The more this debate continues, the more I want city building to be basic and simplified. There are too many other empire building games that are all about what you build, when you build and how many you build. Been there, done that.

I'd like to see the World of Elemental influencing my cities! I'd like only ONE of each building type per city. I'd like research to upgrade my buildings and at the same time increase population, food production, etc. I'd like my cities' population to drop if it is attacked directly. I'd want my production to drop if there was an iron shortage and I didn't find a new mine or switch to other metals. If a cataclysmic event caused the World to 'pause', I'd want my research to do the same. I'd like to tie in the exploration of detailed maps with research, random events, quests and World resources. (Quests could be generated off of these events. New resources might need to be found.)

These are examples (poor I know) of ways where the RPG in Elemental would affect the TBS. Instead of KNOWING I would always need X housing to maximize my population, my civilization would constantly need to account for the World around it. Instead of racing to build my city and then mostly forgetting about it when all is 'maximized', I want to feel the need to always look out for my city. Just because my land is 'full' doesn't mean my Sovereign duties are over in the care of it.

I may not have explained it well, but hopefully anyone reading gets the idea behind it.

ok, what about this.  is it possible to allow sub buildings?

example:  i build a farm on a tile.  i then click the farm and at the bottom of the screen where the various buildings you can build were, a new screen shows IMPROVEMENTS to the farm tile you have selected.  now when you click say "Grain silo" around the farm(or maybe all farms) the green boxes appear.  allowing you to place the upgrade where you want.

i think this would help eliminate the clutter on the build screen as it puts each upgrade effectively within its own buildings of influence.

Also on this screen is a tile that is basically a placeholder tile.  this would be handy for the idea below.

improvement tiles DO NOT use up your city level max tiles.  this is radical and would make having massive cities possible.  if this is not acceptable then perhaps the next idea would be.

when you get a new building tech then you would get its accompanying improvement techs automatically.  these would cost you a city level tile, but instead of having to plan ahead on your buildings then you could already use them.

The developpers said one of the main goals of the game was to reduce 'city-spam'.

Now, we see that the cost of starting a city has sunk from 5 essence points to just 1, thus enabling city-spamming.

Perhaps this is the point needing a discussion with the Team; as you say, what is good for 10 cities becomes nightmarish with 100 (traditional 4X engame micromanagement problem).

Zamul said in reply 25:

Now, I'm not saying that only building gardens is any fun, but by adding more kinds of improvements, and, like Frogboy mentioned in a Dev Journal, being able to merge improvements of similar types when putting them close to each other, there would be so many possibilities that worrying about gardens wouldn't really be an issue. Smart city planning would really become key, and cities would be more realistic.

Say, perhaps, that you place a command post, barracks, an archery range and an armory next to each other, and it "morphs" into a "military academy" with stats equaling the former buildings plus bonuses, for example. Imagine how rich the city building would be, almost like a crafting system! And to return to the garden thing, gardens could gain bonuses when placed next to each other, perhaps in a 2x2 set they could become "farmlands" or something, which would have bonuses.

But the most important aspect to this, I think, is that it could remove the need to delete outdated buildings. (The following is just an example for examples' sake, I know it might not be accurate in actual game rules:) If I had four merchant improvements, for example, for a total of 4 gildars per turn covering 2x2, and then researched the market improvement, which is also 2x2 in total size but gives you 6 g per turn, I'd normally have to remove the merchants and replace them with the market for optimal gildar per used tile, which is boring and "micromanagementy". Now, what if the system worked in such a way that the four merchants had merged into a "merchants' quarter" which gives 5 g, and then, when I research the market tech, the market replaces the merchants' quarters giving 6 g instead. Instant optimal upgrade without having to replace anything manually. It might sound confusing written like this, but essentially it would be: 4 g -> 5 g -> 6 g, without having to micro and remove old-tech buildings and build new ones, while still not sacrificing complexity (eg. not just having one single economy improvement that upgrades through three steps, for example).

Now this can get very complicated. But, a nice way to solve that would be colors. You know, at the moment, all the buildable squares are green. But with a system like this, it could work like this instead (example):

I have built a commandpost. Now I have researched barracks, and I'm going to build one. All the tiles around the commandpost are green, because placing the barracks there would build towards a military academy. The other squares are yellow, because placing it there would not build towards any bonuses.

To further simplify things, there could be a note in the improvement description, for example: "Builds towards: Military Academy". The ultimate thing would be to make the words "military academy" clickable, which would lead to a little popup with descriptions on how to build it (unresearched improvements would have to be listed as unknown or something, though), for example: "A military academy consists of: Commandpost, UNKNOWN TECH, Archery Range, Barracks. *stat summary follows with bonuses made clear*".

So, yeah, that's what I had to say. I brainstormed all this just now so it has some rough spots, but I believe it would really make for some rewarding city building and really separate the "men from the mice" without being hyper-micro or time demanding, instead just relying on city building knowledge.

 

EDIT: I realize now that this could work against snaking (building a line of 1x1 improvements to reach a resource), because all those 1x1 buildings would miss out on bonuses.

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Zamul has an excellent suggestion. Some tendencies of human beings: They feel "penalized" when they have to destroy something they "paid" to build. This will lower the perceived "fun" of any game.

 Also, they will tend to gravitate towards one (or several specific) patterns of building, given no meaningful choices and/or bonuses/penalties. For city building to shine, it needs a much clearer GUI, less housing/populationcap shuffling (ditch housing, make population a function of food x (prestige)^0.5 with a growth rate determined by the gap between max and current, limit the number of gardens that can be built in each city at a given population). Shuffling caps isn't fun. And on any large map, it will quickly become painful. City Spam is limited by Essence (which should be determined by map size).

If squares are limited (one can assume based on population, but there are other ways to do this as well e.g. SoaSE's logistic points system, et al.), and there is an adjacency bonus for buildings, then cities will HAVE to be specialized. This is a direct result of the fact that you can't just build every single thing in every single city. As far back as the beginning of the 4x genre (Civ, Mom) there has been the "oh god, another city, food, granary, barracks, smithy, blah blah". Before there were "queues" you just had to memorize it and do what came "next" on the list. Breaking away from this patterned (mindless) city building would be a huge triumph for the game.

My personal desire is for organic feeling cities that aren't an exercise in queue clicking, but each have a purpose. To answer the OP's question: I want streamlined meaningful choices in city building. Not more clicking for clicking's sake, nor so simplistic that whatever I do is irrelevant, since every city will end up with all of everything anyway.

P.S. Zamul notes that this would work counter to city snaking. For me, that's a meaningful tradeoff.

I just thought some more about this so I thought I'd post it here:

The worst thing that could happen to city building in my book is that it would become too simple and have too generic buildings available to build. It would mean you plopped down the same improvements in every city (an economy building, a research building and a warfare building) and then just researched to improve them. Every city would be the same and you wouldn't have to care about it any more after you've built those standard, generic buildings. Just keep pressing end turn and spam some more cities to increase your power.

To me, a game like Elemental is fun to play not just because you can wage war and move huge armies around, but also because you can sit back and tinker with your cities and be diplomatic. If cities aren't complex enough to be tinkered with, then who'll want to be diplomatic? Choosing the diplomatic path would end up meaning that you sat there and pressed end turn waiting for research to be done so cities can be upgraded, and now and then speaking to some opponent (like I always end up doing in GalCiv2 (which still manages to be a great game, though)).

If the citybuilding were rich enough, but still maintain its relative simplicity (like in my last post for example), there would always be something to do (planning the city layout, for example) while "warmongering" players still wouldn't have to spend time each turn on destroying old buildings and replacing them and such annoying micro stuff. But in the end, is it so unfair and annoying that someone who takes time optimizing his cities and planning them properly should have more successful and "resource-generating" cities than someone who just focuses on warfare?

To me it's quite obvious that someone who takes the time to plan his cities should have "better" cities than somebody who just rushes a couple of cities out and crams a couple of improvements into them. City building is something I'd like to be a large part of a successful empire, and I've played too many 4X games where every city goes by the same "optimal formula". There should be as much smarts and tactics involved in building a good city as there should be in warfare, because having to focus on one part of your empire creates a lot of variation and dynamics. Perhaps you start the game by building a well-planned city, and then, when it's time to go to war, you have to focus on warfare. Making things so simple that you can always focus on both is not fun, nor does it provide the player with any variation in the long run. Like eating the cake and keeping it too. Always having many cakes to choose from, though, provides lots of variation and fun.

Buildings

It becomes boring to spam the same type of building as the city grows.

Streamline: only one building of the same type is built; as city grows, that building gets upgraded.

Roads and caravans

Too much micromanagement here. Automate caravans and the gradual establishment of roads, similar to what was in BETA 1. There's already a lot to do, and this only adds to grinding the more cities a player has. The initial roads could be upgraded, by way of research, in order to allow a greater movement bonus (maybe this is already in the game and I didn't notice).

City leveling

Gardens, gardens and more gardens! Spam deja vu here. Please create a limit and allow subsequent upgrades depending on research. Discovering farming could allow the gardens to be upgraded... something like that.

Suggestion

Devs can very well add as many layers of complexity as they want, as long as each layer is clear, streamlined, intuitive. The limit should be when that complexity only adds to spamming and tedious grinding (excessive micromanagement, which isn't fun nor add to strategic depth). Let's not forget that not everyone is a gamer whiz and I don't think it's in anyone's interest for city building to be cumbersome and tedious. In an aesthetic viewpoint, more buildings of the same type are boring to watch since they all have the same animations. Less spamming of this clears the way for a more animated city, sprawling with unique buildings.

Difference with Beta 1? Research tech and the need to build caravan.

Here's a thought that just occurred to me.  If the development of food starts with the beginning knowledge of gardens, and then advances after researching Farming, Fishing, Orchards & Beekeeping...  why not combine gardens with houses?

Without a serious study of large scale crop management, the default food production would probably be individual gardens, near housing.  Afterward, you'd move up to community gardens, and then on to farms.

A Hut + Garden would still occupy 1 tile, cost a wee bit more, and grant housing and food.  When Housing is researched, auto-upgrade to a House, with increased housing and food production.  Change the upgrade to Villa's or Estates to player controlled, and remove the food production.

Allow the Farming technology to build Farms on Fertile Land (15 food/turn), and Community Gardens anywhere (4 tiles, 10 food/turn).

EDIT:  A bit of clarification.  I mean, make the Hut & House (once researched) self-sustaining.  Each structure will provide food for the people it will house.  Researching Farming and building Farms or Community Gardens would grant bonus food productions, which would be needed when you upgrade to or build Villa's & Estates.

Alpha Centauri had a nifty way of handling population. Any base you had automatically would gain population to a max (level 4, or 4k people) until you built a structure. One structure. I think it was the Children's Creche.

Either way! My bases grew to level 4, I build something, they went to level 8, I build something else, and they are free to grow until they can't sustain any more people on their own.

Now, I am suggesting one of two things based on this...

1. Natural Limits - I build up a town, it can automatically grow up to a level dictated by the presence of food. Then, it hits level 2.9999 and I get a message, "City X is at max population." I go over there, build up a Housing Thingy, and suddenly I can get to level 4.9999.
2. Imaginary Houses - Like I said somewhere else, I feel like some guy at the DMV calling out numbers as houses become built. The current system tailors to making the Sovereign a sort of babysitter - we tell the people when they are allowed to come into our cities, and that magical line of people waiting outside? They get to wait until we have more housing available. Instead of worrying about housing, either have it appear naturally (ala the natural growth suggestion) or just take it out entirely. Keep the higher levels of housing - estates and the like - to represent making a city actually there for the sake of increased population.

I am also going to point out that there are just some things that shouldn't take the space they do. Building walls shouldn't take up tiles - walls are outside the city, so to speak. I say, give us more interaction with the cities, too. Let me upgrade the city by clicking on something inside the city (town hall area? palace?) and have a list of options to play with. Build walls? Sure. Defensive towers, perhaps? Maybe forbid trade from happening? Just having a city is boring - being able to interact, even on the basic level of building stuffs, would make cities more unique and worthwhile.

Xtropy deserves a medal for his suggestion/comparison to the Sins options. 

Gardens, farms and this Adjacent Buildings idea... Well farms aren't traditionally built inside cities, though I could see letting adjacent gardens get a bonus from each other, effectively letting you create a demifarm inside the city. But thats as far as the "build X next to Y to get Z" stuff should go. It shouldn't matter if my armory is across the street from my barracks, or built on the other side of town. Doing things like that would eliminate a lot of the free form city building I currently enjoy. 

The current system is fine in my opinion as far as housing goes. I don't find myself obsessively building them every turn. Maybe I'm just playing the game wrong.

Consider this.  Housing doesn't limit city growth; Food does!  Housing is just the player applying the food to a certain city.  The complaints everyone seems to have are:

1. Houses must be manually placed
2. They take up a useable tile
3. May have to demolish buildings in favor of housing to continue growth if built in the wrong order

Therefore, can we move housing "outside" the city walls.  History supports this.  Let the player use city tiles for "production" buildings so each tile has a real opportunity cost.  Let the player continue to control the allocation of resources to build housing (i.e. food and materials) and the location (i.e. which city).  However, de-couple houses from the useable tiles that define a city's ultimate use.

P.S. I'm heavily in favor of adjacent add-ons to enhance building.  However, each should present an opportunity cost and strategic choice.  For example, Farm add-ons would; first, occupy a tile that could have been used for other buildings and; secondly, present choices like increased output, enhanced health for units, or longer seige defense.

Your thoughts, criticism, or expansion is welcome.

Perhaps when you click on an "add-on" structure icon in the build list, the "main" structure already built highlights, or changes color?

Pretty much agree with this, both on food and add-ons.  At the moment houses only control the flow of food in your empire, it strikes me that there could be a more elegant solution for this.  Though I can't think of one.