It isn't a design flaw. It is a deliberate design to check and limit rampant and disorganized expansionism.

Endless Legend, like most 4x games, involves making the most of what's available to you and altering your timing, building strategy, economy plans and victory strategy accordingly. You have to constantly compromise: sacrifice this for this, take this tech instead of that one first, assign a hero here instead of there, take this location for an expansion instead of that one, build this building first, etc. The whole game is designed around the idea of taking everything available to you and making it work.



This includes your own mistakes. Rather than throwing your hands up in defeat over a mistake that may cost a few a small amount of bonuses, adapt and work around your own mistake. In every game - EVERY GAME - including sports, the professionals aren't the people who never make mistakes, they're the people who minimize the consequences of those mistakes by adapting, adjusting and countering accordingly. Learn to do the same.

If it's THAT big of a deal for you, take a screenshot of all of your cities with the hex grid and yields on, and either copy it into an image editing program or print it out. Then draw in the city you eventually hope to have.



Personally, it sounds like you're blowing it a bit out of proportion. It's possible my math is incorrect, but this is what I came up with after testing a bad tile placement. On a 15 tile city with a center tile unuseable VS a useable tile, you'll have 4 fewer level 2 districts. Assuming 10 resources on a tile, and a 500% increase (I don't know what the actual max % is, but 500% seems like it'd surely be on the high side?), you're losing 90 of that resource a turn. Over 400 turns, you've lost 36,000 of that resource. In later games, I can generate that much on some of the resources in a single turn. Am I missing something here?



Edit: Once I get past the point where happiness is really a factor, I don't even look at making level 2 districts. I go for the best resource boroughs. There are huge differences that more than make up for the lost -2 imo.

Gregorovitch wrote:
It's not the same thing as such a mistake is a one time error or misjudgement you pay a one time penalty for i.e. replace your lost units. The problem with the borough streets is you pay the penalty in perpetuity every turn and there is nothing you can do about it.

Nothing you can do about it, every turn and perpetuity seem to be quite strong exaggerations. :P

I can just start a new game and the penalty, as you call it, would disappear. I prefer to see it as a small bonus to the Roving Clans rather than a penalty to everyone.



Per turn bonuses are great, but not as amazing as you make them seem. How many turns before someone gains a decisive advantage in a game? When you get down to the math, there aren't that many important turns, when you multiply everything it's not the worst that can happen, not even for the most extreme game settings.



Now a big one time bonus, that's something else entirely!

If per turn bonuses were so crushing we could never win against Endless AI. Imagine instead of ridiculous per turn bonuses, Endless AI would get a one time resource boost - something as ridiculous as their current bonuses, but all in one. They would be at your door on T10 with maxed army - the end...

You´ll get used to it. While you´re still not, only settle open spaces and straight borders, and you´ll never have trouble making pyramids and double lines.

Gregorovitch wrote:
I imagine in a competative MP game the same would be true, one would not continue if one accidentally misplaced a borough street becasue the consequences are so big.

You´re wrong, this sort of behaviour is heavily frowned upon.

BPrado wrote:
I´m sure you´re aware of all the real life problems derived from bad planning on cities. Loss of productivity from workers due to mobility and social issues, loss of profit from enterprises due to transport and taxation, loss of governmental efficiency due to excessive bureaucracy and corruption. Granted, all of these can (at least theoretically) be solved in real life through great effort.



In the case of a badly placed city district in Endless Legend, unless it´s a terribly misplaced district, you can also correct it through great effort. It might go through not annexing the best tiles possible as soon as possible in order to level the bad district, but that´s a choice you have to make as a manager (especially as one who´s made a mistake).





There are a couple of small things that can snowball into defeat, but I hardly believe a bad district is one of them (again, unless it´s a terribly misplaced one).



What if you´re playing multiplayer, are you saying strategy players leave the first time they make a serious mistake?



The mechanic is made in order to reward good planning. If people could simply rebuild it, the mechanic would be made in order to reward mediocrity. Not to mention all the issues the would come from the fact that discricts also improve extractors and watchtowers.







You can choose to move your Capital settler in Civ5 on turn 1, which means you can either get a larger or a smaller yield than the base one depending basically on luck, since you severely lack information. If you choose to move and end up settling an inferior spot, there is absolutely nothing you can do. Capitals cannot be razed. It´s a much riskier opportunity due to the comparative lack of information, with a much more severe penalty than building one single wrong district.



On Total War, you can choose to reinforce battles (but not engage) using armies on Forced March which provides them with almost 50% extra movement range. If these armies are engaged during the opponent´s turn, not only will they not be able to withdraw from battle, they also be engaged in an Ambush which removes your ability to deploy units and tends to impose huge Morale penalties. I´d say an ambushed army can lose up to 80% more units than in the same battle on a normal stance. You also spend most of the game with a very limited number of armies and very limited rate of acquisition of units, so one lost battle like that can be worth about 20 turns of a 300 turns game - not to mention instant defeat.



Just a couple from very known games with much more relevant outcomes to show that planning is key in any strategy game, and the game is not supposed to give you a Ctrl+z.

Yes IRL it is expensive to repurpose city zones but is is one time cost/investment. It happens all the time, London docks being repurposed to a finacial district for example.



In EL there is a difference between the *order* you place boroughs and the *placement* of boroughs. If you get the order wrong, or sub-optimal, you can correct that later and the penalty for doing so is temorary. If you get the placement wrong you cannot correct it becasue it may be impossible to include it the required nx2 rectangle or equilateral triangle designs this game mechanic mandates therefore you pay the penalty in perpituity, there is nothing you can do about it.



As for planning it is extremely difficult to do this in EL for the borough street mechanic. I have found that it is very rare that a triangle design is possible. Mostly it is a nx2 rectangle that is the only viable option. So you then have to work out in your head, in the absense of any visual tools to help, a precise sequence of borough streets two wide and n deep that are uniterupted by temples or villages, include the available anomilies and are not edging region borders and so on. This is, I find, extremely difficult. It is made more so by the fact that you cannot see the abailable expansion hexes whilst zoomed ouit where you can refresh your memory over temple, village and border locations etc. You then have to remember this plan exactly for each or your cities each time you order a new borough.



This is difficult to do accurately and it means that this heavy and permanent penatly for a mistake is not being exacted for lack of planning but rather for a slip of the mouse, a momentory lapse in concentration and, crucially, there is no way to fix it. The penalty continues indefinitely. This is the design flaw.



Your civ example is in no way analagous since you can just re-roll a new game if you make a really bad judgement on first city placement after a couple of turns. Here you have to abandon a EL game after 150, 200 turns w/e. As for the TW battle mechanics, as I reponded above, a mistake or misjudgement like that is in no way analagous since it is a one time cost.



I am not arguing that mistakes or misjudgements should not be penalized. Obviously they should. The design flaw here is that a borough street placement mistake very easy to make but often impossible to rectify so the penalty is exacted for the remainder of the game. The crucial lacking ingredient is a tool to allow you to plan a city's expansion out visually when first founded and tag the required hexes. Considering how easy it is to make such a mistake the penalty is disproportionate and playing on higher difficulty levels is not livable with. I imagine in a competative MP game the same would be true, one would not continue if one accidentally misplaced a borough street becasue the consequences are so big.

icarus86 wrote:
OK, I agree that it's a mistake which could cost you quite a bit.

However, there are other examples, such as attacking an enemy roaming army which then gets lots of reinforcements hidden in the FOW. You cannot back out from the engagement since you are the attacker. Is this also a design flaw ? I don't think so.

Moral of the day ? Be a bit more careful with your actions and try to plan ahead.

It's not the same thing as such a mistake is a one time error or misjudgement you pay a one time penalty for i.e. replace your lost units. The problem with the borough streets is you pay the penalty in perpetuity every turn and there is nothing you can do about it.

Gregorovitch wrote:
The cost of a single mistake in borough street placement is equivelent to the happiness malus for one level 1 borough plus the lost bonuses for a level 2 borough in perpituity. For example when you place you fifth borough street you should have four level 1's and one level 2. If you get it wrong you will have five level 1's. The same logic applies to each subsequent borough you place. Once the mistakle is made that malus remians whatever you do becasue you will always have exactly one more level 1 and one less level 2 borough than you should.



So the base penalty for a single mistake, which will get modified upwards exponentially as the city grows by city-wide happiness modifiers, governor bonuses, anything that applies a % modifier basically, is therefore 15 happiness + 2 industry + 2 science + 2 dust + 2 influence per turn for the rest of the game.

I´m sure you´re aware of all the real life problems derived from bad planning on cities. Loss of productivity from workers due to mobility and social issues, loss of profit from enterprises due to transport and taxation, loss of governmental efficiency due to excessive bureaucracy and corruption. Granted, all of these can (at least theoretically) be solved in real life through great effort.



In the case of a badly placed city district in Endless Legend, unless it´s a terribly misplaced district, you can also correct it through great effort. It might go through not annexing the best tiles possible as soon as possible in order to level the bad district, but that´s a choice you have to make as a manager (especially as one who´s made a mistake).

Such a huge penalty is IMO clearly unsustainable, I am certainly not willing to sustain it and I doubt many strategy players would either once they understand the enourmity of it, and since you cannot destroy the bad borough and rebuild it in the correct location you are obliged perforce to abandon the game unless you have a save going back far enough, but I don't play strategy games with saves.

There are a couple of small things that can snowball into defeat, but I hardly believe a bad district is one of them (again, unless it´s a terribly misplaced one).



What if you´re playing multiplayer, are you saying strategy players leave the first time they make a serious mistake?



The mechanic is made in order to reward good planning. If people could simply rebuild it, the mechanic would be made in order to reward mediocrity. Not to mention all the issues the would come from the fact that discricts also improve extractors and watchtowers.

In all other situations in strategy games that I can think of if you build something, units or buildings or whatever, that you should not have for some reason then you can scrap them and pay a one time penalty in lost resources. It is a basic priciple in strategy games that if you discover that the ROI on an asset you build is negative you can scrap it.



I cannot think of a single example in any game where a mechanic that is so easy to get wrong, has such a huge penalty for getting it wrong, and has no means to rectify getting it wrong exists. So I'm sorry but my verdict on this is clear: this is a major design flaw.

You can choose to move your Capital settler in Civ5 on turn 1, which means you can either get a larger or a smaller yield than the base one depending basically on luck, since you severely lack information. If you choose to move and end up settling an inferior spot, there is absolutely nothing you can do. Capitals cannot be razed. It´s a much riskier opportunity due to the comparative lack of information, with a much more severe penalty than building one single wrong district.



On Total War, you can choose to reinforce battles (but not engage) using armies on Forced March which provides them with almost 50% extra movement range. If these armies are engaged during the opponent´s turn, not only will they not be able to withdraw from battle, they also be engaged in an Ambush which removes your ability to deploy units and tends to impose huge Morale penalties. I´d say an ambushed army can lose up to 80% more units than in the same battle on a normal stance. You also spend most of the game with a very limited number of armies and very limited rate of acquisition of units, so one lost battle like that can be worth about 20 turns of a 300 turns game - not to mention instant defeat.



Just a couple from very known games with much more relevant outcomes to show that planning is key in any strategy game, and the game is not supposed to give you a Ctrl+z.

OK, I agree that it's a mistake which could cost you quite a bit.

However, there are other examples, such as attacking an enemy roaming army which then gets lots of reinforcements hidden in the FOW. You cannot back out from the engagement since you are the attacker. Is this also a design flaw ? I don't think so.

Moral of the day ? Be a bit more careful with your actions and try to plan ahead.

The cost of a single mistake in borough street placement is equivelent to the happiness malus for one level 1 borough plus the lost bonuses for a level 2 borough in perpituity. For example when you place you fifth borough street you should have four level 1's and one level 2. If you get it wrong you will have five level 1's. The same logic applies to each subsequent borough you place. Once the mistakle is made that malus remians whatever you do becasue you will always have exactly one more level 1 and one less level 2 borough than you should.



So the base penalty for a single mistake, which will get modified upwards exponentially as the city grows by city-wide happiness modifiers, governor bonuses, anything that applies a % modifier basically, is therefore 15 happiness + 2 industry + 2 science + 2 dust + 2 influence per turn for the rest of the game. Such a huge penalty is IMO clearly unsustainable, I am certainly not willing to sustain it and I doubt many strategy players would either once they understand the enourmity of it, and since you cannot destroy the bad borough and rebuild it in the correct location you are obliged perforce to abandon the game unless you have a save going back far enough, but I don't play strategy games with saves.



In all other situations in strategy games that I can think of if you build something, units or buildings or whatever, that you should not have for some reason then you can scrap them and pay a one time penalty in lost resources. It is a basic priciple in strategy games that if you discover that the ROI on an asset you build is negative you can scrap it.



I cannot think of a single example in any game where a mechanic that is so easy to get wrong, has such a huge penalty for getting it wrong, and has no means to rectify getting it wrong exists. So I'm sorry but my verdict on this is clear: this is a major design flaw.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
It isn't a design flaw. It is a deliberate design to check and limit rampant and disorganized expansionism.

I agree with you. I wouldn't call this a design flaw. This is a strategy game after all ...

What it says.

I would say the maluses associated with rogue level 1`boroughs are not acceptable. It is a fundamantal design flaw in the game.

Admit your mistake and move on, you don´t require perfect district placement to win the game.

The mistake is with the previously placed one built ages ago.

Well you could load the autosave? It will load the beginning of the turn before you placed the borough.



Unless you don't have autosave enabled?

I know this already. The problem is making mistakes. It takes about 15-20 minutes to work out where to place a city by trying to imagine exactly how it will look at size 14,16,18 etc, exactly where the "triangle" or "snake" will be placed. Then you have to refresh your memory of that plan over and over again each time you place a borough. This isn't always a problem as in some situations it's easy but many citries have to grown in a very particular way in a restrictive situaiton. It's also not that big an issue on easier difficulties but once you ramp things up you cannot afford a single mis-placed borough.



I find this a hatefull mechanic. Feels like a game breaker to me at the moment since I have had to abandon two games on the trot now becasue of it.

I believe the two most "effective" borough layouts are any triangle shape; or, a zig-zagging line. When you know this it is fairly simple to plan out your city layout before even founding the city center.

I recommend you read this guide:

/#/endless-legend/forum/9-tips-tricks/thread/3824-building-big-efficient-cities-borough-streets-leveling-districts



In essence, the optimum ways to build a city are triangles or rectangles (unless you are Ardent Mages). Most of the time, I end up with 3x3 or 4x4 triangles (I rarely have more pop to do bigger triangles, unless I'm Broken Lords, Necrophages, or Cultists).

Well that's a another restart then. I had to abandon my last game becasue of this. The cost of level 1 districts that will not fit into a level up structure efficiently is too great to bear. Is there nor an editor/console that you can use to fix a problem like this?



I have to say this borough street level up mechanic is by far my least favourite aspect of this game. may well drop it becasue of it. It is mind bendingly hard to figure out how to place a city so that you can expand it efficiently into level 2 districts. And the problem is you forget what the original plan was, it's just far too easy to make a mistake. That you can't rectifty such an easy to make but incredibly expensive error is beyond belief really.