Funny how any bad element of the game can be explained as a "necessary consequence of the ages system".
Just saying ...
You're free to disagree how it isn't necessary, instead of injecting the assumptive "bad element" as agreed upon. But that would require actually stating a position
The town system was clear (in my mind) to me from launch (which is funny, given how many gameplay systems
weren't clear). I never converted more than a couple into Cities (and was puzzled by people who went all-in on Cities, but the early balancing didn't help with this).
I think it's possible for Cities to starve, but hunger management is less of a factor r.e. growth. Combined with the soft Settlement cap, it's clear that Happiness is actually a valuable investment again (vs. how easy it was to game in VI). But at the same time, I'm not feeling like I was in V where Happiness felt so erratic. But maybe I was also just bad at V, that's more than possible
The problem with this is that it keeps shifting the game into a City Builder instead of a 4x strategy game. I dont think the game needs more decentralization of resources, what is next, having to build water and power plants in the maps and connecting them with power lines and tubes?
When i play Civilization, i dont want to play City Skylines
I thik we already went too far into that direction and the game actually needds LESS of that, it needs to focus on the genre the game belongs instead of trying to be a board game or a City Builder
But who knows, maybe i am wrong, i hope they dont ruin the franchise with any more of these shennanigans and if they want to try something like that they jdo it on a new IP/franchise
In order to grow your empire, or civilisation, you've always had to grow your cities. You've always grown your cities by expanding the territory they possess and the buildable tiles owned by that city. This has always necessitated a level of abstraction that is nowhere near realistic.
Resources have always therefore been decentralised. Civ 1 had
a bunch of special resources. Many were key to building your cities!
Does this mean <insert slippery slope here>? Of course not. But what the game is "shifting into" is simply what you want out of Civ. vs. what anyone else wants out of Civ. The elements you're complaining about have always been there. What's next, having to construct
Roads?! Yeah?
I'm not being sarcastic or anything, I get what you're feeling. But you're framing it as this great ruination, these "shenanigans", like it's some underhanded, destructive thing the developers are doing. They want people to like their game! Whether or not they succeed at it, that's a different thing altogether.
