I personally don't care for sliders and would rather build my way to victory.

+1 for 1-tile-per-city-level, and an extra one for the 'wall' building

would give useful and efficient visual feedback as to how valuable a city is

also would support a system where the number of buildings placeable per level is limited. At the moment there's no point to city specialization outside of the level-up building choice [which is a cool feature]. You just end up building everything in every city, the only priority is the order or whether to build troops.

In Civ4, the reasons you specialise your cities are:

- Strong variation in what a city will contribute based on the resources in its big fat cross. It has 4 different locational resources (food, gold, production and health] over 21 tiles. FE has two over one tile. 
- Buildings are more expensive, and the opportunity cost is high - with some early-mid techs you can trade all of a city's production for research, gold or espionage points. Or build units. The units in FE aren't always strong enough.
- Buildings in Civ4 frequently don't contribute anything automatic. Gold bonuses will be +25% instead of +3 - though there are exceptions.
- National Wonders, things like this were in GalCiv, buildings you can only have one each in your empire and two different ones in any given city.

If city specialization is what we want, you need mechanics like this. Do we want it?


 
 

Actually its not just one tile, only game being clever and counting all relevant tiles bonus on each tile. So what the game does, it sums up 9 different squares and show you what bonus you get on that certain square. But its still 9 squares together. However, there are still only 2 resources. Thats true. One for influence would help alot. 

I would like to see more building based on certain conditions. Like different Resources, Terrain etc. That way, every city would be at least bit different.

Outpost are the solution to city spam. I don't think making them cost alot is going to help anything. They only bring in a small amount of resources in the first place. 

The prestige system is meant to stop city growth. After a few cities it becomes nigh impossible to level them. You really need to get some level 5 cities before expanding. That is IMO one of the smartest limits you can have on expansion. 

I'm actually quite surprised, but happy that there are a lot of people voicing their opinion against the tile system. Everybody seems to at least agree that it needs some kind of improvement to be kept in.

I'm beginning to be a big supporter for the 1-tile-per-city-level idea.

You know, maybe a compromise would be good to try. Although I lean towards the one square city myself, I could see maybe gaining a square for every level of city. You would place that one square where you wanted it. Still smaller than nine, but bigger than one, so you can influence towards resources. Don't actually place buildings inside literally, go Civ style with that.

Also, I guess we would need some type of building rule, so there isn't really just a snake city. i.e. A string of tiles all in a row towards a resource, although with only 5 max, maybe that wouldn't even be so bad. I guess some cities along lakes and rivers may build like that naturally anyway.

Well, just an idea, anyone feel free to kick it around a bit if you like.

Sorry I over reacted a bit. Long day and all. Still, it seems to tie into what we were discussing. But I followed your suggestion and started a thread: https://forums.elementalgame.com/415796

I agree in finding it tedious, while I can see why people like it, I think it's an unneeded feature.

I do think someone the tax slider needs to be accessible from the main screen though.  Otherwise I forget about it.

I agree with...

"placing them is quite fun until you realise that it doesn't make any difference"

they should take the new tile logic used when founding a city and expand it to the buildings as well.

ps: would also like to see a tooltip telling me what building is what from a mouseover on the world map.