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Survival of fittest...or survival of the biggest?

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Survival of fittest...or survival of the biggest?

from Elemental Forums

I hope this hasn't been discussed too in depth before, but, I find one of the most annoying things about alot of TBS games is that...simply having the most cities/provinces means you are automatically the most powerful. Civ4 attempted to address this, as the more cities you had, the more expensive they were to maintain...This was alrighty, though at some point that game start almost punishing you for having too many cities, which it's good either.

--What I would like to know is, will it be possible to not only survive, but also remain competitive in this game even if you don't have alot of territory. Personally I hope that the cost to research technology/spells is scaled based on how many cities you have...that way even small nations can keep up in the tech race, and remain an important force in the world. Larger nations would still be able to produce more, and field larger armies. As it has been said that founding new cities cost essence, it would make since that this game would not force you to have alot of cities to be a powerful country...And how you run your faction should be alot more important than just how big it is...Your thoughts?

elemental
164,721 views 77 replies
Reply #76 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Campaigner, reply 25
And I don't know if it's a good thing if someone can neglect the citybuilding and just boost up heroes and powerup his spellcasting....it will become harder to balance if there's different ways to play. If everybody have to atleast build some cities then the game will be easier to balance because of the similarities.

We already know that one of their goals with Elemental is to allow for many different ways to play the game. Obviously that makes it harder to balance, but it also makes for a better game. Secondly, this is going to be a singleplayer game that is going to happen to have multiplayer support, so perfect balance isn't such a dire need like in RTS's. You don't want things to be out of control balance, but you've got a lot more leeway.

Quoting Campaigner, reply 25
More importantly though, like someone said it's much easier to go with magic power and a few heroes instead of multiple cities (like the difference between a assassin and a general in Demigod perhaps).

Easier is irrelevant, really... And also totally subjective. I actually find generals in Demigod easier to play than assassins (at first, no - the opposite, but once I got used to the game I have a much easier time playing as a general even when my attention is divided).

Quoting Campaigner, reply 25
Also, one of the two playstyles WILL be more powerful on maps with a certain distance between startlocations and that advantage will only grow the bigger the map....

Why? And you're also forgetting the millions of shades of gray between the guy with 1 city and the ultimate channeler and the guy with 10 cities and a fragile channeler. I think the beginning is really the only part of the game where it might be really hard to get a good balance between the two extreme forms of play across all map sizes. Past the middle stages it seems like it'd be less of a problem to me...

Reply #77 from Elemental Forums Top

You say that, but you are in the Beta = you'll be the one to balance it!

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