Food should limit total empire population, but the number of cities should be controlled by another factor.

Logically, it takes increasing skill to manage an empire/city as size increases.  Using the tech tree and/or governors and/or the like seems appropriate.  Some don't like the idea of governors, but large organizations require skill to function effectively and to maintain their size (let alone to grow even larger).

There should also be a cost to founding a city, substantial enough to make it not something done lightly, there needs to be a very good reason to found a city instead of a resource tapper or an outpost/fortification.  Essence is only a cost at the beginning, so something else is needed -- gold, or population (settlers, but why would they 'dissappear' at founding?), or...?  New cities should be a drain on the economy until they reach a certain size, plus the settlers would not be contributing to the economy during settlement, so that's a cost.

How about having buildings in cities have a small random chance to become something enhanced, just a small bonus, like a farmer who finds out how to make a really really good pai, +0.1 food quality, and should be rare, with increased chance on size or if there is a special resource in the area or something .. i think you get the picture.

It would help make each city special

I think most people here would agree with you WildBoarPie. The problem, however, is that as of now there is no trade-off. Making a ton of cities and developing all of them to the max is by far the best way to go about things. 

Many if not most of the suggestions made so far in this thread would create that very trade-off. The food footprints or requirements of cities, governors, etc - they would all function in one way or another to create the very trade-off you're looking for. 

This is a brilliant idea, it adds realism as well as fun little surprises in the game.

Well, as I have said before, each city should be allowed *some* population regardless of available food. Probably some low number close to 10-50. Any increase in growth beyond that should be directly tied to food, while the rate of growth, and the Distribution of Population should be Directly controlled by Prestige.

Prestige is the First factor of where Citizens will go, Housing is the second factor. The amount of food determines the number of citizens in the empire (beyond the first couple that are guaranteed per city).

building a new city with 0 prestige shouldn't lower empire-wide population, assuming that your building cities with some type of settler, being that the *guaranteed* number is the settler and his progeny. If you decide to *abandon* a city, then the population will leave to either dissipate or go elsewhere (dissapate if 50 or less, go elsewhere if significantly more people). These abandoned cities should be ghost towns, and random monsters or bandits could take up residence of such towns. *Ghost Towns*. The option to abandon cities would be to discontinue paying maintanence for that city, perhaps as a management factor to rid yourself of a City that is becoming too expensive (does not have an availble governor) or was simply decided that its not worth keeping. The city would retain all buildings. Either way, you run the risk of Strange Creatures or Rivals of occupying the city. If its a rival, it will start at 50 population and the population growth would depend on the prestige of the city. In addition, im sure you can allow a city to go Rogue, or Independent. They would then be some sort of Neutral or Rebel city ... with the same population and structures, but an AI ruler, not ruled by a Sovereign. Such neutral cities could be captured or re-captured via either diplomacy or Force. A ghost town could be dismantled by an army similar to a Post-Capture dismantling, although the only similarity from there would be that you get an excess of building materials during the 10-20 turn dismantling process. (could be 5-10 turns if a large army??). Of course, dismantling a Ghost town has no moral or Diplomatic penalties, only the chance to discover items and historical artifacts that were looked over. Cities that are exterminated of Population and abandoned by the Invaders can also become ghost towns. However many times an exterminated city will be kept by the Conquering nation, in which case a population of 10-50 loyal settlers are automatically added.

I would like to think that an Exterminated city would lose some of its Prestige (at least half)?? Although im not currently certain how the full extent of prestige works ... if its pop-growth + culture, or merely Pop-Growth and a Diplomatic/interactive feature.

Overall I think you have some good ideas.  The above idea worries me a little though.  I'm not sure I like the idea of instantly losing a city so easily (potentially depending on the availablity of heroes and essence in your system).  Lets say I have one hero with governing 5 and because of this I grow a city to it's limit (lets say 30 tiles).  Now he dies and I no longer have a hero suitable.  I lose my best city all of a sudden?  I think there are some alternatives.  What about being able to assign a lesser hero but having the city degrade over time?  Also if you have no hero at all I would like to see a buffer before losing the city.  Losing a city is a major thing and if you aren't losing badly and you are careful and plan ahead you should not be losing them easily... especially your best ones.

Also I think it would be nice if the number of tiles depended more on the population.  Right now you are getting jumps of tiles at certain landmarks.  Why not make it more gradual and just use your population as the trigger.  Maybe one tile per 1000 people or whatever makes sense in your world.  It would make things feel more natural in my opinion and save from bulk building.

I like this but how do you determine what is "in reach" of a city?  Also you might be able to get away with allowing anything to be built outside the central city.  If it is undefended that should be a good deterent for people not doing it, but if you want to for some reason (restricting movement or something) it might be interesting.  I can see it might cause problems but I think you should at least consider it as you are going along.

Anyway, good ideas that I hope work out and can get implemented.

Well, if the Succession system is used, and there are no avaiablle generals to control it .... If there is someone by marriage or birth that is affiliated with the City, they are the appropriate Governing Rank, and belong to Nation X ... the city belongs to nation X under that family affilitated CHampion.

If there is no such marriage/birth based succession leader on the OTHER side, but there is on YOUR side, you could choose to keep it with a large inefficiency, or abandon the city, or leave the city to be independent. If you choose to Abandon the city, there could be a chance that it simply flips to ownership of a Neighboring Nation (they feel offended) or they simply turn independent anyways (proud of their own heritage, ect).

If there is no-one at all qualified, then it will be in Riot/Revolt for a few turns, lowering in the City's Loyalty Score or PRestige level for some amount of turns, and then eventually become independant by itself. If however you can get a fitting governor while its Rioting/Revolting, then you can keep the City at its current state, for no inefficiencies.

If there is a Succession system, I think this should handle the "City Flipping without Governor mechanic" ... cause getting cities to flip simply by Assasinating the Governor should be a more in-depth strategy that involves intermarriage and intrigue.

Hmm .. Food, and fertile land, these two is repeated again and again on how good a city becomes or should become, and also how this could restrict city spam.. but

Its water, pure water source, that is the essence of a city, both to how many people the area sustains, and the health of the area and its people, why not make the water source the big IT, in how a area sustains its population, and pumping more essence/spells/rituals from the channeler to purify more water, or keep the water pure could be a sort of upkeep towards having very large cities

If you city spam under these settings, you end up with poor health, low populance and mutch more essence upkeep overall, since investing in a single water source and really caring about it would make that source mutch more effective, or around those lines.

defending the water source would become important, and this would also make a player bond more to the few cities he/she has.

i just think that water should be important in a world that has died and now shall be revitalized, not the things that come from water, like food or fertile land

OK so I've been away scratching my head about the small vs. large town trade-off and have thought the following:

- One reason we get city spam rentatowns in MoM/Civ is because all towns follow the same build tree and eventually max out (so far so obvious).

Why not make it that (1) the whole Civ/Faction follows the build tree, but individual towns start based on what's been before ?(already something like this in the Beta via Research tree) - Plus, (2) Unless towns are really big, they just can't support a version of everything. - Plus, (3) We control the growth/size of the towns.

Example: I have one small town started with Library and few other buildings. Population is enough to support them. I now build another town elsewhere, and employ the whole grateful populace with a socking great University (I didn't have to build precursors first, 'cos I'd already done it elsewhere) - but having done that, I can't build much else in that town 'cos there's no staff/space.

I can also build towns dedicated to : Military Training, Central Govt, Industry.... - Tho small they are all of value because they are specialised. Like real towns.

Or I could build one big, more efficient City. Costs me less effort to defend.

This avoids every town being the same - unless I choose them all to be similar, but REALLY Big. - Plus it avoids the raze-the-spam symptom - as an invader you might keep the University Town, but raze the industrial one (let them work in call centres, Muahahahaha ) - As a defender you must decide which you need most. - Plus you can still have many small towns that are still Useful small towns (playing different roles), not Spam.

Governors can also still be in, but as a complementary feature - want a known academic for that Uni town....   - But since a City can only have One governor, a big town faces a choice of which specialism the governor will boost. - Many smaller towns don't have that problem.

Let's all please pretend Boogiebac never suggested that a city will flip nationalities if its governor dies and you don't have a suitable replacement (and someone else does). It would be an absolutely dismal game feature, not to mention utterly absurd. In the context of Elemental, a governor would be someone appointed to that position by the Sovereign as an administrative official. I can't emphasize how lame it'd be if a city flipped allegiance to a neighbor because its governor died and you didn't have an equally good one ready to replace him. Whether integrated with the succession system or not, that would be a complete game breaker for me.

The buildings you build on the resources sound good.

Governors....Don't like this. Sounds like something boring I as a min-maxer would feel forced to micromanage to get best results of and that's just NO!   Add in that they can die so the dynastysystem kicks in....no....don't like it....and don't forget that I WILL game the system so better implement something that isn't exploitable   assassinate governors f.e....

To stop cityspam....don't know yet. But in Master of Magic I only wanted to found cities that would be able to reach 20.000+ pop and preferably close to other goodies like minerals'n'stuff. You also wanted to place them some room away from other cities so they wouldn't share a tile of some resource with another city. Cityfounding was a hard decision there since building a settler took valuable turns from a city. But I hope that Elemental got a better system for building stuff since it felt so locked in MoM.

Aagin, there is less fine tuning with only using off/on switches for importing/exporting. With the options im suggesting, you can set up supply lines exactly the way you want them, without micromanging caravans every turn.

What if you are feeding two 2 cities with 4 farm villages, but you want 3/4 of the food to go to one city and other 1/4 to feed the second city? With this system, settlements can only export/import to connecting cities (either roads or ports). This might seem restricting at first, but it actually allows more control on how food gets distributed (btw you could use this for ANY resource, if the devs are so inclined). This is because nothing is stopping a settlement from importing something, and then exporting it to another connecting city...which creates a supply line from two distant cities. The food goes exactly where you want it, at the amounts you want it, when you want it.

I really like the food-based systems. They seem like they would do a lot more to stop city spam than the governor system would.

The governor system is still a good idea, though. I like that heroes can come in political flavors, and it provides another way to customize your cities. I would change things a little, though:

1. A governor must stay in the city they govern to provide a bonus to it.

2. The larger a city is the more inefficiency there is, so higher-level cities gain more benefit from governing. Outposts cannot have a governor or gain bonuses from governing; the population is just too small to benefit from better administration. If we're using food to limit total population, this also encourages players to have fewer, larger cities.

3. If a city's governor is not skilled enough to handle that city's size, or if the governor is killed, that city suffers large penalties until the situation is corrected. Production stops, prestige drops due to rampant lawlessness, and population falls as citizens flee to safer cities. If the situation continues long enough, the remaining population may lose faith in their government and secede. That should take quite a long time, however. Long enough to have had multiple opportunities to install a new governor.

Lol, good point pigeonx2,

"Oh noes our mayor is killed! What shall we do?"

"I know, let's join the other side!"

/golfclap

After reading the rest of the thread, I think the consensus is pointing to using BOTH a "food footprint" based system to limit population, and benefits, such as you described, for large cities to promote that population to reside in as few cities as possible.

There should be one main city that is your "go-to" city that does most everything you want to do. AFter that you build additional ciites for specific purposes (such as mining/farming/trade/defense/ect..), and not just for the sake of having more cities in order to have more STUFF.