jpmcconnell

Join Date 05/2009

Resources and City Placement Strategy (or lack thereof)

Okay, just want to just see if I'm the only one out here that feels this way. There is currently no real strategy process that has to take place when deciding on an initial placement and settling order of cities on the map. This is a pretty bold statement so I'll attempt to back it up.

Upon game start we are usually met with a small clump of resources immediately around our capital: a shard or two, a fertile land, maybe something else if we're lucky. Plop you first city down here, so far so good. The problem then arises when we begin exploring the world. The world is, in general a repeat of this pattern. As we explore we encounter other empires who also have this resource clump at their capital (in most of my recent games these other clumps w/ opponents have been VERY near my own empire). Outside the vicinity of our respective Capitals we also find a similar pattern, clumps of resources w/ an occasional lone resource by itself. Much of the rest of the world is just vast tracks of empty space (GalCiv was more full of interesting stuff and it was IN SPACE).

It is this factor that causes such a lack of strategic decision making in city placement. Strategy is ultimately about decisions under uncertainty, charting a course among many different options, each with potential payoffs and downsides. However, when one of those paths is always the dominant choice the decision ceases to be interesting; we've gone from chess to checkers or even tic tac toe.

Not saying that Elemental is tic tac toe, but the opening game can seem frustratingly simple. Because of the way Elemental's resource system works there is almost always an optimal city placement strategy w/ a given map and distribution of resources. Find the resource clumps, particularly food and settle there. There may be a slight hesitation about whether to go for a certain type of ancillary resource first or second, but in most of my games this is as interesting a decision as I have to make when deciding city placement. And even then this only happens in one game out of three. In the area I have access too (not blocked off by another empire, mountains, etc) there are usually only a couple obvious spots for cities. It essentially boils down to a drag race to see who can claim these random clumps of resources. Drag races may sometimes be fun to watch, but they're not strategy games. Currently, I usually win the drag races against the AI, but even as the AI improves it will not make the fundamental dynamic more interesting; just faster drag races. The rest of the opening game is just units moving through vast empty tracts of land with little to differentiate one square from the next. And unfortunately, so much of the game is about who controls these resources that the team that wins the most drag races can probably be expected to win the game.

I've been racking my brain for solutions to this problem, but haven't been able to come up with anything good yet. Definitely nothing that doesn't constitute a major change to fundamental mechanics or lore regarding the world.

A few Ideas that I thought of initially but threw out:

1) More resources- if you had more resources there might be a little bit more decision making about where to settle cities. Two problems. One, this is a major violation of the elemental backstory. Resources are supposed to be scarce after the cataclysm; having arcane labs dot the countryside does not an interesting world make. Two, this would just encourage city spam, right now I think the number of cities I end up with is just about right in the early game. Unless I go for an early rush of my neighbors(which is still too easy, even on hard and extreme) I end up with 3-4 cities on a normal map, feels about right. More clumps of resources would just mean more cities

2) Other benefits/costs of different terrain near cities. Problem is this just seems like to fundamental a change in how the system currently works. Resources from before the cataclysm provide bonuses, everything else is just wasteland. Another problem is that anything I come up with in this category just seems to push Elemental into being Civilization w/ Magic. I want a different game, but I also want multiple viable options when it comes to opening strategy.

elemental

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

A third option is to simply make resource nodes (particularly food) less totally necessary, so that the resource nodes are nice (and sometimes important) bonuses rather than the only consideration. If such is the case, the terrain itself and its various bottlenecks and wide open areas becomes an important concern.

This is expanded as a factor once the AI becomes aggressive enough to actively pursue the player, which means expansion wouldn't just be about snatching up as many nodes as quickly as possible but also about determining exactly what size of an area you can defend, and what local geography can help you do it.

As the latest patch seems to have something called gardens in it, this might correct the food issue somewhat with buildable structures, and thus is a step in this direction.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Problem with the defense aspect is that as long as there is a relative cheep spell like teleport defense is rarely really a concern. My Sov and his stack can be anywhere within a turn. Nerf that and it gets a little better.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I've always felt that base teleport should teleport JUST the caster, and that a much higher level teleport should be used for a caster+army, with a major cost associated.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Resource clumps have come about over time through player feedback. Flawed feedback, in my opinion. There has been tremendous concern about everyone starting out with the same 'necessary' resources, so starting cities have become resource central. What's the result? Well gee, those enemy capitals look awfully interesting suddenly, don't they? And most of the world is... well... really dull. Kind of a lame combination, really.

I'd suggest exactly the opposite. Sure, start out with a food resource. But have the initial (non-Adventure generated) resource spawns have a minimum allowable distance. That is, spread the resources out, so each particular location becomes closer to equivalent. This will have the effect of making the world more barren - no spots of uber-awesomeness, and simultaneous make the world less barren - far more of the surface area has some form of resource, and if there is no resource at a location then it's not that big of a difference, so strategic location may become relatively more important. If you target a city due to resources it will be because you need it's particular resource (assuming it has one), not because it's winning the resource lottery.

For those who worry that multiplayer won't work because it may be unbalanced and cause rage-quits, just do what other games do and use a well-known pre-generated map. Not only is that a far more controlled solution, but you can have far more interesting starting situations (not all clumped around your capital, something good at a common contention point, etc).

Successfully updated karma reason!

Resource clumps at the starting area were, I think, originally envisioned to be a method to simply make the game work post 1.0, when having a game that was actually playable on a basic level was a concern. I think that getting away from this system and making resource nodes interesting bonuses rather than a required element is an important step to take in maturing the gameplay.

Successfully updated karma reason!

AlLanMandragoran

Join Date 09/2010

+63

I shook the marbles loose and came up with the following:

Why do I currently found cities?
- Claim resources - definitely
- Strategic chokepoints - kinda but not really since Teleport is uber for offense and defense as it stands today
- "Civilize" the wasteland - kinda but not really. Sure, I push back random spawns of mobs and provide a boost for combat on my default terrain but not significant reasons at all
- ZOC battles - kinda but not really, never had a game where I seriously focused on outinfluencing an opponent (although I did that all the time in GalCiv2 and thought it was an awesome mechanic)
- It really boils down to claiming resources or taking them away from opponents
Why should I found cities?
- Claim resources
  - One could argue resources should be more abundant to fill all that wasted space thus incent city creation
- Expand my civilization's population
  - Currently limited by the fact that good generation comes from a very small % of land tiles even after tech research.
  - Intuitively it doesn't make sense as once land is "civilized" why should only a handlful of tiles generate food?
  - Maybe the new garden mechanic in 1.09t will affect this
- Strategic chokepoints
  - Until teleport is reviewed for balance strategic chokepoints don't matter in my opinion.
- ZOC battles
  - Found cities to steal tiles away from opponents
  - Influence opponent cities to defect (if that GalCiv2 mechanic is introduced to EWOM)
- Civilize the Wasteland
  - Enter in this idea...
  - Magical power currently comes from the land via shards. It's not too much of a stretch to infer the land itself could grant a bonus too. What if the amount of tiles under one's control added a boost to mana generation? I mean, if magic comes from the land then one could infer that the more land under one's control should add more power. This wouldn't change the mechanics of how shards and buildings affect mana generation but maybe for every 50 or 100 tiles under one's control there is +1 mana generation.
  - Longer-term all those empty map tiles could be filled with things such as Waygates, Fortresses, villages, magic defense hubs, etc. That's expansion material.
  - Food constraints are a serious concern as the current mechanics, until mid-to late game, motivate founding cities at additional food resources only. That's why I focus on warfare right out the door - go capture 1 or 2 capitals and I'm golden for the rest of the game.

In short, incent players to civilize the land by founding cities - and grant them more magical power as a result. The actual mechanics could be as simple as a +X to mana generation for Y amount of tiles under the player's ZOC. This could be a top-level bonus not affected by city multipliers and such. Balancing would need to be considered but it's something to think about. It's a fine line between city-spam on one-hand and a handful of cities philosophy on the other. I'm sympathetic to both camps. But in the end I think all that civilized land should benefit the faction in some manner - otherwise it's a waste of space. Thanks for listening.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I agree with the OP wholeheartedly. I know that even the developers (or Frogboy, anyway, according to a previous post) consider this to be an issue. Just a few thoughts:

1) I think that the way resource production is set up is a fundamental, but not fatal, shortcoming of the game design. Due to the lore and the game engine, there is no easy fix. The Civ system springs to mind as an elegant system that works well, but it's just not consistent with either the lore or easily implementable with the current engine.

2) I don't think that making resources matter less solves the problem. I think that strategic positioning of cities is already a big concern. With resource producing buildings having no per city limit, resource nodes aren't nearly as important as they were in 1.08. Making them even less important reduces the need for strategy, it doesn't increase it.

3) These are couple steps that could nudge the system toward the right direction. First might be a modification to the resource spawning algorithms to cluster resources a little more than they are now upon loading the map. This would create areas that would be highly valued and thus create conflict. Second would be the removal of the "I-win" system of spawning resources near your city in the Adventure tech tree. An alternative would be the revealing of resources spawned at map creation. This system would shift the relative value of land as the game progresses and these valuable resources are revealed. The "I-researched-it-therefore-I-have-it" system just doesn't do it for me. It removes depth rather than create it.

4) I think that solving this problem is a necessary step in making this game excellent, rather than just kinda good.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting AlLanMandragoran,

reply 6

Why do I currently found cities?

Claim resources - definitely
Strategic chokepoints - kinda but not really since Teleport is uber for offense and defense as it stands today
"Civilize" the wasteland - kinda but not really. Sure, I push back random spawns of mobs and provide a boost for combat on my default terrain but not significant reasons at all
ZOC battles - kinda but not really, never had a game where I seriously focused on outinfluencing an opponent (although I did that all the time in GalCiv2 and thought it was an awesome mechanic)
It really boils down to claiming resources or taking them away from opponents

You have hit upon a key issue in the city portion of the game (strategically). It's difficult because on some levels, I *like* the food limitation aspect of game play right now. I like it a great deal until you run into all of the other resource capture and strategic issues. It is part of what makes Elemental really "work" from a fluff perspective, and it makes decisions in the early early game interesting. However, having food as a scarce and vital resource for all other city building decisions impacts your choices in the following ways;

I am going to voice the following opinions based upon the fact that it takes a mid to full population level 2 city to be stable economically, and level 3 to be "useful" as more than a spawn point or resource capture.

Claim Resources - Are those resources vital to you? Are you currently Producing Metal? Do you want to take that chokepoint in order to stabilize your held region? Well, if the answer to the question "do you have at least 3 food to make that city work" isn't yes... The answer to all the others is also "no".

Strategic Chokepoints - Do you have at least 3 food that you don't need somewhere else? Are you sure? Do you have all the other resources you could possibly need? If you answered "no" to any of these questions, your answer here is "no".

"Civilize the Wasteland" - What the hell game are you playing? That's a waste of 3 food. Post a guard to prevent monster spawns and call it a day.

ZOC Battles - There is no unrest, no traitor cities in this game. There is no advantage to expanding ZoC aside from capturing a useful node and in the current state, if the node is useful enough to develop a level 5 city to fight over ZoC (which takes a giant pile of food by the way) it is faster, and easier to go kick the current owner in the jimmy and take what you want. By a long shot.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting AlLanMandragoran,

reply 6

What if the amount of tiles under one's control added a boost to mana generation? I mean, if magic comes from the land then one could infer that the more land under one's control should add more power. This wouldn't change the mechanics of how shards and buildings affect mana generation but maybe for every 50 or 100 tiles under one's control there is +1 mana generation.

I think that the essential problem here is the lack of strategy in location of city placement, not insufficient reason for founding cities in the first place. Just my opinion.

Successfully updated karma reason!

AlLanMandragoran

Join Date 09/2010

+63

Quoting LightofAbraxas,

reply 9

Good post, but I can't say I agree with this. Players are already have too much incentive to found cities all over the freaking place with no significant drawback. Mana for land just aggrevates this problem.

I think that the essential problem here is the lack of strategy in location of city placement, not insufficient reason for founding cities in the first place. Just my opinion.

True but scarcity of food currently does demotivate city-spam. I remember in 1.09e city-spamming and then sending caravans to the home city with 20% hero bonuses to food production (gave me a solid road network too). It was a self-perpetuating cycle (I think my home city was producing a net positive like 50+ food or something crazy like that). If Teleport is nerfed a bit it could raise the incentive to start placing cities as chokepoints. But back to Malsqeek's point, the scarcity of food in early game of these builds makes founding cities painful. I'd rather focus on taking capitals for a sure bet and knock out 1-2 opponents in the process.

In the end the goal should be to civilize the entire wasteland. We do that by ZOC increases from influence, city-size, and founding new cities. Whether the map is fully civilized by season 50, 100, or 200+ should be a factor of map size, # of opponents, difficulty of AI, and overall balance and pacing. There are certainly a number of options that SD can explore to balance this.

On a side note: I got rolled a number of times in GalCiv2 by the hardest AI setting - they were staking claim to systems and planets before I even discovered them. What that game did allow, however, was buffing of the home systems via space stations. I had one epic game where all I had was 2 systems each with 2 planets but they were located in the 4 corner region of tiles. I ended up making like 12 economy bases and 3 military bases all with stackables bonuses in range of all 4 planets. It allowed me to turtle hardcore and in an epic battle of trench warfare, finally win by conquest. It was extremely rewarding gaming experience as it was "Game over, man!" unless the turtle option existed. Made me a huge fan of the game and got me interested in Stardock and this title.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting AlLanMandragoran,

reply 10

Great point. Right now there's really no way for anything this interesting to happen in Elemental which is a HUGE shame. Basically, right now the system is the person with the most resource clusters (specifically food) is the one who will win, no ifs ands or buts.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Another strategy that could be implemented but is rather hard to do is to city spam around resources until cities reach an arbitrary influence size, then raze all cities whose influence radii are covered by other cities. This can use up early food - which is not bad; it seems like it's a good strategy to try to let as little free food go as is possible, and then raze certain unnecessary buildings to free up food to create new important cities later. Then, razing those "absorbed" cities frees up some more food for either creating more cities elsewhere, or enlarging existing cities. Plus, we get resources back for razing each building, making cities something of a "resource dump" that can be retrieved in an energency.

What makes this strategy tricky is the minimum 5-tile distance to other cities. But not impossible.

This is also a feasible use for "empty" land: if there's extra food to go around, make some outposts that generate a bit of extra gold and troops, then raze them when you need the food.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Andrew Meronek,

reply 12

this is what i do, and it's the sort of playstyle that should be encouraged. you can spam early to get resources, then just don't develop those outposts and raze them once they enter another city's zone of influence. it allows you to grab xcritical resources without covering the map in cities in the late game.

if it was me, i'd:

make it more apparent that this was the way the game was supposed to be played,

make razing possible from the start, give the player notification when an outpost has been consumed by another towns' influence (and offer to raze it and migrate any existing population)

give unpopulated outposts NO influence (and only able to build on adjacent tiles) so that when they enter another faction influence they flip automatically (preventing players from blocking the AI with an early game rush.

the only problem with building the game this way at the moment is that population growth mechanics favour building and keeping lots of settlements, because total faction population grows roughly proportionally to the number of settlements

as for the five tile limit, that was always an arbitrary and rather crude restriction. if the game mechanics are done properly, people won't want to build settlements that close.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Sethai,

reply 13

this is what i do, and it's the sort of playstyle that should be encouraged.

make it more apparent that this was the way the game was supposed to be played,

Sorry, but it just is. Not to say that it's not a valid strategy, but there should be multiple avenues to victory. That's what makes it a strategy game and not a complex puzzle game.

Successfully updated karma reason!

"wow those fertile land and shard resources are close enough to maker that a great place for a city... hmm but it is also close to that dark cave meaning that city will come under regular attacks from rabid wolves, Could be a difficult to hold a city if I build one there."

I also think alot more could be done with city placement if the game added city happyness like in civ.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting xStarfirex,

reply 15

What if the game was filled with more negative map points. Currently we have no negatives to really consider when picking our city locations. If we had things like caves and dark woods that would spawn tough monsters even early in the game. Or perhaps existing terrain like swamps could mean that population doesn't grow as quickly. I am sure people could come up with lots of ideas. The gist is that I would love to have to go through the thought process of weighing up both pros and cons.

"wow those fertile land and shard resources are close enough to maker that a great place for a city... hmm but it is also close to that dark cave meaning that city will come under regular attacks from rabid wolves, Could be a difficult to hold a city if I build one there."

I also think alot more could be done with city placement if the game added city happyness like in civ.

Agree with both points here. I think that Civ did city placement best. Finding a spot with good resources, on a hill surrounded on three sides by a river makes scream like a girl. But, I think that this level of depth is out for Elemental, at least as it stands right now.

I think having lairs that would exact a cost in the form of units lost in defense would add some more depth.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Tempestwrath,

reply 1

A third option is to simply make resource nodes (particularly food) less totally necessary, so that the resource nodes are nice (and sometimes important) bonuses rather than the only consideration. If such is the case, the terrain itself and its various bottlenecks and wide open areas becomes an important concern.

This is actually really well exemplified by the Clay Pits, Old Growth Forests, Arcane Labs, and Lost Libraries.

Any one of these things is a HUGE bonus to a city, despite all it really does being that it provides a couple resources with no upkeep or citizen cost.

Starting with a clay pit, for instance, frees up several turns of construction, 15 population, and 3 gold per turn in upkeep. (from equivalent number of workshops)

Lost Libraries are even better at 25 population and 5 gold per turn in upkeep. This is reduced by half when you get libraries, but that's still a pretty giant bonus that nobody would neglect.

Having new buildings like Scrapyards which gather .5 metals/turn and require level 3 cities, or similarly, Gardens, which can single-handedly support a Level 2 City (2 food), but require a level 3 city to build.

Crystals I see as a non-necessary resource to allow building generation on, because they are late game, and relatively ignorable in terms of overall strategy. Metal and Food however, are game ending if you are starved.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting LightofAbraxas,

reply 14

This has to be one of the most ridiculous things I've seen posted on these forums. To suggest that your favored playstyle is the way the game "should" be played and encouraged in everyone elses playstyle is just absurd.

Sorry, but it just is. Not to say that it's not a valid strategy, but there should be multiple avenues to victory. That's what makes it a strategy game and not a complex puzzle game.

apologies for my poor choice of words. i didn't mean it to sound like that. i just want the settlement/influence system to be more organic and razing a city presented as less of a suicidal measure. but i stand by my point; the changes i suggested are more about mechanics than forcing behaviour.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Sethai,

reply 18

Whoops, I misunderstood, then. I apologize. I think that we can agree that this aspect of the game needs work.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Tempestwrath,

reply 3

I've always felt that base teleport should teleport JUST the caster, and that a much higher level teleport should be used for a caster+army, with a major cost associated.

Indeed, teleport is pretty OPed right now. I shouldn't be able to be stomping an AI only having them be some sort of super genius and have an army actually attacking me at the same time that will crush a city or two of mine and then be able to teleport my massive invasion army back home for no loss except a few mana.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I agree with the OP. I think part of the problem is that terrain doesn't really factor into city placement because terrain tiles aren't used by your city unless a resource is on them. In my current game, I have decent placement areas for two cities (ie: two clumps of resources), and no other resources anywhere in site. So where do I put my cities? Just in empty areas? I feel like I don't have decisions to make, it's just a matter of filling up empty space with cities.

Successfully updated karma reason!

This is a broader problem with terrain in general in Elemental: it doesn't make a difference in any way. Does anyone really care if they happen to found their city in the middle of a swamp, or in a clump of hills, or near a forest, etc? Answer no. For all intensive purposes you can completely ignore terrain other than resource clumps. The only real effects are slightly increased movement costs and slight defensive bonuses, neither of which have any bearing on city placement.

Right now as the system stands, I might as well have my characters moving through empty space.

Successfully updated karma reason!

To me, the clumpiness of cities is because of the clumpiness of resources. Such clumpiness takes away any choice as far as productive cities go. Making resources weaker but more plentiful would make terrain more interesting as far as placement and help de-emphasize capitals (which, as it stands, are the backbone of your empire. It goes and your significantly handicapped).

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting AlLanMandragoran,

reply 6

I shook the marbles loose and came up with the following:

Why do I currently found cities?

Claim resources - definitely
Strategic chokepoints - kinda but not really since Teleport is uber for offense and defense as it stands today
"Civilize" the wasteland - kinda but not really. Sure, I push back random spawns of mobs and provide a boost for combat on my default terrain but not significant reasons at all
ZOC battles - kinda but not really, never had a game where I seriously focused on outinfluencing an opponent (although I did that all the time in GalCiv2 and thought it was an awesome mechanic)
It really boils down to claiming resources or taking them away from opponents

Why should I found cities?

Claim resources

One could argue resources should be more abundant to fill all that wasted space thus incent city creation

Expand my civilization's population

Currently limited by the fact that good generation comes from a very small % of land tiles even after tech research.
Intuitively it doesn't make sense as once land is "civilized" why should only a handlful of tiles generate food?
Maybe the new garden mechanic in 1.09t will affect this

Strategic chokepoints

Until teleport is reviewed for balance strategic chokepoints don't matter in my opinion.

ZOC battles

Found cities to steal tiles away from opponents
Influence opponent cities to defect (if that GalCiv2 mechanic is introduced to EWOM)

Civilize the Wasteland

Enter in this idea...
Magical power currently comes from the land via shards. It's not too much of a stretch to infer the land itself could grant a bonus too. What if the amount of tiles under one's control added a boost to mana generation? I mean, if magic comes from the land then one could infer that the more land under one's control should add more power. This wouldn't change the mechanics of how shards and buildings affect mana generation but maybe for every 50 or 100 tiles under one's control there is +1 mana generation.
Longer-term all those empty map tiles could be filled with things such as Waygates, Fortresses, villages, magic defense hubs, etc. That's expansion material.
Food constraints are a serious concern as the current mechanics, until mid-to late game, motivate founding cities at additional food resources only. That's why I focus on warfare right out the door - go capture 1 or 2 capitals and I'm golden for the rest of the game.

In short, incent players to civilize the land by founding cities - and grant them more magical power as a result. The actual mechanics could be as simple as a +X to mana generation for Y amount of tiles under the player's ZOC. This could be a top-level bonus not affected by city multipliers and such. Balancing would need to be considered but it's something to think about. It's a fine line between city-spam on one-hand and a handful of cities philosophy on the other. I'm sympathetic to both camps. But in the end I think all that civilized land should benefit the faction in some manner - otherwise it's a waste of space. Thanks for listening.

Frogboy, Derek Please Read his post

Successfully updated karma reason!

Okay, i must of missed something basic here. You can build citys? Really? I had no idea. I always assumed the pioneer was there for decoration and that the proper way to get citys was to let the AI make them, then take them away. Seriously, i don't think i have actually built a pioneer in my last 20 games, because its so much easier to just build up your main city, get pointy sticks, and just take everyone else's citys away. Sure, the AI dosen't place them great, but who cares, free city, right?

Successfully updated karma reason!