A note one Essence and reviving the land...

Right now the part of City Building that takes essence is the re-habilitating of the land. By spending you essence and breathing new life into it (or twisting it) you make it livable for your people and a city can now be placed there.

Cities also radiate this healing (or twisting) power, so as the game progresses you see the world come to life (or, again, twist) to your will. This transformation (hopefully) provides a significant emotional tie between the player's actions and the world they're inhabiting and greatly affecting.

That said, one suggestion to prevent an overabundance of cities has been to decrease the spread of the healing/twisting effect your cities have on the land. While this has been debated internally, we fear the net result would be a world with consistantly small pockets of life spotting the desolate wastes, and the player would lose that feeling that they're 'winning the war' against the effects of the cataclysim.

Anyways, I've enjoyed reading all the great feedback on the topic (and your 80+ posts in 24 hours certainly indicates we're looking at something that really stirs the imperial passions of players).

Carry on, fellow armchair kings, carry on 

 

This seems to me like a good, straightforward way to avoid city spam.  If a city grows beyond its "natural" food limit, it could start receiving food via caravans (letting it grow more, but slowing down the growth of the rest of your empire and making it vulnerable to siege tactics).  Concentrating population growth in larger/more prestigious cities (because people tend to migrate there from the wastes and from smaller settlements) would also help ensure that you end up with only a few major population centers.  But I don't know exactly what the mechanics for this should be (e.g., since resources aren't explicitly shipped around the map, food shipments can't be under the sovereigns control, which could be a bit annoying).

 

I like the idea of governors too, but as a means to limit the player's growth it feels a bit odd.

Not to derail the focus of this thread,

 

- Have enough essence and you can spend that to bring the Governor unit back to life (with the obvious magical consequences that spending essence results in)

I was concerned for a minute before I finished reading it. The Last thing you want to do is "decrease the spread" to prevent city spam. I think that will have the exact opposite effect and urge the player to make more cities, Not less. If anything, one would think you should "Increase the spread" to allow players to build on resources Near their cities without the need to place another one to get the resource. The number one reason players build cities isn't to get the city its-self, but to Heal/Twist the land so they can get the resource. The way things are set up though, you have to build the city on or next to the resource to get the resource.

By Increasing the Spread and allowing players to capture resources by building on them Near their cities, you will greatly decrease the need to spam cities. Another thing that would help greatly would be for the player to have the ability to cast the spell that Heals/Twists the land independently of building a city. This way when the player finds an area with a lot of resources that is already near a populated city they can bring that area under their control then run roads from the resources to the nearest city. Look at how this works in real life to see it's affect. More often then not people don't want to live right next to a Coal Mine or a Iron Mine as these industries are often noisy and produce a great amount of pollution. These industries are often placed on the outskirts of towns or even outside the town entirely. This does force the workers to have to commute to work and the resources to be shipped from the Mine to the city, but it's worth it for the quality of life inside the city.

Also you need to look at resource generation and how that is handled when the maps are created. If the resources are placed at strange intervals you'll have players spamming cities close together if need be so they can get those resources. If the resources are more evenly spread out then the cities will be more evenly spread out. This how-ever will have a impact on the "Organic" feel of the maps that won't be any good. Resources in the real world aren't laid out with human city planning in mind. We go where the resources are.

One last 'devils argument' attempt...

If all we have to do is plop down a few cities (along with the other Sovs) and wait, how much of a "...significant emotional tie between the player's actions and the world they're inhabiting and greatly affecting..." is that?  Little to no effort = little to no attachment.

If we want the feeling we're 'winning the war' agianst the effects of the cataclysm, plopping down a few cities then waiting is not much of a 'war'.

From what I've seen the cataclysm is pretty moot, and the 'war' is against other Sovs.  The cataclysm doesn't fight back or resist, it just inevitably and without subsequent Sov effort fades away -- or am I missing something?

Assuming I'm not, adding in a resisting cataclysm would add a lot -- a third actor in the Elemental play.  The cataclysm is a big part of the lore, but a very small actor. 

At least make the rate/cost of spread of reclamation moddable please.

Edited in:

We have a battle between life and death (not good and evil).  I see the cataclysm as chaos, and our reclaiming the land as order.  Including an order-chaos battle to the life-death would be interesting.

I like the idea of governors however I dislike the idea of them being mandatory. An outpost for example I personally think wouldn't need a governor.

This statement concerns me to a degree. Do you mean that a city will be given to a neighboring governor or a neighboring country?

The idea of having a 3 tier system is very interesting to me. Where basically there would be 2 levels of government for an area. Local which is any individual city, town, village, or outpost. These could have (optional) hero mayors appointed to them to provide bonuses or what have you. The 2nd tier would be provinces, districts, regions, or territories whatever you want to call them. Regions would cover large areas of land encompassing several local governments. A governor, magistrate, chancellor, or what have you would then be appointed to a region.

Now from here you could do whatever feels natural. You could limit the number of local governments that could be created in a region. Limit the total number of tiles a local government can have based on the region or governor. I don’t know exactly what you’d be shooting for but there would be a lot of options.

Now if the situations you originally described comes up instead of a region being given to a neighboring country it would just be temporarily ran by the closest neighboring governor until a replacement is appointed.

So basically you would have local governments which would be mayors, regional governments run by governors, and of course the Wizard King at the top.

  It's really just a visual thing (the cloth map dosen't get the point across), but you definatly feel a sense of pride when the world around you comes back to life, no matter what the effort.  If a game session is almost over and the world is still half-barren, the player isn't going to feel very powerful in that sense. If the game is half over and the world is considerably healed (70%+), and you're a major factor in that healing, then you're going to feel like an awesome, bad-ass wizard who can't be messed with. 

As with anything, the spread of this magical influence is going to be a balancing act, but if we're allowing a player's environment to be a launchpad for future cities, it has to be factored into the equation (feeling of power vs. allowing too many cities).

We're having a meeting on the subject today..I'll be bringing everyone's ideas to the table and keep ya'll posted!

I am concerned about the governing system in that it sounds very much like That in the earlier Total War games and sometimes your family just didn't grow quickly enough to fill all governing positions let alone be generals as well. May I suggest that you can recruit a governor unit that fills the position (research could be done to increase the governing level of the unit). The unit would not give the city any special bonuses like a hero would and would not take part in battles - in essence it would be a functionary dispatched to organise things. You could also consider not being allowed to level up a city that is under a governor.

No, no. I 'get' that. The problem is that there's currently nothing else to do with essence or your sovereign besides rushing cities quickly.  And nothing to do with your sovereign except building more cities in the areas restored afterward. I wonder what the problem looks like with the rest of the mechanics implemented.

 

You guys will be playing with the magic system by the end of the week...don't worry, the true purpose (and importance) of Essence hoarding will soon be unveiled. 

 

I just want to say what whatever else we can do with our essence had damn well better be good enough to make a city-spamming player with an army in the thousands seriously reconsider his decisions.

Though I'm a bit afraid to see what it might be if it is.

Volcano to the face.

Maybe we could forge the One Ring, imbuing it with our essence.

I do believe, long ago, they mentioned being able to imbue our heroes with our essence, making them very powerful.  Dunno if that's still the case though.

 

The essence of a dozen citys, all packed into one hero? that would be like a cheesy kung fu movie where the hero lolPWNs everyone.