Dev Diary #3: Managing Your Empire

Also, I'd just like to point out... that a lightning bolt is not going to strike you down if you happen to place something that's mathematically suboptimal.
Pure assumption. They will have to get their hands on the game and try for themselves to be sure.
 
  • The fact that there's a happiness based town means that it will be entirely possible to spam cities well beyond the settlement cap, although that will likely be suboptimal.
  • I still really don't like settlements being type locked for the entire age. 150 or so turn ages means a ton can change between the time you make that decision and the end of the age. I get the desire to limit the micromanagement and having it be completely unlimited would lead to a ton of micro being expected for optimal play. Maybe a cooldown, or a gold cost associated with switching would be a better compromise?
  • One side effect of some buildings going away on an age switch is that it can potentially throw things out of balance. If temples expire, what happens to your happiness? Is your empire going to go from content to rioting?
  • An interesting side effect of the town system and the warehouse buildings is you'll be able to create your own "Petra cities" whenever you want. Anything can be a good city spot if it's deficencies can be offset with towns.
 
  • The fact that there's a happiness based town means that it will be entirely possible to spam cities well beyond the settlement cap, although that will likely be suboptimal.
  • I still really don't like settlements being type locked for the entire age. 150 or so turn ages means a ton can change between the time you make that decision and the end of the age. I get the desire to limit the micromanagement and having it be completely unlimited would lead to a ton of micro being expected for optimal play. Maybe a cooldown, or a gold cost associated with switching would be a better compromise?
  • One side effect of some buildings going away on an age switch is that it can potentially throw things out of balance. If temples expire, what happens to your happiness? Is your empire going to go from content to rioting?
  • An interesting side effect of the town system and the warehouse buildings is you'll be able to create your own "Petra cities" whenever you want. Anything can be a good city spot if it's deficencies can be offset with towns.
1st...the penalty is 5 :( in Every settlement, per settlement over the limit so you can easily go a few over...but if you are already have 2 over the limit any new town has to have happiness of 5* total number of settlements so far... which means its probably not worth doing it

The lock apparently lets you still go back and forth to growth.... and a Town (that is not meant to be a city) is probably worth focusing on one thing early anyways

the buildings don't expire... their adjacency bonuses do...(so only happiness adjacency buildings will be a problem).... and since ?some? buildings have a happiness cost, you may be able to make it up by scrapping the buildings
 
The images on the Dev Diary #3 have changed since this morning. There was one showing that some Town types are only available in certain eras. Now they are all the Warehouse building image.
 
They look the same to me. Even the saw pit and the brickyard images are switched.
 
Also, I'd just like to point out... that a lightning bolt is not going to strike you down if you happen to place something that's mathematically suboptimal.
!? That can't be!?

Jokes aside, yeah, I will probably be trying things out a lot more on ho it looks like than to be planning ahead too much, at least for many playthroughs.
 
It's back to normal for me.


An interesting side effect of the town system and the warehouse buildings is you'll be able to create your own "Petra cities" whenever you want. Anything can be a good city spot if it's deficencies can be offset with towns.
Make me wonder if there will be a way to re-direct some food out to towns from cities. The tundra/snow tiles often have some nice resources but in 6 it could be difficult to grow a city large enough to grab them.
 
Nice to see a juicy dev diary about the mechanics!

The fact that there's a happiness based town means that it will be entirely possible to spam cities well beyond the settlement cap, although that will likely be suboptimal.
Well it’s Exploration Age only, which seems to be the Age they want to encourage outward expansion, so hopefully not too OP. (And of course until we have actual numbers on these things it’s impossible to say.)
 
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