[Suggestion] Shrinking cities, subdividing squares, no more clutter!
Elemental Forums
So let me begin this post with a story.
When I first started my D&D merchant campaign with my friends 2 years ago I drew up a map for their starting region. It had a great amount of detail. Mountains, meandering rivers, city states, pastures, rolling hills, forests... you get the idea. The map was meant to convey to the players a sense that despite a few bastions of civilization, world was a wild place with scarcely charted wilderness and unknown (and therefore, perhaps limitless?) opportunities.
But there was a big problem that ruined my players' sense of emmersion. That being: the cities were too big and too close on the map. Basically, those vast, wild tracks of land looked more like unmown backyards upon a glance. So what was the solution? I erased the cities and redrew them at 1/9th the size. It's amazing how this small detail influenced their perceptions.
So how is this story relevant to Elemental? Okay, so one thing I've been very concerned about so far in this most recent incarnation of the beta is the sheer size of cities on the map relative to other cities. It's a fun concept to be able to place city buildings wherever you'd like and have them actually appear spatially on the world map, but the problem, I'm sure we can all agree, is that once your cities start growing even a little there is more distance across a single given city than there is distance between cities. So basically what we end up with is a nasty amount of clutter and a world that is filled with urban sprawl. Ultimately, it gives the world a very tamed feeling, even from the onset. I think the emmersive feel of the game would benefit greatly if there were vast distances between cities, with only the late game making the world feel more "domesticated."
So what would be the easy solution to preserve a city's "spatial presence" on the map while remedying the sprawl? Do what I did with my D&D map: scale down the size of a city. Practically, this would involve subdividing a square on which a city is built by either 1/4th's or 1/9th's. Now, when resources could only be acquired by snaking a city over to it, this prospect wasn't possible. Now, however, that resources can be claimed via region of influence, massive, gangly cities aren't necessary anymore. City building would still be identical, but there would be substantial distance between civilization hot spots and a much wilder feel. Resources can be reduced in size as well, graphically, to make the world seem less cluttered. The land space it takes up can remain the same, but simply draw a "lawn" around the resource.
And there are other ways to reduce the clutter of civilization as well, but they have more bearing on gameplay. If it were up to me, I would build in limits to a player's expansion based upon a resource. In other words, there would be far more resources on a map than a player could innitially claim through plunking down cities. Not only would it force a player to choose their cities wisely, it would also add distance between urban areas.
