I'm hoping for a system where each family member/hired hero has some base set of stats, including governorship, which can be increased in a variety of ways. If a hero spends his days leading armies and winning battles, you should be able to increase his combat and army related skills. If a hero spends his days governing a city, sat in his Town Hall or whatever, his governing skills should go up. This would allow you to produce good governors, at the cost of leaving them sat in a city not adventuring or anything.

Oo that's interesting. It could be a related trait to governing, maybe called "Prestige." The more prestigious the governor, the more he can affect the actual prestige of the city he governs. The prestige trait could go up (and down?) based on his/her achievements, on or off the battlefield. 

Good idea! And perhaps cities with governors with no ties to other kingdoms could join a nearby faction that they were on very good terms with, regardless of their dynastic connections.

But the essence mechanic does work - it makes settlement rushing much less effective (or rather, it makes it a trade-off). It doesn't prevent city-spamming throughout the game, though, because habitable land spreads so by mid-game or so you can usually found cities without having to spend any essence. 

Yes, people would probably start to specialize their heroes to an extent... I don't see that as a problem, though. Particularly if a city gets a bonus if its governor is in town, that would strongly encourage players to keep the governors of their larger cities stay in their cities (a bonus to a small city is not going to be as meaningful as a bonus in a large city, after all). To me, this is a positive aspect of the idea!

Um, no. That is not what he said. A city would get a bonus from having its own governor in town. A hero with 5 Governing sitting in a town that he is not governor of would provide no bonus to the town.

I like this! It also makes you think twice about integrating all the cities you conquer - you might be better off razing some of those cities. It'd make consuming another nation through warfare an expensive and difficult process, making it harder for a warmongering nation to just wash over the land. Basically, any city without a governor would be out of your control until you install a new governor unless you place it under martial law.

Meh. I don't see all that much confusion - mostly just people curious as to details that Boogie didn't go into, and how to solve some of the problems with the idea. Saying a feature is unintuitive, confusing and complex based on a (literally) hastily scribbled description made on a Sunday afternoon is jumping the gun. Once details are nailed down I think this idea could be explained very easily and very concisely...

I like this, too! It'd definitely make the very beginning of the game a little less of a hassle and emphasize how badass your sovereign is.

I like what I read boogie

A couple of my own thoughts to add:

First, if the governor dies, the town should automaticly put a temporary leader in play. Maybe it takes time for this governor to be elected (with the town being unproductive while this happens), perhaps he'll only be able to hold control for X turns before a revolt, or he could possibly turn the city over to a neighboring nation if there is overwhelming influence.  Further, governors wouldn't nessecarily need to be special units, but if they are not, they lack the power and benefits a more heroic leader would bring. A default governor could perhaps only ever have a city of level 3, or is easily corrupted and/or killed.

Secondly, it might be interesting if the tile limit was a soft limitation rather then a hard one.  Essentially the maximium tiles listed would represent how large the city can be under its current governor without any inherient drawbacks. Should you place more tiles then this optimal number, the city's prosperity would degrade.  Eventually if a city grew too large, or a powerful governor is suddenly replaced by a lesser one, the city could collapse under its own weight and fall into ruin.  On the flip side, a town much smaller then its max number of tiles should have its prosperity increase accordingly.  It'd be interesting to see in action I think, and would let players push the limits of their societies or play it safe based on their preference.

Slightly related to my second point, you could also give the players sovereign a leadership score that indicates the number of cities he can control effectively.  It wouldn't stop you from city spamming, but if you over step what you can control by too many cities, corruption would be a big issue.  I have a fondness of limits that can be ignored, albeit at a cost.

Mostly like the governor stuff, except for the possible flipping on governor death.

I agree with some others that you should be able to assign a governor that is lower level in this case, but just give the city some severe penalties. If you find that there's no one to govern a certain city, you can have it go independant. Either you lose direct control of it until you assign a new governor, or it could become it's own 1-city "kingdom", until you (or someone else) takes it by force.

One other thing that sort of bothers me, what happens when you take over an enemy's city and don't have a governor of high enough level to control it? Are we going to go on a razing frenzy? I plan on playing the goblin like faction, so it fits... but yea. Wars are going to cause the destruction of many many towns.

The magic will allow you to raise new land, right?  Or make previously unbuildable land habitable?  It sounds like there will be ways to get more tiles, whether by terraforming magic (with direct analogues in GC2) or by bringing in a better governor to develop a high-priority settlement/building growth buildings/whatever mechanism exists in the city-building for increasing city size.

A minimum distance between cities that forbids new foundings if they'd be within that radius seems like a good idea.

I don't see anything wrong with snaking.  Small towns in the real world often grow along a principal street.  From what I've heard of Elemental's building system, it won't be a case of snake towns having cheap trash buildings with no value except as stepping stones to resources, but rather, a resource-oriented town will build a civic skeleton that can be upgraded into usefulness when necessary -- perhaps in preference to starting a new settlement.  Also, snaking will give intermediate towns distinctive shapes.  And if a player needs more civic buildings, then filling out a snake town's undeveloped areas could be an alternative to founding a new town.

Civ has handled this with capping mechanisms.  If necessary, perhaps the one-shot Essence cost for the land to be revived could be turned into an ongoing Essence commitment for the land to be sustained.  E.g., a given hero has a number of Essence points to distribute between cities which is determined by an associated skill or attribute or level.  Let's say a hero has 300 town-sustaining capacity, which can be provided to a single giant city, or to two major cities, or to one major city and several small towns which serve as forts and mines, and so on.  This capacity might also come with a maximum number of different cities.  Exceeding either will force the player to allocate dying land which cripples existing cities until the limit is expanded or the holdings are diminished.
 

In practice, this sounds a lot like the outpost/real city divide.  Pigsley there is going to limit whatever city he manages to being a tiny settlement only as important as its single purpose.  Re-assigning a better governor to develop an outpost will reduce your safety net of qualified governors and could lead to the loss of a city.

What mechanisms are already in place to determine city growth?
 

These things together sound like they could be a problem for hero use.  This system would reward players for keeping their heroes in their cities instead of campaigning with them -- both to get the bonus, and because losing a hero could result in losing a city.  I don't want to stick my commanders in the back of the base Starcraft-style.
 

Yeah, this way the snake or the blob still have the advantage of city walls.  Put me down in the dynamic city walls camp, BTW.  I want a bonus for making a contiguous city and I don't want to futz around with walls on a tile-by-tile basis every few turns.

I have no idea what went wrong with my quote fields here.

 

You do realize that cities are actually the highest rank for a settlement, right?

Your argument loses all sense when you replace "City" with "outpost"

 

Since one of the proposals to fix the problem was outposts incapable of growing into cities, I believe everybody does understand the terminology. The entire objection people have is the idea that some backwater mining settlement will grow to be as big as your imperial capital.

Cities aren't particularly special when you have 30 of them. When you have 30 settlements and only 5 are "cities"? Those five cities are pretty important.

What's to stop a particular mining outpost from growing into a major settlement?  What the hell was San Francisco?

I like the governors and being able to use resources close by.

 

A mining camp needs a keep?  Calling it something else at a lower stage is irrelevant.  I don't care if it's a village, town, city, metropolis, whatever.  The organizational structure is entirely optional.  To set up a mining operation, you don't need any of them.  All you need is food delivered by the same supply train you'll already need to haul your ore to market.

 

In important gameplay mechanic terms, you wouldn't need the place brought to life in order to set up some tents and a fire pit.

I picture them working like the asteroid fields in Galciv2. Once setup, they provide the resource and maybe a production bonus to the city they are attached too.  Players can attack and defend them to their preference, and should an outpost fall under a neighbors influence they could flip on the owner.

 

San Franscico was a Phenomena. It benefited from a huge population influx driven by a mad rush for riches. This population the was soon sustained by California being granted statehood, major banks moving to San Fransico to set up shop and US army creating up bases. It also had an excellent bay for shiping and trade. It quickly became more thant just a mining outpost. It became THE commerce/trade capital of that entire region. I'll shamlessly plus myself, and say this all ties in nicely with my post on regional commerce centers, and how they naturally prevent city spamming in real world terms.

So let me see if I got this straight.

There are 3 main things you can build on the map

1. Cities these require a hero or descendant with a governing skill in order to grow and the skill determines the size of said city though there will probably only be 5-10 on all but the largest 64 bit maps. These cities will be responsible for all of the magic, military and research your empire engages in.

2. Outposts/Towns/Camps

These will mainly harvest resources, provide population, or food. They do not require governors and will be placed on or near resources and then ship the to cities so that they can use the resources for other endeavors. These will most likely have a small military garrison ect.

3. For lack of a better word Attachments

These buildings include anything that must be attatched to 1 or 2 this is included but not limited to military watchtowers and keeps to control choke points and resource camps to prevent city snaking

Now if you only need govs for section 1 it sounds like an extremely good idea to me because that will definetely eliminate city spam for sure and makes the gameplay far more interesting in dividing 2's among 1's

You're assuming Psychoak, that the mining outpost is located at a stable site, with no outside influences whatsoever. The initial expenditure to get the site up and running is not just getting the land nearby up to farming-grade soil (though it certainly wouldn't hurt the long-term viability). You also have to take in to account all the other factors, creatures not destroyed by The Cataclysm would be roaming free since the land is only just being occupied by civilisation, any predators hanging out (we can safely assume) wouldn't be detered by your mighty tents and fire pit. Any humanoid tribes nearby that haven't been assimilated into your culture yet could be mighty resentful of your success... A keep and in extreme situations, a wall would both be vital to the long-term success of the operation under many conditions one could expect in- what is the world's name or is it just "The World of Elemental"? The "organisational structure" isn't just an official for the sake of more red tape, the skill of the gov' represents your investment in the site overall and since we're trying to rebuild and repopulate the world, there is much more to consider than a simple mining outpost.

I don't like this idea. While I do like the idea of governors, all I can really see coming out of this is players spamming heroes to make their governors. I'd rather just make cities past a certain point an economic liability. I'm a big believer in the bell curve

TBh, i  don't really like the idea of govs, but anything that keeps city spam down is something i can handle. I love me some wide open wilderness .