Too Many Cities

agreed

The AI builds cities everywhere there are resources, regardless of whether or not it can use them.

So do I. Even if I can't use it, prevent my enemy from using it.

I'm indifferent to city spam. Pretty much every 4x game uses this strategy to one extent or the other. I would like to see more diversity in the cities, city walls & fortresses that actually function as city walls and fortresses for example. The 1.1 patch is supposed to change things a lot, so I'll hold off my opinion until I see the game at that point.

I just get sick of building stuff in 50 cities every turn.  It is lame that it is just better than not building millions of cities and you are therefor more or less forced to do it.

I'm not against city spam per se.

I am against city spam being the most effective way when the game does not support the management of multiple cities.
City governors, building queues (even if you do not meet the requirements for building X just yet), management screens.
1.09 already has an info screen but it's completely separated from the game. You can not do anything in there.

It has to be either one or the other.

I think large number of cities limits game play.  It forces your hand on how to be competitive.  I also think that a natural resource does not warrant an entire city.  I would like to access it by a remote mine.  It could be another type of character and more tech to research to access these "remote" resources.

the problem is faction population growth, as i've said everywhere. this needs to be tied to a resource (eg food) rather than the number of cities (currently, you get 1 guy per turn per city). this way if you build lots of cities and give them all the same housing provisions (hard cap) then you should expect them to grow more slowly and stop growing at an earlier point, than if you built only a few, or limited some to hamlets by not building housing.

so long as both population growth and the ability to maintain a population increases with the number of cities (due to caravans and nature's bounty) instead of with the available resources, then it will always be in people's interests to spam settlements.

the current system of charging food for housing is a clumsy attempt at doing this, but is ultimately flawed and restrictively simplistic, because it is a only a building requirement, not a population requirement, and determines only capacity instead of growth itself.

just do it like this: https://forums.elementalgame.com/397376

if you determine population growth this way then the mechanics will incourage a mixture of big cities for generating gildar and small villages for controlling resources. much more fun.

near-minded short term fixes like increasing the minimum foundation distance and increasing pioneer costs are not going to cut it.

I think part of the problem also lies with the Area of Influence mechanic. 

Oupost/city spam increases populations and build queues as well as exponentially increases AOI.  I think it's here to stay until it other mechanics change.

This game has so much potential and yet is is soo lacking.  I want it to be successful. I want the AI to have a self-preservation function to prevent it from doing reckless things, actually some AI factions should be reckless but others should be cautious. 

But game mechanics are such that outpost spamming for resource node is the only effective strategy to gain enough resources to have a chance to wage war or defend oneself.  Bring back the random monster spawns in the higher difficulty levels why reduce them on the high difficultly levels?

There is so much that needs tweeking and balancing...  

I would like to see the bandits and monsters come back as well.  I am probably in the minority, but I actually want to see less resources or perhaps a slider to pick the level of resources.

Sethai does not agree but I think a further minimum distance between cities would also help quite a bit.

Absolutely.  With only 1 exception so far, whenever I start a game and start exploring - resources are everywhere.  I mean, to the extent that it's hard to figure out how best to place cities to take advantage of all of them.  The unfortunate result is that they're no longer special.  It really bugs me when people post about how in every game they must have immediate access to every resource or it's not 'balanced'.  For one thing, that is directly contrary to the recovering wasteland setting of the game (a concept that I love).  It's not supposed to be easy to follow all paths in all situations.  I suppose you can argue that it's necessary in multiplayer (or apparently a large portion might 'ragequit'), but if you need a balanced multiplayer map then use a pregenerated one with selectable starting points.

By the way, that one game I played where resources were oddly rare?  Where I would consider it fortunate when I found a single resource of any type?  That was my favorite game, by far.

it would help in the short term, but it is quite an arbitrary distinction. i think the bandits and monsters would help. but they whould be mostly a barrier to expansion rather than a threat to civilizations. they should be more aggressive in killing pioneers but less aggressive for attacking settlements.

This is what I am trying to avoid

I have two good cities growing and the AI sticks a city right in between them.  Doesn't make sense.

The problem is that the monsters are one of the main reasons I feel I need to spam cities in the game.

If I have two good cities that are not close to the other, and I send a caravan between them, the caravan will most likely be killed (many times) unless I fill the gaps in the area of influence with tiny useless towns.

Correct me if I'm wrong - but area of influence causes monsters not to spawn ? And you spread it by founding new cities, even tiny outposts ?

If so, that's backwards. Not only founding a new city isn't risky (you don't have to protect it from monsters), but you actually do that to protect yourself from monsters. Shouldn't raiders seek to plunder, and monsters to dine on my citizens ?

The monsters don't spawn in the AOI, but they do enter if they are spawned outside.

I'm not sure how complex the AI is and if they try to attack cities or just wander around.

But yes, I think that having a city is generally safer than having an empty area.

Played my first 1.09 game last night.  So much better, but the city spam is annoying, especially on large maps where I do not want to be near any neighbor, this way I have some time to build up my bities before the wars begin.

Thanks for the information, random_target.

I can see why monsters don't spawn in your Area Of Influence - it could be frustrating when your city would be attacked with no warning. In Master of Magic, only lairs and nodes generate monsters. You didn't have to put a city between 3 ruins. However, if monsters are not aggressive enough towards cities, then it bothers me. Why in the first place can you afford to paint the world with cities ? Settlers in MOM don't come from nowhere - each group substracts 1000 people from originating city.

I agree with the ease to create settlers.

I think settlers should cost more population to create, certainly more than 1.

As for the monster amount and aggression, since it's a matter of personal preference, I think it should be selected at the beginning of the map creation.

b0rsuk---towers of wizardry spawned monstors as well

Sorry the pic is small above.  Basically I had two decent size cities going and then the Quendar plopped one down right in between them.  The city spamming is actually getting worse in the games that I am playing.  It takes away from game play and ruins the aesthetics of the game.

   One "simple" change to curb city spamming is by modding the COREACCESSORIES file as follows: ( under PACKS )

<!--Equipment Production Requirements -->
    <ProductionRequirement>
      <Type>Resource</Type>
      <Attribute>Gold</Attribute>
      <Value>100.0</Value>
    </ProductionRequirement>

    <ProductionRequirement>
      <Type>Resource</Type>
      <Attribute>Materials</Attribute>
      <Value>10.0</Value>
    </ProductionRequirement>

    <ProductionRequirement>
      <Type>Resource</Type>
      <Attribute>Population</Attribute>
      <Value>10.0</Value>
    </ProductionRequirement>
   
    <AdditionalTrainingTurns>17</AdditionalTrainingTurns>

Lol yeah, i guess that would help a lot.

That will just slow it down, the AI is currently instructed to build cities everywhere there are resources.

In my humblest of opinions, it needs to get fixed for the long term play of the game.

the problem is again population growth, as i mentioned before. if this were calculated as i outlined and more settlements = slower growth and lower pop/city, then this would be a moot issue. influence is related to population (or city size) so if you did it this way, founding settlements would give you two influence "blobs," but they would both be smaller and the advantage would be minimal.

I havent played Elemental for a long time now. The main reason is the city spam. It ruins the atmosphere. A fantasy world must not be crowded with urban life, that's more SimCity for me.

So I am eagerly waiting for a good fix on this. We need game mechanics that punishes city spam severly. Not small changes but radical changes needed.