PanH wrote:
So do stick and triangle cities everywhere. We need a bit of diversity at least.

Stick and triangle cities look like cities. Snake cities look like stupid.

Zerrigan wrote:
Thought about creating a thread about my disappointment with the game, but some of the points are mentioned here so I'll voice my concerns here for now.



This is a bit of a "rant" but since I paid for the game, I feel like Amplitude should at least hear what I think.



1. More than anything else, the fact we are in beta scares me. There are plenty of things to be worked on and the game could change drastically, but the fact we are in beta signals to me that we are past the point of making some deep changes. This beta could last for 5 years for all we know so my fear could be unwarranted, but psychologically I wish Amplitude would take some more time to work on some features. Speaking of..



2. This has been harped on since the beginning and while I'm sure they have talked about it, it is about time we start seeing SOMETHING on it - the OPness of era 1 econ buildings (as many of you have already mentioned). Everyone agrees it is an issue. My personal favorite suggestion so far has been the specializations. Different buildings for different things so there is no need to build everything unless you just have a very rare city location that warrants it. Era 1 econ buildings completely outclass all the other econ buildings. This is mainly a numbers game, but I think the specialized buildings is a much more fun and creative way to tackle the problem instead of just tweaking some numbers.



3. The tech web. As others have mentioned, I almost feel like having 10 techs for each era almost makes everyone play very similar. Yes, the order you take them matters and not everyone will research the exact same techs, but it is similar enough to where I don't see much of a difference. My #1 preferred solution is to simply add more MEANINGFUL techs that create difficult decision for us. Another suggestions I like is simply reducing the number of techs required to advanced to the next era. If we only need 8 techs to advance, it becomes a bit more difficult to decide which 8 are the must haves for us instead of 10. As PanH noted, of course we can go back and research the others, but those don't count towards the next era. That way, players can decide whether to beeline for some higher techs, or to focus on a heavier early game.



4. Anomalies. As others have mentioned, there are some really neat anomalies out there, but when it comes down to it, they are simply just some extra FIDS (for the most part). I would really like to see some anomalies that could really change how we approach our strategies. If anomaly A gave 2F 2S and 2D but also made all marketplace transactions 5% cheaper or somthing that like, and anomaly B gave 5I and gave all population in the city/region +1I when they specialized I, that creates a fairly interesting choice. I'm sure others can create better examples, but I would like it if anomalies were more interesting. They look great and have some decent lore, so why reduce them to just adding some extra FIDS?



5. Ruins. These are almost like anomalies. Others have mentioned making search part more valuable and I agree. However, we still need to make them more useful after they have been explored. It is so depressing to have a ruin in your city because it is almost a dead tile. Perhaps have them give various bonuses depending on techs you research? Maybe even add an option of demolishing a ruin to clear the way to exploit the land?



6. Factions. While I haven't finished a game with the AD yet or even started with the clans, I feel like they are too similar. Oh yes the lore and artwork look different and amazing, but due to the tech web which is 90% the same for all factions, I don't feel much of a difference EXCEPT for the faction powers (vaulters resources, AD spells). It is probably too late to drastically change this, but I would love to see some more faction specific techs, powers.





There is more, but I feel like that is enough for now

More choice in the tech and more exciting play styles (through faction choice AND tech choice) are things I would really like to see!

On a random note, I love how far DOTE has come along I just want EL to come along just as well if not better!

This says it all. I am really concerned about the game too, hope the revs don't rush things and fix the problems.

I'm also discontent with the city/borough mechanic.



) At the moment, I *think* snake cities are the better choice, as they give you access to so many more tiles. The level bonus for districts needs to be larger, so that the level bonus on dense cities is comparable to the many-tiles-bonus on snake cities. I don't want one to be more powerful than the other, but instead for each to be a reasonable choice in a different situation. e.g. a snake city could be appropriate if you want to get dust or research on the coast, while a dense city would be appropriate for creating a high-production city centered around a forest.



) I feel like something better could be done with resource access. When you can just create an extractor (or equivalent) anywhere in a region with equal ease, then landscape patterns don't really matter much. This is a disservice to beautiful landscape graphics, and to gamers (like me) who like having interesting choices. Requiring bouroughs for resource access could be a good solution.



) I agree with BadgerTemplar:

Showing mastery over what RNG hands you is a greater measure of success than following a predetermined formula.

And right now, the effect of the RNG is somewhat mooted by the universally easy access to resources.

Thought about creating a thread about my disappointment with the game, but some of the points are mentioned here so I'll voice my concerns here for now.



This is a bit of a "rant" but since I paid for the game, I feel like Amplitude should at least hear what I think.



1. More than anything else, the fact we are in beta scares me. There are plenty of things to be worked on and the game could change drastically, but the fact we are in beta signals to me that we are past the point of making some deep changes. This beta could last for 5 years for all we know so my fear could be unwarranted, but psychologically I wish Amplitude would take some more time to work on some features. Speaking of..



2. This has been harped on since the beginning and while I'm sure they have talked about it, it is about time we start seeing SOMETHING on it - the OPness of era 1 econ buildings (as many of you have already mentioned). Everyone agrees it is an issue. My personal favorite suggestion so far has been the specializations. Different buildings for different things so there is no need to build everything unless you just have a very rare city location that warrants it. Era 1 econ buildings completely outclass all the other econ buildings. This is mainly a numbers game, but I think the specialized buildings is a much more fun and creative way to tackle the problem instead of just tweaking some numbers.



3. The tech web. As others have mentioned, I almost feel like having 10 techs for each era almost makes everyone play very similar. Yes, the order you take them matters and not everyone will research the exact same techs, but it is similar enough to where I don't see much of a difference. My #1 preferred solution is to simply add more MEANINGFUL techs that create difficult decision for us. Another suggestions I like is simply reducing the number of techs required to advanced to the next era. If we only need 8 techs to advance, it becomes a bit more difficult to decide which 8 are the must haves for us instead of 10. As PanH noted, of course we can go back and research the others, but those don't count towards the next era. That way, players can decide whether to beeline for some higher techs, or to focus on a heavier early game.



4. Anomalies. As others have mentioned, there are some really neat anomalies out there, but when it comes down to it, they are simply just some extra FIDS (for the most part). I would really like to see some anomalies that could really change how we approach our strategies. If anomaly A gave 2F 2S and 2D but also made all marketplace transactions 5% cheaper or somthing that like, and anomaly B gave 5I and gave all population in the city/region +1I when they specialized I, that creates a fairly interesting choice. I'm sure others can create better examples, but I would like it if anomalies were more interesting. They look great and have some decent lore, so why reduce them to just adding some extra FIDS?



5. Ruins. These are almost like anomalies. Others have mentioned making search part more valuable and I agree. However, we still need to make them more useful after they have been explored. It is so depressing to have a ruin in your city because it is almost a dead tile. Perhaps have them give various bonuses depending on techs you research? Maybe even add an option of demolishing a ruin to clear the way to exploit the land?



6. Factions. While I haven't finished a game with the AD yet or even started with the clans, I feel like they are too similar. Oh yes the lore and artwork look different and amazing, but due to the tech web which is 90% the same for all factions, I don't feel much of a difference EXCEPT for the faction powers (vaulters resources, AD spells). It is probably too late to drastically change this, but I would love to see some more faction specific techs, powers.





There is more, but I feel like that is enough for now

More choice in the tech and more exciting play styles (through faction choice AND tech choice) are things I would really like to see!

On a random note, I love how far DOTE has come along I just want EL to come along just as well if not better!

BadgerTemplar wrote:
Yup, I feel that too. Anyone have ideas for solutions?







Interesting concept. What do other people think?







This more than anything else is the driving factor behind my push for city specialization.

If this problem could be addressed without city specialization I'd be just as happy.







Agree. The power balance should probably not be a complete shift to the player's favor, but feeling some shift would be a nice bonus for era racing.









I do not believe we currently have tons of research options due to imbalance of the options presented.



I think city specialization should be tied to two things: what FIDS tiles do I have to work with, and what is the goal of my empire.

Showing mastery over what RNG hands you is a greater measure of success than following a predetermined formula.

Each player makes a choice as to how they want to achieve victory.

I think it would be nice if players had the choice to specialize their cities to reach that victory.

I am not in favor of being forced down any path; I would like the specialization of cities to be a valid path to enforce a chosen strategy.



Research is tied to city building, but it is not the same.

Each city is its own entity tied to a location; research is empire wide.

A city's improvements can be deleted, new structures can be erected, more FIDS exploited, workers rearranged; there is no going back to fix a research.

Counterplay and strategy shift can occur more quickly at a city level than at a research level.

A city's is far more fluid and less detrimental if mismanaged than a research.

The two solutions I see are either making the tech tree like Endless Space(4 trees going in opposite directions, perhaps still giving age bonuses every 8-10 but allowing you to tech where you want) or implementing a linear tech tree ala Civ(Although I'd imagine there will be a lot of resistance to that).

Right, but if I'm already at T3 where it's costing 2k+ science to research something I'm not going to invest 1300 science in T1 technologies. This problem is especially apparent on the Ardent mages who only need 8 techs in T1/T2.

gordunk wrote:
This combined with the huge tech cost for researching things from prior tiers means that at each tree you pick the universal 10 best things and move on, because you can't "rush" certain techs and it's extremely inefficient to go back.

That's actually not true at all.

There is a base cost for research, which is determined by the era (with small exceptions, like the mercenary corps tech for Roving Clans costing more than it should because it switched eras), and then, there is a % added by the number of tech you already researched.

So, even if you have access to T2, a T1 tech will cost less (around 2-300 science less), so it can still be interesting. Considering the industry cost increases faster than your industry, it's interesting. Also, going from era 2 to 3 doesn't give much bonuses (T2 weapons and armors are equivalent to T1 palladium/ so there's no need to rush), so you can be stronger with a few more T2 techs than with a few era 3 ones.

gordunk wrote:
This combined with the huge tech cost for researching things from prior tiers means that at each tree you pick the universal 10 best things and move on, because you can't "rush" certain techs and it's extremely inefficient to go back.

Yup, I feel that too. Anyone have ideas for solutions?

gordunk wrote:


...best way to limit crazy expansive exploitation cities would be to increase the industry cost based on how far away the borough is from your starting district. .

Interesting concept. What do other people think?

gordunk wrote:


Right now every city is a copypaste of each other...

This more than anything else is the driving factor behind my push for city specialization.

If this problem could be addressed without city specialization I'd be just as happy.

gordunk wrote:


I'm also a huge fan of having exploitation buildings for regular tiles. There's a lot of cool anomalies in the game but I feel like I hardly use them because they're never near optional FIDS territory. I want to feel like when I take a region, I take the WHOLE region, not just my little hex patch of it. Once T5 and T6 are added, I feel like, at those tiers I should feel more in control of the wilderness then it is in control of me.

Agree. The power balance should probably not be a complete shift to the player's favor, but feeling some shift would be a nice bonus for era racing.

hashinshin wrote:


"I don't like the researches, we have tons of options but you have to go one way!"

"I want city specialization, despite the fact that it will give tons of options but forcing you to go one way."

I do not believe we currently have tons of research options due to imbalance of the options presented.



I think city specialization should be tied to two things: what FIDS tiles do I have to work with, and what is the goal of my empire.

Showing mastery over what RNG hands you is a greater measure of success than following a predetermined formula.

Each player makes a choice as to how they want to achieve victory.

I think it would be nice if players had the choice to specialize their cities to reach that victory.

I am not in favor of being forced down any path; I would like the specialization of cities to be a valid path to enforce a chosen strategy.



Research is tied to city building, but it is not the same.

Each city is its own entity tied to a location; research is empire wide.

A city's improvements can be deleted, new structures can be erected, more FIDS exploited, workers rearranged; there is no going back to fix a research.

Counterplay and strategy shift can occur more quickly at a city level than at a research level.

A city's is far more fluid and less detrimental if mismanaged than a research.

Part of the problem with specialization and such is the way the tech tree is set up. You have to do 10(or 8 if you're ardent mages) in T1 before moving on to T2, etc. This means that no matter what you end up having techs in a variety of categories. If you're the vaulters you can't just go straight science production because you HAVE to research other things before you can move on to T2. This means that no matter what everyone picks the most optimal techs from each "branch" in each tier before moving on. This combined with the huge tech cost for researching things from prior tiers means that at each tree you pick the universal 10 best things and move on, because you can't "rush" certain techs and it's extremely inefficient to go back.



As far as the boroughs debate, the best way to limit crazy expansive exploitation cities would be to increase the industry cost based on how far away the borough is from your starting district. This tackles the snaking problem without eliminating it IMO, and would make getting T2 districts a bit more viable in the beginning(assuming you keep the population limit in).



City specialization I'm still personally for, it would increase the amount of legitimately viable tiles if there was a system to share FIDS with linked cities via trade(although I think for that to work a sort of city linking tech would need to be available as early as Tier 2 minimum). Right now every city is a copypaste of each other, they don't reflect the unique traits of each region since you just build the same stuff no matter what(and part of the blaming factor for that is the way T1 buildings and research is structured).



I'm also a huge fan of having exploitation buildings for regular tiles. There's a lot of cool anomalies in the game but I feel like I hardly use them because they're never near optional FIDS territory. I want to feel like when I take a region, I take the WHOLE region, not just my little hex patch of it. Once T5 and T6 are added, I feel like, at those tiers I should feel more in control of the wilderness then it is in control of me.

So you're complaining about false choice, but want to add more false choice? Are you being ironic?



"I don't like the researches, we have tons of options but you have to go one way!"

"I want city specialization, despite the fact that it will give tons of options but forcing you to go one way."

hashinshin wrote:


(Snake Cities) remove the aesthetic of the game which is tons of wilderness. Once again I liken the game a lot to the fellowship of the ring where you're on a quest and have to go through elf/dwarf/orc territory to accomplish it.

I also like this aesthetic and I don't want to see regions turn in to massive sprawling cities.

However, I think a different mechanic needs to be in place to limit this sprawl.

Approval does not make sense and has a weird game time curve.

City Shape limits meaningful choices available when it comes to city placement.

hashinshin wrote:


...Besides, you say you want more player choice, yet when faced with my idea that would steeply reduce borough strength you still say that you hate having to choose between a good starting city position and a good borough position.

I would be ok choosing between placing a city for a good start Vs a borough position IF it felt like a meaningful choice.

The only win condition is combat atm. Most games, unless intentionally stalled, don't see era 4+. Approval greatly favors delayed tall Vs wide.

These factors make it difficult for us to determine the value of that choice.

hashinshin wrote:


...Civ5 just ditched it, and look how popular Civ5 is. Learning all these rules and must-have specialities just burdens the player down. In the end you achieve nothing other than drastically increasing the knowledge-burden of the game due to having to know all the best specializations for different cities and bio-spheres.

EL is not Civ5. I don't know if EL wants to compete for the wide market appeal Civ5 has or go for a deeper more niche fanbase.

Some knowledge burden could be partially overcome with tooltips that provide realtime feedback on what what bonuses a potential construction would yield.

Thank you for bringing up the concept of knowledge burden.

It is very important to keep in mind that complexity of choice does not equal meaningfulness of choice.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:


As far as boroughs are concerned, I personally like the idea of leveling up boroughs through construction by placing a borough street on top of an already constructed one. That way, a player could either expand the area his city controls and collects FIDS from, or upgrade an existing borough for bonuses to Dust, Science, and Influence. Of course, approval would need to be separated from the borough system for that to work, as I feel it should be anyway.

This idea could even be taken further by allowing different types of districts when leveling up: Merchant Districts, Academy Districts, Artisan's districts, etc for bigger bonuses in one area at the cost of the others.

I think this should be considered and discussed.

PanH wrote:
The way boroughs works right now is kinda boring, and doesn't give any choice. Personally, I'd do so that you count the number of connections between boroughs (so an hexa city would have lots), which would count towards district level, REGARDLESS of the shape of your city.

E.g. every 6 boroughs connections (like 7 boroughs in one row, or a little row vv with only 5 boroughs) you would get one district level (put on the city center, or on random borough).



This means that you'd have to choose between 2 types of city :

1) The district leveling one (hexa most probably) to favour science, dust and influence production.

2) The snake one which wouldn't have much disctrict levels, but more terrain production.

You could probably even try to make compromises, with triangle cities, which have good district leveling (still less than hexa), and good terrain coverage.

As should this concept. The choices created by this system are more interesting to me than the current system.

hashinshin wrote:


People want more exploitation, and want to change the borough system to fit what they want. The borough system is NOT an exploitation system, but a mega city maker system.

I understand that the OP suggestions would remove these, but...

The current borough system, with its connection to approval and the tiles they grant access to, is an exploitation system.

Okay first off I've got multiple multiplayer games played so I havn't just stomped some AI and moved on. I've played multiple games over and over and as I lock down on the best strategies there is literally 0 room for deviation. When I say literally 0 room and I actually mean NO room. That's a pretty big problem. Seeing as it's a pretty big problem I've come up with some pretty big suggestions.



Part 1: Age 1 required technologies.

Part 2: Opening up choice in starting strategies.

Part 3: Revamping the borough system (well not REVAMPING, but changing.)



Part 1: Age 1 required technologies.



Okay so I've thought about this and there are two real problems in age 1. The first is that there are FOUR buildings to research. Each required, each needing build time, and each reducing choice at tier 1. There are solutions that reduce player choice/dumb down the game/blatantly favor a few factions I don't like. Those include hard limiting each city to one building, "specializing" cities, and so forth. These actually dumb the game down further because it'll just lead to "man as EVERY good player knows you have to build X building in your home city!" and so forth. So I've come up with a sort of compromise. This will make sense later once I get to part 2 and part 3 if it doesn't here.



The left tree should offer a dust/food building, and the right tree should offer an industry/science building. Since dust and science are less required in the first 20 turns this would water down the power of these buildings. Additionally, I'd hard reduce the power of some of these buildings by reducing their flat stats. For instance, the food/dust building would give 5 dust, 5 food, and 15% dust/food. The industry/science building would give 5 industry, 5 science, and 15% science/industry. The industry required to produce the buildings would then be increased to 120 from 80, and upkeep increase to -2 from -1.



This would accomplish two things: Reducing the must-have researches to 2 from 4, and reducing the early game power of the food/industry buildings so that while still likely required will be LESS required opening up different strategies. By increasing the industry to 120 but reducing the buildings to 2 from 4 I also reduce the build burden on new cities to 240 from 320, allowing new cities to do more than just chug tier 1 buildings for the first 20+ turns. In part 2 and 3 I'll go in to further details.



Part 2: Opening up choice in starting strategies.



The first thing that IMO needs to be changed is "search party." I'm not sure if it even works or what it does. However what I suggest changing it to is a 25% increase on all resources found in ruins, and ensuring all ruins give a quest or reward. That would open up a new starting build for people that go ruins searching. But, you might be saying, won't that simply change the new must-have technology to search party? Maybe. Maybe not. What it WOULD do is make "Dust dredger" and "large scale aquatic center" start to look a lot more appealing. To further solidify the early ruins searching/military start I suggest changing stronghold architecture back down to +5 defense instead of +10, but adding +1 militia. With these changes starting builds could go different ways: Going for buildings and giving yourself a strong economy, or going for search party and combining it with early military units to search for more ruins.



With 2 researches opened up we could see if Dust Dredger and Large Scale Aquatic Center start replacing them as the must-have, or if the new Stronghold Architecture and Search party are enough encouragement to research in to other categories. Or, possibly, people could start going for tier 1 glassteel researches. Prisoners slave and volunteers starts to look juicy too. Since these researches would all be very powerful but niche it could start encouraging actually different playstyles (so long as the balance was kept track of.)



Part 3: Revamping the Borough system.



This one is a doozy. Okay first off some things simply have to go. I suggest splitting boroughs up in to two different buildings entirely. City buildings, and exploitation buildings. Boroughs remain buildable at 1 per 2 population, and exploitation buildings serve different purposes. Boroughs stop exploiting any additional land other than the place they are sitting on top of. Borough stop generating any unhappiness/happiness. The industry cost of boroughs goes down to 100, and only increases at 25 per additional borough. Boroughs remain useful for dust, science, and influence, as well as whatever tile you could get them on. The triangle mega-city formation stays. This would reduce the industry burden on cities very hard especially come mid game, but in return open up a little gap for the new buildings, the expoitation buildings. Exploitation buildings cost 200 industry (then 400 then 600 and etc.) and are only buildable at 1 per 45population. Think of them as the way to exploit the land that everyone has wanted. You basically get to pop down another mini-city anywhere you want in your zone. Think of it as a town. It is a town.



This would do multiple things: 1. Nerf the Necrophage's synergy with the current borough system. 2. Stop the current unhappiness creep that happens early game, and overhappiness creep that happens late game 3. Stop the ludicrous industry scaling that just kills mid game since all your cities are forced to deal with building boroughs and never even getting to build combat units. 4. Appease the people who want to exploit more of their land while still retaining the game's look and feel. Visually "towns" will just be a level 1 borough as it is right now, but just able to be placed anywhere for exploition in your zone. At 1 town per 5 population this would also ensure that towns don't take over the land while allowing players to exploit their zones.



The look and feel of the wildness is something I REALLY want preserved in Endless Legend. If towns would take that away then kill the entire idea. I've always likened a lot of Endless Legend to almost The Fellowship of the Ring, where you're on an adventure but have to constantly go through other Races' territory to accomplish it. If everything becomes cities and towns then the feel of the game will diminish immensely. This is why I've always been against the "cities everywhere!" idea, and why I'm very careful with ideas that favor the "I want to exploit everything" crowd. It'd a very tricky act, and allowing too much civilization to pop up will, again, ruin the feel of the game.



Now of course part 3 is the most drastic of the changes and feel free to ignore it, but I think part 1 and 2 would make the early game far more likable for everybody and reduce the false-choice and must-have in the game.

I like snake cities, square cities, round cities and triangle cities. I would love each type of city being viable under different circumstances. I really would.

I'll never understand why people hate snake cities so much. Even in reality, not every city becomes a huge blob, and less so in medieval times. A lot of towns and villages around here actually do snake along the rivers they were build close to. Personally, I don't find snake cities and more or less visually appealing than sticks, triangles, or the occasional parallelogram (reasonably efficient for a 3x3 city, giving you 4 level 2 and 1 level 3 district)



While it's true that people are calling for more exploitation of the regions they control, I don't think that needs to be answered by actually gathering FIDSI from tiles in the region. I think feeling like you're exerting control over the region is much more important that gaining any amount of resources from it. In the first era, we have isolated extractors and minor faction villages, in the second era we get vision through watchtowers, and in the third we construct roads, but no such "increase of control" happens in the fourth era. So I agree that "exploiting" the region shouldn't be tied too closely into the borough system

hashinshin wrote:
Snake cities would be t he worst thing to happen to this game. I don't know why people want them to bad. For a game so visually excellent snake cities would turn mid-late game in to a pile of crap aesthetically. Just boroughs lining the country side.

So do stick and triangle cities everywhere. We need a bit of diversity at least.

Snake cities would be t he worst thing to happen to this game. I don't know why people want them to bad. For a game so visually excellent snake cities would turn mid-late game in to a pile of crap aesthetically. Just boroughs lining the country side.



People want more exploitation, and want to change the borough system to fit what they want. The borough system is NOT an exploitation system, but a mega city maker system.

The way boroughs works right now is kinda boring, and doesn't give any choice. Personally, I'd do so that you count the number of connections between boroughs (so an hexa city would have lots), which would count towards district level, REGARDLESS of the shape of your city.

E.g. every 6 boroughs connections (like 7 boroughs in one row, or a little row vv with only 5 boroughs) you would get one district level (put on the city center, or on random borough).



This means that you'd have to choose between 2 types of city :

1) The district leveling one (hexa most probably) to favour science, dust and influence production.

2) The snake one which wouldn't have much disctrict levels, but more terrain production.

You could probably even try to make compromises, with triangle cities, which have good district leveling (still less than hexa), and good terrain coverage.



Edit : this seems like a good design to me, but I might have missed something



On Research, I think a complete overhaul needs to be done, imo.

I agree that this lack of meaningful choice and these deceptive non-choices need to be fixed, and that simply changing a few numbers will probably not be enough.

BadgerTemplar's observation on the different purposes of buildings are quite accurate, and really need to be taken into account. Combining a flat bonus with a percentage bonus on an era 1 building simply makes it a must-have. I would also like to mention that some of the per population bonuses can feel quite excessive.



As far as boroughs are concerned, I personally like the idea of leveling up boroughs through construction by placing a borough street on top of an already constructed one. That way, a player could either expand the area his city controls and collects FIDS from, or upgrade an existing borough for bonuses to Dust, Science, and Influence. Of course, approval would need to be separated from the borough system for that to work, as I feel it should be anyway.

This idea could even be taken further by allowing different types of districts when leveling up: Merchant Districts, Academy Districts, Artisan's districts, etc for bigger bonuses in one area at the cost of the others.



In any case, the "build everything" mentality needs to be curbed, though I am not in favor of a hard limit. If a good player could pull of constructing everything without sending his empire into debt after investing considerable effort, that's acceptable to me, but it should not be easy. That could even tie into the whole wide vs. tall debate.

Snake cities have many problems:



1. They give you sight of your entire zone, which is a huge advantage and makes it much harder to do your quests in opposing territories.

2. They look ugly as hell.

3. They remove the aesthetic of the game which is tons of wilderness. Once again I liken the game a lot to the fellowship of the ring where you're on a quest and have to go through elf/dwarf/orc territory to accomplish it.



I will never get behind an idea that allows snake cities. Besides, you say you want more player choice, yet when faced with my idea that would steeply reduce borough strength you still say that you hate having to choose between a good starting city position and a good borough position.



Following that, there's little history in 4x for specializing cities, nor is there much history in 4x for specializing actually adding any choice. it jusdt becomes obvious best specialty. Civ5 just ditched it, and look how popular Civ5 is. Learning all these rules and must-have specialities just burdens the player down. In the end you achieve nothing other than drastically increasing the knowledge-burden of the game due to having to know all the best specializations for different cities and bio-spheres.

^^ I like this man's/woman's ideas! ^^

I agree that these three problems exist in EL and that they need to be addressed.



Part 1-

I agree that 4 separate buildings to research bogs down the early turns of research

(and forces new cities to spend so much time building tier one structures).



Why do you feel city specialization or adding city building caps dumb down the game or removes choice?

I think what stifles meaningful choice is the "build everything each city" and "I must research/build this"

(either due to the imbalance or importance of a particular research/building) mentality.



What I really don't like about researching era 1 buildings is it currently creates two non-choices FOR EACH BUILDING.

First, I must choose the research because there is never a time I won't use it. Then, once I have finally researched it, I must build it.

There is rarely a down side, or a time when I won't (eventually), put a tier one building into a city.



Your suggestion of combining the era 1 buildings does free up possible research choices and reduces the time spent building.

However, I think it also reduces the meaningful choices I have when it comes to choosing what structures to build.

So, instead of having 4(8) non-choices, with combined structures I now have 2(4).



Amplitude could nerf the starting buildings to the ground; but then what would we be forced into building early game? Nothing? Military spam?



What other research options feel necessary to you?

Open Pit Mine/Reaping Station/Advanced Harvester? Alchemist's Furnace?

Rookery/Imperial Coinage/Mercenary Market? Conscription Center, Watchtower, Mertocratic Promotion/Signal Corps?

Central Market?

Is that necessary feeling a numbers balancing issue or do you feel like any of these are needed to play the game regardless of numbers?



Part 2-

I would also like to see a reason to choose Search Party. It does seem too weak or random right now.

The militia buff to Stronghold would also be nice to further reduce the effectiveness of early game aggression.



I think with the current limitations on city shape Large Scale Aquatic Center will very rarely be optimal (and to a lesser extent Dust Dredger),

but part 3 works to address that.



Part 3-

100% aggreement that boroughs should have nothing to do with approval.

I also feel the mid game slow down due to being forced into building lots of boroughs,

but I think that may just be because of how they are tied to approval now.

If they weren't I could build 1-2 of them anytime I wanted, not be limited to a midgame explosion.



I don't like the idea of separating boroughs from nearby FIDS collection. It steeply decreases the value of boroughs,

which in turn decreases the value of Food.

I also don't like being stuck with the triangle or linear city.

This limitation on shape handicaps the positional choices I have for a city.

A good FIDS starting location that I cannot take because it would limit my ability to have an expandable city feels like a knife in the gut.

Limiting city shape interferes with choice.

I feel that the Food/Population needed to build boroughs is enough of a limitation on city sprawl.

I can't think of any other reason to limit players choice on city shape.



If Exploitation Towns are the direction Amplitude wants to go, I would consider limiting each city to one of them.

In most normal sized regions I find myself torn between 2-3 (rarely 4) possible city locations based on FIDS/Anomolies alone.

Being able to exploit all 3 of those locations upon reaching 10 population and building 2 structures seems a tad overpowered

and it drastically reduces the importance of your original city's location.

I would rather have your city's tile location be more important than less.



Some related thoughts:

As long as research is the primary way to unlock buildable structures taking that research will be necessary.

Otherwise city's have nothing to build.

I am in favor of having research options unlock multiple structures.

This means that building research is still a necessary research (a non-choice), BUT you gain meaningful choice: what structures to build.



I feel like buildings should serve one of four purposes:

1. Make up for a lack of FIDS due to city location (Expensive flat bonuses)

2. Increase a FIDS based on city location (Cheap tile bonus i.e. Dust Dredger)

3. Increase effectiveness of Population (Cheap because population choices should be valuable)

4. Increase a FIDS your city efficiently produces (Expensive % bonus)



ELs current buildings often fulfill 2-3 of these purposes. 1 solution to 3 different problems.

That makes that 1 solution far more powerful than another research option that only solves 1 problem.

I think you can scale down the power of era 1 buildings by splitting them into several different structures that each serve 1 purpose

instead of applying a simple numbers nerf that hurts a solution to multiple problems.



Increasing the dust upkeep of buildings, reducing the flat dust generation provided by buildings,

and increasing the penalty for a city having negative dust generation would all serve to balance out these buildings in these examples.

Names and number are probably off:



Era 1 Food Production Research:

Orchards (80 Ind, +1 Food per Forest tile, 3 Dust Upkeep)

Fishing Boats (80 Ind, +1 Food per Water tile, 3 Dust Upkeep)

Grain Fields (120 Ind, +1 Food per Grass tile, 3 Dust Upkeep)

Increasing the power of tiles makes city placement/expansion more important.

These options are more of a choice than large cheap flat bonuses because they build on a player's original choice of where to settle.



Era 1 Food Substitution Research:

Seed Storage (80 Ind, +8 Food, 5 Dust Upkeep)

Livestock Pens (100 Ind, +1 Food per rock/sand tile, 5 Dust Upkeep)

You do need a way to make up for a lack of a FIDS if RNG messes with you, but it should be at a steeper price.



Era 3 Food Production

Plows (240 Ind, +3 Food per Pop, 2 Dust Upkeep)

Graneries (280 Ind, +15 Food, 5 Dust Upkeep)

Drying Houses (240 Ind, +20% Food, 5 Dust Upkeep)

These provide options for Mid/Late game when you have more population freed up to produce FIDS and costs start getting prohibitive.



Anyways. There's my two cents plus a buck fitty.