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Elemental: Citybuilding

What we're shooting for and why.

By on February 18, 2010 2:31:39 PM from JoeUser Forums JoeUser Forums

Hi!  I'm Viridian, also known as Anthony Salter, and I just finished a major revamp of the citybuilding system.  I'd like to talk today about our design goals for citybuilding and how the system currently works.

First, let's look at how our major inspirations, Civilization and Master of Magic, handled cities.  In both games, cities were fairly abstract.  They consisted of a single icon on the map and a screen full of sprites and numbers.



And you would end up with dozens of the things as the game progressed; to the point where you'd probably end up ignoring some because they were too small or unproductive to help you win the game.  (Didn't prevent them from falling into civil disorder and bringing your whole empire to a grinding halt...grr...)

 

As strategy games developed, a genre of incredibly detailed citybuilding games emerged, including the Caesar series, the Settlers series, and the Anno series.

 

 

In these games, everything is simulated practically down to the atomic level.  These are the kinds of games where you need to mine ore to make tools to cut down trees to gather lumber to take to the sawmill to make planks to build new buildings.

Now, there's no doubt this can be fun.  I've enjoyed both the Settlers and the Anno series of games myself.  The only problem is that citybuilding, while important, isn't the only thing you do in Elemental, and thus we can't allow it to dominate the game the way it does in Anno-style games.  (I can hear certain people weeping on the forums already but it's true.)  So what we've tried to do is create a happy medium.

I've spent all this time telling you how citybuilding won't work; it might be a good idea to tell you how it will.

What exactly did we want when we set out to create our citybuilding system?

Well, first, we didn't want city spam.  Thus, we created a system where building a smaller number of larger, older cities is rewarded.

As you probably know, Sovereigns can create cities, thus creating a town hub.  There are five levels a hub can go through - they start as outposts, then upgrade to hamlets, villages, towns, and cities.  At each upgrade point you'll get eight new tiles to build improvements on - and your city will be able to support more efficient improvements that it couldn't before.

Another feature of cities is that they are (mostly) auto-upgrading.  If you expand your city to a village and you have the Housing technology researched, then all your huts will upgrade to houses - instantly, and for free.  Your city needs to be at the proper level and you must have the technology researched in order for this to happen.  Again, I can hear the cries of some forum-goers who think that this will negatively impact the game, but we're facing facts here.  Ninety percent of the time when we get a new housing tech we simply demolish our old houses and build new ones right where the old ones were.  Because of the hard forty-tile limit you can't just throw more out there - non-optimal improvements will literally be a detriment to your city.

Indeed, crafting a good city is going to be a continual series of trade-offs rather than a forever-growing list of improvements.  And as the city grows and the game progresses, you will find yourself continually repurposing your cities rather than building new ones.

An early city in Elemental.

 

Our goal is to strike a balance, so that we aren't overwhelming the player with city management, but we still provide a robust enough experience that you don't just think of your city as numbers and sprites.  When someone attacks your city and your little people start running around screaming, we want you thinking, "Hey!  Stop picking on them!  How 'bout a little FIRE, Scarecrow?!"

 

EDIT:  I originally stated that Sovereigns needed to expend essence to create cities.  This is incorrect; they expend essence to bring the land back to life so the city can be built.  I have fixed the error in the article.

+2 Karma | 157 Replies
February 18, 2010 9:03:27 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Sounds great.  Long time ago I posted something on this forum on the importance of tradeoffs so I love the philosophy behind your approach to cities.  Would love it if even a fully maxed out city still left you wishing you could fit something else in it. That would then mean then you'd have to fit it somewhere else and thus lead to having specialized cities for different things instead of lots of mega cities that are just clones of eachother as happens in late game Civ.  Kudos!

February 18, 2010 9:05:52 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

I'm kinda torn on this...

I don't like hard caps, so the 8 tiles/city level bothers me.  On the other hand, I like the idea of hard choices (as in not being able to build everything in a city).  On the first hand, civ4 allows building everything in a city but the game rewards not doing that ("good" players specialize -- production cities, great person cities, research/beakers/commerce cities, cities to claim resources or bottleneck terrain, etc.). Building everything in a city is inefficient, and that's an effective softcap mechanism.

I'd prefer a softcap with diminishing returns.  Or possibly a limit on how many of a type of building in a city (multiple houses but only 1 university/etc.? -- yes this is a 'hardcap' but on a lower level of abstraction).

Having houses/etc. automatically upgrade also bothers me. With hardcapped tiles it makes sense, but I'll miss having 'poor' sections of town/etc. (perhaps city design isn't supposed to be that detailed, and if so this isn't a big issue, but still...).  And what if my Sov hates peons or wants them to tough it out (natural selection out the weakest?).

Well, first, we didn't want city spam.  Thus, we created a system where building a smaller number of larger, older cities is rewarded.

The $64 question is -- how?  The hardcap on tiles seems that it'd require more cities, not fewer (as you can't have a few cities that 'do it all'), to be competitive.  Is this another strike against those wanting to play a small but powerful empire?

How will you prevent a large number of "...larger/older cities..." compared to a smaller number of them (as that's the apples-to-apples comparison, not the apples-to-oranges comparison of many small/young cities vs few large/old cities)?

 

February 18, 2010 9:12:20 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

See my posts here and here if you haven't already.

February 18, 2010 9:13:17 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

What Rising Legend said?  Yes, yes, yes!  He's always got a very rational overview.

I'm sorry, but I'm very disappointed with the way cities are turning out.  Personally, I think the tile system--- where players decide to build on each tile in an authoritarian fashion--- needs to be scrapped altogether.  It adds very little to the game, as far as strategy.

As soon as I'm done raiding with the wife, I'll contribute more to the debate.  Until then, listen to Rising Legend!

February 18, 2010 9:29:57 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Yea ... I totally have to agree that "building Border towns for Resource and Food aquisition" seems to be the next logical step to reducing city spam.

Reduce City spam by favoring a few large cities plus TOWN SPAM!!!! (aka border-settlement spam, rural area, developed, controlled, but not overpopulated ... ect ect ect)

February 18, 2010 9:39:45 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting Tasunke,
Yea ... I totally have to agree that "building Border towns for Resource and Food aquisition" seems to be the next logical step to reducing city spam.

Reduce City spam by favoring a few large cities plus TOWN SPAM!!!! (aka border-settlement spam, rural area, developed, controlled, but not overpopulated ... ect ect ect)

I think the larger and more prestigeous a city, the broader "zone of control" it has on resources.  A city doesn't have to be plopped down on a pile of resources to use it.  Small, simple towns like Tasunke has mentioned would utilize those resources and ship them back to cities to process and utilize them.

February 18, 2010 10:32:02 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

I love the idea of having less, though more important cities but when push comes to shove if you wanted/needed a resource (in civ 4 for example) the only real way in the past was to just establish a city nearby. If cities are supposed to be important, how are you going to handle claiming resources? Can I assume they wont be as prolific as civ 4? How would you also deal with cities becoming too spread out, with the possibility of each essentially becoming an independant citystate?

February 18, 2010 10:34:10 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Well the OP just convinces me that I need to try one of the Anno games before EWOM comes out! I really like the idea that resources are treated as finite units and you could practically track a piece of wood from the tree to the finished item.

And yes, I am one of those crying with pigeonx2 that resources won't be tracked to "almost the atomic level".

February 18, 2010 10:42:13 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

A lot of the answers to these questions will come through the beta to be honest.

February 18, 2010 10:52:38 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

I'm sure they will Frog, but the more info we can squeeze out of you guys now is-- well more info now lol  

February 19, 2010 1:05:12 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting BoogieBac,
We'll be tweaking things up until gold to ensure the systems in place don't feel 'gamey' (read: artificial) yet can't be 'gamed' (read: manipulated for easy gains).

We've talked internally about the idea of 'equation-driven buildable tiles' but we always came to the conclusion that...
1. No matter how much balancing goes into it, a system like that would get 'gamed'.
and...
2. If we DID balance it, it'd be to the point where the players get around X sub-tiles per turn.
thus...
3. Why convolute things with some abstract equation if, at the end, we'd jsut end up wanting the same thing as Level X = Y tiles to build on.

Feel free to convince us otherwise though   I'm all for systems and reward skilled players, and perhaps we're missing something vital that you guys can come up with.

I think the "problem" is setting a hard limit on the number of tiles available.

Instead of upgrading from outpost to hamlet etc.. only on population, why not creating an endless way to upgrade cities :

for instance : when you have totally built your city (each subtile is used) AND population is at some point (maybe 10 citizens per sub-tiles or a more complicated equation) you earn 1 more tile after (already used tiles) turns. Thus you could always let a city grow. You could even have an empire with just only one city if you want.

city with 3 tiles to build. You need 30 citizens and that the 3 tiles are used. Then when your city is ready to upgrade, you wait 3 turns (the time the city prepare the new roads, expands walls, etc...) and you have one more tile to build on.

when your city with 4 tiles has all of them used AND you have 40 citizens then you wait 4 turns to get a 5th tiles, and so on. The 10 citizens per tile is a bad choice (linear progression) but I hope yousee the concept.

 

February 19, 2010 1:06:20 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting Denryu,
Well the OP just convinces me that I need to try one of the Anno games before EWOM comes out! I really like the idea that resources are treated as finite units and you could practically track a piece of wood from the tree to the finished item.

And yes, I am one of those crying with pigeonx2 that resources won't be tracked to "almost the atomic level".

You would love anno 1404.

February 19, 2010 1:48:19 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

I'm still curious about how sieges will work with larger cities. Will I be able to see my men run amuck in the enemy city?

February 19, 2010 1:59:18 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

great to hear that city management will be easy because in Civ 4 on the large maps it can get greatly annoying late game with each turn asking me what i want to build next at City X and the next city.... just really puts me off playing that game.

Looking forward to playing this some time in the future.

February 19, 2010 6:16:38 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting Leomund,
That would then mean then you'd have to fit it somewhere else and thus lead to having specialized cities for different things instead of lots of mega cities that are just clones of eachother as happens in late game Civ.  Kudos!
As a deity Civ IV player I can say that in order to win on deity you need to specialise your cities. You cannot win on any difficulty higher than emperor on Civ IV if you clone cities. Show me a saved game on deity where the late game cities are clones and you are in a winning position and I will kiss your feet.

February 19, 2010 6:31:26 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting Shurdus,
Wintersong, that is actually not a bad idea at all. Not having access to all the numbers would definitely prevent the game from being 'gamed.' However, it is a bit screwing over the players who want to get in-depth and play this game all-out since without being able to quantify factors it can be hard to choose what to do.

It doesn't. For the systems in World of Warcraft where precise numbers aren't available, an entire community sprang up to figuring them out. They have exact forumulas, stat weights, even *simulators* to see what a given upgrade would do if you got it. It's crazy.

Theorycrafters are going to theorycraft. That's what they do. An abstract representation just makes it harder for the rest of us to figure out what an upgrade actually does. Is "superb" 1% better or 50% better then "excellent"? Who knows?

February 19, 2010 6:32:51 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

KillzEmAllGod, there is a feature in the options in Civ IV where you can make it so that these popups do not appear. Also you can build wealth or turn on the governor and the city will never bother you again.

@vieuxchat, I like the idea of the city slowly growing. Having just one monstrous city as an empire... That is brilliant.

February 19, 2010 6:35:13 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Tridus, you are probably right. Then it may be just as simple to just give us a number and be done with it.

February 19, 2010 8:18:58 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Is it just me, or does it seem like houses are a waste to build?  You know you'll have to build them for an exanding city, so it's really just extra clicks for the player to actually make them put the houses on a given tile.  It'd like to see houses placed in the city in heaps at the beginning, and as you research "city planning techs" (rather than housing techs) those houses are organized more neatly, thus making room for more buildings in your city.  So rather than having everyone move in to bigger and better houses everytime you research a housing tech, you'd research a city planning tech and you could simply fit more houses in. 

Perhaps there might be a case, though, where you meet some affluence pre-requisite and are then allowed to place a manor house or some other such prestigeous dwelling.

February 19, 2010 8:54:55 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting Tridus,

However, it is a bit screwing over the players who want to get in-depth and play this game all-out since without being able to quantify factors it can be hard to choose what to do.
I did say that you could still check the numbers. I know there are a lot of number freaks out there that are never satisfied with a game unless they have all the data in a spreasheet. I also did say, it wasn't a popular idea. Way to go, freaks. Breaking inmersion for the rest of us*.

 

* a minority too

February 19, 2010 9:48:29 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Wow! Forty tile limit? Currently, as in the Beta, a 40 tile town will not be very big.

"Thus, we created a system where building a smaller number of larger, older cities is rewarded."

Given the current map size, small, that is in use, and the current distribution of resources, varied as they are, larger maps will require an absolute crazy # of Towns to be created. 

If a town is limited as noted in the OP, no amount of direct creep will allow one town to encompass more than perhaps 2 or 3 different specialties. Such as Farms (Wild Wheat) , Shards (4 types), Stables, Apiaries, Orchards... etc.

So the question I have is. The game play plan is a lot of 40 tiles towns vs 2-3 major sprawling metropolitan centers? By design? Hmmmm.

February 19, 2010 9:59:01 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting Vandenburg,

Also, the most important question for me is, what did you change regarding the ressource aquisition system? Currently you have to build snake cities to connect to resources which I hate without end.

Agree totally. Personally I feel that in a game like this in a world sundered by a cataclysm, big important cities should be rare. If you build a settlement to get access to a mine, why would it grow into a city the same size as your imperial capital? That doesn't make sense, it just doesn't happen that way in reality. In truth, smaller settlements are everywhere to tap resources, and big cities are a rarity.

What I propose is this:

1. Food becomes more important. If your kingdom is producing food from farms, you should have a population cap that said food can support. Reach that, and EVERYTHING stops growing. The world is a barren wasteland, people will come to you if you have food because food is scarce. If you can't feed them, they will go to someone who can.

2. Create a new town type, called a "Colony", or something like that. These must be created at a resource node, and do *not* require a sovereign to create. The difference is that they don't grow beyond Outpost size, and have no upkeep cost. Maybe you can create a "governor" unit that can found a colony, or some such.

3. Normal settlements work as they do now, including requiring the Sovereign to create them.

The idea here is instead of throwing cities at everything, you can create colonies to farm resources in areas where you don't want a city, and have a smaller number of truly important cities where your food and resources are directed.

As an added benefit, since you don't wind up with 50 cities just to harvest resources, the end game problem of city management spiraling into a huge time sink largely disappears because the number of great cities won't scale up so high (it'll scale with your food supply).

February 19, 2010 10:28:24 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting AnthonySalter,
The plan is that improvements become much more effective at higher levels (we're still hashing out how effective) so doing something like building a level 1 city and surrounding it with eight schools in order to try to rush your research will be a bad idea...

After thinking about this a bit, and while I agree that your example regarding a lvl 1 city rushing schools, I would prefer not using a hard cap to prevent/penalize that strategy.  Analogy -- Starcraft.  Starcraft doesn't prevent a zerg rush (ie no hardcap), it offers alternatives to counter it.

So, in Elemental, I'd prefer to see the game balanced so that if someone tries a 'school rush from a lvl 1 city' it's easily countered by a better strategy.  That way you preserve options/choices, and instead of a hardcap banning of 'bad' strategies, let us learn the hard way why it's bad (or figure out a way to make it 'good'?).

It's harder to balance the game by not using hardcaps, and will take longer to tweak balance, but I think the end product would be better and that's worth waiting a bit longer for.

February 19, 2010 10:58:11 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Basically what Tridus said.

At the moment i am very concerned with the way resources and therefore cities are implemented.

We are talking about a broken, desolate world, at least in the beginning. Only a few people are living here and there. Just a few towns should be possible. But at the moment a lot of towns are needed to harvest the wide spread resources. These towns begin to grow and develop and before long there are multiple sprawling cities per faction.

One possible solution: what is needed for a city to develop? In the first line food. Let us have global food resources which the sovereign can redeploy. Each city connected to another with a road  transfers its food resources to a global "food storage" and allows to build either a few big cities, with small mining and shard colonies which are supported by a lot of farm settlements or some intermediate cities. This would make the big cities a rare and important occurrence and prevent the "snake cities" since it would be far more economical to have two or three specialized settlements than an artificial "snake city" built only to harvest resources. In this way the hard 40 tiles limit could be reexamined since there is only so much food to go around - a 100 tile city would be possible, yes, but than it would be the only notable city of a faction. I think this would be a far more natural way to implement cities.

February 19, 2010 12:06:00 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting Shurdus,
@vieuxchat, I like the idea of the city slowly growing. Having just one monstrous city as an empire... That is brilliant.

Thanks. The more I put thought into that idea, the more I like it.

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