[Gameplay-Map] City Specialization, Building Caps, and Guilds (Guild Bonuses & Buildings)

Spitz and Frogboy gave me a Great Idea

from Elemental Forums

I borrowed a page from Spitz and Frogboy's conversation in another topic and came up with what I think is a pretty good idea incorporating what Spitz has in mind plus something useful for Guilds to do that Also allows us to better Specialize our Cities. First, here's what Spitz said:

Quoting Spitz:


How about a soft limit on the number of available tiles for building? If you build beyond the soft limit, there's the risk of incurring a penalty. The available number would increase with each level of city.

For example, with completely fake/unbalanced numbers, for a level 1 city you get 10 green (no-risk-build) tiles, 5 yellow (moderate-risk-building) tiles and 2 red (high-risk building) tiles. At level 2 city you get 15 green, 7 yellow, 3 red.

For an example penalty, let's say bandits, or monster, or demons, (or worse, tax-collectors!) are more attracted to large cities. If you build in only the green tiles, you have no increased chance of your city being attacked. If you want to be able to build more than you have safe-building space for, you can, but for each yellow tile you use, you increase the chance of monster raid on your city by a percentage, which is cumulative the more yellow tiles you use. If you go out into using the red tiles, the chance of attack goes up by an even higher percentage.

This soft-cap gives the player interesting choices to make. Would I rather have a smaller city missing a few buildings, but less likely to attract unwanted attacks, or would I rather have every possible improvement, but have to spend more effort defending the city.

Other ideas would be increased maintenance costs, but the monster-attack thing is more exciting.

Frogboy liked that, honestly, I liked that too and also pulled in Frogboy mentioning wanting to do something with Guilds plus I have some of my own thoughts on a better way to "purpose cities". By that I mean having our cities specialize in doing specific tasks better then others. This is what I used to do with my planets in GalCiv 2. Certain planets would be near rich recourses and had high production capacity so I'd use them for building fleets. Some planets would have high populations which brought in lots of money and I'd draft my marines for landing invasions from there. Some planets just had high population and a research bonus on the planet so I'd make them all researchers. I think we should do the same thing in Elemental only spice it up Elemental Style....with Guilds. Speaking of Guilds, where are all those city level up bonuses coming from exactly? "Guilds" and "Guild Buildings" , of course ;) .

Spitz's Building Caps:

This plays an integral part of this. While I'm hesitant to give up a open building structure like we have now, I would welcome a change if it brought something useful to the table and allowed me to more specialize my cities. This way my cities seem more ordered in the scheme of my Empire. This would how-ever require us to once again be able to build multiple copies of the same building in the same city. It worked in GalCiv 2 and I think it can work here. Plus I have a further idea to make sure the cities don't end up looking stupid with mainly one type of building taking up space. In order for the rest of this to come together though, Spitz's Idea needs to be put in place first.

City Specialization with Guilds and Guild Buildings:

If I have a city that has a Fertile Land tile I'm going to want to specialize this city into my farming capital or "Produce Center" as that would fit Elemental better. If we only have so many tiles to work with I'm going to center my food growing buildings on or next to the Fertile Land Tile. After building so many food producing structures the player gets a message, "The Farmers Guild would like to operate in your City". If you say "Yes" then that city gets a Food Production Bonus and Access to "Farmers Guild Buildings". Advanced Warehouses or Grain Silo's to keep food stores fresh. Advanced Farms for breeding food-stock. A Farmers Collective to work together sharing planting knowledge, etc etc all kinds of buildings really, all Food or Farm Themed. This same thing can be applied with other types of Guilds and Guild Buildings as well, like a Warriors Guild which would be in the city I train most of my troops at, and a Miners Guild in the city where I mine all the iron I use to make armor and weapons. When a city levels up it gets a new bonus from its chosen Guild and access to the next level of "Guild Buildings".

The different Guild Types and City Types are only limited by our imaginations. Warrior Guilds (troop production), Wizards Guilds (magical and tech research), Farmers Guilds (food/produce production), Miner Guilds (resource production), Blacksmith Guilds (weapons manufacturing), all for cities that specialize in doing different things in their respective empires/kingdoms. One city is my center of commerce where I raise the most taxes so the Banking Guild comes to help collect taxes and make things more efficient. Another city specializes in feeding my growing empire, making sure caravans full off food get to their destinations. Yet another city is a haven for Wizards and Warlocks who unlock the mysteries of magic and research for my empire. Endless possibilities here, endless.

What Needs to be done for this to work:

First, Spitz's idea needs to be implemented. Second, we need to once again be able to build multiple copies of pretty much any building we want while having the bonus for those buildings stack or multiply when being built next to each other. This can be balanced by tweaking the bonuses themselves or through the use of balancing the benefits (or lack there of) of Guild Buildings. Some Guild Buildings may not be too popular and have a negative effect (Assassins Guild or a Guild of Death Magic).

Next, and I know this might seem like a big step back in the game's design history, but the importance of Caravans and what city does what needs to be re-evaluated. Like having all your Ore mined in one city, then shipped to another to be made into weapons and armor. Honestly, this can be done in a Fun Way (automatically), limit city spam while allowing for specialized cities (which you need with city building limits anyway), and makes defending your caravans and trade routes very important while adding logistical and strategic depth.

Later Expansion:

This opens the doors to do a Lot of things later down the road. With the introduction of Guilds and Guild Buildings you open up the door to the possibility of what else those buildings can do. Some of them could produce specialized units you can't get Any Other Way. Some Guilds and Guild Buildings can add unique bonuses while others may provide a very specific bonus while also hampering things in some way, example: Death Mages Guild. The Death Mages Guild offers advanced spells that use Death Magic, could summon powerful undead units, but costs a steady population drain on the city they are in which would also increase unrest in that city. Again, the possibilities down the road are Endless. Also when you factor in that every single resource in the game could offer it's own Guild that specializes in it's extraction and use that opens up a lot of doors because of the Huge Variety of resources in Elemental, from those on the map to your empires/kingdoms people them-selves.

Closing:

I really hope you take a serious look at this. With further refinement these improvements could do a Lot for both the game and for Gameplay. I know talking about specializing cities brings up the conversation we had a Long Time Ago when we were talking about the economic models, but the cons of the more complex system there Do Not have to be worked in here so I honestly don't think this has the same draw-backs that the more complex economic model had. In fact I think this avoids all of them while addressing the key issues we're facing now.

I also understood this is a lot to do or even bring up this late in the game, but, being ahead of schedule once again, plus looking at this from a Expansion point of view later down the road, I think at the end of the day it brings a lot to the table for the game. Frogboy, Boogie, give this one the "once over" and kick it around in the ol' noggin and see what you think.

 ;) :)

 

8,902 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Raven X, has it been explicitly stated, yet, that a Buildings bonus, one based on a Global resource, is only effective in a city that produces that resource?

I always ask myself that when I select my Town Level up Bonus. I am under the assumption that since, say Gold, is a Global, and I select a 20% Gold bonus for City A, I get the 20% Global bonus regardless if City A has a Gold Mine inside it borders.

I love the idea of specialization as well but with Global's in affect wouldn't that have to be fundamentally changed to accomplish that goal?

 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting John_Hughes, reply 1
Raven X, has it been explicitly stated, yet, that a Buildings bonus, one based on a Global resource, is only effective in a city that produces that resource?

I always ask myself that when I select my Town Level up Bonus. I am under the assumption that since, say Gold, is a Global, and I select a 20% Gold bonus for City A, I get the 20% Global bonus regardless if City A has a Gold Mine inside it borders.

I love the idea of specialization as well but with Global's in affect wouldn't that have to be fundamentally changed to accomplish that goal?

I don't really see why it would "have to" be changed no. It goes by where you build the city and what you build the city by. If it wasn't that big a deal people wouldn't want to build right next to fertile land tiles and iron deposits and things like that. Their intake may occur on a global level but the cities still need to be built by them or close enough to them. Makes sense to me. Plus, I figure limit the guilds that can be built by how many cities they can be built in, like how some of the specialized rare buildings were in GalCiv 2. Once you built them on one planet, you couldn't build them on another.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

From what I have read I am under the impression in order to differentiate cities  they want to have us choose which improvements to build based in near by resources.. bard had said in a video in this way you might have one city based on more food enhancing improvements while another city might be gold or research..

It has been stated that they want to be able to tie resources to cities.. I am not sure if this is going to be by nearest or give us an option to choose when 2cities  are fairly close..

however it does not seem to make sense to me to be able tie say a food tile on one side of the continent with a city on the other..

this does not necessarily mean that there may not be some improvements that effect ones entire area of control.

 

at least that is what i have got  from various posts and videos..

 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

having a resource to be mined in one city and then shipped off and turned into something else in another city is a little to tedious to be dealing with in my opinion. i simply don't see the need for it.  i think that specializing cities and whatnot is doable as is, it just needs more balancing to be possible.  don't get me wrong, the idea of stockpiling weapons and armor sounds super cool.

as far as guilds go, i like your ideas.  i think that resource guilds could be powerful, also i think that each one you build should increase your output to every city you have, however the drawback being that the resource costs go up each time you build one.  basically meaning that the bigger the network of a certain guild, the more you get out of it, but the more it costs to build that infrastructure, maybe even go as far as having upkeep go up as well on them.

i still think that the unit based guilds should provide equipment and not units.  dungeon masters kits(DM guild), spellbooks(mage guilds), holy symbols(clerics guild), medical kits(healers guild) etc.  so i can mix and match them to make super expensive, super special units.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Twohawks, reply 3
From what I have read I am under the impression in order to differentiate cities  they want to have us choose which improvements to build based in near by resources.. bard had said in a video in this way you might have one city based on more food enhancing improvements while another city might be gold or research..

It has been stated that they want to be able to tie resources to cities.. I am not sure if this is going to be by nearest or give us an option to choose when 2cities  are fairly close..

however it does not seem to make sense to me to be able tie say a food tile on one side of the continent with a city on the other..

this does not necessarily mean that there may not be some improvements that effect ones entire area of control.

 

at least that is what i have got  from various posts and videos..

That's what I had thought as well which in part led me to this idea. Kinda makes sense Imo.

Quoting Stmorpheus, reply 4
having a resource to be mined in one city and then shipped off and turned into something else in another city is a little to tedious to be dealing with in my opinion.

I had actually figured that would be handled "automatically" and the player wouldn't have to manually do it. It's like having one city grow the food, the food is "automatically" set into your kindgom/empire stores and the Entire Population has access to it. No-one needs to go anywhere to actually get the food even though it isn't being grown in that city. Same with iron ore and other materials. They still go into the players "global pool" and can be used from any city. The way I mention though leads more to specializing cities, like one for food and population, one for magical and technical research, one for mining and making arms and armor. The global pool concept is left intact. It might make sense though that if a players caravans are attacked it would lead to resources not being available empire wide.

Quoting Stmorpheus, reply 4
i think that specializing cities and whatnot is doable as is, it just needs more balancing to be possible.  don't get me wrong, the idea of stockpiling weapons and armor sounds super cool.

as far as guilds go, i like your ideas.  i think that resource guilds could be powerful, also i think that each one you build should increase your output to every city you have, however the drawback being that the resource costs go up each time you build one.  basically meaning that the bigger the network of a certain guild, the more you get out of it, but the more it costs to build that infrastructure, maybe even go as far as having upkeep go up as well on them.

i still think that the unit based guilds should provide equipment and not units.  dungeon masters kits(DM guild), spellbooks(mage guilds), holy symbols(clerics guild), medical kits(healers guild) etc.  so i can mix and match them to make super expensive, super special units.

Agreed. I actually kinda like the idea you have of the "unit" guilds making things that would specialize units the player makes instead of granting entire units. Either way sounds good to me. I think it opens up a Lot of uses for guilds though either way.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Here it is, chief :), knew I saw this somewhere.