My understanding from reading both the fora and the gaming press is that EL is supposed to span a time period from something similar to the Middle Ages to the near future. Will visuals, especially cities and tile improvements, reflect the corresponding change in technology? It would seem odd to be building medieval towns/baronies in a post-modern age. Perhaps there's a good lore-based reason for not doing so, but I'd love to hear the answer at any rate.

well in a modern age there still might be similar layouts of towns and baronies. the buildings might just look different.

Adventurer_Blitz wrote:
well in a modern age there still might be similar layouts of towns and baronies. the buildings might just look different(1).

1. That's precisely my point =)

I hope so, because it would add lots of flavor to the game.

lots of flavor maybe, but i think the city would be more changed then that, i believe many things would change such as roads and the city would be physically bigger. i would love to see what amplitude has come up with for the bigger, high population, late game city.

I like what they did in the latest iteration of Eador, and I loved the original Elemental city layout. I would be looking for something similar to that.

Nasarog wrote:
I like what they did in the latest iteration of Eador, and I loved the original Elemental city layout. I would be looking for something similar to that.

It already looks like we're getting a sort of blend of the two. Eador basically had one city per "region," wherein each "region" was a hex on the main map. You could manipulate the development of the city within the region, though to me they looked like they wound up being mostly the same.



Elemental sought from the get-go to avoid the "carbon-copy city complex," in which every city is essentially one tile on the map and you build pretty much the same set of buildings within that one tile (see Civilization). Instead, as you built improvements, you decided where they physically went and that acted to extend your city. As a result, cities were amorphous and more or less unique, at least in shape.



I'm liking the description of how cities work in EL so far. I just wish that the visuals reflected the buildings built in the city. The responses to the GDD questions made it sound like that's not the case. I'd even be happy if they used sort of arbitrary graphics at release and then offered building visuals as part of an expansion/DLC. I noticed "canals" as one of the buildings offered in the city construction queue in the screenies we have. That is something that should DEFINITELY bee reflected on the region view of the city.



On a side note, did any of the GDDs mention rivers? I don't recall them, so I don't know how a canal system would be filled unless by aqueduct--another building that ought to have a visual.

well canals could be filled from oceans or lakes even if there are no rivers in the game.

This is entirely true, but it sort of underscores the point.