oh. thanks bunches for clearing that up for me.



with the recent patch i've had no problem with approval. i play necrophage tho cuz i couldn't stand broken lords playstyle.



as necros it's rather easy to stay happy as districts are built fast. also having roving armies to gather bodies for food gets my pop up quick so i can make more districts quick.

i used the small cities to make the settlers since they can replenish pop super fast.



also the marketplace is rather easy to use atm. since every luxury gives +10 approval now - i found that having many regions with lots of luxury extractors made approval easy.

I think the Food cost for Settlers idea has a lot of merit. Definitely something that should be tried.

Propbuddha wrote:
Expansion (the 2nd X) is an important to the game play in Endless Legend (or any 4X) as it forces interactions (war, trade, diplomacy) between the players. There needs to be competition for land and the resources that come from it. "Wide" strategies should be inherently superior, else we'd all build up our mega city and ignore the other players (or at least until it was convenient for us)

I think that linguistick should not determine gameplay. It could be a false friend.



The problem with wide play, even more in civs game is that it gets micro madness, you need to set things in many cities, but none of these really matters, also build order could be very similar in each. Alternative when you have just 4 cities, but each is important, and you are happy from each building is very tempting.

This is a little obscured in EL, since AI do not resist and do not present any threat ot territory contest.

Also in EL we have tactical battles, which could take time, so with too many cities to manage the play could be too slow.

For me it is more interesting when expanding is not only question of how fast, but if it is right time. So tall empires need a bone, to present a choice, without viable choices there will be less fun. One thing is that Empire plan could serve as reward for tall empire plan.

Moreover, there are random situacions, and if early in the game our expansion got slow down (but warmongerling neighbour, or less than ideal starting region) it should not destroy our chances of come back.

If our faction plan is to run away from the planet conquer would be out of character. In the same time they should not be just a easy prey for larger empires.

This is the case of Total War series, once you defeat your first serious enemy, there is no more challenge, since wide>>tall.



Some other way to deal with multi city managment is client state mechanic. So we can claim land and control it, but can focus on pampering just a few best regions.



On the other hand: I would not expect any balance in that matter in any near time. It is enought players are less likly to stuck with city growth in Age II, and happiness is no issue. There is still much to do.



The idea of settler costing also food, or reducing food output is very interesting, it is the same. It could be even done harder to spawn the 1st settler. Right now, i spawn 2 settlers with initial city population at 3or4. And it works fine. But it feels like land grab. If optimal was waiting for pop 6... would be interesting. Expansion is ok, just make it more a fight for each city.



I would even consider if building any unit will cost some amount of food. Since they all eat. So there will be more presure on food production. More use of food stockpiles (moving from farm city to military), winter become more annoying.

Expansion (the 2nd X) is an important to the game play in Endless Legend (or any 4X) as it forces interactions (war, trade, diplomacy) between the players. There needs to be competition for land and the resources that come from it. "Wide" strategies should be inherently superior, else we'd all build up our mega city and ignore the other players (or at least until it was convenient for us)



That said, you shouldn't be able to churn out settlers and spread out too fast. Seek's suggestion seems like a good one, it should be extremely difficult to make a settler from a starter city.

I have to agree about the wide before tall aspect the current game enforces since you need luxury and resources before building up to maximize cites (which I don't do cause the ai is not worth the effort) but I do agree with the settler aspect.

Starfire512 wrote:
YES, that is something that has always bothered me.



To make a Settler, a city of 2, in any game, requires say 150 industry and 1 population point. The rub is the population point from a city of 2 might be say 50 food, while the population point from a city of 10 might be 500 food. [SOMEMODSFOR] Civ 5 handles this somewhat in that cities founded in later ages start with more population and a few basic buildings (like Empire Mint and Public Library). I'm unsure at the moment whether the settlers cost a bit more industry in the later eras but I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case.

Fixed that for you



But I agree with your sentiment, overall. One idea I've been thinking about recently is to have settlers cost *food* rather than pop, so for a small city a settler would be very costly - potentially costing it more than one pop! - while a developed city could produce settlers with little detriment. I have no idea if this is feasible, code-wise, however.

Nashoa wrote:
With the recent changes you can go wide and tall by mid game(turn 75-125). I do think the way settlers work, punishing larger cities to build, should be looked at. It makes little sense that large population cities would suffer more from settlers over smaller ones.

YES, that is something that has always bothered me.



To make a Settler, a city of 2, in any game, requires say 150 industry and 1 population point. The rub is the population point from a city of 2 might be say 50 food, while the population point from a city of 10 might be 500 food. Civ 5 handles this somewhat in that cities founded in later ages start with more population and a few basic buildings (like Empire Mint and Public Library). I'm unsure at the moment whether the settlers cost a bit more industry in the later eras but I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case.

Nashoa wrote:
I think its a bit early to be discussing tall vs. wide balance and strategy because the AI is no threat at the moment. Thus, you don't have to account for the lost production time/resources to defend expanded regions.

We aren't really discussing balance so much as the concept of using a 1-2 cities can really limit access to resources (both luxury and strategic). To me, and especially with 0.4.8 changes, 1-2 cities is not nearly enough.

The Ai can be stomped/keeped at bay quite easily. The issue is that to reach lvl 4 you need an obnoxious number of districts. I tried by pumping food stacks and maximizing food in a city but it was less than interesting gameplay. Honestly the I find the city management way more interesting in early game than after reaching T3, which is quite an issue imho.

I see a lvl 4 city section, Is there a max level for a city center or burrough, with the Necros you can get lvl 3 city sections with little trouble, but going higher is a bit difficult between turn limits and the AI throw everything at you strategy

With the recent changes you can go wide and tall by mid game(turn 75-125). I do think the way settlers work, punishing larger cities to build, should be looked at. It makes little sense that large population cities would suffer more from settlers over smaller ones.



I think its a bit early to be discussing tall vs. wide balance and strategy because the AI is no threat at the moment. Thus, you don't have to account for the lost production time/resources to defend expanded regions.

About wide vs tall:

It may seem as great strategic choice, but is not. Since wide is just better, not only we have our things, but also denay enemies land, and have better control over map.



So it is more about, how to make viable not spawning cities as mad. And 1 city 1 region is interesting idea. Also happiness limit. And empire plan.



At present you can just go big, with many regions, and big cities, since why not. This is how districts works, and after certain mass you gain happiness the fatter you are.



I would not expect any major changes in near future, since it is balancing issue.



It is noticable that the latest patch made happiness managment even easier, what for now is ok, since there is still a lot to do.

I have been logging a lot of hours in EL for the past week or so. I have completed 3 complete games with 3 different fractions and am well started on the last faction.



The first 2 games, I used a fairly standard Civ strategy of going wide (partly because of a lack of understanding how districts worked), and this resulted in fairly large quantities of strategic resources.



In the 3rd game, I reversed the strategy and, better understanding districting, I went tall. This strategy worked very well excepting for one thing. Very limited quantities of strategic resources. I never had glasssteel or titanium (didn't research those either).



I had Palladian, but just a single deposit so it was really hard to use very much of it. Never had Adamant.



IMHO, Tall is not really an effective strategy due to the strategic resources and how important they are. Now maybe a strategy of 3-4 cities, vs 1 big one, might even out this huge disadvantage but this can not really be fully tested until the AI gets better and games become more competitive.



Thoughts?

lawlbotsama wrote:
this post is confusing me to no end. are you saying by going for compact cities you aren't getting the strategic resources like titanium and glassteel?

Think EMPIRE growth, not necessarily individual city growth.



If the empire is 1 city (tall), few strategic resources but no approval issues.



If the empire is many cities, lots of strategic resources but lots of approval issues.



Obviously, individual cities should grow tall over time.

What he meant was that you can't focus on a single megacity since you need to control many regions. You have to expand in any case

Starfire512 wrote:
I have been logging a lot of hours in EL for the past week or so. I have completed 3 complete games with 3 different fractions and am well started on the last faction.



The first 2 games, I used a fairly standard Civ strategy of going wide (partly because of a lack of understanding how districts worked), and this resulted in fairly large quantities of strategic resources.



In the 3rd game, I reversed the strategy and, better understanding districting, I went tall. This strategy worked very well excepting for one thing. Very limited quantities of strategic resources. I never had glasssteel or titanium (didn't research those either).



I had Palladian, but just a single deposit so it was really hard to use very much of it. Never had Adamant.



IMHO, Tall is not really an effective strategy due to the strategic resources and how important they are. Now maybe a strategy of 3-4 cities, vs 1 big one, might even out this huge disadvantage but this can not really be fully tested until the AI gets better and games become more competitive.



Thoughts?

this post is confusing me to no end. are you saying by going for compact cities you aren't getting the strategic resources like titanium and glassteel? it seems to me like you are saying that you can't exploit the strategic resource because you aren't building districts over it. you use the tech with extractors to get the resources. going tall or wide makes no difference to gathering titanium, hyperium, etc. after reading j.a.'s guide i mix tall and wide. just depends on whats in the region and what's blocking my city layout path.



i have noticed tho that extractors of any type once built will prevent you from plopping a district down on that hex.



forgive me if i've mistaken your meaning.

To be honest as much as the pop per food system works for growth it's silly for settlers. Producing settlers should ba an easier deed for large cities than the opposite. If I remember in other games the settler would be produced by I+F income and don't remove one of your pop.

This same system means in no way population should be allowed to be moved across cities, in the current system one pop is equivalent to much much more people in a big city than in smaller one. You could argue that we shouldn't have growing prerequisite of food when increasing population realistically, it would have to be balanced with increasing load for huge cities or other punishing mechanics in that case. (sanitation?)



I'm discussing it here, but I find the current approval system dissatisfactory right now. The happiness is entirely tied to district level, meaning that actually overcrowed cities are a good solution. The district systems emulate maybe the difference between spreading slums vs more bourgeois districts but the total population itself shouldn't be only an advantage, in this current economy where food isn't scare at all, since even with zero tech one population unit can at the bare minimum feed itself and another at 4/pop.

So sure you have to invest to grow taller "faster" than the opponent, but it's more fitting an heavy industrialized setting imho, not faction struggling for survival on a dying planet.

K__ wrote:
The ideal strategy is both "tall and wide" by your terms.

^ This. Especially with the 0.4.8 changes, leveling the districts in your core cities offsets expansion disapproval. Expansion and city building are synergistic, the strategy lies in the timing.

The thing with both Wide and Tall cities, is that you have to choose ONE strategy at the beginning (Tall and Wide is really mid/end game strategy). Every settler built, significantly slows your growth in your capital (arguably your most important tall city). And, when building settlers, you want them to come from very SMALL cities since population in those cities costs a lot less to replace. Thus, in order to build both tall and wide, you really need to build wide first (at least 2 cities). 2+ cities requires more army to protect them and such but you get better strategic resources.



I personally think the game right now forces you, due to strategic resources, to get wide first. Not very wide, 3 cities seems like it should be plenty but then again, the AI is so weak as to not really be having much of an impact.

Once you can churn out level 2+ district approval and influence skyrockets. You'll still need the smallish cities, though. Currently for me the game lacks high industry cost units though, you're more often that not capped by your strategic resources. Maybe T4 iron would do the job.

I'd say I usually prefer to go wider, I've built tall once and it didn't work out for me.