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.