Ah, my apologies.  I haven't been able to play the beta in months, so I'm not familiar with this mechanic.

Also the ability to build Military Forts or Mining Station's as a separate entity from a City ... able to be built an indefinite distance from cities, but with an appropriate distance cost. I would say the distance cost would be some combination of Immediate Resource Cost + Time it takes to build, so a Fortress 50 tiles away would take 10 times as long to build as a Fortress 5 tiles away from a City.

Forts could upgrade to Castles, and then to Citadels (maybe) ... however they would be almost purely for military purposes, only for housing soldiers (and feeding them) not for training new soldiers, unlike the way its handled in Medieval:total war ... your Cities would produce everything, and your forts could be relatively costly Non-Economic installations whose sole purpose is to house soldiers away from the Cities, in a defensible fortification.

If you don't like the idea of these Non-City Military Citadels, then perhaps a smaller scale would suite you better.

Say WatchTower -> Bunker -> Fort. (say for instance, Fort Eben Amael)

a Fort would be able to house soldiers for "in-house" maintanence, as if they were in your own city, as long as there was a "supply" road/open route between the fort and nearest city. This could be an oceanic trade lane if the Fort is along a large river or on the coast, or it could be a land-based road.

Then, if you built a settlement(city) near the Fort, and connected the two, you could eventually upgrade the Fort into a Castle. This would include adding quarters for Nobility and the Court, as opposed to simply Common Soldiers + Noble soldiers ... aka you would be adding room for Retinue, as well as increasing the (relative) defenses.

Once you have a Castle attached to a City, you can upgrade the Whole-Shebang into a Citadel. This would most likely include constructing building (outer Wall) and building buildings between the inner wall and the outer wall, and then you Could do a final upgrade of (final wall) which surrounds the outer wall. Then you could build further buildings in-between the outer wall (middle wall) and the final wall (outside wall). In this way your Citadel would have 3 walls, with a castle within the Inner wall. Also, once you decide to build the city as a "Citadel" your inner wall can't change, it will remain static, and excess "space" for building improvements must be covered by the secondary wall, and no longer the inner wall. And once you build the Final (third) wall, the Secondary wall becomes static. The Third wall, however, will never be static, so the decision to create a citadel is basically protecting those buildings in your Primary wall (and next to your castle) more closely than those buildings outside your primary wall. A fully developed Citadel would theoretically have 3x the protection of its City-proper.

I would suggest allowing Turrets for walls of a "Citadel" ... perhaps only starting as a Bowman in a tower, then upgrading to a Ballistae at Contruction, and then upgrading to a Bombard(Cannon) at blasting-powder.

It would be nice to have special anti-air turrets to be built, although maybe these would have to be garrisoned by Air-mana casters, or something. Certainly a late-game protection against Invasion from the Sky ... where you would either have to make a break in the walls or have to suffer fire by the Anti-Air batteries. Certainly only a late game feature though. It would also be nice to have the ability to add Oil burners to the Gates of your Castles and Walls, if someone breaks open a door, and u have these oil burners, people passing thorugh the doorway will have boiling oil poured upon them.

In addition, a Mining Outpost is merely a resource improvement with a small military guard, an indefinite number of tiles away from a city (like a Fort). It will remain operational as long as there is a road/open route between City and Outpost. Again, it will remain operational as long as there is a military unit present and an open route. The route can be an Oceanic Trade-lane, a large River, or a land-based Road.

A mining Outpost should be able to be built upon any non-food resource (food resources may still require settlements, Optional). I am particularly thinking only Ore-types and Shards. A mining Outpost can build a surrounding walls (optional, costs wood) and can house a small military garrison (50-100 soldiers). Im thinking ... that the soldiers would BE the laborers in such an outpost, so that the mining,ect is done by the soldiers stationed there. Either this would simply cost more (soldier's wages) OR it would have a lesser rate of effieciency as a Citizen-mining improvement. A fort can be built adjacent to the Mining Outpost. Perhaps this synergy could increase both protection of the Outpost, and increase mining effieciency. Perhaps an Outpost + Fort is more efficient than a citizen mining camp. If a city is built near/adjacent to an Outpost, the outpost will become part of the city and run by citizens, no longer "requiring" a garrison. If a City is built adjacent to a Mining Outpost which is attached to a Fort, then both the fort and the mine will become part of the city, and the option to upgrade the Fort to a Castle will become available at Settlement/City level 3.

Unlike in Medieval:Total War, any City can have a Castle (probably can have more than one if they *really* want to), and equally any large city can decide to become a Citadel at any time (although if the city can't grow any larger, than perhaps not, as you would need some buildings in between the primary, secondary, and tertiary walls.) However, large castles and Citadels I think belong in a Settlement of at least size 3. Other than that, I think you can have your Palace/Castle in your capital of whatever size settlement, as well as a Motte/Bailey or Fortress in the rest.

One possibility of upgrading a maxed out City into a Citadel would be an option to simply build your secondary and third walls wherever you wish, within certain limitations. This would be a more expensive endeavor and would provide little-to-no benefit other than safety. However, I think it would be best to leave maxed-out-cities to not be able to go the Citadel route. Cause going the Citadel route beyond a maxed out city seems to leave an over-complication that cannot be rectified. In which case, a reasonable option would be that all OTHER than level 5 cities can start becoming a Citadel. Of course, while this on face-value appears to have similarities with Medieval, youll still be able to build the city as large as possible, you simply need a base to start within your primary wall. If you want a third wall, you will have to Solidify your primary wall at Size 3 and your secondary wall at Size 4. Only in this way will you *most likely* have enough buildable space within your third wall.

Of course, if Citadels won't be in the game, then I would at least like to see some implementation of military-based Mining Operations and Fortresses/Watchtowers without the need for the presence of a Settlement.

You're proposal will limit the amount of land available, which will probably encourage people to pack cities into the available land even more tightly.  It somewhat depends on your definition of what city-spam actually is.  I'm not as concerned with the total number of cities (which your approach would improve) as I am with density of cities across the land (which your approach would make worse).

I actually think Elemental already has decent food restraints in place.  We can't farm anywhere other than the few resource tiles that allow it, so food is already significantly limited by the number of resources and our farming tech.  In addition the way land grows encourages us to place cities at the maximum distance possible from our existing cities to expand our land more (at least that's how I've done it).  Cities without their own food supply should be extremely vulnerable to sieges, which means we'll probably be wary of placing cities where there aren't any real resources to be claimed.  So far in the beta I think I've only settled 1 city that wasn't meant to claim a resource.

In short, we may not have as much a problem with this as we thought.  Maybe we should sit tight and see what happens?

I think one thing to be said here is that Only a Couple CITIES (with the really good buildings) plus a spamming of tiny settlements (outposts of 50-100 population or less) is kind of what we WANT. yes?

The more CITIES you have, the far more research and production and prestige your empire will attain. The BIGGER your cities are (more pop) the more research, production, and prestige. Its not a linear factor, 2 cities of 250 citizens are better than 5 cities of 100 citizens. 1 City of 500 population should be EVEN BETTER than 2 cities of 250 pop.

The food would limit your City population, and I propose all new settlements are Guaranteed 10-50 population based upon terrain (maybe a diff number, but according to the example it makes sense). In this way, you can spam as many CRAP outposts as you want with 50 citizens. They will do hardly anythihng for you other than expand territory and resource aquisition, they will not be able to reasearch or produce things worth CRAP. they will take 15 turns to build one soldier with ARMOR!!!! while your big city can build 1000 legionairres in maybe 5 turns. The amount your cities can grow beyond pop 50 will be determined by available food, and those cities with higher proportions of Prestige will get a larger proportion of that population.

youll want your outposts to have 0 prestige in order to not detract from the population of your Bread-Winner cities. In fact, you could create settlements to Harvest more food, simply for Food = Population sake, and solely to ship all that food for your big cities. Having 3 outposts of 50 citizens each, farm a strip of fertile land worth 1000 food, then your 1 city of 500 can now grow to 1500 (or 1000, or any 500 + divisible of 1000). Would it be most efficient to move all your food into one city?? Yes. Up until the point where your Big-City's housing can no longer hold population, in this case, excess food would be distributed to other settlements, first based on prestige, second based on distance to BigCity, and third based on distance from food's origin OR that being too complicated, third could simply be the natural fertility of the area (which is SORT OF like distance from food's origin).

In this way, say City A can hold 1000 citizens, and you have 500, and you have food enough for another 1000 citizens. Your city maxes growth at 1000, (500 additional people), and then City B which is pop 100 and can house 500, which has second highest prestige, gets 400 of growth, and then the last 100 are distributed among the smaller settlements according to equation (the one I colloqually spelled out, counting prestige first, distance second, ect ... lets assume that all other cities are only resource gathering settlements, and therefore its based upon distance from City B ).

Then your City A upgrades to City size 3, and can now build more buildings. City A can either build more housing (+500 citizen cap) research better Houses (+1000 citizen cap) or both (+2000 citizen cap), as the technology would double the house's effieciency. So lets say they tech for better houses only, and do other interesting things with the new buildable land. Its cap is now 2000, and it grows to 1500, reducing City B back to 100 pop. Perhaps you can control this with Governors, perhaps all citizens leak into highest prestige first (like the example) or perhaps the Populations of City A and City B reach an Equilibrium based upon relative Prestige levels.

I personally like the Equilibrium idea, although the Totalitarian Prestige idea presented would also work, since the biggest City would always be the most efficient location for population, and all settlements are guaranteed at least 50 pop. On the Equilibrium idea, lets say City A had 1000 prestige, and City B had 500 prestige. I think the equilibrium could work on either a direct proportional corrolation or an exponential porportional correlation or a logrithmic porportional correlation.

I personally prefer a Direct Proportional corrolation because its easier to plan and work with, and less guess work (although you could get used to either method). In this case, the City A's growth "soft cap" would center at twice the pop of City B. So, in the most simplistic assumption (assuming there is PLENTY of living space, and a deficiency of food), lets reapproach the initial setup. City A would not have 500 (+50) pop, and City B would not have 100 (+50) pop. Instead City A would have 400 (+50) and City B would have 200 (+50). If enough food for 1000 new people were added, then City A would rise to 1067 (+50) pop and City B would rise to 533 (+50) pop. This is my preferred system, although I suppose that even if such a system were not held to, it at least reveals additional ways to PREFER isolated Metropolises supported by MANY small towns and to NEGATE the view that many smaller towns are better. In addition your smaller town's cannot individually grow into larger towns, each population center would need to be supported by farming, and in the most basic instance of infinite accesibility and resource, the player would pour all available population into one Super-Mega city, as a result of this city being the only city in the empire with Prestige.

This method, in my opinion, in some ways *almost* obsoletes the Idea of Prestige as a form of Population growth, and instead treats it as a tool of Population *Distribution* as well as the respect it entails from other parts of the game. I say almost obsoletes it, because the base Prestige base could still affect the rate of growth in the period in-between Having no extra food, and having 1000 extra food. Prestige would determine how fast City A grew, and how fast City B grew. As city A grows faster, interestingly they reach their caps at the SAME TIME because cities with smaller caps would grow slower. Personally I think its brilliant, as its my first time to bring all points together in a way that I THINK makes sense .... however I suppose your ablility to synthesize your own conclusions will be the true deciding factor in how clearly I was able to express my ideas and opinions.

**as a note of interest, this Metropolis-focused plan of national growth reminds me *slightly* of the Kuriotates from FFH, although the Kuriotates were forced into such a device by arbitrary restrictions, rather than actual reasons. In my creation of Viewpoint, larger cities are so much better that its far Superior to have less, bigger cities. This method DOES NOT require much in the way of distance maintanence in the smaller outposts to prevent city spam, as its not city spam but village/outpost spam in the fight for resources, which are very poorly defensible, and quite juicy prey to raiders. They would most likely be the first target in warfare, and there would most likely be a literal *sea* of such small settlements, where-ever there is develop-able land with some pertinent resource.

I really like the food-related solutions to city spam. Back in the day when a Camp 1 economy was expected, I think similar ideas had floated around.

I think it should be relatively easy to come up with a system where large cities are not capable of feeding themselves and depend on food imports from surrounding smaller settlements - or alternatively, for a large city to feed itself it must have a large swath of good, empty land around it, discouraging densely packed cities. The former would prevent you from developing all of your cities - you have to choose which settlements to grow into major cities, and which to keep as small farming/resource outposts; the latter would strongly discourage densely packed settlements.

Some combination of the two would be wonderful. Ideally, I want large-city-spamming to be strongly discouraged, and densely packed settlements to be strongly discouraged. But at the same time I wouldn't want either of the above strictly prohibited.

About governors: I still like the idea of governors, but maybe not intended as a primary motivation for limiting city spam. All heroes could be governors (but not all would be good governors), and assigning one to a city will give it appropriate bonuses. But unless you're somehow keeping your # of cities to an absolute minimum and maximizing your force of heroes, you should not generally have nearly enough governors for every city. If you have 2 good governors and 8 cities, you would have to choose which cities get the governors and the associated bonuses (maybe it'd be your two biggest, or maybe you'd assign one to a smaller village that has access to important resources, etc). Or perhaps a governor would only be required for a city to exceed a certain size.

Why have giant numbers when little ones will do?  In the simplest implementation, one food equals one city.  Collect three units of food on the floodplain, and you can feed the floodplain city and two more with no food access.  (Caveat: ideally, starting cities would have the potential to produce two or more food.)

A slightly more complex implementation would be to have one food equal one city level.  Five for a full-sized city, one for an outpost.  This seems pretty good, since getting more food later on would open up the possibility of coming back to a small city and growing it.  It also matches (but does not exceed) the granularity of the most important corresponding system.

It would be possible to require cities not to re-use a particular type of food when growing.  I don't think this is a good idea, though, because it promotes spread in a variety of ways (need more food resources, can't grow larger cities).  Balanced right, however, it might encourage an appropriate sequence of expansion and consolidation as the player's empire grows to X number of cities, hits the magic food combo, and then builds those cities up.

It's starting to look like implementing a food system might result in a "tipping point" where losing a food-producing city can put a player's remaining cities into a persistent famine situation, or at least force some painful rebalancing.  I'm not sure whether this should be intended (makes late-game battles over resources very meaningful, discourages stalemates) or avoided (makes losing a city too costly, slippery-slope balance problem).

I am liking the food based ideas put forth here.  Large numbers of small outposts supporting a few big cities makes a lot of sense (you could choose to do a few massive cities with many outposts, or more medium sized cities that can do a bit less... all of which are a good model).  It also helps from a role playing perspective (how many small towns are in most fantasy settings... quite a few, and they are usually no less important places for adventure than the big unique cities).  It also fits in the game mechanics. Governors should stay (lots of gameplay potential there), but I think food limiting population growth, and thus city size is the way to go.

One thing that I really like about Elemental currently is that you can't just farm everywhere.  It's different and it makes the world seem very dangerous.  I like that quite a bit.  I'd rather not change it.

One thing I don't want to see is food having huge impact on population growth, like it does in far too many games.  People don't reproduce faster just because there's lots more food available, they just need "enough", beyond that, it doesn't really matter.  Look at Ethiopia; not much food, but no population growth problems.  Obviously food should limit population to some degree, although I'd favor a gradual unrest rather than suddenly going into starving mode.

I'm still favoring the wait and see approach.  Plain open land just isn't an appealing place to settle in Elemental at all.  My only real concern is that there really isn't any reason to settle near rivers now, which have historically been the most common places to settle for obvious reasons.

A Simple Point (haven't seen it mentioned yet) - Allowing the player to grow each of their cities to any size (which has already been mentioned) is to some extent self-balancing anyway -

- A few large cities is playing a higher risk game, as the opponents can capture a lot just by taking one

- Many small settlements will take longer to capture, but will not individually be as productive

So I think the player should be the determinant of city 'size' - not an arbitrary 'footprint' that comes with growth levels &c. Essentially a player should choose in what size/direction their city attempts to project its influence. Like a real city-state.

moving along .... double post

Fair points all - but most depend on how combat works. In any event:

Smaller cities May be easier to take (depends how much of that small city is fortification!) - but if there are many of them they are also easy to Retake. - have experienced this in other games such as MoM/HOMM - where the enemy has more cities, progress is slow because you must stop to garrison/fortify before you move on. - HOMM players will recognise this - wherever I move my killer stack to take the next town, the AI has a puny stack waiting somewhere in the wings to retake the last one I just overwhelmed.....

This mirrors a well known engineering trade-off - one large town = single point of failure but v efficient, many smaller towns = redundancy but little failures all the time.

- As player, we could -choose- which trade-off we want?

(Later: NB: I was answering Cerevox's points, though out-of-sequence)

You make the assumption that he bothers to actually hold the city. What if he just rolls in and razes them? Or dosen't bother leaving any defenses, just keeps attacking until he finishes you off? I know in Civ at least i would almost always raze any city i took, typically because the AI was horrible at city placement, but it also meant that my entire army could keep advancing and that if my army got beaten, there was nothing left for the person i attacked to retake.

Assuming you have the same size army in both situations, a few things will always be easier to defend than a lot of things. To my mind, there is no trade off. One option is clearly superior and anyone choosing to go with many small cities is just asking for someone to invade and raze their stuff.

I'd usually raze captured cities in Civ as well, unless they had something really worth keeping. The way Civ 4 worked, taking a city required putting a garrison in it to quell the revolt and to keep it from flipping back, especially since the other cities of the person you took it from would put massive cultural pressure on it until you took those too. It was usually easier to burn most of them down and keep a few.

I'm really liking the food ideas, though I think I already said that. They use a simple mechanic, but it's pretty powerful and they create a lot of tension on the map because fertile land is a VERY valuable resource. Losing it is a big deal, as opposed to losing iron mine #6 where you just shrug.

It seems to me this is exactly what we're looking for: a mechanic that isn't complicated but adds a lot to the game.