Additional city improvements and levels

from Elemental Forums

Currently, it seems like a no-brainer for me to expand when I see another plot of land I can build a city on. I've starting thinking of trying to create a tradeoff between expansion and building up existing cities. My goal would be to make both "City Spam" and "few mega City" viable, with some in between space for a combination of the two, but hopefully creating influences that reinforce going one way or another. To that extent I'm hoping some of the experts or creative types might be able to weigh in on what would be a good way to do this. Here are a few ideas I have so far, likely I would use a subset of these or other suggestions. :

  1. Adding more levels to cities with additonal buildings and benefits: Just like a player can level thier sov to 35 into a powerhouse, why not have cities face a multitude of levels with unique options for specialization. Some gate mechanism would need to exist that would make it easier to level with fewer cities...
  2. Increasing food limits drastically and making growth from prestige the dominant limiting factor limiting cities. Some tie from city grains would still need to exist...perhaps improving growth rate but to a lesser degree than prestige.
  3. Creating a greater value of world resources to a city: the number of resources that attach to a city is going to scale with the space from other cities, so if we add some small incentive to a city for every resource such as +5 food per shard would mean create an imediate trade off between building one larger city with multiple outposts or multiple cities with less resources. Other bonuses might have to be +5% gold or +5% research (maybe tied to level of the the shrine).
  4. Creating a new city level/specialization before the first that choses between "City" or "Hamlet" where a hamlet has no builable squares or options but can provide great bonuses to all other cites this would have to be differenatied from towns by much greater incomes in towns and greater benifit to all other cities from hamlets.
  5. adding additonal buildable squares and improvements to cities, giving them deeper levels of improvements that are very rewarding and more improvements or instances of an improvement. Creating more of a "Mega City" feel, and offering deeper investment
  6. Significant population drain from building pioneers

Does anyone here have other suggestions, or feedback on the above. There's alot to consider and this would be my first attempt at a mod. Off the top of my head I'm concerned about each of these points for pretty much every item I listed above:

  • Can it be done?
  • Balance swinging too far towards less cities
  • How might these changes affect the AI, is there anything that can/needs to be done for it to take advantage of the change.
  • Can I justify it logically i.e. "Shards provide food?"
  • Would anyone else enjoy this, or be annoyed by this .... (I'll probably do it regardless)

 

3,631 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I started work on this a few months ago. My mod started as a city level mod. If you want to play it on easy just for a taste of how I am handling this kind of balance, it might help your overall project. For me, the key is to limit Sov based growth, reduce overall growth, increase city level power, increase difficulty of expanding by increasing difficulty of conquering expansion areas, take out almost all prestige from techs, add prestige from wonders and improvements that cost influence, make towns the only effective growth option for cities, reduce or remove consulates, nerf growth spells. 

Basically there are a ton of imbalanced ways to grow cities. Vanilla cities are so weak it is not that noticeable. Once you start making cities able to grow up instead of getting more, you really notice the problems. Anyhow, my basic design is a good thing to look at for ideas. Let me know what you think.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top



Can it be done?
Balance swinging too far towards less cities
How might these changes affect the AI, is there anything that can/needs to be done for it to take advantage of the change.
Can I justify it logically i.e. "Shards provide food?"
Would anyone else enjoy this, or be annoyed by this .... (I'll probably do it regardless)
End of quote

 

I believe that it can in fact be done with regards to city levels and population.  I think however that unless you modify when a city levels up or modify something to allow for more food your population will cap out and city growth stagnate.  I don't think #3 is a problem to implement as there isn't a limit to how many resources can attach.  Modding Resources to have additional benefits wouldn't be a problem either.  Some of us think the city specialization thing can use some help I give you that point (#4) .  I don't know if additional buildable tiles will be an issue.  Adding improvements on their own shouldn't be an issue. I know what you're thinking with #6 (I think slowing down percieved pioneer spam)  but is that really necessary or you wanting it for immersion? 

 

As to your questions, the AI places an importance on things which is part of the xml code.  I think you'll have to increase the importance of things based on what you add.  I  would be curious about it and where such a mod would go.  Hard to say what I'd enjoy.

 

You make want to check out BlackRainz Immersion Mod which may be similar.  He has been tweaking population numbers so it feels more like actual cities of thousands instead of a few hundred folks.  And of Course Sean's mod.  He has taken on the City Specialization thing.

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