I know what you mean, but I can't pay the salary of 40+ people to get the game I want. Maybe one day, when I win the lotto, I will hire a studio to make 3 perfect games for ME, just the way I want them to be... I surprised no multi-millionaire has done that.. but then again, they become rich by doing other stuff I suppose.

Yea, the borrough and city leveling mechanic not only needs more attention, but each faction needs unique art work for their unique playstyle....

Ok back on topic. I think building on top of each other makes no sense. Cause right now you are getting new exploitation and bonus from district field, as exchange for - happiness and need of population.



Your choices are "build in triangle, get fewer exploitations and lvl 2 districts" or "build wide, get more exploitations and no lvl 2 districts"

Please no more OT.

Propbuddha wrote:
Ahh, the old "evil corporate game publishers and greedy CEOs" line. Never gets old after hearing it for 20 years. If only people made games for free with an unlimited amount of time to finish them to everyone's satisfaction, we could get rid of those pesky robber barons for good!



Watch out though, AmpliMath, the CEO is on here and posts a lot. He'll be upset you've caught on to his evil plot...

why is it evil to spend tons money on a product you want, then allow others to play it for a reasonable fee? the only negative thing about it is that sometimes the CEOs feel they are making a product for the fans, yet never listen to them. if they made the game for themselves to play then there isn't really any negative thing about it (unless the CEO didn't earn the money he's spending, though there aren't many game companies around old enough for such things).

EcthelionHelm wrote:
Not quite true. Keeping topics like this alive (and new players coming in and making the same suggestion!) shows to the devs that this is a issue that many think needs improving.

We've been hammering them about the borough and city leveling mechanic for months. They know it's in need of a major rework. I think after they release the game, we'll have an opportunity to present our ideas again. But that' just my understanding of it.

Nasarog wrote:
Because until the dev's ask us how we think the borough mechanic can be fixed, there is no point to argue about which would be better. Everything here has already been covered before.

Not quite true. Keeping topics like this alive (and new players coming in and making the same suggestion!) shows to the devs that this is a issue that many think needs improving.

avidsupporter333 wrote:
How is all this related to the borough mechanics !? Why are you people writing all this off-topic nonsense ? Please, don't ruin the discussion. Relate to the inicial topic.

Because until the dev's ask us how we think the borough mechanic can be fixed, there is no point to argue about which would be better. Everything here has already been covered before.

Sorry, meant automatically evolving, not naturally.

Propbuddha wrote:
I imagine the designers liked the concept of the cities naturally evolving, rather than built to specification.

In Scandinavia in the viking era, cities were designed around fortresses very meticulously with defense in mind. During the reign of the Roman Empire, cities were designed so that large armies could move through them with ease.



Sure there were cities which evolved naturally, but quite a lot of them are designed.

Hey avid, there's already moderators on this forum. Stop trying to do their job Dumb posts get dumb responses...



To get back to the discussion, the city leveling mechanic (and accompanying approval penalties/bonuses) is consistently cited as one of the most confusing things in the game, something needs to change. Upgrading Districts manually ("building districts on top of districts") would probably be the most intuitive way of doing this.



I imagine the designers liked the concept of the cities naturally evolving, rather than built to specification.

How is all this related to the borough mechanics !? Why are you people writing all this off-topic nonsense ? Please, don't ruin the discussion. Relate to the inicial topic.





Propbuddha, you don't help with this sarcastic response. Neither do you prove yourself to be intelligent or funny, by writing all this BS. You just spoil the guy's thread.





I ask for the deletion of this post after the thread is cleaned.

jamoecw wrote:
take a look at any producer that makes a game that the fans are mixed about, then the producer says in corporate speak, "this is how we wanted the game." it obviously means that the CEO of the producer wanted the game made for him.

Ahh, the old "evil corporate game publishers and greedy CEOs" line. Never gets old after hearing it for 20 years. If only people made games for free with an unlimited amount of time to finish them to everyone's satisfaction, we could get rid of those pesky robber barons for good!



Watch out though, AmpliMath, the CEO is on here and posts a lot. He'll be upset you've caught on to his evil plot...

jamoecw wrote:
take a look at any producer that makes a game that the fans are mixed about, then the producer says in corporate speak, "this is how we wanted the game." it obviously means that the CEO of the producer wanted the game made for him.

Perhaps, but if I produced my own game, first and foremost, the game would be made for ME, that way I want it to play. Start to finish. Selling it to other to try and recoup the investment would be gravy, but I would be the ranked #1-#100k.



Remember, this is a hypothetical based on some astronomical lottery win.

Nasarog wrote:
I know what you mean, but I can't pay the salary of 40+ people to get the game I want. Maybe one day, when I win the lotto, I will hire a studio to make 3 perfect games for ME, just the way I want them to be... I surprised no multi-millionaire has done that.. but then again, they become rich by doing other stuff I suppose.

take a look at any producer that makes a game that the fans are mixed about, then the producer says in corporate speak, "this is how we wanted the game." it obviously means that the CEO of the producer wanted the game made for him.

Nasarog wrote:
I surprised no multi-millionaire has done that..

I think Notch did that with Age of Wonders 3, but this is going very, very OT now.



So could we please discuss the merits of my suggestion again?



Any very experienced players who can weigh in on possible repercussions to this?

It seems that the consensus on the forum is that the leveling up of cities is broken, and that the fix which restricted everything to level 2 only is... restrictive.



So, how about enabling boroughs to be built on top of boroughs in order to level them up instead?



The way you balance that (compound) cost is up for discussion, but at least it would enable those who want to snake to do so (especially since there is no empire wide tax rate to offset it).



EDIT: And alternatively, you could put a city level requirement on all buildings in the game, so a new city can't just plop down an advanced building without first having a level 2 or level 3 borough.

The devs will not delay release - they are simply too far along into the final stages of release.



Honestly, I think this will hurt them in the long run (a 7 game that becomes a 9 after free dlcs and some xpacs will still be known by most as a 7). Still, the decision is made.







At this point, our best bet is to try to make a comprehensive list of what needs some more attention in xpacs. A change of this magnitude is unlikely to make it into a free update, but an economic overhaul might be on the same scale as the warfare overhaul of disharmony.

TimBur wrote:
Nasarog - I appreciate your quiet confidence. I do wish things were otherwise, but I'll pipe down, cross my fingers, and hope for the best.

The truth is, I go but my experience with ES and by my conversation with SpaceTroll. I bought the game a good long while back, and I play on a MAC. I am the picture of confidence..

Nasarog - I appreciate your quiet confidence. I do wish things were otherwise, but I'll pipe down, cross my fingers, and hope for the best.

TimBur wrote:
I encourage folks here to post on this thread about the possibility of postponing the EL release date.



While I agree with Nasarog (and others) that the city leveling and borough mechanic needs a lot of attention, I think that these mechanics ought to be worked out pre-release rather than post-release. First impressions matter, and if EL is released without 'something that works well' for these mechanics, then we'll all be the poorer for it - early adopters, later players, and Amplitude itself.

It won't happen. Amplitude will release before the end of the month. The good news is that they will keep working on the game for a good long while after release. I do no know ho along it will take, but I think many of these issues will be addressed one way, or another.

I encourage folks here to post on this thread about the possibility of postponing the EL release date.



While I agree with Nasarog (and others) that the city leveling and borough mechanic needs a lot of attention, I think that these mechanics ought to be worked out pre-release rather than post-release. First impressions matter, and if EL is released without 'something that works well' for these mechanics, then we'll all be the poorer for it - early adopters, later players, and Amplitude itself.

The city leveling and borough mechanic needs a lot of attention. Maybe after the game is released, we can figure out something that works well and doesn't make things too complicated for the A.I.

Warlock works a bit differently - and I don't think a warlock approach would work too well here.



In warlock, each population point allows you to build one building. This building is built on the hex map (like districts currently are). Each building *may* be affected by terrain, for example a farm built in a plains will produce +20% food, but a market may produce less gold.



Also, I really do love Rise of Legends, so maybe this is where I am coming from. I just would also like to add interaction with terrain / interaction with surrounding boroughs to it. Think galciv3 crossed with rise of legends crossed with warlock.

eobet wrote:
It seems that the consensus on the forum is that the leveling up of cities is broken, and that the fix which restricted everything to level 2 only is... restrictive.



So, how about enabling boroughs to be built on top of boroughs in order to level them up instead?



The way you balance that (compound) cost is up for discussion, but at least it would enable those who want to snake to do so (especially since there is no empire wide tax rate to offset it).



EDIT: And alternatively, you could put a city level requirement on all buildings in the game, so a new city can't just plop down an advanced building without first having a level 2 or level 3 borough.

to both of these suggestions. It'd allow a greater variety of city shapes (compared to the current min-max line and triangle cities), and make leveling cities more worth-while (plus stop the outright purchasing of improvements on smaller cities, as lo_fabre mentioned).

EcthelionHelm wrote:
Allow different types of boroughs (3 or 4), which interact differently with terrain, buildings, and surrounding boroughs.

Just for reference, I think this is how the 4x game Warlock works.

EcthelionHelm wrote:


Allow different types of boroughs (3 or 4), which interact differently with terrain, buildings, and surrounding boroughs.

A terrain booster might give you dust on deserts, science on cold, industry on forests, or food on plains.

A city booster might give you the option to specialize in buyout, influence, industry reduction, military benefits, trade, etc.

A support booster might influence the cost and production of surrounding boroughs.

A building booster might be tied to a specific building, and increase its effect but also its upkeep.

Beautiful idea! Reminds me of the districts in Rise of Legends (an old RTS game)

Different district types allow you to dynamically specialize your city towards your preferred victory type. It may also introduce new building requirements such as (Building X requires Level 2 of District X to be built etc...), and increase terrain interaction



Perhaps some of them (especially the "supporting" types) can only be unlocked with technologies or era advancement, which will give tech research even greater impact

Threads on this issue keep popping up over the place, so I am basically just going to repost my ideas here again.



First, I think the general idea of having boroughs manually level up is great. However, this could lead to a few new systems that could drastically make economy / terrain interaction more interesting.



Allow different types of boroughs (3 or 4), which interact differently with terrain, buildings, and surrounding boroughs.

A terrain booster might give you dust on deserts, science on cold, industry on forests, or food on plains.

A city booster might give you the option to specialize in buyout, influence, industry reduction, military benefits, trade, etc.

A support booster might influence the cost and production of surrounding boroughs.

A building booster might be tied to a specific building, and increase its effect but also its upkeep.



Interaction could be used to make choices - support boosters may not work on terrain, but only on city and building (up to a point). However, a terrain booster might give a benefit to a building booster in certain cases - a cold terrain booster could give a bonus to an adjacent science building booster.



Otherwise, we have this flexible borough system with lots of choices (can build anywhere, and choose what to upgrade), but very little meaning behind all the different choices.

Agreed. This would be a good solution to the borough issue. The current cap at 2 feels heavy-handed, artificial, and uninteresting. Hopefully it's just a stop-gap, something to fill in until the devs have a more thorough solution.



Even if each borough had a flat build cost, dependent on borough level, I think this would be an improvement. However, you might add a bit of interest by having the cost of a borough upgrade be dependent on the number of levels of boroughs in the surrounding tiles. E.g. cost of level L borough = 200*L - 10*(sum of levels of boroughs in surrounding 6 hexes). Thus, you could always make a city of any shape, but the 'best shape' would depend on the surrounding landscape, and on what you want for that city.

Definitely agree with a manual leveling through construction system. I'd mentioned it before in other threads, and I think it would help the game by providing more options and choices: Go wide for Industry and Food, or tall for Dust, Science, and Influence? Even then, however, the boroughs need to be balanced so that large, heavily upgraded cities don't receive huge approval bonuses.

eobet wrote:


EDIT: And alternatively, you could put a city level requirement on all buildings in the game, so a new city can't just plop down an advanced building without first having a level 2 or level 3 borough.

I agree with the idea of having some advanced buildings require a City or District (or BOTH) at level 2 or more. It can also reduce the Build Everything Syndrome a little bit. Of course, this means they might need to add more buildings to offset the new requirements.

eobet wrote:




EDIT: And alternatively, you could put a city level requirement on all buildings in the game, so a new city can't just plop down an advanced building without first having a level 2 or level 3 borough.

Good idea. Sometimes I've conquered a small city, and just bought all improvements on it, to make it producing in the next turn, instead of waiting some turns to grow.