We need a keep at every mine to defend against predators and attacking primitives...

 

How about just garrison a unit?  Better yet, patrol your territory and kill any barbarians or scary monsters before they get there.

 

Piss away five essence to restore the land, and then not do anything with it...

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 .

The idea of governors concerns me a bit.  I would hate for Elemental to fall to the same game-breaking problems that struck EU: Rome, which quickly deteriorated into tedious shuffling and replacing of governors as better ones became available or old ones died off.  It was a game killer for many people.  I don't know if they've improved it since, but it crippled the game at release and many people never went back to it (myself included).

Personally, I'd rather see city growth and spam limited some other way.  Unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot of alternative ideas to offer at the moment.

 

I would simply like to state that I oppose the whole governor idea with all my heart, though I do vote yes for the satelite expansion idea. But the only things the whole succesion idea would make me do is either function in a constant state of war against anyone who took my cities from me, or just refuse to marry out at all and completely ignore the dynasty system, as while heroes are nice I refuse to risk my cities for the chance of getting a good one.  I also oppose any system which would prevent me from being able to completely conquer my foes, simply because I have ran out of heroes skilled enough to manage the cities I am trying to seige.

Besides, if someone wants to make the strategic decision to spend some of his or her precious and limited essence on making many large cities, why not let him? Instead of trying to punishing people who make many large cities like this system does, you should make it a strategically non-optimal choice. Something I thought was already being done by making each city you make cost non-replaceable essence that you could be using to bind monsters of legend to your cause, or to increase your channelers personal power. Or other such options.

Edit - I am not opposing a governor system as an idea, but I truly think this version of the idea is deeply flawed.

I don't like the idea of losing settlements and/or cities because you don't have a hero to govern them. I don't think it has been mentioned yet that if a city is conquored, it probally means that the hero who governed it might have fallen in battle in the city's defense. Unless you have a spare hero, you are going to have to wait until you can retake the city.

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Here is an idea. Give the soveriegn a "Soveriegnty" stat. This stat shows how well a soveriegn can control his lands without the aid of heroes governing his lands. Basically how willing the soveriegn's subjects are willing to work together, how willing the people are willing to follow the soveriegn's rule, and how competent the bureaucracy is.

The stat could do the following:

-Allow the soveriegn to control 1 city without penalty.
-At really high levels, the soveriegn might be able to control 2 or 3 cities without aid from any governers.
-Allow the soveriegn to control a few cities with some small penalty (maybe the cities only functions at 75% max efficiency).
-Allow the soveriegn to control many cities with a large penalty (maybe like at 25% of max efficiency).
-Governers may reduce this penalty by 25% (or more if they are really good).

With this stat, a soveriegn could make or conqour many cities. However, with the given penalties, the soveriegn would feel the need to stop and reconsider how his lands are managed. The soveriegn would have to either find new heroes, or would have to invest more points into his soveriegnty stat before expanding once more.

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I need to think abou this some more.

Actually, thats a really good idea. It also would prevent disasters if the gov of a city dies, since the sov can just manage it till you get a new gov in.

"predators and primitaves" you did see the thread a few weeks back about some of the creatures inhabiting the world right? I'd certainly want to wall off my aquisitions. Never the less, you still seem to view this from the wrong angle, the world is not easy to live in, safety would always have to come first and the arrogance you seem to display would invite destruction. There are many things if when foeced to fight early would cause a soverign great pain, even behind stout walls; dragons being an example. A quote from Aristopahes, ancient greek playwright, and poet. "Epops: The wise can often profit by the lessons of a foe, for caution is the mother of safety. It is just such a thing as one will not learn from a friend and which an enemy compels you to know. To begin with, it's the foe and not the friend that taught cities to build high walls, to equip long vessels of war; and it's this knowledge that protects our children, our slaves and our wealth."

1. Is a big problem already and we've not seen a lot of improvements yet to be available for the game. I'd also like to be able to go beyond the current size 4 limitation in the game, though it should be limited.

2. This is a big annoyance. Found a great resource... but I have to plop a city right next to it and there is nothing else good around that I really want a city for.

3. I've had some rather unrealistic development sizes. I also think the populace should sometimes force an issue.. like housing. In many parts of the world, unlicensed development is a major problem. Might some unwanted slums creep up if situations weren't just right?

4. It would be nice to have some control over this, though it shouldn't be too unrealistic. Are people just going to stop having kids? Your first city or capitol city should be mandatory as unlimited population growth, everybody has to have somewhere to go.

Sounds in many ways like replacing city spam with hero spam, which I personally like even less. To start with an outpost size 1 shouldn't require any leaders. I like the idea of requiring governors and vassals to help oversee your kingdom though.

How will one stop exploiting it with governor swapping? or governor assassinations? Vassals need to be static and you shouldn't need the governor outside the city much.

I love this one. Hopefully others at Stardock listen to the proposal.

I've also got an idea of my own to propose.

A city can grow into a metropolis or a giant trading megacity. It doesn't happen automatically and a number of disadvantages are added to it to prevent megacity spam.

To even qualify it has to meet these conditions:

• Two or more cities have to overlap "influence" zones. That is they're already growing together.
• They must have an overabundance of food for both of them.
• They must have an overabundance of trade routes (roads or ports more than needed).
• They must both be at size 4.
• They must both have a certain prestige threshold.

You then have to select the two cities and allow unrestricted development into a metropolis. This gives the following advantages and disadvantages.

• They share resources as the same city
• Share bonuses from buildings (only one needs a barracks to treat both as having a barracks)
• Additional tiles for development are opened (tiles must be inbetween the two if there is any space, else along roads or ports). No more than 2 or 4 tiles for both cities combined. The masses might obliterate some nearby farms in favor of housing, it is a risk you take.
  
• Commerce bonus for taxation purposes. Trade bonus to the city with other civilizations.
  
• Prestige bonus for the metropolis as its size makes it into a major of the kingdom/empire. This prestige bonus is equal a prestige debuff applied to all other settlements of any size. The main city in the civilization simply eclipses the prestige of any other settlements and impedes their development and ability to attract new citizens.
  
• The reduced restrictions and increased commerce also increases crime in the city. You become more unlucky with random events. (Piracy, bandits, disease, whatever are all more common in larger cities).
• Espionage penalty. It becomes a lot easier for enemy spies to sneak into the countless masses of citizens. Defending yourself from espionage becomes more difficult. The sovereign and his governors will be at more risk of assassination or other clandestine activities.

The idea is to create just a few "epic cities" in the world. Having more than one of these should be an allowable recipe for auto-disaster. Prestige in non-metropolis cities would become negative, crime unstoppable, espionage by your opponents unstoppable, the second metropolis might just rebel and decide their army is big enough they don't need a sovereign any more. Many civilizations will prefer to go without any of them, but the few that do will make a major name for themselves and be a sought after target for trade treaties and espionage.

I suppose that depends on how heroes/family members function in Elemental. If they do die, that would actually be a real pain in the ass for the whole governor idea. That also got really tedious in the Total War games - constantly finding new generals to govern cities and lead armies when old ones died got a little tiresome. I wouldn't want to see that in Elemental. Particularly if governors play an essential role in larger cities (in TW games they were helpful, but not essential).

This makes no sense. What do governors have to do with sieges?

The issue, as clearly stated in the OP, is that the necessity of imbuing land with essence to create fertile ground does not really deter city spam (although it does make city-rushing a big decision with a big trade off - or it will once we have other things to do with essence).

Also, you say "Instead of trying to punishing people who make many large cities like this system does, you should make it a strategically non-optimal choice."

What's the difference? Making something a strategically non-optimal choice, or even just making something be a real trade-off necessarily involves a downside, or as you might call it a "punishment." With a governor system, you'd still have the option to make many large cities - you'd just have to invest your resources into good governors and high prestige to attract all that population. In other words: a trade off. Something that may or may not be a good idea depending on the map, your strategy, etc.

Really, if they instead just got rid of the whole notion that fertile land spreads and forced you to spend essence for every city you create, every time - that would be a much harsher disincentive for building cities than governors.

Each city does not cost Essence.  Only cities founded in un-restored land.  Once you restore land it expands outwards with your prestige.  It's quite possible to city spam using this.  It is perhaps a bit slower than other methods, but after the first batch of cities it grows exponentially (if you have land available) especially if you've research the pretige boosting techs.  In the current beta it happens fast enough that I'm usually annoyed that I need to stop exploring with my sov and found some cities and I'm often limited more by my economy than I am by available restored land.  In the long run you probably end up with more cities this way because you have to plant them somewhat closer than you might normally.  Unless there are major changes, I think founding cities with essence will generally be limited to expanding to a new continent, doing a major expansion push, or claiming important resources, especially shards.

Keep in mind, as I read it this wouldn't require heroes.  You could train regular units for government work as well.  There will probably be a limit on how high normal units can go.  I'm guessing maybe topping out at 4 at the pinacle of the tech tree.  And of course there could be spells and wonders that might help with this.

I still stand by my statement regarding mining camps.  The miners need someplace to live and someplace to spend their wages, and somebody to enforce the law, and people to maintain the tools, eventually they might have kids and you might need a school (okay, that's a modern notion, strike that).  Sure, you can ship food in, that's not a problem.  You can't ship the other things in.  The only exception I can think of is if we are talking slave or penal labor, in which case it can definitely run on less, but the guards still need something to do.

Interesting concept.  I guess this model would work, but it could potentially be spammed as well.  I think quite a bit of flavor could be added if the outposts/remote locations and/or governer had to be derived from the origin city.  This would assure that the remote location would have a "vested interest" in producing for the city.

In other words, my sovereign can't just go running around spamming outposts.  I would need to create a settler type unit, and a governor (if I don't appoint a hero), from the original city.  This would assure that the area is of strategic interest enough to take the time and spend the resources on the point of interest, not to mention the travel to the point.  It would be expedition-like.

Here's a thought Boogie. The quote isn't working so here it is directly:

"4. Not really solved, in fact this approach favors large cities. Maybe my idea and the governor idea could be merged, and this would be the area where needing governor's would really help. In fact, it will also factor into balancing between problem #2 and problem #3 as well. So the governors should still definitely be in, imho."

Perhaps have cities that are built close together auto-join together when they spread too close together. The player could gain a small boost or even minus for a set time as the two settlements merge. If both settlements were doing well when they merged the city would experience a growth spurt or added tax income or production until things even out. If one or both of the smaller settlements weren't doing that well they would receive a minus in something until the populations settled on the idea of being one city.

If done right this would solve city spam and still allow the player to snake out to a resource. The trade off is the player gets the resource but when the cities grow bigger and they over-lap they become one city, thus the player is losing a city but gaining a larger city or what would be a boost to the original city depending on which way you look at it.

Then again you could also just let certain things like mines or other resource gatherers be built outside the city then connected to it with a road. The cost of this is that the "mine" is now vulnerable to attack and needs to be defended plus you're now paying upkeep on that little bit of extra road. If you have a lot of resources outside of cities the costs of the roads and keeping them protected is going to add up, so it's cheaper in the long run to try to keep your resource expansion inside your cities.

lol yes, no gold here just sand.  The California goldfields were much farther inland, as Outlaw says San Fran got huge because of the excellent natural harbor where ships carrying goldseekers could dock and all the resulting commerce.

Much appreciated, Boogie. Steps in the right direction if they are implemented properly. My reservations about cities are quieted for now knowing that you at least share the community's feelings... solving the problem won't be easy and will probably evolve through the beta. Good luck!

I also like the resource tapping proposal, and the governor concept.

However, using governors to limit city spam seems unwieldy, as it's an indirect method, easily gotten around, and relatively toothless, when there's simpler, direct, and softcap solutions, such as decreasing the amount and/or rate of spread of resotred land, or making the spread cost essence, or the like.  Make us choose amongst large empires (ie many cities), more heroes, more puissand SOVs, etc.  It lets small & relatively powerful empires compete with large & necessarily-relatively-weaker empires.  Hard choices are good, especially when they have large ramifications.