Bring back oldie Total War city development

[Carl Jung was right]

First of all, I started an exact same thread a little while back.

Secondly, it should be noted that some people dislike the building features of the Rome I and Med II system. However I must stress that they must have never played the major mod overhauls, which attempt to fix the "build everything everywhere" problem. These mods, like EB and SS offer some very interesting game mechanics. It feels like you're slowly tailoring your faction towards a specific policy end. For example in EB and RSII, there's a "policy" building chain, where you choose to develop a city either as a vassal allied state under your control, or annex it into your faction entirely. Both of these choices influence the way a province develops. Characters are affected by the buildings in the settlement, and different building chains offer mutually exclusive benefits, making it impractical to construct one of each chain in every city. Large architectural projects, unique constructions and faction specific buildings offer flavor and depth to city development. That is why I strongly advocate scrapping the overly abstract and simplified new building system, which feels like it belongs more to a gamey e-sports RTS than an immersive strategy game. Instead I would like to see a combination of the best parts of the old and the new systems - small provinces, forts and settlements with limited development opportunities should have their building options restricted, whereas large metropoli and faction capitals have an unlimited amount of building slots, enabling the player to indulge in various architectural vanities alongside practical building chain advancement.

[mdoolitt]

I'd rather cities were unique and not be able to build everything than have each one as universalfactory#4563. In Med 2 when I lost a city I didn't really care as all I lost was some income. Losing a city that provided your best units/ships etc I find much more engaging.

For that we would need an AI that might actually threaten to conquer the players cities.

[scoicarius]

Offtopic

I've been watching some Attila Total War campaign playthroughs (I don't have a powerful enough computer to play it) and I think cities look great during battles. I'm curious how much variety there is to them. For instance, do cities identically developed look different based on geographical location? Do all different cultures have different-looking cities? And do all structures built on the campaign map actually appear during battles? Maybe someone who played it can shed some light on the matter for me.

[Col. Tartleton]

I like this idea.

I think there is some value added to the gameplay by limiting the amount of buildings in cities. With the med2 system, all small villages on the map could become huge metropolises, which sorta broke immersion.

However, the Rome 2 system was waaaay too restrictive. It was a killjoy to only have 3-4 building slots in most settlements, with only 5-6 for the largest cities. So often was I forced to demolish a garrison or a temple to build a new farm because I was running out of food, which doesn't make any sense. If you need more food, you build more farmland, but you wouldn't build it on top of your temple within your city would you???

I liked the Shogun 2 system. Each town had a limited number of building slots for trade, recruitment and happiness buildings. However, each settlement also had extra fixed slots just for farmland, a port and a specialist building.

So maybe take the Shogun 2 system and improve it to make each city feel more unique?

All the "small villages" in Medieval 2 were major cities. At least in vanilla. Even in most mods they're going to be provincial or county capitals.

[Aquila_Mars]

^ this is correct, the cities present in the vanilla game were more or less very important towns, not peasant village number 27.

Unless you people want Altdorf to be little better than the unimportant villages in rome 2 (yes, that includes the majorest of cities in that PofS game.) , I think medieval 2's building system is better. Otherwise enjoy trying to put 1 knighthood order's chapter house in any of your cities, oh wait, you are out of food.

[Woody0]

^ I think medieval 2's building system is better. Otherwise enjoy trying to put 1 knighthood order's chapter house in any of your cities, oh wait, you are out of food.

I think this is exactly why some people do not want something unlimited like in Med2. I know for me I want the challenge of having to select what to build and what not to build with advantages and disadvantages to my choice.

I think a mixture of Rome 2 and Empire would be nice. I like in Empire not all your important structures/resources where within the settlement, seemed a bit more realistic to me. I also liked Rome 2 where I needed to make a choice between a money and military production. I also would like to see the unit recruitment tied to population. Meaning if I recruit a unit I lose citizens able to farm and perform other task.

[scoicarius]

Instead I would like to see a combination of the best parts of the old and the new systems - small provinces, forts and settlements with limited development opportunities should have their building options restricted, whereas large metropoli and faction capitals have an unlimited amount of building slots, enabling the player to indulge in various architectural vanities alongside practical building chain advancement.

That's the kind of system I'd like to see, where a few major cities have unlimited (or a very large number of) building slots, whereas the rest have limited slots, to varying degrees (so that you cannot turn all cities into metropoli).

[Aquila_Mars]

I also would like to see the unit recruitment tied to population. Meaning if I recruit a unit I lose citizens able to farm and perform other task.

This used to be a feature in older titles, however it caused an error with the AI where the AI recruited all its peasantry into military service, which caused you to find little villages in turn 692

As for the advantages and disadvantages of a limited building system, I'd rather have them polish that instead of servicing me the crap that was in Rome 2 (which you miraculously happened to like for some ungodly reason)

They can limit my building plots in a city by categorizing buildings, okay? Say I dedicate a city to military, then that city will have no limits regarding military buildings, and all other type buildings -food-trade ETC will be available in limited numbers.
However I refuse to accept 6 building slots in a single city, ever. That isn't a city, that isn't even a hamlet.
And warhammer fantasy, especially Empire cities are significantly larger than our own historical cities.

[scoicarius]

However I refuse to accept 6 building slots in a single city, ever. That isn't a city, that isn't even a hamlet.
And warhammer fantasy, especially Empire cities are significantly larger than our own historical cities.

I don't have a problem with it. The whole system is (and has always been) abstract and to a large extent arbitrary. I'm only interested of it in terms of strategic possibilities.