[Suggestion] New cities should add unrest to existing cities

from Elemental Forums

There is almost no downside to expanding as population is quickly capped in the early game. I think the problem can be mitigated by making unrest scale with expansion.

Once a city is contiguous to your capital it only produces 22% unrest which is easily covered by the belltower + cleric, or at most one more 10% building. There is no need to have any more unrest reduction unless you want to raise the tax rate (which is not beneficial until much later in the game).

The game needs an unrest penalty to check against rapid expansion, which is the only effective strategy (aside from overpowered custom soverigns). Each new city should add x% unrest to existing cities. It could be static 5% per new city or incremental (1%,2%,3%,4% etc), and it should be based on the map size / number of opponents.

This will create a downside to reckless expanding in the early game and a counter to the snowball effect in the late game, both of which are lacking in the current game. This will also allow the garrisoned unit reduces unrest effect suggested in another thread to have a purpose in countering the expansion unrest.

6,093 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Solid suggestion, the game really does need something to limit early rapid expansion and later conquest-driven snowballing, both are so good it's kinda the only way to play right now. It makes sense too, trying to manage a larger empire would lead to increased unrest in general. Some refinements: the first few cities should have no penalty - say 2-4 'free' cities depending on map size. A single-city empire just isn't viable, and you don't want to punish players for doing the bare minimum of expansion to stand a chance, it's more about giving us a reason not to over-expand beyond that just because we can.

Civics research could increase the number of 'free' cities you get before the penalty kicks in, so that empires grow more gradually as you move up the tech tree, rather than desperately fast early expansion followed by stagnation when you run out of room. Also captured foreign cities should cause more unrest - say double empirewide unrest, 10% for captured cities if normal ones are 5% - it makes sense, and the power increase from conquest is a very powerful boost, without a strong disincentive your first conquered enemy often leads to an easy win.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

There are ways to mitigate spread:

- Growth. The more cities you have, the least they grow.

- Unrest increases if cities are not inside ZoC. That means a lot of outposts.

- Maps usually don't have many fertile lands to settle (even the temperate). So we settle when we can, not when we want.

And this is a 4X game, for God Shake, do you intend to cut it to 3X? ;)

What I might agree is that only the FAR cities (lets say 50 or more tiles) could have some more unrest, but not apply to the "core cities".

 

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

i'm not sure unrest is enough of a penalty. even with unrest you still produce gold in normal amounts, and can buy troops and buildings.

i find unrest isn't hugely relevant to me, as i can do most of my development through sheer investment. trade and economic treaties with every faction, most of my settlements being towns, and filling them with merchants/markets, and casting the propaganda spell everywhere. who needs production ^^

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top


Since, technically, growth is suppose to reflect survivors finding refuge in your cities rather than actual real growth, shouldn't we have some sort of upper limit to overall world growth based on the number of people still wandering about?