[.86][Feedback]Multi tiles cities are killing me

In the current beta state, I can relate to you for I somewhat feel the same. But I think the "multi tiles" cities and "building placement" schemes were originally intended to be somewhat of an innovation for this type of TBS game.  

I agree we still have to see it implemented in a way that lets it live to this premise, but there has been ideas and discussions on the subject. There are some interesting strategical aspect that could potentially be developed around the "multi  tiles" idea that would, i believe, make it interesting. 

 Since I strongly doubt the devs would ditch the multi tile concept at this point, I can only hope that they have some "great plan" regarding it. Some avenues, such as building interactions, or terrain/building interactions seem quite promising to me.  I keep hoping that the multi tile cities will turn out to be a fine and interesting aspect of the game in the end.

If it does not, it will be kind of sad though.

Hm...great points. I hadn't really thought about it but yeah, why keep the feature, right now it serves no purpose. None. It isn't fun or interesting and it doesn't impact gameplay beyond the cheese tactics you have described. The feature has potential, but it needs to be developed further to be interesting. If it isnt gong to be developed to be meaningful, it should be scrapped. 

Benefits of removing Multi-tile cities:

1) better scale. Cities will take up less space, eliminating the city sprawl that can occur now. This will make the game world feel larger since more open space will remain. This is appropriate for a world recovering from disaster. 

2) eliminating of cheese strategies like city snaking and army teleporting.

3) no time wasted placing buildings. 

Ways to make Multi tile cities meaningful:

1) give syngery bonuses based on proximity to other buildings

2) constrain building to prevent snaking, ie: must fill each ring of the grid before building further out.

They are likely going to make the auto-place feature the only way to place buildings. That would solve snaking. 

Not everyone likes the large cities. Some people do. Some people don't like the cities in Civilizations. Everyone is entitled to their opinion I guess. 

Without 'snaking', wouldn't your zone of control always be the same shape?

I like the multi tiles cities. I don't use snaking, but I think auto build should be default.

I love the look of the cities, it's so much better than boring 1-tile designs in other games.

I hope that they don't get rid of this feature.  Given that they asked us about the city zoom option I believe that they don't intend to get rid of it and don't have auto-placement in mind as the only option.

I agree it could be given some love and made more strategically interesting/relevant.

There are building requirements which need certain resources within your city to build.  There could be more of these (need iron in the city for blacksmith, anyone?).

There are terrain requirements for certain buildings - there could be more (need swamp or desert for...?). 

I like being able to protect my fireshard, or whatever, from guerilla attacks.  I like being able to block off passes.  I like being able to (sometimes) manipulate my area influence.

I think perhaps some people have lack of understanding of what they can do with their city placements.

There is a problem with sometimes not being able to delete buildings in conquered cities.  A workaround is to build alternative building(s) to keep the connection and then you can delete, but perhaps some fix is needed here.

I like multi-tile cities, I think they are very visually appealing.

I'll chime in and say that I also like multi-tile cities and find placing buildings a satisfying experience.

I like the look as well, and I certainly use it to expand my city in certain directions and form my ZOC.  I thought this was the main reason for it, a more finely tuned ability to form your city instead of just "round," or "square."

I like the cities, but I do wish they took up less space overall.  But, it's a minor issue and the teleporting thing isn't really an issue for me.

I realy don't understand how you can all like this feature as is, imho it's absolutely horrible. It was okay to experiment with this in WoM, but the experiment failed. The whole city building part of the game should have had a major overhaul (like tactical combat for instance), but the changes that have been made seem 95% cosmetic. Without some radical changes this aspect of the game will never be more than mediocre. I'm pretty sure there are more people feeling this way, city management is the second highest scorer in brad's recent poll (even though it was only added afterwards, something that worries me more than slightly).

If it were up to me it would be totally redesigned. But as that is unlikely I'll make some suggestions to salvage it;

1) Building tiles should be restricted, perhaps to only the first ring of tiles around the core. That gives you anywhere from 8 (for large buildings) to 32 (for small buildings) building slots. No more snaking, no more teleporting, no manipulation of influence, more strategic choice of what to include in the city walls.

2) There need to be way less buildings, and each building needs to be more significant. There are about 70+ buildings in the game right now, I would cut that number in half. Or make half of them available to kingdoms and half to empires. Most of them just give +X resources or +Y% production, which is very boring. Make them interesting, for instance by tying them into unit production. So you can't train units with a trait until you have a barracks, or can't train horsemen until there is a stable. (There need to be some interesting option for the more civics or magic minded players to, but I honestly can't think of anything right now.)

3) Make buildings upgradeable (by choice, NOT automatically). This way you can provide more of a certain bonus without the city taking up more space on the map.

4) Give us more to do outside cities. Apart from resource tiles, there is nothing to do, and once you have build on those you never have to touch them again. Make resource tiles upgradeable, so I can choose to have them produce more (at increased costs of course). Make it possible to build more than one type of building on a resource tile. So for instance at a skath pit, I can choose to use them as mounts, or hunt them for sport. At a scenic view, let me choose between building a diplomatic capital generating palace, a (money?) generating private estate, or an unrest reducing public park.

4b) Outposts could be more interesting. Now you build them and you're done. Make them upgradable to cover more ground in your influence, to give defenders a defence bonus, have a militia, or even recruit units from nearby monster lairs.

4c) How about being able to build farms or farming villages on fertile lands around my city? This space just seems wasted right now. This way you could cut a lot of the +X grain or +X food from grain buildings, that are a bit counter-intuitive imo. And it will make the countryside seem more alive, and give you something to raid (or defend) rather than having everything safely behind "city walls". There should be some limits to this obviously, as I wouldn't want a civ-like spamming of improvements. But maybe 1 village per city level? And/or a minimum distance between tiles? Logging camps and fishing villages (on coasts or rivers) are other options. This will also create a difference between relatively safe heartlands where it is safe to build these structures, and more uncivilized area's on your border near enemies, wildlands, or uncleared monster lairs.

agree 100% with OP.  all the crazy "benefits" from snaking and wonky unit movement near cities drive me nuts.  After seeing the discussion of other threads though I don't get the impression this is going anywhere (neither going away nor adding any complexity that would make it more interesting)

i also agree they look nice, but i don't care so much about that so much.  I'm glad some of yall enjoy placing the buildings although I don't understand it.

I'm sorry you dont like it. Others like myself do. If you dont like it, simple solution, dont build snake cities.

Please dont call for the removal of choices from others just because you feel one way or another.

I'm much more concerned about the combat numbers than anything else, so when my troops are getting one-shot killed, when my champions can't hurt anything until they find a super weapon, or when monsters don't one-hit kill large groups of soldiers...I might start looking at city building more.  

Oh please, calling using something that is poor game design a choise. It's an exploit. Please don't call for maintaining exploits just because you like them, while they are bothering others. (It is the second most voted for part that needs work in Brad's poll, don't act like its just a fringe group that is bothered).

I havet yet to see people casting fireballs, summoning elementals and such in real life.

Sorry, I coudln't resist. I apologize.

And Miami is actually a quite snaky irl iirc. 

So is Seattle-Tacoma. 

A downfall to creating a city that is too snaky, which often gets overlooked, is that snaking out a city will potentially eliminate other nearby city-building sites because they will then fall within the 8(or 9?)-tile city distance limit.

I like it. 

p.s.  The indignance suits you well.

I quite like the cities. Or at least I like the look of them and find their growth more interesting than say Civilization or MoM cities. I also don't mind placing improvements manually, particularly if double click also works to auto place.

I do think the exploit of moving through them instantly is a bit crap (although on the other hand more than half the time the automatic pathing takes terrible paths anyway so one could argue it is justice!). I would be happy if a sensible rule could be found that avoided particularly abusive snaking.

I think one of the reasons people have said city building is a feature that needs major work is that the range of USEFUL buildings available is pretty anaemic, particularly early game. It is quite common to have multiple cities sitting around doing nothing because there is nothing worth building (unless you are going for an imminent conquest victory and even then troop maintenance costs put a hard cap on the amount of troops you can afford to build).

Of course I realise that some people object much more vehemently than I to the 'chore' of placing new buildings, the instant movement, etc. To each their own but I think it is important for the developers to realise that some of us aren't quite so fussed.

The city-building aspect of the game is like the appendix in human body. It serves no obvious purpose, but for some reason not known to us, it is still there. Most of the time, it can be safely ignored, but sometimes its inflammation can cause a great discomfort, or even death.

I hate the tile placement system. Hate hate hate it. Which is strange, because I love Sim City, eye candy and all sorts of fun little micromanagement. I guess it turns out I don't like micromanagement that serves no purpose.

Hate it. Must be given some purpose or axed.

It is particularly confusing in combination with the food/materials from the square that the city is originally built on, being the only place that affects the cities food and materials.

Aparently the only bit of a city where any farming or production can occur is the very center.

Indeed.