An idea to make city-building interesting

that seems good, but it looks like they city structure is going to be different from the picture above.  Like it sounds to have an entirely different scale, to the point a building shouldn't take up more than 1 block at all.  In such case, shapes wouldn't matter

I like the idea, and it makes me want to go play 'Startopia' but I'm nure sure if it would or could be used here.

Very nice explanation, thanks.

Since we will be customizing units to some extent, will there also be a customization of buildings?  For example, if our religion has options for 'areas of emphasis' (such as healing, motivation, thrift or duty) might the church enlargements have optional outbuildings (such as clinic, devotion hall, money changer or Templar House) which might influence units raised in that town of that religion (such as HitPoints, Courage, Cost or Toughness)?  So in addition to building a basic church in a design such as a cross, we could add the outbuilding later making the shape more complex.

Not a bad idea, though I'd want to avoid feeling like I was playing Tetris. 

What about doing something simliar to Total Annihilation 2, I mean, Supreme Commander, whereby buildings get different bonuses depending on what they're next to?  Such approaches always feel a little "gamey" to me, but can be fun if done well.

I wonder if the engine could support real variety here that would enable different factions to have very different basic patterns for settlements, kind of like the way in the Wheel of Time the city Carihien is extremely rectangular, while the city Caemlyn is more 'organic' looking.

I definitely like the idea of using 'irregular' building shapes to effectively require some planning when you're working on a grand capitol.

I dunno about the tetris idea. Although it would make it more interesting (I'd prefer it to the block format that the game has now) but it seems to put a lot of emphasis on puzzle skills and foresight/planning that have little to do with the game. No ideas on how to top it except turn the game into sim city though.

Short answer: Bad idea.

Why is that?

Basically I see two possible options for those buildings:

1. The same buildings always has the same shape (can also be used as an advantage / disadvantage: e.g. Faction A has especially small archeries)
2. Depending on the city location or plain randomness building sizes differ

Option 1. would require the player to figure out an 'optimal' city layout. After this has been learned and adopted by the player, it does no longer serve your original incentive: fight monotony. It's just more of a nuisance to place buildings.

Option 2. would give some cities advantages over others. E.g. you have the specialised farming city because farms are small there. If the size depends on the terrain this rewards strategic placement. If done randomized it serves to distinguish cities from one another. Yet, the same effect can be reached using different mechanics. (e.g. Farms on good farm land produce more food per time unit)

My conclusion: This mechanic only makes it more complicated to layout the city without really adding something. Different sizes and odd shapes are ok to add flair, nothing more.

My proposal: It is rewarding if the city becomes impressive (in size / complexity / looks / 'stats'). 'Special' buildings (statues, triumph bows, heads-on-pole) granted for certain successes (like: first city to breeds 100 horses, a general from a town wins a battle against an enemy hero, or first captures of a town...) add much 'personality' to a city. Also, the more such buildings a city wins the larger it becomes - which makes it more impressive and hence more rewarding.

Also, the player has a strong incentive to meet the requirements for these successes if these buildings also add to the productivity of the city: horse breed faster, generals train faster, ... what promotes it to a strategic goal to thusly develop cities.

Personally, I like my idea much more than having to puzzle the perfect town with tetris tiles. Limited space limits the city even if the tiles are squared...

By the way: Farms should be outside the city walls  

I don't see why farms should always be built outside castle walls, I mean think of the advantages in a sieg if you could have a food supply (albiet a small one) growing right within your walls. Granted, however, if said farms caught fire due to enemy projectiles they'd be useless and they would take up huge amounts of tracts within the casltle and probably wouldnt feed too many people but I say if your trying to build a city in an area that is raided frequently why not try to secure some of your food supply?

A farm is too big to fit the city wall. The wall around the farm would had to be very large. It would be very expensive (a lot of material needed to the construction) and if you want the ctity wall to be usefull, you must add defenders to it. Long wall = lots of defenders. And  the farm produces only limited amount of food.

In medieval times it was quite common, that if an enemy army got close to the village, the inhabitans took as much supplies as possible and fled to the nearest castle. There they helped with the defense.

To the original idea: it is interesting, however it would be bad if we consider large empires with many cities. Build queues would work better.

Not Tetris - Cathedral!

Sounds interesting. I would suggest making the system a bit more modular.

You need full control over 3 things in regards to building layouts:

1. Position of internal components.
2. Configuration and shape of outer walls.
3. Access between internal components and through the outer wall.

Lets say we were building a small three tile city. The three tiles are arranged in a row. The first tile is open farmland. The next tile is divided into 4 buildings. A granary, a stable, a vinyard and a warehouse. The last tile set higher up the mountainside is a small fortress. The tiles are set into a sloping pocket valley with mountains on 3 sides. The farmland is set outside the valley mouth.

--

The position of the internal components can have a big effect on things like commerce and defense of the city. The fortress is one big block with a main gate on the outer face. The second block is divided into 4 buildings which are separated by the main road running down the center and out through the farmland. The vinyard and the stables are placed beside the fortress because these 2 buildings provide the least cover for invading armies.

The outer walls of each subcomponent might not seem important but they can still have an effect. The stable and the vinyard have no walls at thier outer boundaries, again to provide as little cover as possible to invaders. The warehouse and the granary on the other hand can be heavily fortified on thier outside face. This creates a reinforced outer wall of the city. Since the granary has been placed by the outer wall, its heigh allows defending troops to use it as a watchtower.

The only way to move through each city tile is to use the road and gates that run up the center. This is helpful when defending the city because you only have 2 main gates to defend. At the same time this creates a main artery for all types of traffic.

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It might seem like a lot of uneccesary detail but imagine the fun things you can do with it. Set up shop on a mountain, close off a few gates and force the invaders to fight thier way up a giant spiral.

I'd love to have functional, realistic fortress designs, but the farm issue really isn't a problem.

Instead of building a farm, just build a farmers residence, the farms can be autoplaced in flatlands outside the city area, and you'll then have your city built in a reasonable fashion, without needing some odd system to keep them outside the walls.

If the farms actually are inside the city at release, I'll survive.  Unless they have realistic farmlands for the population, in which case a city of a thousand people is going to have thousands of acres of farmland inside the city.  Since the pictures show nothing so absurd, I'll suspend my disbelief and live with it.  It's not like any previous games have actually had realistic farming setups.  Even the more hardcore sims are usually so far off the mark that hilarity is the result of trying to take them seriously.

Having funny shaped buildings though, blegh.  Seems like an annoyance, not something fun.  I'd like terrain specific requirements for certain types of buildings, like no pastures on a hill, but playing tetris with my city designs is pissing me off just thinking about it.

I like games as complex and realistic as they can be without sucking the fun out of life by turning a game into something as irritating as real life itself.  I don't like annoying myself just to make something take more effort.

Thats a good solution. In retrospect a farmers house isn't any different from a regular house. All he really needs is flat ground and a tool shed. So as long as you have working farmers residing in your city then available arable land will b cultivated. It doesn't actually matter where the land sits. Sunny mountainsides? Vinyards are a go. Cleared hilly forest? Orchards and so on.

I think a system like Zyxpsilon is proposing for GC3 might work in Elemental: you build a city on a tile. It takes up that tile, and stays there. Adding buildings will not make it grow beyond that tile. HOWEVER, if you click on the city, the window zooms in to just that square and it breaks up into a smaller grid that has Tetris buildings as in the OP. If you run out of space, you have an option to expand into the next tile, but as the city grows you need to build bigger and bigger walls, which costs more money and makes you more vulnerable. Here is the original GC3 idea: https://forums.galciv2.com/328231/page/40/#replies. Idea #4 on the first reply.

Shape-variance is a VERY cool idea for another game, but not what I want out of Elemental.  Would be better with a game that's more of a sim or city building exercise than a TBS MOM-like.  Here, I want to focus on big picture stuff and interactions between leader, race, units, spells, etc. instead of having to screw around with where stuff goes. 

If you want food inside the city walls, things like granaries or warehouses to store food during seiges makes more sense. As others have pointed out, building a wall around the amount of land that a farm would realistically take would be insane.

Come on, a half-baked Tetris mini game?!  If someone want to play tetris, play a real one.  The Tetris idea is a real bad idea.

OTOH, it maybe interesting to make city building interesting with minimal micromanaging.   For example, the Tactical combat terrain is affected by how the city is built. 

Afterall, I don't think this aspect of game need any improvement over the regular 'build it then forget it' formula.  Buyer of this game don't expect it is a castle building game afterall.

I disagree with this part.  I always disliked arbitrary limits on how big cities could be.  Instead of making an arbitrary limit on city size and making the player build puzzle-like cities, I think the tetris idea should instead be applied to the terrain type the city is built on.  For example, building a city in the mountains would give the player more awkwardly shaped land to build on than a large, wide open grassland.  Each building would only take one block, but the combinations that have been talked about by the devs when laying out cities would require multiple one block buildings to be placed adjacent or very close to eachother.  This way, the player has less options to make powerful combinations between buildings in difficult terrain than in favorable terrain, making the system of city building more realistic and somewhat more challenging

Not a fan of this idea.  It adds additional complexity for no gain in my mind.  People will just find the building pattern that is most optimal and use only that.

Sammual

I don't like the tetris idea but the whole you choose where the buildings go and multi-tile cities is cool, there probably will be several optimal ways, some may be good for trade and the like but horrendous if you are attacked

Part of "how complex should cities be" may come down to "how common are cities"?  If the player needs to manage dozens or hundreds of cities (immense maps, perhaps?), they should probably be kept simpler.  If "every city counts", then more complex cities are fine.

That said, complex cities are fine even in large numbers if the player has ways to intelligently automate certain functions, or can rely on the AI to do a "good enough" job at certain functions.  See "Sins of a Solar Empire" for definition of an AI being "good enough" at something.

Dang. If I could've posted this first, I'd've thought I was pretty smart. I don't know about the Sins stuff, your basic point about us not knowing how common cities will be is a good one. At least for those of us who think that rare cities and late-game wilderness will do a lot to provide fantasy flavor to the game.

Maybe a game setup setting for # of cities would help, similar in function to the star density setting in GalCiv2.  If cities are complex to manage, you can always go for fewer cities.  The "more is always better" people like myself can take a crack at Immense maps with Cities set to a more common setting.

Cities, I think, use Essence, so maybe "cost of cities" is a more accurate term.

I still have some hope that the essence mechanics will organically ensure that maps rarely or never end up tessellated with housing and other improvements.

But that would mean spacing via blasted lands and not 'natural' spacing that yields a map like Middle Earth (very sparse population centers) or 'the west' in Jordan's Wheel of Time (less sparse, but still full of wilderness).

Maybe instead of a 'city frequency' option analgous to the habitables options in GC2, some (adjustable) form of 'independent' revitalized territories could do the trick. The whole thing as actually gotten me wondering whether some of the greatest Beasts, e.g. the Dragons, might not also have some essence to use. When we go to beg a dragon to aid us in some effort, will we be going into blasted lands, lands that we or another channeler restored, or lands that the dragon restored?

Call me crazy but in doing so in the end you end up with the same situation except this time you have considered the shapes as an additional factor.