City Guilds - a potentially good idea to be worked on

I like this but maybe just make all guilds mutually exclusive so you could only have one per city and it would somewhat define it's specialization.

Yes, a lot of city buildings should work this way.

One guild per city is already what I meant, since you only get to choose one at level 4 - sorry if I wasn't clear. But maybe you mean that one can have only one guild of each type in the whole realm, making each guild what a national wonder is in Civ IV. Unique buildings/guilds are a nice and easy way to make cities unique, but we should not forget that games should also be unique. If in all games I end up having the paladin city, the assassin city, the mage city, the worrior city and the merchant city, then guilds offer city-diversity but too little of game-diversity. This would be kind of boring in the end.

As long as you create Guilds different enough though, even if you allow players to create the same guild in every city they will choose to create different ones in order to exploit their different advantages, depending on the faction they pick, the specialization they want for a given city, the position of a city, some sinergies that we could come up with between different guilds, possibly even the magic school they use and so on. This would make cities more special but at the same time it will make each game also kind of more special.

Or, for example, we could make the guild choice an event. Say that once a city reaches level 4, there is a possibility each turn that a guild offers you to spawn in a city - but you cannot choose which one, and you can have at most one. So, if the merchant guild wants to establish its headquarter in your city A, you can accept and give up the chance to have another guild, or refuse and wait for a guild that you find a better match for that city. This would make different games every time...

Come on guys, there is so much to invent and twist here... anyone with creative ideas on how to make it fun, interesting and doable with not too big an effort from the devs side?

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all joking aside I have to say i really like your idea and hope that in time it will get implemented officially or as a Mod.

Hey, thanks, but the aim of this post is truly to develop this idea a little more. I was hoping that people would participate enthusiastically... maybe I was wrong?

Anyway, I think I have refined the idea a little bit. Here it is:

1. Every city can have at most one guild.
2. A city must be of level 4+ to be eligible for a guild.
3. There are three main groups of guilds:
   1. Fighters guilds: warriors’, paladins’, assassins’ and rangers’
   2. Academies: mages’, monks’, warlocks’, druids’
   3. Corporations: engineers’, accountants’, merchants’
4. Fighters’ guilds can be installed in level 4+ cities only if the player has researched at least x points in warfare technologies. Similarly, Academies and Corporations require a certain level of research in the Civilization and Magic research trees.
5. Once a corporation is installed in a city, the effects are:
   1. Two unique buildings are available
   2. Permanent bonus and malus to the city
   3. An additional unit of defenders, of the same type as the guilds’

Assassins and Warlocks are specific for Empire factions only, and Paladins and Monks are for Kingdom factions.

What do you think? Will it work? Is it wrong, unrealistic, boring, complicated…?

The one who offers the best idea to improve guilds within the next 4 days gets a karma point

Love it. And don't get down just because people aren't posting. It usually means they agree and just don't have anything to add. I had almost this exact system in WoM: Robust Cities mod, but I never gave it to the public as it clashed with others and no one was playing the game anyways. 

Here is one of my Mages Guild buildings:

Keep the faith. 

Mmm... ok. Maybe what is left is to hope for a mod with it. Or maybe Kael will make us a surprise and include it during the beta... still, I'd like people to come up with variations. Relating different Academies to different bonuses with different magic schools may also be a nice twist...

New ideas/comments are welcome!

ps: your mage guild looks really cool !

i can get behind this idea.  Cities are something that really could use some work.  they serve their purpose, but that's it.  Every city in the game almost always looks the same.  If something can be done that will make each settlement look unique then i think it would help sooooo much.

I like the ideas presented so far. Here's my suggestions/summary of what I like from above:

Each city can only have one Chartered guild and one official guild building.

When a city reaches level 4 you have a choice of 2 or 3 randoms guilds to choose from. If you wait to choose a guild, your choices can change over time.

Each guild has two basic buildings to choose from, and each one of these buildings can get a small upgrade later on.

Each guild also has 2-4 unique buildings. These unique buildings can only be built once, and grant guild wide bonues, in addition to the bonuses provided by the buildings.

Some guild are Kingdom/Empire specific and some are universal.

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So for example there are five different sovereigns in a game, two are empire and three are kingdoms. The theives guild is a universal guild, and has structures in all five of the sovreigns' cities. The paladin's guild is a Kingdom only guild and has guild structures in the three of the sovreigns' cities, while the assassin's guild is an empire specific guild and has guild sturctures in the last two sovreign's cities. The thives guild's two basic structures are the smuggler's den and the exotic bazaar. Any level 4 city that chooses the theives guild gets the choice between the two. However, the thieves guild also has four unique buildings - the carnival, the money lender, the pirates' dock, and the gambler's den - that can only appear when the guild meets certain criteria. Some of these unique buildings can replace existing structures and some can't. The money lender can replace an already existing smuggler's den, while the gambler's den can replace either structure, and the pirates dock must be placed in a city bordering water, and the carnival in a new city. When a guild builds a unique structure the bonus extends to ALL cities, even if they are somebody else's cities. So the money lender would grant a small extra amount of income to each smuggler's den and it would help EVERY smuggler's den. However, the more smuggler's dens that existed the bigger the benefit to the city with the gambler's den. So if there were ten cities with smuggler's dens but not a single smuggler's den in the player's territory (but he had the money lender) he'd still get a big bonus.

What do you think?

I do not see anything in the xml code for allowing a building to check for any buildings in other cities or for that matter in other faction's cities. But I love the idea and would want the devs to add such code to in order to let us do this type of thing.

What you can do this look for a way to make the same effects with the functions we do have. My specialization thus far is improvements and quest building. I would like to see a Guilds Mod come out at some point. There is alot of room here for specialization. I like that it could give bonuses to every type of strategy, making it compatible and balanced with other mods. I hope the devs have some kind of expansion in mind from the current Farmers Guild and Mining Guild options. Turning this into many guilds would add alot of flavor to cities. 

I would like to take this a step further and suggest that a level 5 city could upgrade their guild of a certain type. Ex: A Fighters Guild should lead to The Order of Talos. This order of knights would get special traits and items, making them a veritable knights of the round. I might even want to do a Knights of the Round Table Mod after I finish my current projects. Remember that any building can trigger quests. A guild can thus trigger some interesting quests in its given field, rewarding the player with loot that benefits for that specialization. 

korn469's idea to let buildings affect other players' bonuses is interesting. One could go even farther and let buildings have different bonuses depending on how many other buildings of the same type exist in the world. But we must be careful with the consequences of our choices. Allowing the fact that buildings provide bonuses the more buildings exists of the same type in the entire world could possibly trigger these effects:

> a player is encouraged to build guilds of the same type because they give bonuses to each other

> a player is discouraged to build a special building if his opponent has a lot of city with the same guild that would benefit from that building more than he would.

is this what we want? Maybe these are a nice effects, or maybe not. If they are too strong, they would encourage the mono-guild style of play, which is possibly less fun than leaving the option of building several different guilds for the same realm. I mean, rules should be such that a player that wants to build different guilds is not penalized if compared to the mono-guild strategy.

How about this couple more ideas:

> the first thieves guild to be built in the world becomes the Thieves Guilds Headquarter. All other thieves guilds tht are built later in other cities must pay a small fee to the Headquarter.

> We could allow for each guild to be able to perform a given mission - e.g. the thieves guild can perform a "stir unrest" task in a target enemy city for some gold.  The merchant guild can rune an "establish trade route" task to foster commernce between two cities. A paladin guild can perform a "holy quest" task and bless a champion with special bonuses for all battles related with a given quest.

Thinking back to my previous idea I realized it is probably difficult to imagine how the accountant's corporation may provide units to defend the city Here I attempt to summarize the ideas seen so far, with a small addition of my own:

4. [EDITED] Fighters’ guilds must be unlocked as a technology in the Warfare Tech Tree. Similarly, Academies and Corporations must be unlocked in the Civilization and Magic research trees respectively

5. Once a corporation is installed in a city, the effects are:

1. N new buildings become available, and X of them are unique (only one can exist in the whole world) and have certain requirements to be met before you can build them. Unique buildings may possibly have effects that affect all other guilds of the same type in the world.
2. The city receives specific permanent bonuses and maluses.
3. Each corporation can perform a special task once every n seasons, at a cost (e.g. thieves guild can increase unrest in a target city controlled by an opponent. Engineers guild can slow down production in target city; Paladin guild can give bonus to champion during a quest...)
4. Depending on the Type of guild, it will:
1. Add an additional unit of defenders when the city is under attack, if a Fighters' Guild (warriors, paladins, assassins, rangers), with different units for different Guilds;
2. Add a permanent enchantment to the city when defending against enemies, if an Academy (mages, monks, warlocks, druids), with different spells for different Academies;
3. While fighters' Guilds and Academies have a maintainance cost, Corporations (merchants, accountants, engineers) provide a small income to the city, but no bonus when attacked
5. When the city turns level 5 the guild can be upgrade to a special type (e.g. Paladin guild becomes Order of Talos...) with special other effects.
6. The first thieves guild, paladin guild and so on... of the entire would receives funding from all similar guilds built after that from any player

Maybe the thing is becoming too complicated? I think even a simple version may improve the game a lot in terms of replayability and flavor.

Btw can you come up with a name - other than "guild" - for Fighter's guild? So that we can call all of them guilds, or refer to them as Acamedies, Corporation and *** depending on the type of Guild we are talking about...

This made me laugh. =What= death creatures?

In any case, there are a couple oddities with what you propose that would clash with the current game design.

1. Units are not 'spearman/swordsman/bowman' they are humans that are given a customized set of armor and weapons of the players choosing. Forcing a unit design also does not make that unit any stronger.

2. Technology determines the equipment, traits and army sizes of troops. Jumping the tech tree to provide uniquely equipped units because your city reached level 4 is not a good idea.

The use of city-level-up choices providing more buildings is a solid idea. Complicating it to the point of requiring an entirely new set of code (also a good idea!) is highly unlikely to be implemented by the developers. To address the problems with (1 and 2), you could make the buildings provide new traits and 'equipment' (this is different than armor and weapons) for units produced from this city. These items could potentially be tied to the tech tree.

Note there is likely no code to give items based on buildings, but it isn't as invasive as running a check to see if a certain empire has a certain building and the specific effect of said building on the constructing empire.

I see. This means that what units I can build depends entirely on the tech tree and not on the buildings in the city. This is indeed quite a clash with the city guilds system I propose. Unless you make Guilds a technology, and once you unlock it you have access to the corresponding buildings. Fighters' Guilds could be a Warfare technology, Academies could be in the Magic tree and Corporations could be in the civic tree. Luckily this seems to fit well. What do you think?

About Evil.. ehm... Hunter... I guess there are no death creatures in the game?

btw, if I understood correctly and the units you can build are driven by technology, this means no difference in which units each city can build right? This makes sense to some extent, but makes cities less different which I am not sure it's more fun.

Putting those buildings in the tech tree (and I presume the option to build one or the other) does not change that it is a fundemental code adjustment. If you could just build all of them no new code would need to be added, but I doubt that is the effect you are aiming for.

Correct on the built units not being tied to anything to do with the city. Once you have the tech and the resources any city (whether newly constructed or an age old metropolis) can build any type of unit. While this certainly breaks immersion, I'm not entirely certain it is a bad thing, since production determines how quickly you can build units, and 'some' buildings have an attached bonus to all constructed units.

Making this bonuses specific to certain types of units would probably be a harder code change than making certain buildings mutually exclusive.

Great ideas here. I think this system could be implemented with the present XML code but maybe not exactly as formulated here. Like you know, every time a city gains a level, it gets access to new unique buildings (like mason, bell towers etc.). This could be the place to change things around for deep customization. The problem now is that unique buildings proposed in that list aren’t that significant to gameplay. Having, for example, access to a unique building that gives me 10% research while not building or to +1 militia isn’t that exciting. Usually I don’t even pay too much attention to these choices and always select the mason to build faster. The concept is totally right: being able to customize a city at each level is great, but the impact on the city itself isn’t incredible. That’s where the path could be implemented: no needs to change graphics or anything, there is already a great amount of buildings available (that could just change role or name or not even).

When a city reaches level 2, it could get a path type of building choice. That’s where the fighters guilds, the academies and the corporation proposed by marionesi and others could be chosen. When a city reaches lv 3, it could then specialise: if player chose fighter’s guild it would then choose between paladins, warriors, assassins etc. If he chose academy: mages, warlocks etc. and corporations: merchants etc. These choices would give game changing bonus and maluses to a city and access to special unique units to defend that city and/or heroes with civic or military traits. I mean a lv 3 city is big and needs an identity!

Finally, when a city reaches lv 4 it could get unique buildings associated with alignment/factions/faith of the world: at lv 4, a city becomes a metropolis and a capitol of the world! Is this city truly good or evil? In what way? These lv 4 building should have a great impact on the empire itself: give truly mighty dark or light units or monsters, unique greater spells and huge malus too: if you play empire (and more inclined towards death) then you could have the choice to recruit maybe black dragons (dragons dens) or demons (pentagrams) or liches (necromantic tower) etc. and get unique and specialised spells that way (like raise dead, summon demons, etc.) and malus (like demonology weakens you vs banishment, necromancy vs light etc…). Light counterpart could be something like dragon den (gold dragon this time), holy temple (angels etc.) and cathedral (crusade spell, archpriest of the sun etc…).

Just an idea to implement easily the excellent ideas proposed up there. The changes proposed could be progressive and every level of cities would bring a more specialised path. If think this would mean real choices, not only at lv 4 but already at level 2. This way, cities would become much customized: even if you decide to have 5 corporation cities, each could be specialised a different way at lv 3 (like two turned towards engineers, 1 towards merchants etc.) and even more at lv 4 (of the 2 turned towards engineers, you could go dragon den or cathedral etc.). This way, each city could also provide unique sets of units and armies could become very customized. The lv 4 units should be as strong as a lv 15 hero or something and take a huge amount of time to recruit after you get your first one (like for a wonder in civ 4). Maybe also just be able to have one at a time. What do you think?

Sorry, I have not been reading the forum for a few months. Thank you for your answers everyone.

For CdrRogdan: one way to implement what I propose without changing too much the code would be to create a building (e.g. Paladin Guild) that increases paladin production by 200%, and make Paladins quite long a unit to build. This way, sure you can build Paladins in all cities, but you probably do not want to. In Civ IV it is the same once you can produce tanks: all your cities can technically produce them, but your poduction city takes 1 turn and the average city takes 10. As long as there is something worth producing in the other cities, you do not produce tanks there.

For Galahorn: I like your approach, I think this could work. Thanks for the contribution!

I really believe in this idea to make city specialization (through specific different Guilds) become something that matters, and something that affects our playstyle depending on the choices made, further improving longevity - e.g. playing a certain race on a certain map could feel different depending on the guilds developed in your cities.

I hear that Derek is working extensively on city building/improvement. Hopefully, he'll borrow some of the above ideas to make this game even better!

I hope so too.

Could "Corporation" be changed to something more medieval/fantasy-sounding like "Craftsguild"?  Alternatively, a Craftsguild could be another kind of guild that is production-focused rather than income-focused and every few seasons they can cheaply rush a building.