Small Observations General Thread (things not worth separate threads)

[Krikkit1]

Yes, thanks for the history lesson. The point I was making is simply that building infrastructure and building up bonuses in order to survive an ever worsening situation - with no hope of actually preventing that worsening - can be fun. It doesn't all have to be about accumulating bonuses to make something ever greater and more magnificent. Merely managing to stay still by treading water against a growing can be good gameplay; the opposite of your insinuation in #507.

And I think that’s what the Crises are designed as…a chance for that type of gameplay.
As well as an opportunity to make sure that success in one era has limited benefits in the next…ie the bigger you are, the harder of a Crisis you will face, the more likely to lose some of that bigness. (so if you’re well over the settlement limit, expect a wave of rebels that will probably take a few of those settlements..if you play well you can limit how much you lose and be prepared to reconquer them in the next age)

 

[Gori the Grey]

the bigger you are, the harder of a Crisis you will face

They actually should build this in as an explicitly stated logic for the rubber-banding; it might somewhat reconcile players to their loss of power at the Age shifts: "Yeah, I guess, [grumble, grumble] 'the bigger you are, the harder you fall.'"

 

[queenpea]

Maybe this was said previously, but with the elimination of workers/builders (all improvements now being controlled by building by individual cities), resources outside of city limits (3 tiles) but within cultural borders will no longer be accessible.

This also means means that improvements like the Great Wall will no longer be able to be built outside of city limits (3 tiles).

 

[queenpea]

Do we know that city expansion is limited

We know workable tiles are limited to 3 distance from city center, like VI. Cities can expand beyond these borders, like VI, but you can't build beyond, and only the 3 distance tiles are included in city yields.

 

[Krikkit1]

We know workable tiles are limited to 3 distance from city center, like VI. Cities can expand beyond these borders, like VI, but you can't build beyond, and only the 3 distance tiles are included in city yields.

Actually it appears they can't extend beyond the 3 (At least in Antiquity), in the playthrough there were developed tiles 3 away from the city center and they had not gotten access to tiles 4 away.

 

[queenpea]

Actually it appears they can't extend beyond the 3 (At least in Antiquity), in the playthrough there were developed tiles 3 away from the city center and they had not gotten access to tiles 4 away.

It was explained somewhere, maybe by Carl? Ed? Potato? Ursa? That cities can expand further than three tiles, but the 3-tile-workable mechanic has been carried over.

 

[AriochIV]

Since the only mechanism that we know of that adds tiles to a city is when you manually place a population point on a tile, it makes sense that the city's borders won't expand past the point at which you can place population on tiles.

A few previews made vague comments about still being able to buy tiles or expand in other ways, but I haven't seen any corroboration of that and I don't think the videos show any examples of tiles beyond the 3-hex limit.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

It's not the whole game though. It's interludes of 20 or so turns between periods of 200 or so turns of growth. I can see it being more like a stress-test of how solidly you've been building so far (with the inevitable loose bits falling off) than anything else. Of course it might not work; it all depends on the crisis themselves and what happens during the transition itself (which we know so little about). But it's not inevitably bad or unfun or un-civilizationesque in principle.

- And this is the difference from what I feared in #507: they seem to be providing the gamer with possible alleviating factors in the Crisis Period and limiting the Crisis to a fraction of the playable turns in each Age: a far cry from centuries of negative factors that serve the gamer with multiple problems in multiple areas. At first I was very sceptical of the entire mechanic, but the more I learn about the specifics the more I am warming up (pun intended) to it.

We know workable tiles are limited to 3 distance from city center, like VI. Cities can expand beyond these borders, like VI, but you can't build beyond, and only the 3 distance tiles are included in city yields.

Question: do we know any more details about the establishment and use of Towns as 'extensions' of City Radius to specific Resources?

When first described, they seemed to me to be addressing just this point: allowing exploitation of terrain/Resources outside of the normal City radius, but I don't remember seeing anything since that details just how that is going to work.

 

[AriochIV]

Question: do we know any more details about the establishment and use of Towns as 'extensions' of City Radius to specific Resources?

When first described, they seemed to me to be addressing just this point: allowing exploitation of terrain/Resources outside of the normal City radius, but I don't remember seeing anything since that details just how that is going to work.

You choose tiles for Towns in the same way as Cities. They are presumably subject to the same limitations. Or maybe I don't understand the question.

 

[queenpea]

Since the only mechanism that we know of that adds tiles to a city is when you manually place a population point on a tile, it makes sense that the city's borders won't expand past the point at which you can place population on tiles.

A few previews made vague comments about still being able to buy tiles or expand in other ways, but I haven't seen any corroboration of that and I don't think the videos show any examples of tiles beyond the 3-hex limit.

If you place an improvement 3 tiles away from your city, it culture bombs the 4th tile. However, the 4 tiles are not workable. So, "iron" could be four tiles away from your city, but you would not be able to build an improvement on it unless you founded another city within 3 tiles of the resource.

 

[queenpea]

Question: do we know any more details about the establishment and use of Towns as 'extensions' of City Radius to specific Resources?

When first described, they seemed to me to be addressing just this point: allowing exploitation of terrain/Resources outside of the normal City radius, but I don't remember seeing anything since that details just how that is going to work.

I don't think we know how town borders expand yet, because I don't believe control their production queues?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I don't think we know how town borders expand yet, because I don't believe control their production queues?

Exactly. We have a few hints about how Towns work and develop, but not enough details other than that they work very differently from Cities in the game. What that means for Resource/Terrain exploitation, we are so far largely guessing.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I don't think we know how town borders expand yet, because I don't believe control their production queues?

We don't control production queues, but it has nothing to do with border expansion. Rural districts are added as normal and you still could buy buildings (some of them) to build urban districts. In the gameplay livestream we've seen rural districts placed in the same way in towns, see here (from about 1:06:00):

 

[chaosprophet]

Maybe this was said previously, but with the elimination of workers/builders (all improvements now being controlled by building by individual cities), resources outside of city limits (3 tiles) but within cultural borders will no longer be accessible.

This also means means that improvements like the Great Wall will no longer be able to be built outside of city limits (3 tiles).

I can't pin point where it was said, so may be wrong, but I remembering hearing that you can expand the borders further than the 4th tile and there is some way to get resources that are on your territory but not inside a city workable range.

As an unique improvement though, the great wall needs to be built in a city over rural districts from that city so likely needs two or more cities range touching on a point if you want to build a really long one.

 

[queenpea]

We don't control production queues, but it has nothing to do with border expansion. Rural districts are added as normal and you still could buy buildings (some of them) to build urban districts. In the gameplay livestream we've seen rural districts placed in the same way in towns, see here (from about 1:06:00):

I'm a little confused by the video, because the next available action sometimes says "grow city" and sometimes "grow town", however, all of the tile select screens say "city". I don't know why the word city would be used if it is a town, and vice versa.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I'm a little confused by the video, because the next available action sometimes says "grow city" and sometimes "grow town", however, all of the tile select screens say "city". I don't know why the word city would be used if it is a town, and vice versa.

UI is not final, so the text inside is the same for town and city, but the last one (opened with "grow town" button) is clearly a town.

 

[AriochIV]

It seems like they're being a bit sloppy in their nomenclature in the UI, using "City" instead of "Settlement" in some places.

UI isn't final, but how much you want to bet that some of that makes it all the way to release?

 

[queenpea]

.

UI is not final, so the text inside is the same for town and city, but the last one (opened with "grow town" button) is clearly a town.

Ok, so if the towns function the same way with district placement, then resources outside of the three tile limit would not be workable or accessible for the player.

 

[Siptah]

iirc from the livestream, putting down a district or improvement in the third hex ring does not trigger a culture bomb into the fourth ring. The borders seem to always end at the third ring.

 

[stealth_nsk]

.

Ok, so if the towns function the same way with district placement, then resources outside of the three tile limit would not be workable or accessible for the player.

Actually we've only seen antiquity era. Exploration and Modern eras could have additional ways to expand territory and grab resources.