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.