A Question about Map Size

I think that he was talking more about someone who played a reasonable amount, rather than an 8 hour slog.

If you've played Civ 4 here's a comparison of the largest map sizes.

That's the largest default map size in the 32 bit version... The end of that very post says that if Intel ever gets them a 64 bit version of havoc, map sizes could even bigger. 

Those are big and all, but I'm expecting bigger from what he made it sound like. Hopefully come Monday or maybe before we'll get some official answer.

It's over 5 times the area of a Civ 4 map! I don't know how much bigger you were thinking, but it's 35840 tiles. Just to put it into more perspective...Even if half the map is water, half of the land is mountains, and there's 32 factions, that still leaves enough land for each faction to have control of 280 tiles. So if each city takes an average of 10 tiles then that's 28 cities per faction even with only a quater of the map colonizable. To me, it seems rediculously large already.

Hopefully a lot less! I want cities to be few and far between, not just few 28 cities is way above the upper end of the # of cities I'd like to see per empire, at least until the stronger players start dominating the map and pushing everyone else aside. And even then I'm hoping the proposed vassal system will keep the number of directly-controlled cities per player to a minimum.

But yeah - I will be very happy with such a large map size! Still, bigger is better  

there should certainly be spells to aid in troop/army movement .... (even if only castable by a Sovereign Channeler)

I don't mind 3-5 metropoli for each empire, with 10s or 100s of smaller townships/villages scattered throughout the countryside ... and plenty of wild-land for epic lairs, monsters, demons, and dragons. Of course spending extra essense on cities could increase your cities to as many as 10 large epics ... and of course I would like a highlander-esque system where you absorb the essense of a defeated/fallen Sovereign. In addition captured cities shouldn't turn into villages, but should perhaps the city should be harder to control until A ) you rule all of the former nation's mega-cities (and possibly villages) or B ) native player-population outgrows the former ruler's population/culture (your culture over-takes that of the enemy).

in terms of city count, cities  I feel are much  to close  together   in  the   current form  of the game.   Being that your city  physically expands,  I would say t hat no less than 5 tiles between  cities should  be the  standard (rather than 3,  which  is the current)   Possibly 6-8 would actually still be fair  (though 8 would   be a pretty massive block.  That might be  pushing it for smaller  maps)

A Dev responce to this would be Awesome.

I would like 6-8 to be more of a minimum except in maybe extreme situations... The world is just starting to recover from a cataclysm, armageddon for god's sake! Cities should be few and far between. I'm still holding out hope for some sort of village/outpost mechanism, though - I'd like those to be scattered around largely for the purpose of gathering resources without having to set up a full-fledged city on top of them.

On small maps, I don't want to be able to build more than a small handful of cities without encroaching into other players' territory. Think about your favorite fantasy worlds - how many of them contained lots of nations each with more than a small handful of major cities? I honestly can't think of a single one... A lone dominant nation will sometimes have a pretty hefty number, but that is by no means the norm. I want Elemental to convey that! In the end it will make cities more important, and higher value strategic assets! Where you place them is crucial, and they are not to be spammed so as to cover the whole world.

And in Elemental, considering cities take up multiple tiles (a pretty large # of them for bigger cities), that is exacerbated. Now, I'm not saying I want there to be a hard limit preventing you from founding cities less than 8 tiles away from each other, but I want it to be discouraged - so there would have to be a good reason for doing it! (Like trying to block off a wide pass, or access a resource-rich area, etc). 

yea ... cities should be more spread out ... but all sorts of villages can be created/ spring between them for resource collection. Make a mining town/slave pit? sure, but you can't make a city over it if there is another nearby for miles and miles.

Plus, there is no reason to create a city for raw-material extraction. Cities are places for massive numbers of people to congregate and share their skills, its a place for the refinement of materials (factories), knowledge and learning, and other such things. While most cities will probably be surrounded by massive farms, I see an option for Farming Villages to arise, and ship food to the large cities which do nothing but skill-based labor, wether research, military training, item production, or more-than likely all 3 and then some.

A dev responce is always awesome.  but, they are too busy making the game.

I've come to the conclusion that city size should not cap as low as it currently does.   I mean, I was saying before 5 spaces would be good between cities, because you could build out 3 spaces no problem.   Now in 1B, I can hardly build out 2 spaces because I never have enough house room to increase my city size cap.

Just a comment I wanted to throw out there, as it pertained to the topic.   

That is cheating.   Because most fantasy worlds that come to mind don't really have the time to deal with minor cities.   Middle earth has in theory a bunch of small towns dotting the landscape, but we don't really hear about them because they are... well, not major towns.   Places like Lake Town or even Bree wouldn't me mentioned if something had not happened there.

Warhammer, warcraft, forgotten realms in the hands of the right story teller, and Even Eregon (I feel dirty bringing it up) has a bunch of space that COULD be other towns.   We just don't know because they are not so major that we hear about them.

Yes, there is a point to bring up that generally "fantasy worlds" focus on the mysterious and fantastic parts of their world.   More often than not, this is focused on 1 or 2 major cities and the 'wilderness' that surrounds them.   I think the World of Darkness, i.e. white wolf's world, even goes out of their way to specifically say there should more concentrated urban cities with wild unknown between them.   Very little in terms of suburbs or other instances where rural community isn't detached from urban society.  

But it all boils down to how we imagine it.   I often imagine my fantasy settings to be like feudal Europe, just that it has dragons and stuff where the major trading routes aren't.   Since this game HAS trade routes as a major feature,  It makes sense that there would be spotted cities along such trade route, which may very well be exactly what we get since hospitable land should grow to connect channeler created cities along trade routes.  So while we may WANT this game to be solitary major cities, I think Elemental is looking to be more based on effectively managing trade and urban expansion.

Your response is a non-sequitur, landisaurus... I said "how many of them contained lots of nations each with more than a small handful of major cities?"

and you responded "That is cheating. Because most fantasy worlds that come to mind don't really have the time to deal with minor cities."

I didn't say minor cities, did I? I said major ones Like I said before I love the idea of having villages scattered around your territory, but I'd rather those villages not be treated in the same capacity as your full-blown cities. Bree and Lake Town I could imagine being small cities, but places like Bywater or Harlond... They're more like rural communities than cities. Being able to make villages & such, settlements with which you have minimal interaction (and which are visually unassuming), would go a long ways towards making the world feel alive, while maintaining the sense of an untamed world. Having actual cities littering the landscape in a fantasy game, especially in a post-apocalyptic setting, would absolutely ruin the feeling for me.

Depends on how you define major city. The Dragon Lance world has at least a dozen good sized cities, and more if you consider smaller but important race-specific areas like Kendermore or Mt. Nevermind. There are also many smaller towns and villages scattered all over.

You're trying to tell me that there being a dozen good sized cities in a whole world counts as a fantasy world being littered with big cities everywhere?

Ok then...

Well, it's all relative right? My highest population before the game crashes is about 150. Not exactly a metropolis.

I already posted this link in another conversation, but it might be interesting for people following this discussion as well. It's a site from someone who did some research in population density / city density in Medieval Europe, and extrapolated this to some basic calculations to make a 'believable' fantasy world.

Very interesting indeed, Scorpiana. Thank you