ThosDowling wrote:

For what it's worth, I agree. Expanding in the early game is far too cheap and far too fast, and I think having more smaller territories is an important step, as one of many, that can be taken to address this.

Also an rather simple one

Lompeluiten wrote:

ThosDowling wrote:

For what it's worth, I agree. Expanding in the early game is far too cheap and far too fast, and I think having more smaller territories is an important step, as one of many, that can be taken to address this.

Also an rather simple one

I've seen some others, such as limiting influence gain in the Neolithic, increasing the exponential cost of claiming new territories and stability penalties of attaching outposts. All of those solutions I am sure will require a lot of balancing and tweaking to limit growth without it feeling too punishing, but reducing the territory size by 1/3 to 1/2 or so of what we saw in Lucy definitely feels like it would be the simplest to implement without a lot of tweaking, and most likely one of the more effective solutions.

Waper wrote:

Actually, I think the size of territories was about just right. (Granted some of them were indeed weirdly shaped.) Not too big nor small allowing single zone cities to establish. Reducing their size any further would make it hard to pull off creating multiple autonomous  zones.

In Lucy build, I agree that merging or attaching territories was too easy and cheap to pull off. (I recall 25 influence for attaching 1st zone, 50 for 2nd, 75 for 3rd, etc.) That favours more players to create larger sized cities or adopting more of macro-management for which I know devs want to cater those who prefer this playstyle for easier gameplay. As a result, many of us felt the game pace was fast simply because we managed to pool up higher rss production just by merging lands early and easily. From there, things can slowly start to snowball as we merge more and more lands if we choose to do so.

Rather than fostering people to do that, I think we should make it a bit harder for players to attach territories to cities. So increasing influence cost from 25 would be a good start. Make it so that decision to merge new territories does not become a no brainer choice due to relatively cheap cost.

In short, what I am saying is rather than reducing territoy size, we should tackle the issue of easy land merging practice instead. Doing so can help people who likes to adopt micro-management too. (And maybe those who like to play tall with small number of lands too.)

I played endless legend and I fount the territories there also to big. I really loved the attaching mechanic, but the sizes are it feels weird. 1 territory is around 40 tiles+. So only 3 makes that 120 tiles. That is fucking HUGE! 

What territory you attached didn't really matter. It was not like: "I am missing some good food here, should attach that". With smaller territories you can make more specialized ones to increase strategic dept.  

Waper wrote:

Actually, I think the size of territories was about just right. (Granted some of them were indeed weirdly shaped.) Not too big nor small allowing single zone cities to establish. Reducing their size any further would make it hard to pull off creating multiple autonomous  zones.

In Lucy build, I agree that merging or attaching territories was too easy and cheap to pull off. (I recall 25 influence for attaching 1st zone, 50 for 2nd, 75 for 3rd, etc.) That favours more players to create larger sized cities or adopting more of macro-management for which I know devs want to cater those who prefer this playstyle for easier gameplay. As a result, many of us felt the game pace was fast simply because we managed to pool up higher rss production just by merging lands early and easily. From there, things can slowly start to snowball as we merge more and more lands if we choose to do so.

Rather than fostering people to do that, I think we should make it a bit harder for players to attach territories to cities. So increasing influence cost from 25 would be a good start. Make it so that decision to merge new territories does not become a no brainer choice due to relatively cheap cost.

In short, what I am saying is rather than reducing territoy size, we should tackle the issue of easy land merging practice instead. Doing so can help people who likes to adopt micro-management too. (And maybe those who like to play tall with small number of lands too.)

I disagree with this reasoning, as I think that adding territories to your city should be a bit of no-brainer, at least for the first one or two. Definitely not as easy as it is now, as I feel it should be a bit more expensive, though not necessarily a lot. The influence cost and hits to stability should be somewhat exponential. Adding your first territory? Easy enough. Your second? Not too hard. Your third? Need to save up for a bit and manage your stability, but still doable. Your fourth? Alright, slow down there buddy! Some techs and civics during later eras will reduce the stability penalties and influence cost for merging, then it should be doable if you still want it.

Creating new cities should follow a similar logic, where you have to weigh the cost and benefits against simply increasing the size of your existing cities, and civics and ideologies can play a role in shaping your preferences between a few big cities and a bunch of smaller cities. Making territories smaller doesn't restrict this ability if the costs are adjusted accordingly.

Also, based on what I observed from my own and other player's experiences, currently the game rewards creating multiple single-territory cities, which not only produce exponentially more population than singular big cities, but allow you to spread faster too. So it's hardly fair to say that it's a no-brainer that just attaching territories is the way to go.

In either case, smaller territories and increased costs for attaching territories and claiming new outposts can rein in the rapid spread of your continent spanning city and city spamming around the world by the end of the Classical Era. I also agree with Lompeluiten that it can only increase the strategic depth as you plot where to put your cities.