City Build Locations

from Elemental Forums


I just had to throw away another game sixty turns in because there is no place to make a second city. 14 tiles west, 8 tiles north (coast), 12 tiles east, south is coast and ocean. Not a single location to build.This is getting old investing time into a game only to find out you were screwed from the start. I am not talking about bad locations that are only 3/3 build sites. I am talking about the inability to build even 3/3 city.

 

The lack of places to build new cities is ridiculous. I have seen continent size land masses (15x15) yet there was only two building sites. Both of those sites being in the lower right corner making the rest of the continent nothing but empty useless land. Throw a couple outposts to cover whatever resources are out there and then that portion of the map probably never see any use again.

 

I understand you want to reduce the number of cities in the game. However making no locations to build is not the way to do it. If you want to limit cities then put in a can not build within 5-6 tiles of a city, outposts have that with 3 tiles, why not cities. At least then a player would get a choice where to build even if it is only a  3/3, at least it is something for a city.

 

If this game ever wants to see multiplayer it has to be a problem that gets fixed. For multiplayer it would completely throw the balance of the game to hell if one player was in a spot and could build three cities and the other was in an area you could build none.

 

12,479 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I understand you want to reduce the number of cities in the game. However making no locations to build is not the way to do it. If you want to limit cities then put in a can not build within 5-6 tiles of a city, outposts have that with 3 tiles, why not cities. At least then a player would get a choice where to build even if it is only a  3/3, at least it is something for a city.

Cities have that too, which is why a lot of the fertile locations die out through gameplay, (and also why its important to build a pioneer first off in your first city).

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Does this happen to you a lot? I've seen one or two games like this, including one where I couldn't even build my first city, but it's quite rare for me. What settings do you use when generating the map?

As to losing the existing fertile spots, yes, Kongdej is dead right about getting a couple of pioneers out early to bag locations if they're rare, because even though the AI is a bit more restrained in this build it does have a knack for pulling pioneers seemingly out of thin air, and is quite willing to grab an inferior spot to prevent you building on a better one nearby.

Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top


Well started another large game with the temperate (allegedly more fertile meaning more cities.) Got two cities (5 tiles apart from their build tile) at the north end of a continent (20 x 22 tiles) and then it was 17 tiles south until the next buildable spot on the next continent south. It is not an issue of a city taking away build locations. With a continent size of 20x22 it should easily be able to support at least 4 cities, maybe six if you had the right placement. This continent is about 15% of the world map yet only yielded two cities, that makes for one crappy game.

One other thing I noticed is that some tile yeilds will disappear for no reason. Yet if you take a pioneer to that location you can still build on it even though the map shows no tile yield for building. I noticed this because in a previous game the tile yield disappeared while my pioneer was in route.

This also includes entirely clearing a continent of monster lairs, useless darkling camps, ogre lairs, etc. If you remove those off the map a tile yield can appear. So there was no "hidden" yields either.

 

 

 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

In my experience the amount of places you can build cities in is greatly varied. I played one small map and got two cities only. Then I played a tiny map and had 6 cities before turn 80.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top


I agree.

It's great that FE has a cataclysmic nature. I really do love that element of the game; so much so that I was saddened to hear that the restore land spells allow for you to build anywhere...ANYWHERE. Too powerful, imo, but I digress...

When it comes to city building, a little bit more balance is needed in the map generator. It would be nice if 'pockets' of good land were still available, surrounded by wasteland. Within these pockets, you can be garenteed 2 city locations....sometimes 3 or 4....but no more.

Thus, as any random game progresses, you end up with controlling 1-2 pockets, having anywhere between 4-8 cities. A perfect number, imo, to make for a GREAT TBS game.

Just needs a small bit of tweaking as about 40% of the games I start fall into this catagory already...unfortunately the other 50% fall in the 'no where to build' catagory and about 10% in a 'too much to build' catagory.

Perhaps an option in the game startup??? Cataclysmic Nature: a)Very bad b)Bad c)Average d)Good e)Very good

This would adjust the map generator to change the size of the habitable land pockets...

Just thinking out loud...

 

 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top


Another game, ocean to the north, 10 tiles southwest and 10 tiles southeast making a 20x10 area explored and not a single buildable location besides the start location. With repeatedly getting bad maps it makes me quickly lose interest in playing. Why would I want to play a game where I get stuck with one or two cities while the AI has three times as many.

 

Seriously how do you play an empire building game when the map does not allow you to build additional cities?

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting boredpeon, reply 7

Another game, ocean to the north, 10 tiles southwest and 10 tiles southeast making a 20x10 area explored and not a single buildable location besides the start location. With repeatedly getting bad maps it makes me quickly lose interest in playing. Why would I want to play a game where I get stuck with one or two cities while the AI has three times as many.

Seriously how do you play an empire building game when the map does not allow you to build additional cities?

Are you still playing with a "temperate" map?  I think there's something wonky with the map generator at this point.  I started a "desert" map thinking it would be about playing conservative, doing a lot of scouting and having 2-3 super powerful cities and instead there are tons of city locations all over the place and the AI spammed pioneers and is dominating.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

At this point I have determined the map generator does whatever the hell it wants. Overall the map generator sucks.


The map density settings seem to make no difference at all. Used to be dense monsters meant wall to wall monsters.

 

Climate makes no difference because the map still generates huge barren lands when using temperate, which is supposed to create fertile lands.

 

It creates MANY bad start locations (at least 1 in 4 are bad when it comes to materials and grain. Essence is not even seen half the time for starting locations. Resources at your starting location are garbage half the time even if you pick dense.  The curent starting location makes the thought of multiplayer being more who got the luckier location.

 

Shards on the map are a joke I played a large map and explored/controlled almsot 20% and I had one of each shard. With one of each shard that makes the multpliers for owning multiples of that shard type in spell effects useless.

 

Mountains seem to take up at least 30% of the map, then figure 40% for ocean and there is not much left to play on.

 

You have to have a decent map to have a decent game. If the game can not generate a decent map there is no point in playing it. Players should be able to tell the difference between barren, nomral, and loaded maps when it comes to resource settings.

 

As it stands right now there is a great game system with nothing to play it on because the maps are horrid.