My Level 4 town

I like this change. Let's hope the re-balanced improvements encourage the upgrading of an existing city instead of building a new one!

Ahh, much nicer. 

are you going to fix the inorganic look problem in the future?

i mean:

1) the regular ground cover between buildings

2) adjectancy

3) merging of buildings

etc.

otherwise it looks good, release the new beta already

This has been bugging me for awhile...but why cant that Inn be incorporated into the town itself? 

Looks cleaner than in 2-nil. In that picture I'd like to have cobbled streets, wonder if that is doable. Would hide that road as well, but those will probably see sense soon enough. You really want us to try this 'broken and unplayable' thing don't you? 

1. Yes.

2. I'm not sure what you mean.  We do want to have buildings that if placed adjacent increase the adjacent building's production. I.e. a windmill next to a farm increases the farm's output. We want to keep these relatively rare and they would be improvements that would come in pairs or groups so that players aren't having to remove improvements because they don't have a spot for the new one.

3. Maybe.

The Inn is supposed to go away entirely, it's a bug.

It's coming (cobbled streets).  Cosmetics are something we'll be addressing later on.  

The way things look and are animated are going to get a lot of polishing (particularly fighting and spell related) between now and release.

Sweet.

Will there be enough improvements that you still have to make choices between what you want at the high end, or is there enough space to just throw down everything?

Glad to hear it, especially with regards to #1 - all you really need are some cobblestone streets or something similar between buildings, and it'll look much more integrated. More like a city than a dozen buildings sitting on the grass next to each other. [Would also be nice if the outside roads connected in to the city's street network, rather than running diagonally through existing buildings as in the screenshot ]

#2 sounds fine as well, I can live with adjacency as long as we're talking about buildings available with the same technology that we can build at the same time, and never end up in a situation like "I just researched these new windmills, now I need to go find every city with an old farm and demolish some buildings to fit them in."

Looks like a very nice town you got there (waits for update).

Still I really can't see why people hate the way this game looks... Its Awesome!

Cool.  It'd be nice to see cobbled streets, with some straw/hay scattered in the corners and up against the buildings so it doesn't look too clean, and have the occasional chicken running around.

Sounds great! Looks to be a big improvment to how things are now. I really like the way cities look in this game, makes them look a lot more interesting than in most games like this.

This is probably something that will be fixed eventually, but I hope the glaring cosmetic tech level/architecture differences in some of the buildings is addressed. For instance, currently in early games, a temple looks a lot more advanced then most other buildings. In the picture above, the council and command post look woefully lower tech then the rest of the city.

Very nice to see city building improvements and hearing about the visual polish. I would love to see a city built on a mountainside a la the white city in LotR. Or anything that would not be quite so flat and symmetrical.

Improvement wise the thing that comes to mind looking at that pic is that the command post should merge into the Fortress which should be the hub of all things military after it has been built.

And the trees could use more detail, but I guess that's part of the polish that is underway.

While on the subject of buildings and towns, will there be alternate building styles we can pick out without modding?  So I can, for example, have longhouses and huts rather than the 1600s looking ones we've seen so far?

Agree there, the council I don't mind since it matches with a garden or green in the middle of the town (maybe not a full-scale city but a town probably has one). The army camp shouldn't be within the city walls imho. It should be a 2x2 (might still take one square in the city limit of buildings) and be placed outside. Real life army camps never fit inside cities so it should be external which also makes it a point worth defending. Officer academies or engineer schools should however be inside the city walls. (Archery ranges and stables should be outside). Nothing necessary but worth some thought.

That is a nice looking town. I'm much more sold than I thought I'd be. Still, I liked the rural feel of gardens.

Nix that last comment there is clearly a garden.

@bilskis

the same can be said about farms

@Frogboy

don't forget gates in the walls, as of now it looks a bit silly when the road passes through walls

otherwise thanks for your quick reply

i'd love to see some great, funny, surprising animations that are not so 0815 (dawn of war being a good example for good animations imo)

I must echo this question because that was the first thing I wondered.  I remember reading previews to GalCiv2 (PC) that stated the reason for going with the building system you did (ie: fixed number of workable tiles to place buildings on) was that you wanted to avoid the "build everything" mentality that appears in some of these turn based strategy games.  It's an idea that I fully agree with, or at least, I agree that building a city should be more involved than simply building every structure available to you, with only the order being the important factor.

I am confused, is this food output of the garden the same?

And if so, has the housing improved so much to balance the lack of gardens out?

He also has an oasis, don't those produce food? (Never managed to claim one, no idea). Also could have other cities producing food to support his housing, we really don't know.

Soooo are you releasing BETA 2-A now?