I agree.  Anything that you are forced to build in beta like "housing" should be built automatically (if it MUST be built, the only difference with letting the computer do it is a few less clicks.  I was hoping to see building construction move more in the direction of organic growth rather than planned.  Basically, you would be responsible for building certain special entities or encouraging special activity and your citizens would build around them.  Citizens would build their own houses, for instance, and if there is a lot of wealth floating around, they build manor houses which would give you prestige.  Also, instead of the player building inns, they would sprout up depending on how much trade passed through the city or whether you sponsored adventuring guilds.

Yeah, I also think that the city building system could be done better. First, it doesn't work - at least till 0.255; it's bugged, so it's even hard to discuss it. Second, it feels a little strange. I mean, as it is now, if you want to achieve higher city level (based on population), you have to build houses almost exclusively. Building placement is also an issue - it's bugged, and even if it works, it forces you to build cities that are awkwardly stretched, so that you can cap a resource spot.

Nevertheless, the game should require us to make decisions - e.g., whether or not we want to get higher level city that will be able to provide us with more money/research, or a city that exists solely to cap a few vital spots.

That said, I don't like the current solution (i.e. houses). As it is now, houses rise the population cap and add some minor prestige bonus. This features can be easily transposed to other game elements. That is why I would like to propose different system:

Introduction

Houses will be automatized, meaning you won't be able to build them, but they will be built by the city. The number of houses (i.e. the absolute city population cap) will be dependent on the city level. Houses, together with the food supply, describe the max. population. In case when there are not enough food and/or houses, the population of the city will decrease. Prestige, as well as the current population (but to much smaller degree), are factors which decide of the city's growth rate.

Houses

• Houses can't be explicitly built by a player, but the player designate the house zones.
  
• Houses are placed automatically on the city map while the population increases. When the city reaches the max. population (corresponding to the number of houses), the city will automatically start to build a house tile.
• Building a house tile will require some time (e.g. 6 turns). If the player want the time to be shorter, he/she should research a corresponding technology.
• Only one house can be built at a time.
• No houses will be built if the city is under siege (building sites will be stopped).
  
• Building a house cost some resources, but not much (e.g. 5 gold, 0.5 wood & 0.1 stone every turn during which the house is being built).
  
• Houses won't be placed on the bonus tiles.
• Houses don't count towards the buildings cap.
• Houses can be destroyed/demolished. If that happens, people will rapidly start leaving the city. An example:
  • City's population is 200.
  • The 'castle' (main tile that is always build first) can support up to 100 population (i.e. the max population without houses is 100).
  • Every house provide shelter for 30 citizens.
  • We assume that all the required houses have been built (i.e. no place shortage). That means that there are already 4 houses (apart from the castle & other buildings); 100 + 4 x 30 = 220. In other words: we can provide shelter for 20 people more.
  • Unfortunately an enemy force (which we drove back) destroyed our house tile. Now the max. population is 190, thus 10 citizens have no place to stay.
  • Of course the city starts building a new house right away, but it will still take a few turns - during these turns people will leave your city.
  • Each turn X citizens will leave your city. X = 0.10 * extra_population. Thus, in our case, 6 citizens will leave the city.
  • One important reminder: When there is the 'house shortage' population won't rise!

Food

• 1 food unit provides enough rations to support 10 citizens.
• Food comes from city's own supplies and trade.
• In case of food shortage, people will starve to death. This system is similar in a way to that of houses one:
  • 20 food = 200 citizens max.
  • War = -3 food (i.e. enemy destroyed our farm).
  • 17 food = 170 citizens max. 200 - 170 = 30 starving people.
  • For 3 turns nothing will happen (there are always some food reserves, which of course can be enlarge developing a specific tech).
  • From 4th turn, X people will starve to death each turn. X = 0.2 * extra_population. The 'safe period' (5 days) is required, as you have to rebuild the farms yourself.

Prestige & population

• Prestige & population determine the population increase of a city.
• 10 prestige = 1 citizen every turn (10%).
  
• 100 citizens = 2 citizen every turn (2%).

i like the ideas here!

one thing i was tyring to get across but i dont think i covered well was that there would be no set zone types, you would be able to  designate districts then dicide what can go in that district. ( District 1 = small markets, taverns, small house...) 

yes, i don't like the system they have implemented at all. Because by the time ive built my 3rd city, its filled with mansions because of my research (which does not even make any sense to me- research should not affect housing development directly [as in mansions are automatically always going to be available once the technology has been researched]). Because in the medieval world, cities were filled with all sorts of housing. From huts to hovels (where the slaves and the poor lived) to more grandiose apartments or villas of merchants or wealthy nobles. Id like to see this sense of development in what the devs have described as the "living, breathing world" of Elemental!

This to me would be far, far more appealing in this game, for the sake of immersion. Because as a sovereign, you would be able to welcome the people into your city, but they would have to earn money/ make a living to move away from poverty.

If peoples of "medieval" type societies (or at least early post-renaissance, such as the american colonial period when the many cities on the eastern US were founded) had modern city zoning.   I would likely hate driving less.

You know, i could actually see this working very well. If by the end game, we are still building every type of housing because its still strategic to do so, i think it will have been done right. As long as we don't have mansions in every city i think there will be a better chance of us being able to say "now that looks like a city straight out of a fantasy world"

The current system for those not in the beta is as follows:

hut: houses 10 citizens

hovel: houses 15 citizens

house: houses 10 citizens, and slightly raises settlement prestige (+1)

estate: houses 10 citizens, and significantly raises settlement prestige (+5)

mansion: houses 10 citizens, and greatly raises settlement prestige (+10)

see how mansions would be all that would be built?

Heres what i would propose if i could:

hut: houses 10 citizens

hovel: houses 30 citizens, significantly decreases settlement prestige (-5 to -8)

house: houses 5 citizens, slightly raises settlement prestige (+1), provides slightly better tax revenue

estate: house 2 citizens, significantly raises settlement prestige (+5), provides greater tax revenue

mansion: houses 1 citizen (or possibly lord's family?), greatly raises settlement prestige (+15 to +20), other bonuses based on lord's traits

   -pre-requisite: A Lord (sons or daughters could be deemed lords of a settlement, but i hope that we will see a court system in the game as well so that sons or daughters could be used in greater roles rather than as underlings )

I kept the prestige values relatively the same as i don't think we know what role they will play just yet. In truth, i suppose it really all depends on how much of a factor prestige plays in the final game as to whether or not it would be a valuable tradeoff for a loss in maximum population. Since population is going to be necessary in order to build troops id imagine prestige is going to have to play a pretty huge role... Aww well, i still think its necessary to somehow make it so that we will see all types of housing in big cities. Perhaps you could have resource pre-requisites for houses and estates (similar to Caesar III) and they would give you even greater benefits.

I think we all agree that the current system has some critical flaws:

- too much micromanagement with the different house types and the need to renew them to the new (and superior types)

- the need to connect to ressource nodes forces snake-like cities that try to cover as much ground as possible

- city spam is still possible and encouraged to take as much resources as possible

I'll propose a solution to this problems. My inspiration came from the asteroid fields in the GalCiv2 expansion DarkAvatar. In this game, you have asteroid fields away from planets, where you usually build upon. You can build extractors on those fields to remote mine them and then send the resources to a nearby planet.

I think a system like this would work perfectly with the vision the devs have of Elemental. Especially the vision to make the game look like a rpg world and not like the typical city spam you have in similar games (especially in Civ-alikes).

Lets take a look at a crappy mockup of the current Elemental map.

We can see the following resource nodes:

- a field for a farm

- a shard for a shardthingie

- a mountain range for mines

- a forest for woodcutters

- a lake for a fisher

With the current system, the smart way to build a city would be like this:

You build the city in a central location and then try to connect as many resources to it with houses as possible. Not only look those cities very bad, they are also bad to defend and need lots of micromanagement to function.

The micromanagement problem is the following. After you've built the city, you try to connect as many resources as possible to your city via the building of houses. Let's say we connect the field to the city and build a farm there, since food is very important in the beginning. After some turns, when our city has grown and we've got more tiles to build upon, we connect the next resource with houses, etc. etc.

Also we need to upgrade those houses to new types as soon as they've been researched since they new ones are superiour to the old ones.

All in all, the city above is ugly, messy and not much fun to build, since the design is forced on you by the need to get those resources connect to the city.

My solution to this problem is the following:

There are two key differences to the old model. Resources don't have to be connected to the city with houses anymore. Instead they are connect with roads. Also houses can be built next to resource nodes to simulate small shoves and villages that usually have sprung up next to larger farming or gathering places.

It works like this:

Resource nodes

- on every resource node inside your borders can the appropriate harvesting building be built on (may need a worker unit or not, debatable)

- those buildings need to be connected to a city (by a road, debateable) to bring resources into the resource system

- distance from the resource to the city has dimishing returns on the amount of resources harvested (this is to make super cities impossible) there are no penalties till a certain distance though (so that city spam won't be necessary to not lose too much resources)

Houses

- houses will be built automatically next to resource nodes in a small amount (those houses simulate the people working on those resources, it also creates the feel of small villages in a fantasy world, which is usually missing in games like this), amount of houses built depends on type of resource node and, if exists, upgrade level of resource node

- the population of those houses is added to the population of the city they're connected to (which means, buildings in a city that effect people also effects those remote villages)

- houses in cities themselves are built automatically too (very debatable, not necessary) or get built automatically in designated areas

- houses don't count as city extensions themselves, only special buildings do (like inns, armories, etc.), special buildings increase the build range by 2 tiles though, to compensate

- houses get upgraded automatically and require certain amounts of resources to do so, a global setting can forbid the upgrading of houses to help in times of resource shortages

- houses can be upgraded automatically till the level of house (hut -> shovel -> house) if the necessary research is done

- houses can be upgraded automatically further -> estate -> mansion only if for every estate 3 houses are available and for every mansion 3 estates (to prevent the silly filling of cities with estates, also prone to balance of course)

- huts have 5 inhabitants

- shovels have 10 inhabitants

- houses have 20 inhabitants plus 1 prestige

- estates have 20 inhabitants plus 3 prestige plus a slight increase in tax generated

- mansions have 25 inhabitants plus 5 prestige plus an increase in tax generated

Huts cost nothing to build, so if they're built somehwere you don't like, you can quickly destroy them, shovels and houses have a slight upgrade cost. Estates and mansions have a quite high upgrade cost, since they give much higher benefits. (All numbers can be changed for balancing of course.)

Well, that was quite a wall of text I'd say. Anyway, it is a complete revamp of the current system, but imho it would lead to a much more organically looking and growing world, would remove some annoying micro management. Would help against city spams and would free city designing from the need to only care about resource connections. This would open much more interesting city designs imho, giving players more abilities to make cities look like they want.

i can see how the amount might not be enough, i was just going for balance, but i really like the idea of taking up multiple squares!

definitely a wall of text lol but at least there were pictures, it kept me interested. Id say your last picture looks like an idea RavenX had about not making improvements have to be connected to the city, which is an idea i liked.

I also thought about this, but i didn't know if we should have such definite guidelines in city construction, of course, its the devs decision in the end, i just hope they are watching this post, lots of good ideas im seeing  

There is one more good question: what is the prestige good for? At this moment the high prestige has no value. It increases the speed people move to the city, but this number is very limited anyway. However, the overall prestige is the good candidate to influence the diplomacy.

One more idea: cities have the level. What if the housing at 1-st level  may accomodate 10 people, at 2-nd level  fifteen people etc.  If you want to achieve the next level, you should allways build some new residential buildings, but you don't need to fill the whole map with buildings.

I like your idea, and some of the similar ones that have been tossed around in search of a way to get resources without having to build a city close to it. I really hope the current way to get to use a resource get's changed in some way and your idea is as good (or better) as most.

  I also dislike the current system.  I'd rather let cities grow to the limits of available food, and spend my time building either RGOs (resource gatehring operations) on the map, or special structures in the citys, rather than gerrymandering my city all over the place connecting resources.  Housing techs could be used to unlock certian levels of city growth, perhaps you need huts to grow to a hamlet or villiage.  Or just research the hamlet and villiage tech for all I care.

  As for the resources themselves, I'd rather just be able to capture them by building on them when your influence grows rather than having to grow out to them, with the resource going to the nearest city - the one providing the boundaries.

  Probably my least favorite part of the game, other than the frequent ctds.

I really wish they would reconsider the whole city mechanics. I really would like a system that distinguishes sparsely settled frontier lands from civilized lands. Something that would prevent the whole world from being cultured and civilized by mid game. And one that felt more natural and RPG like in the land feel. I'm not entirely sure what the best solution is. But I know that it's not what we have now.