if it's a desert or forests, or plains, or grasslands.  Those things should affect a cities production.  Heavenfall, you said why replace a system that works, but I don't see the current system as working.  City spam is alive and well in 1.1, but it's even worse, because you spam cities for no reason.  The landscape is completely cosmetic.  There's no reason to place a city in any particular spot as opposed to any other particular spot.  I think there's a huge missed opportunity here, and it damages the empire building aspect of EWoM, which is a vital part of any TBS 4X game.

This

Anything that changes E:WoM into another generic 4x game is a bad thing in my opinion. There are a few things that make E:WoM different from the crowd and the resources idea is one of them. I don't really understand how city spamming to cover all areas except desert is any more strategic than putting cities near to actual resources.

If the bonuses were to be relative (10% more materials, 10% more metal) that would give a sense of using the environment, without having to pursue city-spamming in every corner as you'd still rely on the world resources to build your cities. So you'd find a world resource, and then you'd consider where on the map close to that resource to build your city. If there's an iron ore mine, there's a decent chance that those mountains next to it will have a small amount in them too.

Just avoid civ's "one building on every tile, at the very least" crap.

I'm with Heavenfall on this. I don't think a system like the OP would be good for the game, but this does show that city development needs something to make the environment more interactive. Having the strategic resources appear in their natural environment is a start.

I have all sorts of ideas that could work or suck. One is that you could build certain creature dwellings only on a specific tile. This could work for example so that by studying certain advanced techs, you can build one Troll Lair or Spiderling Camp per city in a forest tile that has at least four adjacent other forest tiles. This enables you to hire/train the relevant creatures to your army. Mountains and hills could have other such dwellings.

Anything to spice things up with the environment would do, really.

Believe me, I don't think that my little idea here is a perfect (or even great) solution, but I would like to see some kind of system implemented to make city placement somewhat strategic.  

Also, I don't mind a system put in place to control city spamming.  Increasing costs for cities would work and is perfectly fine for me.  It may be arbitrary, but I'd prefer an arbitrary city spamming control system to none at all.

Perhaps we're talking a bit apples&oranges.

Right now, for 'materials' (brick, wood, stone, mortar, hides, cloth, etc.) all we have to do is make workshops (setting aside special resources).  Doesn't matter if we're in the middle of a desert, thick woods, rolling hills, or whatever -- it's all disassociated from the city terrain.  Same with food (for the garden we can eventually build).  All that differentiates one city from the next is special resources.

I think this concept could help control city spam, not increase it.  The world is supposed to be destroyed (tho that part of the game has pretty much been removed, as there is no longer even the pretense of needing essence to revitalize the land, and empires exist as easily on the destroyed land as kingdoms do on the revitalized), that should limit where cities (of both factions) could successfully exist.  Being able to plop down cities willy-nilly, with no regard to terrain, and having each being able to pump out pretty much unlimited materials via generic 'workshops' is what contributes to city spam.  Same with any city being able to build a garden.

Done 'right' (and I don't mean copying civ4, and I don't have the perfect answer on how to achieve 'right'), this could help control city spam (not all of in itself, but as one part of the control) and tie in the terrain with cities -- and being another way to achieve city specialization.

During beta the devs decided upon global resources, but that doesn't mean that all cities should be equal production-wise (again, setting aside special resources).  In fact, they still mention city specialization being a goal.  We can have global resources, and still have city resource specialization via terrain being important.

I see pros and cons with this.

Pros:

1. It would make the enviroment more interactive.

2. Resources galore!

3. >>I'm a pretty pesemistic person so its difficult for me to think in this category.<<

Cons:

1.  More AI city-spamming.

2.  Improvement spamming

3. Faster way of reaching tile limit, especially on capital. (once those resources hit a city, the wall shadow incorporates them.)

4. Resources galore!  (Isn't a premise of the game that there are limited resources?)

5. Strategic value lessens as you can place a city anywhere and build improvements according to the surroundings.

I agree that the game should start out with few resources and wilderness style. However it should be a wilderness that you eventually overcome and conquer outside of a dragon or elemental lord type spawn. Early game you should be at the mercy of the wilderness, working on fortifying your position and getting the basics setup using goodie huts to give a boost. Midgame you should be looking to start dealing with neighbors through diplomacy (not really implemented yet imho) or war. Late game you should be master of the wilderness and strictly dealing with the other near-demigods and their empires/kingdoms.

Just because the game starts 100 years after a cataclysm (which I like a lot btw) doesn't mean the world needs to stay empty and boring the whole damn game. Eventually as your kingdom grows they should be able to take advantage of the enhanced land within your borders. Otherwise you just get this lame mechanic that makes the ground look pretty and somehow gives you a combat bonus for fighting on grass.

I don't think city spamming would get worse if they put some kind of limit on cities.  Since adding population as a resource I think it would be justifiable to make cities limited by population.  Something like for every x amount of people you can have 1 extra city because now you have the population needed to start a new colony which is kind of realistic.  This will also strengthen the fact that it is important to focus on city building rather than shitting out settlements.

Only issue you might run into is food management, but if settlements are being limited it leaves less of the map not covered in faction influences, which gives greater concern to guarding borders for random spawns and also leaves the map open for exploration.  This fact alone would make placing settlements more strategic in the end.

Put the resource nodes in terrain that makes sense and ... voila!  a compromise.

I agree.  Good idea.

Best regards,
Steven.