[Idea] Spend essence to create city (avoids city-spam, fits game-lore)

Agreed. 

What you describe is how it was in early beta.  Cities could only be placed in revitalized land.  We had to strategically choose to invest valuable essence or wait for revitalization to naturally spread (or place at adventure sites that popped up as they were revitalized, but my guess is this was an 'unintended feature').

I don't remember seeing any word from on high why it was changed.  The game lost a lot of its lore and an important strategic choice with this change, and gained significantly easier/quicker city spamming.

I have to say i think i liked it the old way as well. I would like to be able to choose where to put my cities to seal choke points or to gather specific resources. Reverting back to this way i think would add a bit of strategic depth.

Nick describes my take pretty well.

I do vaguely remember catching scraps of talk about some folks (maybe not devs?) thinking that requiring the sovereign for settlement-founding was somehow making the sovereigns less fun or something? Like it was demeaning for a mighty mage-monarch to be bothered with something as tedious as founding settlements? The paucity of talk that I caught and my solid dislike for the change make it hard to remember the specific 'explanation.'

Spam is good for one thing and one thing only: Monty Python's Spam Sketch. In the TBS genre, it's baby fat that's been carried well into adolescence and makes many a game with good bone structure just seem bloated.

I like the idea that cities can only be placed  on the appropriate terrain, though the creation of cities should still require a pioneer. A spell would be needed to prepare an area for settling, otherwise it would take too long to settle much early in the game.

However it would not be as effective at deterring city spam late in the game when cities have large influence areas and spellcasters are more common, and if the incentive to do so is still present people will do it. To really fix the problem there should be a penalty for having lots of cities (see the thread Adminstration Cost).

So add 'freed up the sov from being required to place some cities' to my list of what was gained from the change.  And one could argue this also could be added to the list of what was lost.  Reasoning is that with the lore's 'restore civilization to the lands' bit, requiring the sov to 'seed' the lands for city creation doesn't seem unreasonable -- especially so considering the sov is only needed where revitalization hasn't naturally spread.  So the sov isn't required for all cities, and decreasing so as time progresses.

Soloution:

Pioneers still build cities.

Set a max number of cities based upon sovereign's essence.

Or have there be diminishing returns for each city, till it starts to cause your income to decrease when you found new cities.

That's a spot where my steel-sieve of a mind is sketchy. I can't recall whether we had both the pioneer units and an unlimited Found Settlement power for the sovereigns. I like the idea of having both, but the biggest city-spam stretches I remember from earlier betas were when I had seriously good map luck with already-revitalized land and could found settlements without spending essence.

I'd like to see Essence be needed more as well, especially with founding new cities if the land is dead and needs to be infused with life/death magic to be useful. The thing is though, Essence is INCREDIBLY LIMITED and you don't get enough of it when leveling up to make it viable to spend it every time you want to build a new city. Essence should be able to be gained in a few more ways, like draining it from a defeated enemy Sov. If we had more essence to spend, then make every city cost 2 or 4 essence to build, it could both reduce city spam AND make our Sovs more powerful as they're supposed to be.

Another shocking revelation for a guy who never played the beta and has known Elemental only post-release. Again I repeat my plead to the Devs.

Please. Make headache go away. Explain...

Wait the old way sounds far more interesting and immersive, why the heck did they change it?

Though I have to say if they insist on this Good vs Evil - Grassland Kingdoms vs Deathland Empires, it would kind of suck because it would be yet another thing trying to force us into using only one of two terrains. I hate that the Kingdoms and Empires are so bland and homogeneous, they should have more diverse domain terrain types at least that would add some flavor, I mean why doesn't Kraxis use desert when they're right there on the desert and perfectly themed and color schemed for it? One of the Empires even has a description that says they're in Swamps and Forests but their terrain is just Fallen Terrain, why not Swamp Terrain instead?

Actually I wish they'd just do the terrain types like Age of Wonders 2, where you could cast a spell to transform your terrain as a seeping change from your cities, and also cast spells to directly alter the terrain.

I disliked the beta method a great deal. Sure, it stuck with the theme better, but it REALLY hampered the way that I like to play the game, and my enjoyment (is that the right word for Beta?) of the game was impacted because of it.

I would not *mind* requiring sovereigns to "seed" revitalized areas, but if that is to be the case, there needs to be a pretty rapid expansion (like 1 radius every 10 turns or so, with a HUGE limit) from all cities, and sovereigns would need to be able to seed other areas as well.

It also complicates the claiming of opposing faction cities, as the land is putrified in your eyes, and would need to be restored in some way to make it "right", and no really good mechanic comes to mind without simply saying "The good guys are here, and the land rejoices! Flowers instead of magma pools! Yay!".

I absolutely agree that the current AI's absolute maniac compulsion to fill up every last available square of land without regard to resources, strategy, or apparent reason/objective drives me absolutely batty, but as a player who doesn't build a city without some form of specific reason (choke point or resource), hampering my play-style's ability to expand would be just as frustrating.

Yeah, the city founding change game with the whole "Global" fad Frogboy had going off on how this is a game not a simulator.

The baby was thrown out with the dirty bathwater in a lot of ways.The idea was that the Sovereign wasn't supposed to be out roaming around all the time and would want to be parked in the home city for many turns (see how well that worked, eh?). So they made it that he wasn't needed to found cities. But then you needed him to roam around and recruit heroes and farm monsters for Gildar so it didn't make a difference.

City founding with the sovereign was too much of a pain. I like the idea of the sovereign being the only one to revitalize the land and pioneers are the only ones to found cities beyond the first. I'd like to see it that the first city and land revitalization came free. Influence spread was increased and after the first city you need pioneers to found cities on reclaimed land and only the sovereign could spend essence to reclaim it if it hadn't spread that far.

But for whatever reason they're very hung up on the whole Global economy and have been unwilling to consider reverting back no matter how unpopular (or unsuccessful their game launch).

I don't think any of us advocating this are trying to 'punish' big kingdoms or take away that strategy, but rather allow smaller kingdoms to viable -- we're trying to add a choice, not substituting one choice for another.

If small kingdoms are to be viable then there must be a way to balance size, and essence is a good candidate -- it's powerful, it's lore, and large kingdoms can substitute the quantity of troops that having many cities allows for a corresponding decrease in their magic ability (while still retaining significant magical abilities, just as the small would still retain quality troops, just not as powerful/many).

With all the AI pioneers running around I feel like I'm stomping cockroaches.   Where you see 1 you know there's hundreds skulking about.

There's an enemy pioneer! *stomp*

Another pioneer *stomp*

And another *stomp*

Same with enemy cities -- *stomp* *stomp* *stomp*

It's more tedious than fun (and the game is otherwise rapidly getting to be much much fun!), and it makes pursuing the other aspects of the game less viable, as ignoring the cockroaches has dire consequences later on.

There's really 2 ideas here -- small being viable vs. large, and the AI's mad expansion.  Addressing the former then having the AI take that into account should 'fix' the latter.

Those are fair points, Nick. I just don't feel as though using essence as the tool to accomplish them has a greater weight of benefits than negatives.

I would be curious, however, to see how a more "financially punish the big bureaucracy" approach would work. Capital city is maintenance cost-free, and then install distance "tiers" which tack a cost in materials and gold every turn onto cities that are farther away from the capital.

I would also dislike losing my ability to fly around and fart death all over the heathens simply because I wanted to have a fourth city. Additionally, Essence cost for cities also creates an enormous penalty-for-failure for the player that loses a city. On top of the income, production, access to new resources, you have also lost the value from your sovereign's very finite pool of essence.

Opportunity cost paid with NO returns to use economic terms.

In terms of stomping cockroaches, they just need to put a 5 Mana spell into the fire book called "bug bomb" that immediately kills all pioneers in your area of influence with no save or damage reduction. That way at least you wouldn't have to chase them down.

I agree that the "financially punish the big bureaucracy" approach would be a good one and think this is necessary, even without considering the other issues raised here.  It just makes sense and is good game design.

A multi-tiered approach is possible, too.  A bit of this, bit of that.

One thing to remember is that essence wasn't required for all city foundings, as it spread out at a fairly fast rate.  In early beta I'd only invest essence for 2-3 cities, and the essence spread, plus capturing existing cities, took care of the rest (and back then IIRC we get more essence from leveling than it cost for placing a city).

If properly balanced, this might help with the endgame conundrum -- the end-game shouldn't drag on and on and be a chore, but the loss of a city or 2 shouldn't cause one's rapid collapse.

Thanks for the polite and well-reasoned discussion! 

Indeed. If essence were more of a meta-mana which regenerated super-slow, and spending it reduced your casting capacity over a period of time before returning to full power (a lizard regrowing a lost limb, for instance), I could see it working out. the same functionality would work nicely with imbuing champions and magic items. I just have unfond memories of floundering around last fall trying to level so that I had essence to found cities with and its kinda hard for me to see around that particular experience creatively.

I'm sure there are elegant ways to make it work out.

No problem. It's how we Malsqueeks roll. Thanks for my first Karma!

Essense will be replaces by mana income that adds to a global pool in 1.1, so it might be better to talk about how to work with that than essense as it is now.

I think there is a lot needing to be changed and it should have to do with game play rather than "lore".

I would be much happier if they went the way of the Civ games or Mom for city management and expansion and building. Make every single piece of land have an impact on your city but still have nodes a bonus plots for food and production,gold, mana, research, etc..

As it stands it seems like they used the poor city building (where you have to micromanage every building in a city and place where the buildings go) to help make the game more interesting instead of just making the game better. When someone makes a mod that uses the principles that every piece of land is helpful and not a big desert it will be a lot better and will allow you to focus on actual empire building and attacking/defending. Cities can still grow and take up more space and cities could easily be different from one another in looks and what they specialize in. No need for a pop cap or tile limit that makes no sense other than they don't know how to make it progress so we will just not allow it to progress.

Founding cities coud also be a technology you have to research again and agan if you want to increase the number of cities you can control. That way it would still be possile to have a lot of cities but not very convenient, since all research would have to go into that.

We tried the route suggested by the OP, and it was the general consensus that it was not fun.. while I support changes I do not think taking a step backwards is the right idea. especially with some of the other changes we have had. Honestly  right now the old adage "to many cooks spoil the soup" comes to mind way to often for me when I think about all the changes made and in consideration..  Change is not always good. I think we need baby steps in these changes or the game play will suffer.

but as always I realize that this is just my opinion and I respect other folks right to have their own.

Having been there from the beginning of public beta, I have to disagree. People liked it in principle and how it fit in with the story/lore. They didn't like how it made expanding your empire drag on and put your sovereign at too much risk for every city you wanted to found.

What we got is 180 degrees the other direction and not what I think people were asking for and I don't think it is any more popular than the original.

I believe there is a lot of room for a happy middle.

I dislike this idea a lot (even if it's planned.)  Right now, essence is tied directly to your sovereign, which is pretty much the premise of the game.  Changing essence to be a global pool of mana seems to take that "power" away from the sovereign and take away what makes him special.  I would prefer that one aspect be left the way it is, I kind of like how that works out.

As far as the city-spam, I agree it'd be nice to be able to limit city-spam, making new cities cost essence just means we'll be taking essence on every level up.  Although, it'd be nice to have something that'd distract me from taking combat speed every level.

What we need is a middle ground between eliminating city spam, and avoiding the "here are your 10 cities, use them to the best of your ability."  I think limiting the viability of city-spam as a tactic, and making sure the AI realizes that, would do the trick.  I kind of like the idea of the sovereign pouring his essence into a city, but then I'm left wondering where all the other cities came from, and it makes taking over a city far more valuable than making your own (which again, could be a good thing).

Maybe add a resource drain to cities so that non-producing ciites create a burden on your economy.  That could be an effect that could be applied even to enemy cities you have taken over that were under-developed or poorly placed, leading to us razing them instead of keeping them.

The global mana pool will the the sovereign's power (aquired from the shards), everyone else only gets to use it be cause the ruler is sharing with them.

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