Three Short Things

I agree with everything except 1-A.  I like it in concept, but what I hate is the building ques, and in WoM, I had to build 100 of any thing to get a noticeable result.  And that would keep my city busy forever.  I don't want to build the same thing over and over.  I don't want to build something and feel that it barely helped.  So if I have to build a lot of the same building, can we take out ques for it? I don't understand why it would take me 20 years to build a library anyway.  I would prefer multiple, different building that do similar things.  I don't know about you, but the ability to make multiple of the same building didn't do anything to specialize my cities, they all had a billion studies in them.  Maybe the idea has just been soured by it's implementation in WoM.  

Absolutely. I would hate to have to build in an analog way that one researched in GalCivII. Before they changed things so that a particular building was necessary to grant units trained there a bonus, having multiple copies of many buildings would make no sense anyhow, but now they do so even more. I am thinking more along the lines of: If 1 forge gives you a +%50 increase in the production speed of all armor and weapons requiring metal, then 2 forges should give you not +100% but somewhere around +%80, and three perhaps +%95 -- something like that. I am not a mathemetician and have no great algorithm at hand. Diminishing returns. But since land is finite, specializing by building multiple copies of one building will mean building less of another type, so that is a tradeoff in itself. I just don't want to be artificially forced to build a *maximum* of ONE.

Hmm, diminishing returns might make that a much more viable and interesting choice...yea, I like it.

But cities are ugly when they have several of the same building. Ever been to the Eastern Bloc? They call it that because the Soviet buildings make the cities look like one big block. No, what we need is the ability to upgrade a forge into a steel guild, into a steel district, into a Titan forge. It's simple and elegant. It would be even better if a level 2 city could get to level 4 of forge, assuming there will be instances where metal is located in barren land.

Yeah, screw repeating the same building over and over. It's not fun, it doesn't look pretty. Give us a valid choice instead. One city might have a harbor, but another city could have a deep water harbor, a fish market, a place to build ships in, a temple to summon water demons, and whatever else.

Wow I couldn't agree less. Having an empire with each city having the same things in it (one of that, one of this, one of those) I find boring and unfun, it is by far the single most boring element of the Civilization series, to me. I would like to have the OPTION of building more than one type of building, not the NECESSITY of it.

The way to satisfy both is to make it impossible to have the same building in every city. Done. Random buildings, different buildings at each city level, limitation on max population for cities. Now it would be totally useless to have more than one of the same type in a city. 

dev  'ed

Really this could be achieved the same way Civ4 handles certain buildings. Just make a limit of one per nation for certain buildings. Every town can build a harbor, only one can build the harbor of the heron king. Any town can build a temple, but only one can build the ultra-rad temple of truthiness.

Except that doesn't fix the main problem at all. Civ is like 90% a race to build as many buildings as possible as fast as possible in a certain order in order to get more production. I mean what could be bad about a system where the person that has the most production just has better buildings and cities then everyone else and everyone else can't possibly ever catch up?  Oh ya that would be a system where that same advantage also allows them to build faster then everyone else and spirals into a never ending loop of  better buildings allowing you to race ahead of other players down the build queue, which allows you to build better buildings... Definitely not my idea of fun.

I think they just need to implement a local population or even just a well balanced tile limit that increase with city level. That would prevent players from building every improvement in every city.  If they can then get cities properly differentiated through random bonus improvements and geographic differences then we would have truly specialized cities.

The difficult and depressing part is not the unique buildings but the removal of materials and other resources and the addition of local production. Shudder. How are cities supposed to be unique now? The only universal resources left are gold, iron, lore, crystal, and mounts.... You think people are going to be specializing towards crystals and mounts, because I don't. That just leaves gold, lore, and iron.

Okay you will probably see the occasional city beside a mine that has some different buildings in it to maximize iron output but without a tile or pop limit it will have all the same buildings as the other cities as well. So that leaves gold and lore. Unless players are going to be forced to make serious sacrifices  between lore and gold in each city I think most cities are going to be pretty similar.

DSRaider,

Apparently I am misunderstanding the conversation. I thought the gist of the thread was concerning city uniqueness, not building spam. What would you have the cities do after constructing the available buildings in a more limited system? 

P.S. I may still be misreading you, I had a hard time understanding what your first paragraph is about, maybe I need to get some coffee.

There are only 9 tiles to a city. Each level gives you one unique, random building. The resources and terrain near a city decide what kinds of buildings can be constructed. There are national wonders and world wonders. Every city is limited on growth by local food supply: this limits the city level and thereby its building options as each level will allow new types of buildings and upgrades for the old ones. There are 5 city levels in the vanilla version alone. 

Cookie cutter cities is just not going to happen...

9 tiles to a city that make up your food/materials variables, but i think you can grow the city beyond 9 tiles can't you?

No.

I haven't read anywhere that only the 9 tiles are buildable, but I sure hope so. It would be a nice limitation and prevent gamey snaking cities.

I agree.

Depends on what you mean by cookie cutter. Sure most cities will have different buildings in them but they will all serve the same purpose. Pretty much every city you build will be balancing act between production, gold, and most of all research. Random buildings will be just an extra but largely strategically irrelevant tacked on multiplier. Ditto geographic buildings. I like them and they will be fun but they won't drastically alter cities, they are random so it would be odd if they did.

In WoM you could build workshop/factory cities, magical lore cities, and research cities. Each city was different and produced different goods foor your empire.  Gold, food, and iron specialization was usually added as a secondary specialization because it only required 2-3 buildings.  With the removal of materials, food, and magical lore every city is basically going to be a research city with the occasional iron or gold mine tacked on.

Sure the buildings that comprise them will be slightly different but that is largely aesthetic, and while it may make one city better than another it does not make them different. I much prefer a system where cities are not interchangeable except for the degree as to which random improvements and geography boost them. In real life and as a economic rule cities tend to specialize and trade... they are not completely independent city states that produce all goods internally but for some reason have the same government.

You make a good point about strategic differentiation. I was only considering the aesthetic value of cities. The cities in FE will, for what we know right now, be focused on production, food, and strategic resources:

1. Production and food are usually found in every tile in some amount. This part will likely play like Civ4 in that hills give hammers, while green plains give turkey legs. You can settle a city on some combination to make the city level of your choice. I would guess there will be a proclivity towards making a couple of really big cities and many others that focus on production. This is a binary system, requiring only consideration of basic economy. 

2. Strategic resources will present what I think you are looking for. Differentiation seems to begin with the special resources one finds near their city. This opens up special buildings and allows for this specific city to be strategically different from its neighbors. The variety of resources will likely be similar to WoM. You will have production, money, research, mana, metal, and diplomatic capital. The random buildings are there to give level appropriate specializations to a city. One city may be near a very valuable resource and at the edge of your border. You may get High Walls or Castle Keep at low levels to protect it. At high levels you may get a Dragon Roost or Hall of Valhalla to give you specially trainable units to protect it. Another city may receive special trading guilds at low levels and later become the center of all beaver fur trading in the realm.

The differentiation you seek seems implicit in the random building feature. Much like buying a development card in Settlers of Cataan, it will give your city a unique specialization; something to set it apart from every other city for cubits around. I will argue that cities will be both more aesthetically pleasing and have more differentiation, more personality, than the game's previous incarnation. It is a special bit of wonder to me that this will all be set on a randomized system. It will make each city new from the last. 

1. Production and food are now local resources. How can you have cities that focus on production? The only point of it is to build local buildings to get other resources. You are never not going to want both food and production, if you don't get both it's just a bad spot to build a city.....

2. Again production is local, and I wouldn't be surprised and if d.cap is removed. I admit I am making some educated guesses here, based on how it works in Civ. Anyway you won't be specializing cities around d.cap anymore then you will be horses... Even metal and mana will probably be just 2-3 buildings tacked on to an existing generic gold and research city. I highly doubt for instance that your not going to build a school in a city just because it has a iron mine. Same deal with production buildings, you are always going to build every one. Which means that cities in this case are not specialized, some are simply better then others. ie they start beside a resource and thus get 1-2 extra buildings. Which is why you end up with generic cities.

As for random improvements they are also not real specialization. For one they are random and can't be planned for. Secondly, they will most likely give small multipliers or bonuses on existing resources. This would encourage later city specialization in WoM but not FE. In FE there are no unlimited improvements. Your not going to decide to build or not build certain buildings in a city because of these multipliers. Since food and production are local you are always going to max these buildings in every city, because they are what let's you build other buildings. Is a 10% gold bonus going to make you not build universities in a city? No.

Even with a tile limit, pop limit, or "shudder" build time limit that restricts it so you can't have both banks and universities you will end up with only two real types of cities, gold and research. Even then the differences between them will be a small, they will both produce some of both.

Why are they cutting so many resources and global production?

Best regards,
Steven.

But the limitation that forces choice and thereby differentiation is rooted in only having 8 tiles to build on. You can have a school, perhaps in every city, though I don't see the point of having a school on a level 3 iron works city. You wouldn't be able to build a university because there would not be enough room. When you do find a nice patch of green land for a large city to make that university worth while, not much else will be built there, except for educational, administrative, and economic or magical buildings. 

Then your big city hits level 5 and you get Library of Alexandria. Now you have the most powerful source of knowledge at your fingertips. Your level 3 city with all the production will never level up since its 9 tiles are hills and mountains. So then, you have to decide what to build that would help out a level 3 production focused city. There is the obvious choice of barracks, normally you would want city walls, but in this case you already have High Walls as a random building. So you might venture down the civilization and warfare tree to get all the metal and production advancements you can use at level 3. With any extra room you might consider an Inn or Pub to attract some heroes to your civilization. 

As I saw in the last dev journal, you can find a place that has food and production near a river. This will probably get to level 5 because of the river. This is a rare position. Most will be less fortunate, forcing one to choose a more polar option. The level 3 city with an iron mine will always outproduce even a level 5 city because all of its tiles have almost only production. Larger cities may not even produce more gold due to high maintenance costs of level 4,5 buildings. 

Random buildings will do more than mere % bonuses. They will give special unit options, provide hard resources (such as +10 to production), new magics, and be completely moddable. Random buildings are always going to add something useful to your Kingdom. You might not get what you want, but your ability to utilize the opportunity is part of succeeding in FE. Limits are set to prevent the sort of productive crawl one sees in the Civ series. The need for units will also be a significant pressure to build things efficiently. Also, it has been said that the really good resources are protected by powerful creatures, meaning most cities will be fought for, further slowing expansion. I think we will be hard pressed to find any identical cities once we get the full game in our hands. 

P.S. What is d.cap?

I am pretty sure that a 8 tile limit on buildings is not officially confirmed. That limit is on the amount of unimproved tiles you can harvest from. It would be weird to have a limit that does not grow with population or city level.

d.cap = Diplomatic Capital

They just decided to move to a system much similar to that of Civ for some reason. Except you know without as many strategic resources.

Except my point was that there is no reason beyond poor geography to not get both food and production. I think you are vastly overestimating how much the beginning terrain bonuses effect a city's growth and how it specializes. Get to level 5 off terrain alone... unlikely, maybe 3 maybe. That would defy the entire point of the civilization tech tree and improvements.

Don't forget a high population means more workers which means more production, so there isn't a 1/1 trade on food/production or anything. Having high production will allow you to build more buildings which can increase food, and having high pop allows you to build more advanced production buildings. It's also not like cities can ever have enough pop or production. Like in Civ it will be about build order and building as many buildings as possible as fast as possible to get as much population, research, and production as possible. You will end up building every building possible, even if you just picked a horrible spot to build a city.

Why would I ever build a production city??? Production simply allows you to build faster in that city. It has no value in itself. You would end up with a city that builds nothing, extremely quickly... Building next to a iron mine in some hills is just a resource outpost and not a real city.

Besides even if their were "production" and "food" cities that would still only be two types of cities, and neither one would trade with or affect other cities in any way.

This theoretical discussion has gone to the point of us just guessing at what the balance will be. Hopefully the devs are reading too and are thinking about specialization a little more. It may be that the game allows the civilization tech tree to fix any city that didn't get enough food or production. It may be that the tile limit thing I read somewhere was in my imagination (I looked but I can't find any specific answer to the question). It would be strange that a city can build in any direction since it can only gain resources from 9 tiles. 

I think it would be terrible balance to allow a city to get to level 5 just off of civilization technology. They should need some serious help from natural food and river tiles. If my level 3 Iron city can get to level 5 with enough technology, that is a serious problem for me. The devs might have a different vision for the game, but I think level 5 cities should be rare. That means no amount of granaries or aqueducts will ever provide enough population for a city with little natural food. I am not saying off of terrain alone. I am saying terrain must be the determining factor of whether or not it is worth it to try to grow a city to level 5. 

Why would you ever want a production city? To have an army. A fast building, professional army. I thought that was implied. War machines are going to be worth much more than metropolises to a war minded faction. 

This doesn't even include the nations that focus on things other than civilization. An adventure or magical nation will certainly have other ways to make their cities and other goals than building the mundane artifices of civilization. 

I share DSRaider's fears that the factors inherent in the current game scheme now which you, seanw3, have pointed out, will not be enough to make cities feel different.

If FE really wants to be so much like Civilization all of a sudden (and I do not understand the reasons behind it, although I can guess at some of the causes, that is, 1. why make something new when you can use something already tried and proven, and 2. Derek obviously has a very large affinity for and history with Civ) and, much like Civilization, still be something other than an all-out dedicated wargame with various victory conditions (unlike, say, HOMM or Dominions), then the building aspect of the game should not take over Civilizations two worst traits. I was unable to finish a second game of CivIV and play as a builder (as opposed to a warmonger). After the game entered the Modern Age, and all of these large empires were up and running, I *wanted* to continue to play and achieve a diplomatic or cultural or space-race victory -- but it was just too f*cking boring. With one or two exceptions, I could not tell any of my cities apart, so I had absolutely no emotional attachment to anything in my empire. And having food as a local resource (while luxury items and everything else is magically teleported around the world) simply drives me crazy. I suppose that if in FE tactical combat is 540% better than it was in WoM, and the magic system about 870% better, I would attempt to ignore this bizarre constraint and just try to find fun things in the game that take my attention away from constantly desiring to transport some wheat from BellTowerTown to GotARareBuildingHereVille. It may seem small to you, but it really really bugged me in CivIV, and this game here (WoM and FE I mean) are supposed to be RPG hybrids, that is, we are supposed to have some (tiny as it may be) modicum of immersion here. Unlike CivIV, where population was supposed to be measured in the thousands and millions, we are talking about the dozens, scores and hundreds of people in FE, at least during many of its gameplay phases. We can almost see them individually. That town within 2 days march over there (which is connected to this town over here with roads and trade routes) has a large quantity of food, but I cannot pay (in time, in gildar, in risk, in % loss) to have some of it come over here? Just tell me why. Sure, there will balancing and implementation issues. I cannot imagine that these are more problematic than the system that was in place 6 weeks ago, but who knows. Please, tell me why, make it good, and I will shut up, really I will.

I was thinking it over; and assuming there is an actual building-in-city limit it would be possible to create a city specialization strategy around this concept:

- Assume that a total of 10 buildings could be placed into a city

- But also assume that the same building cannot be built more than once (so no 10 temples but 0 forges)

- Then that there are several categories of buildings (educational, warfare, production, moral, religion, etc)

- And that each category has at least 5 distinct buildings (school, college, library, university, and laboratory)

- There would be a penchant to build only the most powerful-level buildings for each category; to maximize the overall benefits to the city - which would cause the sameness of cities

- If instead buildings synergized with each other, then the specialization-vs-generalization suddenly becomes more prominent.

E.g.

1. A school adds +1 to research. It reduces the upkeep of the following buildings by half (college, university, laboratory)
2. A library adds +2 to research. It adds an additional +1 research for each of the following buildings (school, college, university)
3. College adds +1 to research. It also adds +1 to production for each of the following buildings (school, university, laboratory)
4. University adds +3 to research. It also adds +10% research for each of the following buildings (school, college, library, laboratory)
5. Laboratory adds +3 to research. It also increases the odds of rare talents by 5% for each of the following buildings (school, college, library, university)

In other words there is good incentive to specialize on the one hand - but also a significant penalty to other qualities that the city may develop if it didn't specialize.

I think I will put a pin in my part of the discussion until after the beta comes out. There are just too many things we don't know and even more ways they could be handling this issue based on how they actually implemented city building. 

Content mods are my backup plan if the building features are guilty of city cookiecuttering. I am planning about 10 unique buildings that fundamentally change the way a Kingdom or Empire play the game. Each building will open up 10 new buildings that are possible to get by the end. I hope other concerned gamers will join in.

We may even be able to mod the building limit as HF did in WoM.