Bump for the devs to see

VieuxChat wrote:
The following could be interesting to push players to create "compact" cities (the leveling mechanic is there to simulate that : "snake" cities would be a bad shape for cities) :

Each time you add a borough you add the number of new connections to the overall level of the city. Once the city reach some threshold (like 3/6/9/13/17/21/25/30/+5...) you get one free "upgrade" too apply to any borough you want.

Only in a game where you have to be optimal like a MP game or a very high difficulty game. I'd like snake or star to shrunken cities to be viable but not terribly efficient, otherwise, we are again going to be forced down the one single path to success like ES.

Nasarog wrote:
Only in a game where you have to be optimal like a MP game or a very high difficulty game. I'd like snake or star to shrunken cities to be viable but not terribly efficient, otherwise, we are again going to be forced down the one single path to success like ES.

With what I proposed, any shape would be interesting, but some less than others while letting you som eflexibility when you sometimes need to reach that special tile.

VieuxChat wrote:
With what I proposed, any shape would be interesting, but some less than others while letting you som eflexibility when you sometimes need to reach that special tile.

That's great news. The one city per region, brilliant. Being able to grow your city anyway you want is brilliant. Outposts being more functional? That would be brilliant too.



I hate city sprawl in 4x games. In Warlock 1, you had to build them 6 hexes apart to create an impromptu road network. In Civ5, you have to do it to grab resources and fight forward settling civs.



The one city per region is really game changing. If you like to change things up a bit, well, then you play Roving Clans.



So much good in this game. I can't wait to play.

I was not aware of this game mechanic until I read the post: “Building Big Efficient Cities: Borough Streets & Leveling Districts”.



I must say I’m very disappointed. I don’t think it was the dev’s intention to create only one optimal build and thus making the actual native terrain of very little use. I hope they do something to make other designs also viable. I love the idea of snaking your city to include some natural resources in your city and utilizing the area you have to it’s max.



I’m thinking of a fix, where you could “buy” an upgrade. So it would cost a little more than the optimal layout, but after paying the fee for not following the optimal layout, you’d still get the benefits of the optimal layout. That way it could be worth paying this “fee” to deviate your city, so it includes a good local resource.

TheSAguy wrote:
I was not aware of this game mechanic until I read the post: “Building Big Efficient Cities: Borough Streets & Leveling Districts”.



I must say I’m very disappointed. I don’t think it was the dev’s intention to create only one optimal build and thus making the actual native terrain of very little use. I hope they do something to make other designs also viable. I love the idea of snaking your city to include some natural resources in your city and utilizing the area you have to it’s max.



I’m thinking of a fix, where you could “buy” an upgrade. So it would cost a little more than the optimal layout, but after paying the fee for not following the optimal layout, you’d still get the benefits of the optimal layout. That way it could be worth paying this “fee” to deviate your city, so it includes a good local resource.

You're right, right now city management can be monotonous and boring. But I'm sure the devs will provide more choice, adding new options and changing the mechanics. I hope the borough system gets optimized ! There are two nice threads about it, bringing suggestions:



/#/endless-legend/forum/6-game-design/thread/3063-alternate-borough-mechanic

/#/endless-legend/forum/6-game-design/thread/3061-actual-long-suggestion-to-fix-the-false-choice-lack-of-choice-borough-system

Hey. I missed this on the initial go-round but I'm glad it got revived so I can say +1 to the ideas in the Original Post. I was actually about to write something similar, but not as well-thought-out (level 1 when surrounded by four 0s, level 2 when surrounded by five 0s or three 0s and one 1, and level 3 when surrounded by six 0s or five 0s plus one 2, or four 0s plus two 1s, and so on).



Anyhow, I like the original post quite a lot and would love to see that system implemented, rather than what happened in the last build with the max city le el cap just being reduced.

oh so thats how you lvl your city i tryed that and it never worked, nor will it ever with how i build my city's.

If you say that it never worked, then perhaps you tried leveling up your city center. For some reason, leveling up the city center does not increase approval, which is one of the most readily noticeable effects of leveling up districts.

Concerning the Minor factions and ruins, I agree with the third idea: allowing players to build boroughs directly on them and changing their graphics slightly (make them look cooler etc..). The ruins can still be searched even after building boroughs on it. This way, we don't lose the quests and bonuses from ruins (the total number of available ruins must not be reduced, cuz they can be searched again with certain techs etc..). Also, boroughs can't be built on minor factions cities unless they are pacified first (to be realistic and challenging).



As for the other proposals... I'm rather comfortable with the current district leveling mechanic and approval system. my apologies



However, I do agree with Cat-O-Nine-Tales that a manual upgrade system is more preferable, perhaps making it cheaper to upgrade a district that has other districts around it (depending on their number)? Also, like Cat said, faction variation would be great as well.

This... is really interesting. Even though you said it is basically exchanging one optimal formation for another, this just really feels more right, I guess. It doesn't seem that natural to build cities in strips in my mind I guess. Except on coastlines.

The following could be interesting to push players to create "compact" cities (the leveling mechanic is there to simulate that : "snake" cities would be a bad shape for cities) :

Each time you add a borough you add the number of new connections to the overall level of the city. Once the city reach some threshold (like 3/6/9/13/17/21/25/30/+5...) you get one free "upgrade" too apply to any borough you want.

j.a.paisley wrote:




Another proposed change



Currently, minor race towns and ruins are obstacles to avoid when determining city placement. You can't build a district over them, and just one missing district will often prevent several districts from leveling in a cascade. But this seems backwards - both native towns and ruins seem like they would be culturally-enriching when incorporated into cities. I believe you could do this in one of three ways:



[LIST=1]

Towns and ruins would basically be "wild cards"... that is, if you built adjacent to them, they would automatically be incorporated into your city as a 'free' district, and level as normal. Since you didn't have to build the Borough Street, they wouldn't count against the population limitation on the number of new districts you can build.

as in (1), but they would not level up like normal districts, and only receive their base production. However, they would allow adjacent districts to level up as if they were of N level.

Simply allow players to build Borough Streets over towns and ruins. Change their graphics to make them look incorporated into the city, but don't overwrite them with the "bigger buildings" models as the district levels up.

[/LIST]





One last related proposal



With the current magnitude of approval gains from district levels, all other approval mechanics in the game are drowned out in the great deluge of excess happy-fun-time in larger well laid out cities. I believe if you toned this down considerably, then other mechanics will become a lot more relevant, and EL will be the better for it. So, instead of -10 per Borough Streets and +15 per district level...

• -5 for each Borough Streets expansion
• +5 for each District Level.
  
  

Finally...



I think some of the ideas in this thread are also worth consideration, and aren't entirely in conflict with the concepts I'm floating here.

i figured you could simplify it for the player and have it be:

n -1 = district level (where n is the number of adjacent district/city tiles)

the lower of: district level capped at level of city or lowest adjacent district/city tile

x /6 = city level (where x is the number of districts)



this caps district level at 5, makes hexagon type cities more efficient at 36 districts (a 37 hex city), while triangle cities are better before that. last but not least if paired with the lower happiness impact suggestion means that a single hex snaking city would have a neutral impact aside from the 1 or 2 end districts (depending on if an end is the city square or not) gaining its bonuses from greater workable tiles instead of city density.



since everyone likes pictures:



colors: red>orange>yellow>green

what the numbers mean:

# of districts/district+city levels/non city workable tiles



for the snake, the first set of numbers is for what is shown. the second is if you put the city on the end and don't loopback so close (no wasted near city tiles).



the first numbers for the triangle and hex are for what is shown. the second is to compare the hex if increased by 1 more ring, which shows the turning point between the two.





i think this is easier on the player due to not having to know much in the way of formulas or charts, plop a district down and whatever it is next to will boost its level, which is figured by simple counting (though you do start at 0). as long as their is some indicator of the city square's district level (hopefully their will be an indicator for districts as well) no math will be required to plan your cities, not to mention that you could get away with just picking a good spot and snaking to the tiles you want without throwing your city into rebellion.



butting up to a ruin/village should be like butting up to a district to make those places not something to be avoided, though they shouldn't level up like districts i think.



Edit:

as districts are now given numbers in game as to their level, and that number starts at 1 (not 0), the changes to keep those changes are:

n = district level (where n is the number of adjacent district/city tiles)

instead of [n-1=districtlevel(wherenisthenumberofadjacentdistrict/citytiles)]



new numbers in graphic should be:

20/41/37 (20/42/46) for the snake

instead of [20/21/37(20/22/46)]

20/75/21 (35/167/27) for the triangle

instead of [20/55/21(35/132/27)]

18/70/18 (36/183/34) for the hexagon

instead of [18/52/18(36/147/34)]



keep in mind that all that has changed is what the level is called of the districts, nothing else.

Very solid ideas.

That's nifty. I like this too.

As someone who just bought this game.... Good Lord! I had no clue you could even fashion cities in shapes and leveling.... Lol, I now feel lost.

j.a.paisley wrote:


Proposed district leveling mechanic

• A district that is adjacent to 3 or more districts of level 0, will advance to level 1.
• A district that is adjacent to 4 or more districts of level 1, will advance to level 2.
• A district that is adjacent to 5 or more districts of level N, will advance to level N+1.
  
  

I think that, as of version 1.02, since there is a truncation on the maximum level a city can have, this became a moot point.

I, personally, like the way it is, today... If you force that the optimal layout for a city to be an hexagonal one, you are only replacing the stick with the hexagon... With the current layout, you have an hibrid layout, where expansion is possible, but kept in check, and you don't have a logarithmic happiness progression with a compact layout.

j.a.paisley wrote:




Another proposed change

Currently, minor race towns and ruins are obstacles to avoid when determining city placement. You can't build a district over them, and just one missing district will often prevent several districts from leveling in a cascade. But this seems backwards - both native towns and ruins seem like they would be culturally-enriching when incorporated into cities. I believe you could do this in one of three ways:



[LIST=1]

Towns and ruins would basically be "wild cards"... that is, if you built adjacent to them, they would automatically be incorporated into your city as a 'free' district, and level as normal. Since you didn't have to build the Borough Street, they wouldn't count against the population limitation on the number of new districts you can build.

as in (1), but they would not level up like normal districts, and only receive their base production. However, they would allow adjacent districts to level up as if they were of N level.

Simply allow players to build Borough Streets over towns and ruins. Change their graphics to make them look incorporated into the city, but don't overwrite them with the "bigger buildings" models as the district levels up.

[/LIST]

I agree wholeheartedly with that! Villages and ruins are a bother... After they get explored they simply "get in the way". However, I think we could roleplay this a little:



For villages: players may place a borough over a pacified village belonging to an assimilated minor faction. This borough will become a special "minor village" borough. If the player changes the assimilated faction, the empire will still receive the bonuses for "minor village" burroughs, and that region only may build the minor village unit. When the minor village burrough level up, it counts as an extra village for purposes of assimilation bonues. Minor faction bonuses acquired this way may only be achieved once the occupation timer is over.



For ruins: when the player place a borough within a ruin, when the borough is completed it is like if the ruin were explored once more (to roleplay the situations where construction workers stumble upon an archeological discovery), and the ruin disappears.

Great thread (also the one you wrote before)!

IMHO city leveling takes too much time, allowing increase when a tile is adjacent to 3 as proposed by the OP will help

I don't think that city leveling takes too much time, so much as the game's pacing will have it so that you will usually win the game against AIs before you get to the leveling point.

Adventurer_Blitz wrote:
I don't think that city leveling takes too much time, so much as the game's pacing will have it so that you will usually win the game against AIs before you get to the leveling point.

In my last cultist game I got to 200 turns, and with FIDSI in the thousands, I only had about 10-11 districts. All other factions, I wouldn't get close to that in the given time. How long are your games!!?!

Nice proposal Paisley.



I like the way it could fix the city shape 'optimization'.



It would be nice to have a feedback form the dev concerning this topic, and espescially the direction they want to go concerning the city shape optimization and the city size. To me it looks quite critical to freeze the district mechanism and the FIDSI output before going further into economy balancing.

Reserved for some possible future afterthoughts, flashbacks, or fevered rantings.

I not going to read it all, so thanks for the pictures.



+1

Nice and thoughtful argument.

• I strongly second the idea of better balance, such that long cities (more perimiter tiles) and compact cities (higher levels) each have their place, and the alternative rules proposed by the OP seem to do this.
• Ditto with the ideas about ruins and minor race towns. Both those features ought to be positive supporting tiles rather than annoying obstacles.
• I'd add one more idea: I wish that landscape structure mattered more. EL landscapes are visually beautiful, and rich in features, but as-is, those features have little influence on city design. I wish that there were some stronger relationship between boroughs, anomalies, and resources, so that good city design required thoughtful consideration of the arrangement of anomalies/resources across a region. e.g. resource bonuses when resource hexes were adjacent to boroughs, and larger bonuses when under a borough, with the size of the bonus related to the level of the borough. Similarly, when an anomaly is in a borough, there should be a bonus related to the borough level.
  
  

+1..



Seriously though, no matter what they do, I'd love for them to leave an option for us to grow our city/region anyways we want. Some being better than others, but what if I want a starfish shaped city and the like.

Of course! Freedom! For me, the problem is that if there's one single design that is clearly superior to the others, then I feel like I'm being penalized for using my creativity, as my 'alternative' designs all come with gameplay penalties. I'd like to see options that are *different* rather than better/worse, so that there were more kinds of gameplay choices to explore. So that the idea of exploration was rewarded rather than penalized.

Nasarog wrote:
but what if I want a starfish shaped city and the like.

Well, your starfish would probably have some really good reach for exploitation . . . but, yeah, not so good on the district leveling front.



Unfortunately, it's true that if they use rule-based criteria for how districts level, then certain city layouts will be much more efficient than others. With these changes to the underlying mechanic, I've shifted the optimal design from linear to hexagonal... And while hexagonal cities really should take the cake, it's still just trading one optimal for another.



But keep in mind, once you have a nice city core going, you'll have a lot of and influence to spare from all the district levels. At that point, you may very well want to send districts off in some direction to grab more . . . or maybe just for aesthetics



p.s. no forum icon for influence? I has sad.

I really like your idea so much so I really have nothing to add

j.a.paisley wrote:




p.s. no forum icon for influence? I has sad.

Before early access they had the star as pink. (and called it Prestige) But they changed it to purple since was already pink. But they never updated the forum icon ^^



Which makes me wonder, what would the pictures look like if the system was: A district adjacent to 6 other districts of level N will advance to level N+1 ?



Around the same time as the pink prestige I hear that was the original borough mechanic. According to the VIPs, they told the devs this was too much so it became the 4 boroughs as it is now. I just think it might be interesting to see their original mechanic...

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
Which makes me wonder, what would the pictures look like if the system was: A district adjacent to 6 other districts of level N will advance to level N+1 ?

With that leveling rule, hexagonal cities would be about the only option. Since a district couldn't level up until it was surrounded, you would have to build six borough streets into a hex pattern before you got your first leveled up district. District levels would be much more difficult to achieve - you could compensate for that by making them give more FIDSI each, but I think most people would find that mechanic too granular.

Could have different factions alter how strict this mechanic is.



Like at the highest have the necros need fully hex citys to level, where at the lowest have the walkers who might even get penalty's for having more then 2 connections on a district.



Really see how it could be exploited.

As I noted in thread awhile back, the current mechanic for leveling city districts results in linear two hex wide cities being optimal... and that's something that many players consider sub-optimal. There are other interesting suggestions for modifying this mechanic, what I propose would simply alter the existing mechanic so that more intuitive city layouts become optimal.



The mechanic as it currently stands:



A district that is adjacent to 4 or more districts of level N, will advance to level N+1.



This mechanic penalizes hexagonal cities, primarily because their corners are only adjacent to 3 districts, and therefore the corners don't level up. Triangular cities fare better, but for bigger cities linear two-lane cities rule the day:







key - [yellow:level0] [blue:level1] [green:level2] [red:level3] [darkviolet:level4] [lightviolet:level5]



The hexagonal layout (A) uses 19 hexes (city center plus 18 Borough Streets builds), and has 6 L1, 6 L2, and 1 L3 districts, for a total of 21 district levels. Including the hexes adjacent to your districts, you can potentially get production from 37 hexes.

Triangular (B): 21 hexes; 6 L1, 6 L2, 3 L3, 3 L4; 39 total levels; 42 hexes.

Linear (C): 21 hexes; 4 L1, 4 L2, 4 L3, 4 L4, 1 L5; 45 total levels; 48 hexes.



Proposed district leveling mechanic

• A district that is adjacent to 3 or more districts of level 0, will advance to level 1.
• A district that is adjacent to 4 or more districts of level 1, will advance to level 2.
• A district that is adjacent to 5 or more districts of level N, will advance to level N+1.
  
  

Which leads to:



[



Underthesemechanics,it'smoreefficienttotruncatethecornerhexesfromtriangularcities,sincetheywon'tlevelupanddon'tcontributetotheiradjacenthexes'leveling.AndsinceIshrunkthesizeofthetriangularcity,Iremovedacouplehexesfromthelinearcityaswellinordertomaintainamoreevencomparison.



Hexagonal(A):19hexes;6L1,6L2,6L3,1L4;40totallevels;37hexes

Triangular(B):18hexes;6L1,9L2,3L3;33totallevels;36hexes

Linear(C):19hexes;4L1,11L2;28totallevels;44hexes



Sowiththismechanicchange,youcangetapproximatelythesamereturnsfromalargeoptimally-builtcity-butthehexagonalclusterisnowtheoptimallayout.Butalinearcitymayhaveanadvantageinandproduction,sinceithasmore"surfacearea"ofadjacentproducinghexes.



Anotherproposedchange



Currently,minorracetownsandruinsareobstaclestoavoidwhendeterminingcityplacement.Youcan'tbuildadistrictoverthem,andjustonemissingdistrictwilloftenpreventseveraldistrictsfromlevelinginacascade.Butthisseemsbackwards-bothnativetownsandruinsseemliketheywouldbeculturally-enrichingwhenincorporatedintocities.Ibelieveyoucoulddothisinoneofthreeways:



[LIST=1]

Towns and ruins would basically be "wild cards"... that is, if you built adjacent to them, they would automatically be incorporated into your city as a 'free' district, and level as normal. Since you didn't have to build the Borough Street, they wouldn't count against the population limitation on the number of new districts you can build.

as in (1), but they would not level up like normal districts, and only receive their base production. However, they would allow adjacent districts to level up as if they were of N level.

Simply allow players to build Borough Streets over towns and ruins. Change their graphics to make them look incorporated into the city, but don't overwrite them with the "bigger buildings" models as the district levels up.

[/LIST]





One last related proposal



With the current magnitude of approval gains from district levels, all other approval mechanics in the game are drowned out in the great deluge of excess happy-fun-time in larger well laid out cities. I believe if you toned this down considerably, then other mechanics will become a lot more relevant, and EL will be the better for it. So, instead of -10 per Borough Streets and +15 per district level...

• -5 for each Borough Streets expansion
• +5 for each District Level.
  
  

Finally...



I think some of the ideas in this thread are also worth consideration, and aren't entirely in conflict with the concepts I'm floating here.

I feel like the biggest challenge is fitting these cities in regions.. with mountains, ruins, and other "obstacles". The other issue at hand is that you shouldn't be seeing cities of the size referenced above until very late. Cities with a population of 20+ are old food focused monsters, so these boroughs are double the size I would expect to see in game before turn 160 or so.

j.a.paisley wrote:
Well, your starfish would probably have some really good reach for exploitation . . . but, yeah, not so good on the district leveling front.

It might not be optimal, but I would love it being a viable options.

@ j.a.paisley, thanks for putting in all the time on the OP, it's really well thought out and presented.

j.a.paisley wrote:


Currently, minor race towns and ruins are obstacles to avoid when determining city placement. You can't build a district over them, and just one missing district will often prevent several districts from leveling in a cascade. But this seems backwards - both native towns and ruins seem like they would be culturally-enriching when incorporated into cities.



[LIST=1]

Towns and ruins would basically be "wild cards"... that is, if you built adjacent to them, they would automatically be incorporated into your city as a 'free' district, and level as normal. Since you didn't have to build the Borough Street, they wouldn't count against the population limitation on the number of new districts you can build.

as in (1), but they would not level up like normal districts, and only receive their base production. However, they would allow adjacent districts to level up as if they were of N level.

[/LIST]

Ruins and Minor Faction Villages as avoided zones is one of my biggest gripes.

I like that Amplitude made these zones produce , but I don't like how the current systems punishes you for building around them.

As long as Ruins and Villages can be reached for quests, the first two ideas submitted in the OP are great.

j.a.paisley wrote:


With the current magnitude of approval gains from district levels, all other approval mechanics in the game are drowned out in the great deluge of excess happy-fun-time in larger well laid out cities. I believe if you toned this down considerably, then other mechanics will become a lot more relevant, and EL will be the better for it. So, instead of -10 per Borough Streets and +15 per district level...

• -5 for each Borough Streets expansion
• +5 for each District Level.
  
  

j.a.paisley wrote:
Well, your starfish would probably have some really good reach for exploitation . . . but, yeah, not so good on the district leveling front.

My second largest complaint is being linked to borough positioning/leveling.

Right now, there are not any situations where I would consider building a city in a sub-optimal leveling shape because of this link alone.

If a city was not hit so hard by negative for not leveling a borough,

I would sometimes choose to build different shaped cities to reach anomalies/tiles with valuable .

A starfish could sometimes be a viable choice to gain specific tiles over leveled boroughs.

This suggested numbers nerf may be sufficient to give players a new choice.



A bell curve of borough expansion seems to be encouraged over steady borough building.

With 4ish cities giving expansion disapproval an un-leveled city can go into rebellion fairly quickly.

So, I either use Luxury boosters and focus the Empire Plan to get more ,

or wait until I will reach the 12+ population needed to have an positive city before beginning to build boroughs.

Is this intentional? How does the borough building curve look like for other people?

Nodor wrote:
Cities with a population of 20+ are old food focused monsters, so these boroughs are double the size I would expect to see in game before turn 160 or so.

At what turn are people reaching these mega cities?

Not much to add here but say I'll add another +1 to the OP's ideas, especially in regards to minor towns and factions. While I haven't encountered the issue on any of my playthroughs so far... I've seen potential expansion locations that I had to reconsider because of a ruin or minor faction owning the land I might want to expand towards, and I shouldn't have to think of placing my city is a bit less ideal spot just to avoid having it expand over a ruin or a minor faction that I've pacified.

JonathanStrange wrote:
Not much to add here but say I'll add another +1 to the OP's ideas, especially in regards to minor towns and factions. While I haven't encountered the issue on any of my playthroughs so far... I've seen potential expansion locations that I had to reconsider because of a ruin or minor faction owning the land I might want to expand towards, and I shouldn't have to think of placing my city is a bit less ideal spot just to avoid having it expand over a ruin or a minor faction that I've pacified.

I thought they had addressed that already.

Nothing to add but applause.

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
*snip*

Around the same time as the pink prestige I hear that was the original borough mechanic. According to the VIPs, they told the devs this was too much so it became the 4 boroughs as it is now. I just think it might be interesting to see their original mechanic...

That was indeed the original mechanic, but that is - in my eyes - a worse mechanic than we currently have. Realistically, it would only allow level 0 and 1 city tiles as a district could only level up when completely surrounded by tiles of the same level, regions would be to small/ill shape to contain such large cities to ever reach level 2. The region's size, shape and content (mountains, water tiles, minor villages,...) would simply work against that mechanic and would often lead to frustration.

adder wrote:
That was indeed the original mechanic, but that is - in my eyes - a worse mechanic than we currently have. Realistically, it would only allow level 0 and 1 city tiles as a district could only level up when completely surrounded by tiles of the same level, regions would be to small/ill shape to contain such large cities to ever reach level 2. The region's size, shape and content (mountains, water tiles, minor villages,...) would simply work against that mechanic and would often lead to frustration.

I think having only level 0 or 1 city tiles could be nice. Honestly the actual mechanism and the fix proposed by paisley are not so simple and intuitives, so maybe it is a wrong way..



If you get rid of level 2 city tiles*, the original mechanism looks quite nice, simple and elegant.



*EDIT: Maybe not get rid of completely, but only reachable via buildings or others.. > for example, district level could be only boostable via buildings (by building 'district' on a level 0 city tile), and tiles surrounded by tiles may have a +1 bonus (or +x once some urban techno discovered).. somehting as simple as that.

I agree with much that has been said here.

• It's nice that ruins and villages are no longer complete dead zones, but they're still obstacles, which seems to clash with their argument against anomalies with penalties. If they can#t be treated as low-level borough, then they should at least provide some other bonus (+2 Industry from the labor power of the minor faction, and +2 Dust or Science from ruins)
• Tying approval directly to boroughs is a terrible idea, because it results in optimal layouts.
• I'm not fond of tying district levels to connection rules anyway, since that will, again, lead to optimal builds. I've been in favor of a manual upgrade system for a long time. That could also serve to differentiate the factions: While the Necrophages would get cheap extensions for sprawling hives, the Wild Walkers might get cheaper upgrades instead, creating compact cities producting a lot of Dust, Science, and Influence, but refraining from covering the entire natural landscape.