As it stands now, if your region has strategic or luxury resources, your city doesn't have to be close to them in order to exploit them, you just have to have the research done to be able to build the extractor for it. Personally, I think this is fine (it works similarly to how watchtowers do), though I think that a little more risk should be involved if that extractor is located far from your city and so a little less defensible...it would make for another target than just hitting an enemy city, if say, you wanted to hurt another player's economy.



I feel the lack of the ability to exploit the land around me the most when there are land anomalies around that I cannot get to without making an unfeasible chain of boroughs from my city to them. While I like the fact that this forces me to make a choice about where I place my city, sometimes it feels more like I have to accept a choice that feels sub-par because the game simply doesn't allow for a better one. For instance, I've had a case where 3 decent anomalies were very close together, but I had to choose a different place with no anomalies because placing my city to exploit those would've meant few options for the growth of that city, being that they were close to the edge of the region.



I'm not sure what the plan is for roads, but I feel like that could be a decent solution to this problem, where you could build boroughs at places connected by road. Given the current mechanic of boroughs taking from city approval, it would seem to balance being able to build a borough where you could exploit more hexes, and perhaps roads would also block production from hexes they occupy as well. This isn't to mention that it would be less defensible as well. Just some thoughts I had on the subject.

IMHO, for the sake of "atmosphere" lands should not be/look very populated.

I've noticed that the world generator can make some strange shapes and abnormally large regions in the corners of the Pangaea...

Well, if you include terraformation, it would be a shame not to include height terraformation too, like in Alpha Centauri (the only other 4X game I'm aware of besides Endless Legend which has a variable height (in meters) for each tile instead of just a "flat" ocean/coast/plain/hill/mountain system).

I like the ability to terraform from CIV.

And I think for Endless Legend what you could do is to either grow forest (with either technology unlock or playing Wild Walkers) or build farms.

Some factions would be unable to do either one or both of these, namely I am thinking about Necrophages unable to do both and BL unable to build farms.

Faction could have greater tools with technology unlocks.

I want to add some additional experience I have gathered over the past week.



One thing I noticed while playing my last few games is that region size will have a significant impact on the problem described in my first post. I recently played a few games with "small" region size - and the experience was much, much better.

Take a look at this image from my last game:





The reduced size of the regions from the "small" setting does not only create much better shapes, but also reduces the feeling of wasted space. These regions have enough nice spots to settle on, but the ratio of controllable terrain per region is much better - and so I almost never felt that I had "wasted" space. Maybe this might be an approach to solve the issue without having to tinker too much with the game mechanics: Just reduce the base region size and then check if the player feels like he has more impact via city expansion on the regions he claims.

Lulz! wrote:
I feel the lack of the ability to exploit the land around me the most when there are land anomalies around that I cannot get to without making an unfeasible chain of boroughs from my city to them. While I like the fact that this forces me to make a choice about where I place my city, sometimes it feels more like I have to accept a choice that feels sub-par because the game simply doesn't allow for a better one. For instance, I've had a case where 3 decent anomalies were very close together, but I had to choose a different place with no anomalies because placing my city to exploit those would've meant few options for the growth of that city, being that they were close to the edge of the region.

Why not use villages as expansion to be built on anomalies to get the ressources of that specific case?

In this way, no spam possible and the anomalies close to the edge or surounded by hex without ressources could still be useful.

Considering that commodities and resources give you the ability to see through the fog of war, maybe we could have a labor camp built around the mine to either increase the amount of the resource/commodity mined or add the benefits of the surrounding land around the resource?

Perhaps the combination of some of these ideas. A village in the form of a single hex district like expansion that did not have to be adjacent. It does not get its own city screen or production queue or anything, but simply adds the resources from one hex to what the rest of the city is producing. Perhaps not even have city improvements such as dredging work in the village.

One thing I noticed in my games is the fact that I never seem to form a strong interest in the land outside the range of my cities. All I do is looking for the best spot, move my settler, found a city and instantly forget about everything else left in that region.



Let me give you an example:





I settled Cyaegor in the southern end of this region because it had great terrain (river + anomalies) and was close to my capital. In the northern part of the region is huge fertile region with grassland and forests. A great piece of land - but due to the current settle mechanics, I will never again interact with it in any way. Maybe I will build a watchtower to lift the FOW, but apart from that, nothing will ever happen to it.



And, imho, that is a big shame. I think the player should identifiy with the regions he settles, he should strife to care and improve them, protect them. He should feel that every hex in his regions is part of his empire.

In CIV5 you shape the land over time: You clear forest and jungles and replace them with farms. You build mines on your hills. Barren land like Tundra, Desert and Arctic can become an at least somewhat useful part of your country, thanks to your effords. Even those tiles out of reach of your cities are at least claimed by your culture, becoming part of your realm, where you can build forts to defend the borders or prevent enemies from moving into without declaring war (if you keep your borders closed). Rarely any habitable land will be left unused and unimproved as the game progresses. Your actions (re)shape the land and make it a product of your will.



In ES you had your planets. In fact, I consider them to be one of the best features of the game. Whenever I was in the system view I watched these beautiful jewels of my empires, slowly rotating with all the cool features on their surface and dotted with some of the buildings I had constructed. Later on, I was able to terraform these planets and turn them into completely different worlds of my liking. Oh, the sight of a system full of Ocean planets with blue water and an atomsphere only dotted by little white clouds...



So far EL offers little of this. You can expand your cities, but your influence never growth past the hexes around your districts. Huge parts of a region will stay idle and useless - and if you ask me, "useless" is rarely a good thing in a 4X game.



I think the game really needs a mechanic that allows the player to project his influence in the remaining part of his regions. Maybe watchtowers can be used for this - imagine you could turn these into small enclaves as the game progresses (with increased cost for each one build like districts), acting as small "mini cities" that allow the player to utilize more of the land.



I am sure there are more ways to achieve a strong connection between the player and his land - and I'd like to hear your comments, ideas and suggestions in that regards.

Another possibility, aside from using city pop for village expansion, would be to utilize the "Foundations" that are currently used for the watchtowers:

In Era II the player receives the ability to either turn these special locations into watchtowers (military use) or enclaves/villages (economic use). Later on there could also be the option of trading posts (improved trade routes), depending on how the mechanics work. These special buildings improve as the eras go on, increasing their area of influence and thus the impact on the region (military could bestow a small combat bonus in the whole region, economy could affect more hexes, etc).



This way the player increases the amount of control he can project on his region AND receives a limited amount of customization and strategic choise ("Do I want a fort near the border with player #2? Or is it better in the long term to use a village to harvest that Glass-Steel?"). It would also create a natural connection to the Eras and the tech system - as technology improves, so does your ability to control the remove parts of your region. For example, Era IV villages/enclaves could have a 2-hex radius, while Era V or VI allow you to utilize almost all hexes for FIDS income. The downside would obviously be that the player would not be able to choose expansion locations freely, thus limiting him to the randomly placed Foundation spots - but still, it would be better than no expansion into other parts of the region at all.



Still, I think there are many other possibilities out there. Let's hear what other users have to say.

I second that... and maybe minor race villages could behave like that as well...

BlueTemplar wrote:
After thinking about it, "villages" are a bad idea, we don't want to end up with Alpha Centauri - style cities-every-other-tile => dozens of cities micromanagement.

Then I had pretty much the same idea as tom : just districts that are not forced to be placed adjacent to nearby districts, but which would have some kind of extra penalty as long as they are not connected to city center.

Well, what you could do is alter every even/uneven pop between a district and a village/enclave (whch acts like a regular district and maybe an extra upkeep cost w/o connection). This could also solve the oddity of being able to connect all ressources in the region without your city being near them: You want that gold deposit in the south? Drop a village next to it, then build the mine! That Glass-Steel looks interesting? Increase your pop size to 5 and build yet another village!



Having villages act like seperate cities would certainly be impractical. I am pretty sure the whole region system was designed specifically to avoid infinte city sprawl.

After thinking about it, "villages" are a bad idea, we don't want to end up with Alpha Centauri - style cities-every-other-tile => dozens of cities micromanagement.

Then I had pretty much the same idea as tom : just districts that are not forced to be placed adjacent to nearby districts, but which would have some kind of extra penalty as long as they are not connected to city center.

exactly. however, for the sake of making this game not all to complex, you should only be able to build those villages from your main city-menu (in that region), and they shouldn't take up tiles around them for that would make them too unrealistically strong, especially considering that its just an average village.



adding them would be like adding another expansions to your city, or districts as you will, without them actually needing to touching that city, (for which they'd need to get all kinds of disadvantages for, like extra unhappiness or minus a certain amount of gold/food) meaning also that they wont have a separate construction-schedule from the main city, and that they'd just help construct whatever is being constructed there (maybe at a disadvantage as well). oh, and perhaps you'd also have the ability to build roads to them too, or maybe your troops would get an extra heal bonus when they were to be stationed there. there are all kinds of additions to be thought of!



non the less though, i love the idea, and i really think this should be implemented!

Villages aren't needed.



I would say the example is unfair. Later in the game you'll have watch towers covering the region.

I'd propose being able to make "villages" - they would be like second cities in a region (including expansion disapproval, buildings, construction queues, sieges...) except that they would have some limitations compared to cities, like not being able to exploit/build the region's strategic resources, luxuries, and minor race villages. If the city and village districts were ever to touch, you would have the option to "merge" them.