attaching the number of settlements to the civilization tech tree in some way is a really good idea to whomever suggested it!

That would have to only affect creating settlements yourself though, otherwise it'd totally cripple conquest style players because they'd have to keep up with the city count research in order to conquer anything.

Another alternative solutionf or city spamming... come up with a new method to place cities in converted ground.

So you can spend essence to create cities in wastelands. But you have to use a different method to build cities in reclaimed ground. The reason for no people in reclaimed ground isn't that the land is barren... it is that the people just aren't attracted to settle there for whatever reason.

Maybe instead you build a settler unit or a significant gold outlay is needed? When cities aren't free, guaranteed you'll slow down how many are built.

I personally think a Settler Unit made out of either a small proportion of the City's population or a small amount of *free* population with an appropriate gold cost would be the most reasonable.

Then, the population of the Settler Unit would become the starting population of the settlement. Now, due to prestige, if this is an extensive amount of population (due to gaming or whatever) then that excess population would likely migrate to other cities anyways, so there would only be the incentive of using low-population settlers.

I suppose you could make a settler start with a certain resource cost (a custom settler?) where you "prebuild" buildings along with the settler, up to the amount allowed by the first ring of buildings. In this case, you can use your productive city to "create" a preset hamlet to plop somewhere else. Such an investment might allow a less risky requisition of sizable population into the Settler (yet still a pittance compared to the City's total population). This could be a more expensive, more viable option for settler building in the late-game where much of the land has been somewhat urbanized, or to reclaim lost land, ect. Not sure if *this* would have an unbalancing effect however.

I suppose the simple answer is that, beyond the first city (or two) I propose that Settlers be used (wether pop or gold cost) to create new settlements. I suppose, however, that Channelers could still construct all the cities if he wanted too?? Settlers built in Cities would cost population (unless its decided to be a gold cost), and Cities founded by the Sovereign would cost a certain amount of gold cost, as well as possibly some access to Wood and/or Stone.

Still - settler cost does not alleviate City Spamming in any appreciable way, other than perhaps early-early rexing. Settler cost is appropriate, and might help avoid *some* problems, however in the long run it does not handle city spam, or the "Boring City" dillema found in Civ and Total War. True ways to stop city spam rely in Food Scarcity, Food transport, and Population distribution via Prestige (migration).

Vieuxchat suggested it, and I also like the idea, but Tridus brings up a good point.

This "new city" tech is one that a player should be able to research over and over. However, each time it gets prohibitively more and more expensive to research a new city... to the point its no longer feasible. The actual tech represents the logictics and planning involved in creating a new city, and the increasing cots represents the ever more complicated logistics in governing more and more cities.

Conquest however should not be restricted by this. However, if you research a new city tech so that you can build one more city, but then you instead conquer a city, it goes back to zero. If its already at zero, and then conquer a new city, it goes down to -1. So the next time you research this tech, it simply brings you back up to zero. Its  a downside to conquering, plus the player that just lost a city will now have their next 'new city' tech at a cheaper price ... due to the that player now having less cities overall.

Anyway, im stilling milling this idea in my head to see if its any good.

Outlaw, I think your solution is searching for a problem, just complete the "New City" research and you're now ABLE to build another city.  No need to worry about anything other than that.

That's why a "new city" tech isn't really good, because if you conquer a new city your available cities are back to 0. And you made a research for nothing.

In fact I prefer my other idea about this : each 4th level in civilization gives you one more available city. And a tech "urbanization" will give you a new city for each 3 level in civilization (or 5th and 4th, etc.)

That would be a player choice : If you go deep in the military tree ... and have a little level in civilization, then you'll have to ... conquer. Isn't it logic for a "military" faction ? They get new cities through conquest.

In fact food already work like that IF you build a road. You can have a big big city with a lot of food, and if you connect your outpost with it, it will have enough food to get to level 2 or 3. I already did that.

Hmmm, Im not sure if I like that. Feels too confining for the players, and makes it feel like its funneling players into a single predictable path to play the game.

With 'new city' techs the player gets to decide when to focus on cities, and when they can put all their energy into that effort. But I agree, making all their research obsolete if they conquer a new city isn't good or elegant. So, instead of worrying about who is conquering what, simply base the cost into researching a new city on the number of current cities you control. Its basically the same effect, but with no risk of making your research obsolete.

The problem is already there, --> city spam. I just want to come up with the best way to limit its as much as possible. Increasingly expensive "new city" techs would go much farther in doing that than simply a single base price for the tech, imo. But you had to deal with city conquest, and the addition of new cities through that manner... but I feel my new suggestion above makes that a non-issue now.

I don't understand why you need to consider captured cities at all in this process.

I imagine the "outposts" would be the things used to extract resources and such.  If small settlements are really desired, essence might be used for that as well.

FIXED:

I think now that we KNOW they will allow players to grab resources without having to build a whole city where the resource is that "City Spam" will mostly take care of it's-self.  What was the number one reason for deciding where to build your city? Because that's where the resources you wanted were. That's not as much of a factor now as you'll be able to grab that resource that's 4 or 5 tiles away from your city without having to build a new city that close by.

NEW PROBLEM:

This does how-ever do something else, it throws the weight of what will determine "City Spam" on the shoulders of the Rate of Expansion of the Healing/Twisting effect on the land. Even though we can now grab that resource that's a bit away from our city, it would still make sense that we'll only be able to actually build on the improvement if the land underneath it has been twisted to our will. If this Spread Rate is too slow/small then we'll Still have players spamming cities close together to get the resources they need.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:

1) Increase the Rate of the Spread. If this grows a little faster in the early stages of development the player will be able to grab that resource that's 4 or 5 tiles away. It can always be set up to Spread quickly at first because of the strength of the spell but gradually get weaker the more land it takes over. After-all we can only assume each use of essence to bring the land back to life can only stretch so far. It's not a infinite effect.

2) Allow the casting of the Healing/Twisting Spell to be independent of founding a new city. This way a Sovereign can expend the essence needed to bring the land back to life around those resources he needs so badly. You are getting a infinite resource after-all, it only makes sense you may have to "spend money to make money" as it were.

Disscuss...

I like the idea that the land needs to be aligned to you to access a resource.

I like the idea to be able to expend essence to heal/twist the land without building a city (maybe only mana or a VERY small essence cost. Another possibility would be to be able to "direct" to some extent the healing effect of your city. Default is to spread in all directions, but maybe you could will it to focus in one direction at the cost of not expanding in other directions...

I am also interested to see what other uses there are to essence, I think this is going to be the BIG deterrent to city spam.

edit: I also think that being behind "city walls" needs to provide a pretty hefty defensive bonus. There needs to be motivation to get those resources inside of walled territory, and not just within "the sphere of influence".

You don't, really. Its easy enough for the game to keep track of who founded a city, so it knows how many cities you've founded. The "city founding" tech would control that number. Once you hit the limit, you can't create new settlements until you get another level of the tech. Conquered settlements don't factor in at all, which allows the path of a warlord not focused on Civilization techs to be workable.

That's not my preferred solution to the issue, but it's certainly workable.