This thread wins! 

The best part about it is this:

This is a wonderful idea and I love it. It essentially accomplishes everything an outpost system would but within the current framework, and also naturally adds in a distance requirement. It makes sense that you wouldn't really be able to harvest resources from some distant location without any sort of infrastructure in the general vicinity.

I also like the governor idea, although (as any new idea) it could use a fair bit of refining. The biggest issue to be solved is what happens to a city whose governor dies and cannot be replaced? I don't like the idea of it leaving your control and joining up with the nearest neighbor who can support it (which it looks like you suggested). Maybe, depending on the governor ability of the replacement, the city would take a hit to productivity and efficiency, and also prevent any growth from occurring until a suitable replacement governor has been found.

I think I'll be very happy if something like this makes it into the game, as I think it would resolve a lot of my reservations about city building!

If we can city-spam now in MoM and Civ, if the drivers are still there to city-spam in Elemental, the player will still -try- to do it, just that they'll governor spawn/city spam instead of MoM's settler spawn/city spam. Heroes/family hard to get? Could become equivalent to making a new city settler expensive.

Isn't there some way to more subtly remove the -motivations- for city-spamming the map? - For instance, in civ/mom it's obvious that you want as many cities as possible - because they add to your accumulated income/research. IF, however, some sort of law-of-diminishing-returns was applied to reflect the dangers of imperial overstretch, this would discourage city spamming over a particular population. - And we'd have to choose carefully where to place them strategically. - Unfortunately it's then obvious that the underlying formula would have to change for balance on different map sizes.

Alternatively, there could be a 'Capital' dynamic, as in many other games - With your idea, the Capital could perhaps be the city governed by the Sovereign. - Certain key scores/buildings might only go up via the 'capital', meaning it becomes all important. P'haps only one capital per major landmass?

Like the idea of resource-tapping outposts - but better if we have the option to reinforce them or leave them vulnerable - all part of the strategising!

Note: Units that are set as a city's 'governor' would still be able to explrore and adventure. The difference is that hero units more inclided for domestic use (with a higher 'Governing' stat) would also have inherent traits that give bonuses to the city they're stationed in (boost o production, training times, etc).  So cities that don't have their governor present will not be producing at their max ability.

What if outposts didn't have to have governors?  That would eliminate the problem of having essentially no heros to govern in the early game.  You could still make a few outposts, and as you got more heros, you could expand them into actual cities.  While you'd still have to have some sort of measure to stop outpost spamming, I have much less of a problem with having a handful of large cities and a large number of outposts than with having a huge number of sprawling cities.  This could also add an element of depth and strategy to creating cities- would you rather have a few large cities with heros and armies constantly guarding them, or a number of very small ones, requiring a more mobile army but therefore allowing more mobility to your heros?

Just a thought.

Eye of the beholder, indeed. 10 cities per faction would be horrible spam to me on the beta map size, and 30 would be ludicrous even on a ludicrous map. I'm really sold on the idea of trying to make a marked departure from the swarm-o-cities norm in the TBS genre.

I'm late in my second colony rush on a GC2 immense map with moderate habitables. 100+ colonies seems both normal & fun, but I got all my GC2 habits long, long before I started hearing Elemental devs express interest in the idea of fewer, more 'meaningful' cities.

Really, really like the system. It addresses nearly all of the concerns i have with the current system.

Things to consider:

With this system a couple of early heroes are essential, since the marriage of the sovereign is probably a mid game event and the second and third city should come way before that.

Tapping resources without snaking: Yes! Yes! Thank you!

Maybe allowing some other structures -like watchtowers- to be built not adjacent to the hub too?

Governors to avoid city spam: Yes! Yes! Thank you!

Maybe letting lvl 0  outposts be possible without governor but also being absolutely unable to grow till a governor is assigned? So that a mining outpost with just 4 tiles would be possible? But absolutely every settlement needing a governor is also all right with me.

good

good

not good.

As the sovereign i am still the supreme ruler, it should still be my decision.

I think it would be better to give severe penalties to the city making it a liability costing big money to maintain for the time without a proper governor. Than i could revert the control of this city to a neighbor to get rid of the penalties or tough it out till a new governor is available.

my opinion exactly

This method also makes heroes viable for more than one playstyle!  I love this idea.

One thing to take into account about city spamming, is that right now you can't use Essence for anything else than city spamming. As soon as Essence can be used for something else, we will see less cities in general.

About governors, I like the idea of them, but as an idea, not as a second mechanic to avoid city spamming because the first mechanic we thought doesn't work... (and again, hard to know if it works until we get more uses for Essence).

Couple of concerns...some of which may be unwarranted to due to changes and/or misconceptions about the economic model.
So the outpost with ranger billy can't grow because of his poor governor skills, but still gets the extra bonuses from direct control of whatever resource it controls. But, because it cant grow it cant take proper use of the extra resources as much as say, City B, that is 7 tiles away, thus most of them are wasted because the outpost doesn't have the proper buildings to fully utilize the resource it just tapped. As a result, such as the problem now, there is no incentive not to grow that outpost as fast as possible so to make full use of it's resources.

(The above assumes the economic model where the city that 'owns' the resource gets a significant bonus as where other cities get a minor bonus)

I propose that cities below a certain level(outpost would probably be fine) be allowed to select a designated city that receives the bonus resources that the outpost would receive. Caravans would transport the goods from the outpost to the designated city and I think that might inject some of the option 1 feel(complex economic system) into the game. Plus they become important trade routes that add more strategic depth in warfare.

Edit: Of course, you couldn't designate a city halfway across the map as the receiver, this should be over relatively short distances.

Edit2: That also makes it so that later, when a barbarian horde is coming you still have the opporunity to upgrade to face the danger.

I'd pretty completely agree with this, except that the worst city-spam binge I've had so far didn't take essence for the most part, it happened via luck finding good open land and luck in what ended up covered by progressive renewal from my original sites.

This is actually a great system because it will give uniqueness and specialty to each city.

No city will be the same and there won't be any one city to rule them all.

In my opinion, this issue does NOT make city building lame.

However, it would be nice to allow more tiles for the capital to distinguish it from the other cities.

When changing the capital, extra tiles will also have to go.

Perhaps, "area of influence" can be defined for the city and enable harvesting for any resource within that area.

(For example, in civilization 4, you can harvest any resources that are in the 21 blocks around the city.)

This will address 2nd and 3rd issues - no snake tailing and unnecessary city building.

Also, prohibiting other party from building a city within your "area of influence" would address the 2nd issue - douchebag syndrom.

Note: "area of influece" is not the same as "cultural influence".

(unless you want it to be, in which case, it will trigger city flopping )

Specialized buildings, such as farm, pasture, mine and etc, would be nice, with proper research of course.

This way player doesn't have to

It would be nice to have "garrison" option for the specialized buildings or allow units to have "camp out" or "fortify" option.

Meh. nothing is perfect.

Love it. it would be a nice feature like in Total War where the city gets extra benefit when the governor is present.

Also, not all heroes should excel in magic and might. Some heroes should excel in governing and research.

However, I don't think it should be mandatory.

Don't be sad, this is beta in action. I mean, it's not like we're a month before release. People like the direction, there's just some tweaks to make.

 

I think there's some neat things you could do with this idea, but I've got some concerns.

- How random is the "governor" stat on a family member? It would be unfortunate to go one game with 300 turns before you can raise a settlement to city due to an unhappy RNG.

- Having a major city in the core of your empire suddenly flip factions because the governor died would seem kind of odd. Maybe if you can't appoint a suitable governor, the city should suffer penalties due to mismanagement until you can (with the penalty size proportional to just how far off the governor is from what is required). If you can lose cities this way, I can't see people putting their important governors anywhere near combat.

- Reassigning governors could get tedious without a good UI.

That said, I really like how this emphasizes heroes and family members as important things for your civilization itself and not just to be married off. Prestige could be affected, a new settlement being led by the legendary Lord Bob who just defeated two legions is probably going to draw more people then one founded by Uncle Dave the senile.
 
 

Love it. What kind of range would you be able to use?
 

Strictly speaking a "colony" under that system could be an outpost that can't grow, but that doesn't offer the same possibilities that the governor system does.

Anyway, as I was saying, don't be sad. This is exactly how the beta process is supposed to work, and good ideas came out of it.

I like the new direction that Elemental's graphics are going in.  

Ah, I first want to say, thank you for acknowledging those problems so openly. That's why I love StarDock.

Let's see what your idea would solve:

Doesn't solve it.

Does with low level governours.

Does with the ability to build harvest buildings afar.

Does, with level limit on governours.

Does, with limit on number of governours.

Five out of four, pretty good I'd say.

I really like it that you'd need a governour for every city, it would really help in preserving wilderness and empty areas on the map.

I don't like that, since it could give a city in the middle of your kingdom to another player just by the bad luck of losing a heroe. Imho a city without a suitable governour should just become unrulable, ie. you can't do anything with it and don't gain anything from it till you can send a new proconsul. But it would still count as your territory and the soldiers there would still be under your command (different chain of command). Only after a longer time of not getting any replacement ruler, a city should be able to either declare independency (become neutral) or join another faction if they've an appropriate ruler to send and only if that other faction is close by.

So a player has a chance to easily get one's city back but if you don't act, you'll lose it eventually for good.

Imho watchtowers should also be allowed to be built at a certain range (4-5 big tiles), harbours (1 big tile away only), castles (if there are any) to protect mountain passes for example and to station troops (2-3 big tiles).

Then move some soldiers over there and station them yourselves if you think it's important enough.

Disagree heavily with that. If you want stuff outside your city defended, then move some soldiers there for protection. Having unprotected stuff outside of cities would make raiding a viable mechanic instead of just assaults on cities.

-------------------------------

Now to go wild on the succession system for a moment. When a faction surrenders, how about cities with sons and daughters of other sovereigns as rulers go to their parents factions, instead of having the whole defeated faction surrender as a whole?

So instead of, oh, faction B surrender to faction A, here faction A, get 5 new cities.

It would be like, faction B surrenders. Faction A gets 2 cities governed by grandsons of faction A's sovereign while faction C gets one city ruled by the grand-grand daughter of the sovereign of faction C and 2 cities would go neutral, since they were governed by heroes who had no allegiance to anybody special.

While the idea says its possible for governors to be out adventuring, i don't think anyone would actually dare do that. If a hostile nation spotted a hero whos main focus is governorship instead of combat i am pretty sure they would put some serious effort into killing him since it would cripple his city. If a player has more then a few high level governors assassinated then it pretty much cripples his whole nation since there are fewer cities and each is more important.

Giving a city a bonus just for having one of these heroes in it also creates a problem unless you cap the number possible. You could have 5 governors all running their cities from a distance while they all sit in one city which turbo charges that one city.

This also might be a problem if one nation takes a large amount of land or cities from another nation. Would do they do with the cities they captured? they probably don't have spare governors who are high enough level to put in them unless you give out lots of govs, and if there are lots of govs, it lets folks spam cities. And if you grab a bunch of free land, do you have to just sit on it and wait for more high level govs to be able to build cities on it? Sure, you could build settlements, but those sound pretty pointless if your goal is to make some major manufacturing zones.

A possible solution to this would be to make governors and heroes a completely separate unit. Perhaps there could be a special building(Sovereign's Institute of Bureaucracy and Red Tape) you can only build in your capital that, at great expense, can produce governors. Otherwise, you can't control the number of govs available to you and they become a painful bottleneck if your nations situation changes quickly.