Valiant_Turtle

Join Date 03/2006

Elemental's cities and issues they raise.

Elemental's approach to cities is somewhat unorthodox in the genre. I like it, but it throws several genre assumptions out the door. The more I think about it, the more questions it raises. I thought it might be good to really consider what issues and questions this raises, even if we don't have the answers. Most of the issues that I'm thinking of relate mostly to defense and just what is so special about that initial city square (if anything). Here are some of the questions it raises for me:

Just when is a unit really "in" the city?

Can enemy units destroy buildings without invading the town square? (or whatever we call that initial city square)

Are garrisoned troops considered to be everywhere in the city? (strongly related to the invaders questions)

Does the Sov or other units really need to be in the town square to rest/heal?

Does anything special happen when cities interlock or otherwise become just a giant urban sprawl?

Are there roads within the cities?

Does it take time for civilians to get to buildings within the city? (a possible deterrant to snake and squid cities)

How will city walls work? The current approach seems laking. (another possible deterrant to snakes and squids)

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ScottTykoski

Join Date 03/2001

+132

Just when is a unit really "in" the city?

The moment it enters a world-tile that has an improvement on it (even if it's just taking up 1/4th of the space).

Can enemy units destroy buildings without invading the town square? (or whatever we call that initial city square)

Current plan is: if you attack one part of the city, then you're attackign the ENTIRE city.

Are garrisoned troops considered to be everywhere in the city? (strongly related to the invaders questions)

Yes.

Does the Sov or other units really need to be in the town square to rest/heal?

You heal QUICKEST while in a city, heal SLOWER in your territory, and not at all when outside your territory.

Does anything special happen when cities interlock or otherwise become just a giant urban sprawl?

Not at the moment...there will be a 1 tile buffer between all cities.

Are there roads within the cities?

If so they'll be completly graphical.

Does it take time for civilians to get to buildings within the city? (a possible deterrant to snake and squid cities)

Again, if so, it'll jsut be graphical.

How will city walls work? The current approach seems laking. (another possible deterrant to snakes and squids)

City walls give a universal bonus to the defender. If it's destroyed in battle, the coorisponding improvement is destroyed as well.

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Quoting BoogieBac,

reply 1

Current plan is: if you attack one part of the city, then you're attackign the ENTIRE city.

Wasn't one of the older plans (sometime in the past, when dinosaurs still ruled the earth?) that to conquer the city you had to conquer the Keep/Town-Square/Castle? And that's why how you built your city (sorrounding the Keep with other city tiles) would help to protect the city? Giving the impression of fighting in sections of the city attacked?

I'm fine with the current plan but hoping for some surprise in the future.

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Current plan is: if you attack one part of the city, then you're attackign the ENTIRE city.

Hmm... I hope these sieges aren't just one-off battles... I do like brutal drawn out city combat.

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I was hoping for something more like Erfworld mechanics. The initial city site is the garrison, control of which determines ownership of the city. Walls provide a large defense bonus, but once an area is breached, the enemy can bypass the wall at that point and attack adjacent areas without the defenders gaining the wall bonus.

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Quoting Wintersong,

reply 2

AFAIR, you are right. To be honest, one of the major reasons why i pre-ordered was, because i thought this idea to be really fascinating (because it would add some kind of "operational" level between tactical and strategical game, at least as far as sieges are concerned).

Is there any chance this will be modable, or that you are returning to the previous concept?

Without this, the "multiple-tile-city" concept seems much more mundane and less interesting to me...

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I was going to say, the responses to those questions all sound pretty orthodox to me.

Quoting Cookie_1,

reply 5

Without this, the "multiple-tile-city" concept seems much more mundane and less interesting to me...

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Hate to sound like a broken record, but I agree with the above. Ofcourse I like the idea of sieges taking multiple turns so that I can have epic sieges that last for months or years. (not sure how much time passes per turn) Not to mention it would be amazing to siege a city and focus all your effort on, for example the farming districts, cut off the garrisons food supply and now it's a downhill battle.

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Quoting xGhost4000x,

reply 7

*sign*

I always got the impression, that the map won´t be swarming with cities in Elemental, so that to conquer/lose a city should be a big deal. Therefore i was looking forward for the need to really think through how i build my city or how i attack an enemy city. Imo, this would also have made city sieges more varied and interesting.

I wonder what the the reasonig behind this change of concept was.

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ScottTykoski

Join Date 03/2001

+132

I wonder what the the reasonig behind this change of concept was.

Just to implement a streamlined solution before making anything too complicated We're goign to let people play out the current implementation and see where we go from there, opposed to implementing an overly complex soultion that gets scaled back later on (it's harder to rip stuff out than you'd imagine).

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Quoting BoogieBac,

reply 9

... Just to implement a streamlined solution before making anything too complicated We're goign to let people play out the current implementation and see where we go from there, opposed to implementing an overly complex soultion that gets scaled back later on (it's harder to rip stuff out than you'd imagine).

I'm very pleased to see VT's tidy list of questions and your prompt, clear responses. This last bit is at least sort of encouraging to a weirdo complexity-lover like me. I still see big potential for Elemental to be amazingly innovative in how it treats population centers and the built environment.

Maybe, if things go just right with the coding & the heckling, we'll end up with keeps (administrative/command centers) as fundamental sub-tile and a less awkward-seeming transition from transition from full tiles to sub-tiles. I don't see the point of having all that sub-tile 'clutter' unless it has specific effects on how I might attack or defend a site (and I like playing with the little blocky bits in the beta).

A wall that occupies sub-tiles seems like the best way to properly define a city, and that leaves plenty of room for snaking out to resource tiles with a chain of homesteads, inns, and maybe just roads. If we could get things working like that, there'd bee no need for something as artificial as a 1-square DMZ between 'cities,' except of course if the game actually ends up also supporting something like DMZs...

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I hope this isn't a Necro but I was wondering after a nother thread made mention of it, found this and it seems the right place I guess.

Walls do present an issue based on these pictures.

https://www.elementalgame.com/Screenshots/Screens_8-28-09-7.jpg

As noted, seeing as walls will provide for defensive bonuses, does/can one wall off each small segment of the city as it is built, or does one wait until a certain critical mass of buildings accure, hope the map provides the ultimate choke point

https://www.elementalgame.com/Screenshots/Elemental_1251917010.jpg

for your biggest City Square, or just intuitavely know that now that X amount of game time has elapsed, it is time to prep for possible incursions, so let's Wall it all up.

Assuming that movement within said walled cities is not restrictive (purely graphical in nature at this time), then having walls without gaps around everything (who doesn't want Max Defensive Bonuses (MDB's) right?) will not hamper day to day business to occur in the city proper thus the question then arises.

https://www.elementalgame.com/Screenshots/Elemental_1251919228.png

Can walls only be built at the outer most boundaries of a City, or can walled off sections, then have new building tiles placed on the outside (creep) and then have walls, for the (MBD). erected around them?

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Will it be possible to wall off areas of the map by building a wall-like city around it? I'm not sure what map objectives will benefit from such a strategy, but I just thought I'd bring it up. The city building so far has been very free form, possibly enough for some strange explots.

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As a graphical template you might consider some of the star fortress cities. In addition to being really cool to look at, they more closely reflect the impact spellcasters (artillery by any other name would smell as brimstone-y) on urban design. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_fortress has some basics, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coevorden

I particularly like the history of this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nov%C3%A9_Z%C3%A1mky "The town also played an important role in many anti-Habsburg uprisings in the northern parts of Royal Hungary in the 17th century. Emperor Charles VI had it razed in 1724–1725, to prevent potential further insurrections which would use the fortress as their base." I'm American, anti-Imperial revolts make me happy.

Okay, maybe we're talking the expansion pack for this, but if your graphics guys are getting bored, set them on this. This modification should be really freaking expensive, but hard as hell to take if even moderately well defended. Arguably you can tell that terrain has an effect when it starts making sense to build these in chokepoints. A lot also depends on how much of a zone of control a city exerts on surrounding terrain. Building a star fort should have the effect of expanding a city's zone of control.

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