Brainstorm City Spamming Solutions

New resource called "Administration" that is increased by town halls and other buildings, requiring you to get your cities to level 3 before they can build new ones. 

Smarter AI (other kingdoms/empires and monsters) that will take advantage of large numbers of unprotected settlements on its borders.  I see the problem as a lack of risk associated with many cities.  Not a lack of punishment due to some arbitrary game mechanic like food cost, happiness, etc...  In games like Civ, GalCiv, etc... something that keeps expansion in check is that you have to spend X turns building defense or you'll just lose all the cities you spammed.  In this game I can go to turn 100+ easily without ever defending a city or even building a single unit other than a pioneer.  A champion or 2 smiting monsters is all you really need.

Penalize big realms, and not just that they are hard to defended because that would cause the game to be even slower. Large nations require lots of infostructure or they become unmanagable. It costs something to send messages to coordinate and manage the realm, and to ship resources to where they are needed.

more details -> https://forums.elementalgame.com/397068

I posted elsewhere a response to this issue.

Several suggestions:  BTW I am playing ver1.0x as i can't downkload patches to ewom)

1) Actually have the soverign expend 'essence' to create / build each settlement.  (the land doesnt support life, remember?)

2) Have a penality that increases with each new settlement established.  BUT also: have ways to minimize (not eliminate) this penality.  One key way to minimize penality is to have a member of the soverign's line (spouse, children, grandchildren) loacted in the settlement. 

Also, consider that many pre 20th centruty wars were noble families feuding with one another  (wars of succession, war of roses, etc).  So, allow that a few scions of the royal family, that were raised in someone elses' court, (one parent is from another soverign's realm), migth have more loyalty to one paretn over the other (one soverign over the other) AND inthe event of war, might 'switch sides, doing a little sabatogue on the way out, or 'stealing something' on the way out, or taking some troops (from the settlelent) out with him/her.  Perhaps, on very rare occasions, this scion is popular, so the entire settlement, intact with troops,switches sides.

As I see it, the problem with city spam is not the number of cities but that even the smallest outpost can be producing all sorts of research points and resources.  Like 10 guys out in the woods are really going to be studying spells, historical documents and working in an iron mine. 

Instead of limiting the number of outposts that can be started it might be effective to limit the number of buildings they can support.  If each new city is only able to use a limited number of building squares (maybe 2-4) then you can eliminate the problem of every outpost having a large number of resource generating buildings.  This would be even more effective if building requirements for unit production were put back into the game as discussed elsewhere.  That way you could have as many outposts as you want but they would mostly only be good for unit production, spreading influence and border defense.  To create productive cities you would have to expend food to increase the city level to build research generating and resource multiplying buildings.  If you balance the numbers right that might allow for the use of outposts for defense while only those near productive resources become full fledged cities.  

I don't see any problem with the concept of city spamming. It's a strategy that's in every 4x game. The problem isn't the strategy it's the lack of AI countering this strategy. In this particular game, especially, it should be much easier to program the AI to counter this given that a significant part of the game involves "wandering monsters". iow, it should be very difficult for a human player to spam out 12 cities. The game I'm playing now I have over 50 cities by turn 180 and own 75% of the map includig most of the shards & crystals, and I didn't even have to fight an AI, unbelievable. At a minimum, bandit groups should be prioritized to attack pioneers, forcing a bare minimum of pioneer escort. Every 10 turns bandits should get a little tougher too regardless of adventure tech researched, in order to force the player to either increase the size or quality of the pioneer escort. Spell casting or bow wielding bandits that prioritize pioneers in battle wouldn't be a bad idea either. Those teleporting spiders should teleport near pioneers instead of just "randomly" across the tactical battlefield. 

This concentrates on the resource-grabbing facet of city spam:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395845

And city spam is only a problem because it's not intended. That is clear to see from the lack of any cities overview.
It also goes against the background story to turn the whole continent into one huge sprawling metropolis.

I think a reasonable approach would be to have the pioneer pack cost 1 food to produce in addition to other costs. If your pioneer dies, you get the food back, and if your pioneer successfully founds a city, the new city center takes over the 1 food upkeep to support its built-in housing limit. With this approach, however, something would need to be done about your starting city, so you don't start the game with -1 food, even if it's just as simple as every faction starting with 1 food.

Below size 2 settlement is an outpost, it needs 1 gold, 1 food and 1 material per turn to maintain it until it grows to size 2, then buildings start produce and that extra cost is removed. Capital is excluded from this rule. That extra cost could be multiplied by distance to capital and by number of towns below level 2.

buildings and units shouldn't cost food, population should.

divide your total food over your total faction population. if you exceed a certain ratio of food per person, you get a bonus to population growth in that settlement (there will be other factors like buildings and overcrowding). if it is less than a certain ratio, you get a negative bonus to population growth in that settlement. display the various population growth factors in a simple screen like in the total war games. houses should cost nothing to maintain, just determine your hard population cap.

more settlements = more citizens = less food = less population growth

so if you keep spamming settlements, population will stagnate and your settlements never reach higher levels, including your capital. you might have to move some buildings up to level 2 to make this hurt as hard as it needs to. it would work even better if income (that wasn't from gold minging) was tied to population (ie, taxes) and the merchant buildings simply provided a bonus to this.

that way 10 guys in a village you just founded are worth less than 10 guys in a level 5 settlement where you have the infrastructure to tax them properly

Hi everyone, i'm a newbie but i thought i'd put my idea forward concerning city spamming....

I wonder if it would be more practical to tie the number of cities to the soveriegns experience level, so that leveling up by slaying monsters and completing quests early in gameplay rather than conquest to emphasize the fantasy RPG aspect of the game.

Right now, city spamming generates food on a linear progression.

Build one house.  When city levels up, build irrigation.
Those two steps are optional but that way the one house is free and you get a somewhat larger ZOC out of the deal.

But no matter what:     every additional city = 1 additional caravan that can be sent to the food producing city.
That is the net gain.   For every single "outpost".

exactly. this is totally messed up. i have created a separate topic for this issue

https://forums.elementalgame.com/397376